Twin brothers laid to rest together 74 years after WWII death

Twin sailors who died together, but were separated when their US Navy boat sank during a D-Day rescue mission, will be reunited in death Tuesday as they're reburied together in France's Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. Julius Heinrich Otto 'Henry' Pieper (far left) and twin Ludwig Julius Wilhelm 'Louie' Pieper (second from left), of Esmond, South Dakota, were 19-year-old sailors in the US Navy when they died on June 19, 1944. The two Navy men died when their ship shattered on an underwater mine while trying to reach the blood-soaked D-Day beaches on that day. ouie's body was soon found, identified and laid to rest at what is now the Normandy American Cemetery, but Julius' remains were not recovered until 1961, when French salvage divers found them in the vessel's radio room. Julius — given the identified 'Unknown X-9352' — was interred as an 'Unknown' at the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium (inset). Julius' remains might have stayed among those of 13 other troops from the doomed LST-523 still resting unidentified at the Ardennes cemetery, had it not been for a U.S. agency that tracks missing combatants, establishing case files for each from witness accounts to DNA testing. That agency's efforts led to Julius' proper identification in 2017. After his identification, the Pieper family asked that Louie's grave in Normandy be relocated to make room for Julius' grave, so the twins could rest side-by-side.