June 6, 1944
John Saarloos was a part of that invasion. When I stop to think about what the Weeks, Days, Hours, Minutes and the Final Seconds that led to that moment..... My mind seems to shut off.

To be standing on a boat, crossing a channel, your Iowa farmboy face stinging with sea salt, every inch of you soaked as you shoulder up to strangers who’ve become brothers, staring out into a vastness that must have felt like an eternity away from home. There’s no sugarcoating it—this was hell. Every single second was like a strange mercy and a slow-burning terror all at once. You’d signed up for this, but nobody’s mind can really prepare for it. One second, gone. Another inch closer to what you feared most. The same hands that once held tools for bringing life from the soil now gripped a weapon, holding life and death in the balance.

John Saarloos was the son of a farmer, the eldest of three brothers and a sister. When his father passed young, John, just a boy, stepped into a role few could understand, let alone hold steady. He left school, took the reins, became the man of the house. They called it a “ten-horse farm”—ten horses needed just to work the land. It was a grind few of us today could imagine. John kept things moving. He fed his family, kept my grandfather in school. John held the family together, honoring his father and laying the path for those yet to come.

To my grandfather, that older brother—the one who picked up the pieces and held them all together—that brother was his hero. To a kid with no dad, John wasn’t just big brother; he was legend, the one who shouldered all the weight, who showed by example what it means to rise to an occasion you didn’t ask for. John honored and prepared.

But things changed. When my great-grandmother remarried, it was like a new captain taking over the ship. And John’s time as the anchor was over. The home he’d grown up in now had a new father, and for a young man who’d been “man of the house” for so long, stepping back into a role as someone else’s son wasn’t an option. So John and his younger brother, Gilbert, both enlisted. They wanted to stand as men, to protect and defend the land they loved, to honor their own family roots.

At enlistment, they took John and sent Gilbert home. The military’s logic—don’t risk losing both brothers to war.
One stays. The other goes. And sometimes I think, what if… What if John had stood behind my grandfather that day instead of in front? What if they had both gone? If that had happened, I wouldn’t be here. My children wouldn’t be here. And you wouldn’t be reading this now. Just that tiny shift of fate. Sometimes it’s those smallest moments that cast the longest shadows.

John went to war. He told my grandfather, “I probably won’t be back.” My grandfather, now rootless, headed west to California, a man on his own, without a father, without his older brother. He found his footing, found my grandmother, and built a life. And there’s a stack of photographs of them, my grandfather crossing the country every chance he got, finding his brother in Texas, California, and New York. No plane tickets, no easy calls—just raw love, pure loyalty. John meant the world to him, and in turn, he meant the world to us.

One day, when I was a kid, we sat at my grandparents' house watching TV. I saw a howitzer firing and thought it looked cool, the way a kid would. I couldn’t have been older than eight or nine. My grandfather, usually quiet and calm, looked at me and said, “There is nothing cool about that.” I didn’t understand. Later, under a tree, he told me about John. I felt then, for the first time, how much he loved his brother, missed him, and looked up to him. And from that moment, his hero became mine.

As I trace these red threads through our family’s story, I see moments knotted in time, bound to people who lived as they believed was right. They didn’t know they were creating a legacy; they just did what had to be done. John didn’t preach to his brother; he lived his life, and his brother watched. And that’s how it goes. My grandfather carried on in his brother’s honor; his sons watched him, and I watched them. And now I hope to do the same, to live in such a way that this message carries on, that someday my children will live in the light of it too.

Sergeant John W. Saarloos, A.S.No. 37189591, died on June 12, 1944, in Cherbourg, France, during Operation Overlord. A tank fired on a church tower, sheltering a sniper, and as the tower fell, it claimed John’s life.

In a letter signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, it’s written:

“HE STANDS IN THE UNBROKEN LINE OF PATRIOTS WHO HAVE DARED TO DIE THAT FREEDOM MIGHT LIVE, AND GROW, AND INCREASE ITS BLESSINGS. FREEDOM LIVES, AND THROUGH IT, HE LIVES - IN A WAY THAT HUMBLES THE UNDERTAKINGS OF MOST MEN.”

I read this almost every day. And every time, I think, “God, grant me the strength to live up to that.” To make sure he would be proud. To make sure he is remembered and that his story doesn’t fade.
John never asked to be on a bottle of wine.
But nearly 80 years later, to not honor him would be a real injustice.

In Grateful Memory.

Drink it with Pride in Your Heart.
Here is to John.

Our Hero.

Keith Saarloos