The beloved Steven Spielberg film, Saving Private Ryan, has kept audience tears flowing since its
release in 1988. While the fictional story follows the rescue of a World War 2 soldier,
Private Ryan, whose three brothers have all died in combat, the real tale is even
more of an emotional rollercoaster. Today on Nutty History, we’re covering the military’s
Sole-Surviving Son policy, and the real brothers who inspired Saving Private Ryan. Let’s storm in!
While Saving Private Ryan is based off of the story of the Niland brothers, they weren’t the
only family to lose multiple members to war. At the beginning of World War II, allowing siblings
to serve together wasn’t exactly the norm, but it wasn’t against the rules either. Some thought
that allowing people to serve alongside their nearest and dearest was a way to boost morale.
But then came the Sullivan brothers, and the U.S. military realized that they probably
hadn’t thought this through fully. There were five Sullivan brothers - George, Francis,
Joseph, Madison, and Albert - who all enlisted in the war after losing friends at Pearl Harbor.
George Sullivan even wrote a letter to the secretary of the Navy, asking that
the band of brothers be permitted to train and serve together. Their request was met, and the
Sullivan brothers found themselves on board the USS Juneau, a naval ship that was eventually
sent to the Pacific to guard other ships from Japanese attacks. They weren’t the only ones
with the idea - at least 30 sets of brothers were serving on Juneau when it met its untimely demise.
On November 13, 1942, the USS Juneau and the USS Atlanta were up against 18-20 enemy ships,
when the USS Juneau was fatally struck by a torpedo from a Japanese sub. The ensuing explosion
rapidly sunk the ship and killed most of the 700-person crew. 100 men escaped onto life rafts,
possibly including three Sullivan brothers, but help would not come soon enough. Over the
course of eight days, most of the sailors died of exhaustion, dehydration, or shark attacks.
One survivor, who said he was on the same raft as George, recounted that the eldest Sullivan brother
suffered from delirium, fell into the ocean and succumbed to either drowning or sharks.
Only ten people were eventually rescued. None of them were Sullivans. Fubar, man.
The devastating story of the Sullivan brothers, along with many others, prompted the military to
adopt the “Sole-survivor” policy in 1942, also called the “Sole-surviving son” at the time.
The policy was meant to separate brothers who were serving concurrently,
and, in the event of the deaths of all other siblings, protect the lone survivor.
Private James Francis Ryan, Matt Damon in the film, was actually Sergeant Frederick Niland,
nicknamed “Fritz.” Fritz was the youngest of the four Niland brothers, hailing from Tonawanda, New
York. According to their mother, Augusta “Gussie” Niland, the four brothers were thick as thieves,
which makes their story all the more sob-inducing. While the two middle brothers, Preston and Robert,
had enlisted prior to the war, Edward, the oldest, and Fritz volunteered in November 1942,
right around the time of the Sullivan brother deaths. With the new policy, the brothers
were assigned to separate units. Edward was a bomber pilot in the Burma-India-China Theatre,
while the younger three brothers were stationed in England, awaiting the allied invasion of Europe.
D-Day arrived on June 6, 1944, as depicted in the film’s opening scene set in Omaha Beach.
The allied invasion of Europe, in Normandy, France, meant that the three Euro-based Niland
boys were thrown into action. Hearing of D-day back home, Augusta Niland was grateful
that at least one of her sons, Edward, was far away from the action. But then,
she received the first of three telegrams, telling her that Edward’s plane was shot down in the Burma
jungle. While he was officially “missing in action,” it was assumed that he was deceased,
as even surviving the fall may have left him in the hands of the Japanese. Back in Europe,
Preston was an infantryman storming Utah beach, while Robert and Fritz were paratroopers. Fritz
was actually part of the 101st Airborne division, as is Private Ryan, and dropped down in Normandy.
But misdrops and the chaos of enemy fire caused him to be separated from his unit, just as James
and Michael and Augusta Niland received another telegram. Meanwhile, Robert and his battalion
were tasked with building a defense from northern attacking Germans in the small town of Neuville.
When their position became indefensible, aka they were screwed, Robert Niland agreed to stay back
with another paratrooper to cover his comrades’ retreat. He died at the helm of a machine gun. The
courier begged not to be sent back to the Niland house to deliver the third terrible telegram.
When the army discovered that three of the Niland brothers were likely killed in combat,
they put in orders to find Fritz and bring him home, hoping to avoid another Sullivan
brothers tragedy. But rather than an eight-man Ranger rescue crew headed up by Tom Hanks,
the real person that found Fritz was a chaplain of the 501st Regiment - Father Francis Sampson. Fritz
had reunited with his company and learned that his brother Edward’s plane was shot down. Then, as he
was actively looking to find his brother, Robert, he learned that he died on D-day in Neuville.
According to one version of the story, Father Sampson took Fritz to an allied gravesite to
find Robert’s grave, when they instead came upon the grave of his brother Preston. It was only then
that he learned that he was the sole-surviving son. Father Sampson put in the paperwork for Fritz
but was sent home to the States where he served as Military Police for the rest of the war.
In a rare happy moment of this story, it turned out that Fritz Niland wasn’t actually
the sole-surviving son. His oldest brother, Edward had survived his plane going down. He had wandered
the jungle for a few days before eventually being captured and taken to a Burmese POW camp. Niland
survived nearly a year as a prisoner of war before the camp was liberated by British forces in May
of 1945. He returned home, a mere 80 pounds, but still alive. The Nilands had never given up hope
that Edward was still alive. Edward’s son, who he named Preston, recounts that his grandparents
would set a place for him every night at the dinner table, keeping the faith that one day
he would come home. And he did. Does anyone have a tissue? Or five? The sole-survivor policy wasn’t
adopted into law until 1948, and still exists in a more regulated form today. Now, men and women
of the military who have lost family members in combat can apply to be sent home, rather
than sending dangerous rescue missions after them. Sounds a bit more organized. Let us know