The traffic circle on the center of town.

A standard French traffic roundabout or traffic circle.

The traffic circle remembers Colonel Ollie W. Reed commander of the 175th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division who was killed on this spot on July 30, 1944.  He was the most senior officer killed in action of the 29th Infantry Divsion during the war. 

Ollie Reed joined the Kansas National Guard on the campus of the Kansas State Agricultural College in 1916 as America's entry into the war in Europe was looking inevitable. He quickly rose through the ranks with tours in post-war Germany; the Infantry School at Fort Benning; professor of Military Science at Dexel in Philadelphia (Where is was the football coach) and Wentworth Military Academy in Lexingon, MO; the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth; and the Philippines on the eve of the Japanese invasion.

His son, Ollie Reed, Jr., was born in 1919 into a family on the move. His father's assignment to Wentworth provided enough time for Buddy to graduate high school and fulfill his father's dream in his acceptance to West Point. The day after his graduation in 1942, he married his love whom he met while at the academy and, together, they embarked on a new life, just as his parents has years before.

World War II interrupted such dreams, and father and son were called into service overseas. Colonel Ollie W. Reed was assigned to the 29th Infantry Divsion, later in command of the 175th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division in Normandy, while First Lieutenant 'Bud' Reed sailed across the Atlantic as a platoon leader with the 363rd Infantry Regiment, 91st Infantry Division first in Morocco, then in Italy.

Within three weeks of one another, the two men fell in combat. Back home, word of their deaths reached Manhattan, Kansas where the Reed spouses were  was living with a six-month-old grandson, on the same day, only hours apart.

At the request of the family, Father and son are now buried alongside one another in the Normandy American Cemetery (Section E, Row 20, Grave 19,20)

LT Ollie Reed is remembered on the 363rd Infantry Regiment Memorial in Ponzalla, Italy. (See Site Ponzalla).

Source: The American Legion Website

Rond Pont

du  Ollie W. Reed