Back in 2013 I interviewed a lady from Loughborough who lived in Quorn during the war, and was 16 when the 505th PIR arrived to take up residency in their temporary tented camp on the grounds of Quorn House. She told me that she had met a number of the Paratroopers as they /1

explored their new surroundings, and later became romantically involved with one who was 19 years old at the time. She mentioned that this Paratrooper was the son of a famous American General, so when I asked his name I was surprised when she told me his surname was O'Daniel. /2

As someone who had done some reading on the 3rd Infantry Division, of course the name that immediately came to mind was Major General John W O'Daniel, who took over Command of the 3rd ID from Lucian Truscott, a man I admire greatly. I mentioned this to the lady, who said /3

"Oh, yes, that's the man". MG O'Daniels son was called Pvt John Wilson O'Daniel, Jr, his name identical to his father's in every way. Pvt O'Daniel was a post-Normandy replacement in A-Company, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He arrived in Quorn in July 1944 and the two met /4

shortly after.

(I must stress at this point that I am not mentioning this woman's real name for 2 reasons. The first was that she asked that I use a false name in the book, and the second being that I have simply forgotten her real name. Her mother was not happy about her, /5

being 16, seeing a 19-year-old American and I believe from what she told me that her Mother made her feel quite ashamed of it, something she clearly struggled with for the rest of her life.)

She didn't tell me to what extent their relationship was "romantic" and of course, I /6

didn't ask. But she did tell me John was quiet, shy, very apprehensive about what lay ahead, and was generally not like the other men who were boisterous, many were walking egos (kind of had to be, to be a Paratrooper). John was right to be apprehensive. He was KIA by MG fire /7

just 3 days into his first taste of combat, during the fighting around Nijmegen.

The truly sad part of all of this was that the Regiment did not return to England, so "Mary" had no way of knowing he had been KIA.

After the war, she was shocked to receive a letter from /8

MG O'Daniel and his wife, who had found letters from her in their son's personal items. They, without knowing it, informed her that he was dead, and thanked her for giving him friendship in his final days. The Major General also spoke of his grief, and his struggles to /9

overcome the loss of his son. He had seen plenty of death, plenty of young men die in horrible ways and the thought of one of them being his boy was something he struggled to cope with.

In researching the book I was never able to find out much about John Jr. I found no /10

photographs, and he was not mentioned in any unit histories. That was until last year, when I was contacted by an American called Lowell Silverman who was working to complete the bio's of upwards of 30 men from Newark, Delaware, who had been KIA in WW2. He sent me this. /11

Through Lowell's diligent work to find out more, he was able to determine Johns's actual cause of death from the conflicting reports from those who witnessed it, who included A-505th D-Day Pathfinder, Bob Murphy.

Lowell did a memorial page for John Jr, which can be found /12

here.

https://www.fold3.com/page/653611803/john-wilson-odaniel-jr

I'm proud of having played a small part in bringing this hero out of the shadows.