REMEMBERING
PRESTON P. BRASHER

By Joe C. Fling

Sixty years ago, the D-Day invasion of Nazi-held France, brought additional hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers, many of them from Colorado County, into harms’ way. The first to die in ground action in the European theatre would be Preston P. Brasher.

Brasher’s family had come to Chesterville from East Texas. He was born August 18, 1919, the son of James W. and Mattie (Gilcrease) Brasher, He had several siblings, all of whom are now deceased. Preston married Jewel Horn in 1942. At the time of his induction into the service the family was living in Pasadena, and working in Houston. Brasher received his induction notice on November 10 and entered the service on November 23. Brasher had begun his training at Camp Wallace, and also trained at Fort Bliss; in California, Colorado and Maryland before going overseas. Brasher was trained in a coastal artillery unit.

Brasher wrote home that he had shipped from England to France on August 25, 1944, eleven weeks after D-Day. Soon after his arrival, his wife received the unwelcome notice that Preston had been reported missing in action. It would be an excruciating, six month long wait before the War Department notified her that Preston had in fact been killed in action in the area of Luxembourg and Germany. Compounding the frustration, the family never received any details of his death and no personal effects were ever returned. This may have contributed to the decision to leave him buried in Europe. News of Brasher’s death was reported in the county’s newspapers in the first days of May, 1945 as the war in Europe was ending.

Mrs. Briscoe is one of many who have expressed dismay that a soldier was trained in one area (artillery), but was subsequently sent into action in another area (infantry) without a sense of his being adequately retrained for action in the new unit. His death within a month of arriving in France seems to bear this out. The late Stephen Ambrose, in his book Citizen Soldiers, is harshly critical of the method of replacement that was done in the European theatre of operations. Once ashore in Normandy, units were resupplied piecemeal from the replacement depots with men who had trained with other units and often for other action. In Brasher’s case, having trained in coastal artillery, he went into action in the infantry. This would have placed Brasher into combat with men he did not train with and with duties other than those that he had trained for.

Brasher was serving as a private in the 112th regiment, 28th infantry division at the time of his death. The 28th is one of the divisions often seen in photographs of the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944, marching parade style down the Champs-Elysees under the Arch de Triomphe. What is less widely known is that the 28th did not stop for rest and relaxation in Paris. They were on their way east, on their way to battle. Brasher had arrived in France from England the same day Paris was liberated.

If one tries to make an educated guess at what action Brasher may have died in, we note that September 17, 1944, the date he was reported missing, was the same date that three American and British Airborne divisions jumped into Holland in Operation Market Garden. The rest of the line, down south, notably Patton’s 3rd Army and Hodge’s 1st Army were shorted on gas and other supplies for the risky gamble in Holland. Fierce fighting was going on all along the front, with the Germans offering stiff resistance as the American army approached the Germans’ home soil.

Brasher is buried in the Luxembourg American Cemetery in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, where some 5,076 American soldiers including 3rd Army’s commander General George S. Patton, Jr. are buried. Back home, a memorial service was held at the United Evangelical Brethren church in Lissie, with Rev. N. H. Peterson officiating. The family later received, in 1945, the Purple Heart Award and a certificate from Governor Coke Stevenson placing Brasher’s name on the State’s list of honored war dead.

Brasher was survived by his parents, his wife and a two-year-old daughter Patsy Ann. (Eagle Lake residents will know her as Mrs. John A. Meitzen.) Brasher’s widow, who later married Jack Briscoe related some ten years ago, that like so many others whose loved ones are buried in military cemeteries in Europe, that no member of the family had ever visited the gravesite. However in the last few years she was able to get a photograph of the gravestone when a relative toured Europe.