Mary Morris wasn’t even born when her half-brother, Pvt. Vivian Francis Brookshier, was killed in France Aug. 16, 1944.
In a letter received more than a month after the private’s death, the soldier’s mother, Edna Groshong of Polo, learned from a chaplain that the death was the result of German fire.
“Private First Class Brookshier was hit by an enemy rifle bullet and died within fifteen minutes,” the chaplain, attached to the 141st Infantry Regiment, wrote. “An individual funeral service was held for him in accordance with the Protestant practice and was conducted by me.”
Morris was born in February of 1945, six months later and just as the war was entering its final stages.
The connection between Morris and her half-brother was of only minor consequence to her until 69 years later, when Frenchman Alain Dubreuil began communicating. That Dubreuil, of Anthéor, France, managed to connect with her at all was the product of unusually good fortune and timing.
The result of that link is that Morris and her fiancé, Ed Duncan, will be in the South of France this weekend to attend Memorial Day ceremonies honoring her brother’s sacrifice and those of other Americans.
Their trip has its roots in Dubreuil and his wife, Martine, who adopted Brookshier’s grave in 2014 and decorate it for Memorial Day and other occasions.
The serviceman is buried in the Rhone American Cemetery in Draguignan, a city in southern France – one of 860 American soldiers and sailors interred there.
Most were killed during Operation Anvil/Dragoon, an amphibious landing that began Aug. 15, 1944 – a day before Brookshier’s death – and followed the Normandy invasion by two months.
The objective was to open a second front, turn German attention and resources away from the advancing D-Day troops and hasten the Allied drive toward Western France and beyond.
Like so many things today, it was the Internet that ultimately brought Morris, the Lawson woman, together with Dubreuil and his wife, as well as the Franco-American Society and the mayor of Draguignan.
To read the conclusion of this story, see the Friday, May 27 issue of The Excelsior Springs Standard