The REMEMBER US Cover: Mystery Solved!

One year ago, our friend, Frans Roebroeks, called me and said, “I’ve found it!” 

Fotocollectie Regionaal Archief Nijmegen

We had been searching for just the right image for the front cover of REMEMBER US. I wanted a cover shot that captured the story in one image. It needed to include an American soldier, but I didn’t want a combat photo because our book is about so much more than war. I also wanted the Dutch to be represented, but in a way that reflected the unique connection that unfolded between liberators and those they freed from Nazi occupation. When I saw what Frans had found, I knew we had it. But who was the American officer? And who were those two beautiful children on the hood of the jeep in their oversized clothes wearing rough-hewn clogs? 

Through the tireless research from an interested and determined person I now call a friend, Ditta Strijbos, we learned that the two children in the photo were five-year-old Francien E. Paes and seven-year-old Jan H. Nillesen. On that day, the children were playing in front of Francien’s home in Malden, in the municipality of Heumen, the Netherlands. Jan was Francien’s next-door neighbor. 

AP Wirephoto, “Wooden Shoes, Jeep and a Yank,” The Enid Daily Eagle (Enid, OK), December 13, 1944, 1.

Around the same time that we received the names of the children from Ditta, Thulaï van Maanen contacted us with information about the soldier in the photograph. Thulaï, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Military History, had discovered the paratrooper was a public relations officer and Second Lieutenant with the 82nd Airborne Division named Russell W. Brazelton, from Los Angeles, California. My team dug deeper and learned that Brazelton previously had been in special operations with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. In spring 1944, Brazelton had been a member of a small commando unit in the BARDSEA Project, which had the mission of training and arming the Polish resistance in France to assist with the invasion of Europe. He was a decorated soldier by the time the BARDSEA Project was dissolved after D-Day, and he transferred to the 82nd Airborne.

Learning the information about Brazelton allowed us to piece together the story. The first American soldiers entered Malden on September 19, 1944. Taking the town was an important step toward seizing the bridges at Nijmegen. Brazelton would have arrived sometime later to escort journalists reporting on Operation Market Garden. We also discovered that the photographer who took the picture was Peter J. Carroll, who snapped the iconic photo of American soldiers marching down Paris’s Champs-Élysées months earlier, in August 1944.

I had long hoped that one if not both of these two "children" might still be alive to meet and interview. Unfortunately, we learned that everyone has since passed. Brazelton separated from the Army in October 1945 and became a real estate broker in California. He died in March 1991. Francien married and passed away in March 2022. Jan also married and had two children. He passed away in February 2023.

There are no dead ends with Remember Us, though. I’ve learned with this book, like The Monuments Men, that the end of one story is just the beginning of another. The next chapter of this new story is meeting the wonderful Dutch people who helped with this search beginning with Ditta and Thulaï. Then there are the members of the families of those in the photograph. I am in contact with Brazelton’s descendants, particularly Brian Muegge, who has been gracious and shared in our excitement about unraveling the mystery behind this great front cover photograph on the front cover of Remember Us. I also look forward to reaching out to Jan’s daughter, Marilou, who is a historian at the Brabant Historical Information Center. And it always bears repeating that had it not been for our great friend, Frans Roebroeks, we would never have known about this photograph so as always, thank you Frans!

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