Private First Class James McClean of North Carolina died on July 16, 1944. He is buried at the American Cemetery in Normandy.
Photo: Linda Hervieux
Cpl. Henry J. Harris of Pennsylvania died on June 6, 1944. He is buried at the American Cemetery in Normandy.
Photo: Linda Hervieux
Cpl. Brooks Stith of Virginia died on June 6, 1944. He is buried at the American Cemetery in Normandy.
Photo: Linda Hervieux
James L. Simmons
Photo: Courtesy of Charlotte Simmons Chase
UPPER MARLBORO, MARYLAND
Private First Class James L. Simmons, Jr., was one of three 320th men killed in action on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. His little sister, Charlotte, remembers when an Army man in a brown pulled up in front of her family’s house. When the man left, her mother was sobbing. That's how she learned her brother "Bunny" was never coming home. A large framed version of this photograph hangs on Charlotte's wall in that same house in Maryland.
On June 6, 1944, Theolus Wells – everyone called him “B” – shared a foxhole on Utah Beach that was so deep, Wells could barely haul all six-foot-two-inches of himself out of it. During his time in Britain training for the invasion, Wells had sometimes been mistaken for the heavyweight champ Joe Louis. On the morning of D-Day, Wells, age 21, said he “didn’t have enough sense to be scared.” He watched as a plane was hit by fire and the pilot jumped. “I’m an American!” the flyer yelled repeatedly as he parachuted to the beach. He died on July 16, 2018.
Theolus Wells, known as “B”, said he was too young to have enough sense to be scared on Utah Beach. He landed on D-Day.
Theolus Wells at home in 2011.
Photo: Linda Hervieux
