COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — Omaha Beach is empty and peaceful now. But 74 years ago, 13 days after D-Day, allied forces were frantically landing soldiers and supplies, beginning their push through France. Making a run to the beach on their tank landing craft were 19-year-old Navy operators who were identical twins: Julius “Henry” Pieper and Ludwig “Louie” Pieper from Creston, Nebraska. Their ship hit a German mine and exploded. Louie’s body was found and was buried with the other American casualties in the cemetery just above Omaha Beach. But Henry’s body was never identified until now. Seventy-four years later, the inseparable Pieper twins, whose service on the same ship ran against standard military policy, have been reunited. “They pleaded with grandpa,” said Linda Suitor Pieper, their niece. “Grandpa then wrote a letter to their commanding officer saying, ‘My boys came into the world together, they want to serve together, and if they go down together, so be it.'” That’s how the twins ended up serving on the same ship. French salvage divers had found human remains on the wreck in the 1960s and they were taken to a U.S. lab in Belgium. But a positive identification wasn’t made until 2017, and… Read full this story
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