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Technology that was too far-fetched for even science-fiction novels when he died in 1944 has led a Breckinridge County man's family to the approximate spot where he fell in World War II.
And because of the Internet, a thousand French students were studying this week about Maurice O'Connell and other Americans who died on the Birttany Peninsula in August, 1944.
It's a Veterans Day story that says to those still searching for answers that the information is out there. Just don't give up.
Perry Ryan, a lawyer in the Attorney General's office, is a man who lives and breathes the history of his native Breckinridge County. And it was his research that set this weeks's events in motion.
The story begins in September 1944.
A telegram from Uncle Sam came to the home of Alfred and Marie O'Connell in the Clover Creek community near Hardinsburg, regretting to inform them of the death of their son, Maurice, in France on Aug. 27.
But it didn't tell them what battle he died in. How he died. Did he suffer? The little things a family wants to know so they can hold them in their hearts during the long years ahead.
O'Connell was buried in the U.S. Military Cemetery at St. James, France. In 1948, he was finally brought home to Hardinsburg for final burial.
Helen Taul O'Connell, widowed after barely 11 months as a wife, began writing the government, trying to find out the answers to the family's questions.
But the government was busy. It didn't have time for a young widow's questions. And so, in time, she quit writing.
For half a century, the answers lay silently in government files.
Then, on May 27, 1996, New Clover Creek Baptist Church dedicated its new library in honor of O'Connell, the only member of its congregation to die in battle.
Helen Taul O'Connell Murrell returned home from Louisville for the ceremony.
Fifty-two years after O'Connell died in France, U.S. Rep. Ron Lewis presented the family with seven miltary decorations the government hadn't gotten around to bestowing on the soldier.
And with Lewis' help, Ryan was able to dig out many answers from government files.
He learned that O'Connell died near Guilders, France, as Americans fought to capture Brest.
Apparently, Ryan says, it was a mortar blast that killed O'Connell. An embalmer noted a fractured skull when the body was exhumed for reburial.
Ryan wrote a 65-page biography of O'Connell. And in June 1997, when New Clover Creek Baptist got its own Web site, the biography was included.
In France, Philippe Bodin, a professor at the University of Brest, searching for information about Americans who came to the aid of France in World War II, stumbled across the account.
Bodin, who is also a deputy mayor of Guilers, had the biography translated into French and asked permission to distribute it to French students so they would never forget that Americans died to help free them from the Nazis.
Keenan O'Connell, Maurice's only surviving brother, paid to have 1,000 copies printed in French. And Bodin invited O'Connell and Ryan to spend Wednesday--Veteran's Day--in France.
A man named Francois Marc, who helped the Army locate American bodies after the battle, is still living. And Ryan was hoping he would be able to take them to the spot where Maurice O'Connell fell 54 years ago.
The truth is out there. Just keep searching.