Matthew Cottone and Ian Smith never met Navy seaman Auvergne Breault, but they know all about his brief life — and his service.
Breault, an Escanaba native, was one of the 160,000 allied troops who stormed Normandy, France, on D-Day, which happened 80 years ago on Thursday. Breault went missing that day, and Cottone, a teacher in Rochester Community Schools, and Smith, a student at Rochester Adams High School, have been studying him and his life for months as part of an international fellowship.
In the weeks following the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the two are scheduled to travel to Normandy through the Albert H. Small Normandy Institute to “experience the price of freedom” and commemorate Breault, according to the institute. They'll also visit the Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer in northwestern France, where Breault is buried.
“The soldier project was probably one of the greatest challenges of my life," Cottone said. "You’re given a very specific task of finding a soldier that served at D-Day, died there, and is buried at the cemetery."
Founded on a mission to preserve and spread the message that “freedom is not free,” the Albert H. Small Normandy Institute seeks to teach future generations about the Normandy campaign and memorialize the soldiers who gave their lives on D-Day. Each year since 2011, teachers and their students are selected to conduct in-depth research and travel to France to eulogize a soldier from or near their hometown who served on D-Day.
The D-Day invasion was the largest naval, air and land operation in history at the time and led within two months to the liberation of all of northern France. It created a crack in Nazi Germany's defenses in Europe and resulted in Germany unconditionally surrendering within less than a year of the invasion.
Denver Brunsman, the chair of the history department at George Washington University and an academic director of the Albert H. Small Normandy Institute, said a central part of participation in the fellowship includes finding personal connections to soldiers who served and died on D-Day.
“The idea is that, depending on the proximity to where the student-teacher team lives, there are likely to be common experiences and places that will be encountered in the research,” Brunsman said. “When we visit France in June, the student will deliver a eulogy at the gravesite of the soldier, and then their research will be deposited in the cemetery’s archives and made available to researchers.”
How the team came together
Cottone, a sixth-grade world studies teacher at Van Hoosen Middle School in Rochester Hills, and Smith, a junior at Rochester Adams High School, are among 15 student-teacher teams from across the country who were selected last January by the Normandy Institute to participate in an intensive 20-week study of the Normandy Campaign of 1944.
Since then, the two have been taking courses through George Washington University. For the last three months, they have been researching events, people and soldiers related to the Normandy campaign and its broader historical contexts to piece together Breault's life.
In his 17 years of teaching, Cottone, who has done other international fellowships, said he'd always wanted to apply to the Normandy Institute but was looking for the right student to apply with. He said Smith, his former student, was a perfect match because of his work ethic and shared love of history.
“Ian was definitely someone I thought would be amazing for the fellowship,” Cottone said. "He is truly one of the most hardworking students I know."
Smith, a county diving champion, said he “was ecstatic” when Cottone reached out to him about applying for the fellowship.
“I had Mr. Cottone for social studies in sixth grade, and he was one of my favorite teachers,” Smith said. “I was honestly in disbelief that he chose me out of anyone else.”
A main component of the application was to describe a personal connection to World War II and how participants will apply what they've learned throughout the fellowship to the community, Smith said. Smith's grandfather was in the Air Force, and he has a passion for history.
"After we get back from the trip, when the school year starts next year, we're going to make a presentation and combine elements of both of our experiences from the trip and what we learned through the fellowship," Smith said. "We both learned so many new things, and we thought it would be really beneficial to teach Mr. Cottone's classes about D-Day by sharing what we learned on the trip."
Cottone and Smith’s main project, and a core piece of the Normandy Institute’s mission, was to identify and research a soldier from Michigan who served on D-Day and was buried in the Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer in Northwestern France.
After looking through the Normandy American Cemetery archives and the names of hundreds of soldiers, Cottone and Smith came across Breault, who they found out enlisted in the Navy from Michigan. Cottone said it was initially Breault's name that stood out.
“Our soldier had an interesting name, Auvergne Breault, and he stood out to us, so I researched him and found a picture, then took that picture and sent it out to 10 different people on Facebook. I got some leads on him from them. ... We were able to gather about 120 primary documents, from birth certificates, to registration papers, to interviews," he said. "Ian and I began to put all these documents together, and we really began to feel a connection with Breault.”
Months after selecting Breault, Cottone and Smith learned that Breault was on the boat that led over 3,000 allied vessels across the English Channel to Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, and one of the 30 soldiers that died on it.
The price of freedom
Breault was born on Jan. 8, 1924, to Henry and Cordelia Breault in the small town of Escanaba in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The second of six siblings, both Breault’s brother, George, and his sister, Audrey, said on several occasions that “Auvergne was just special,” even almost 48 years after he went missing on D-Day.
"When we asked Aunt Audrey to explain what made Auvergne 'special,' she told us he was kind, considerate and loving, even as a child," Denise Breault and Jan-Marie McCabe, Breault's nieces, told Cottone and Smith in an interview.
Breault was 18 when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy on July 18, 1942, 43 days after he graduated from St. Joseph’s High School in Escanaba. Because Breault was under 21, his father, Henry, signed a waiver of consent to allow him to serve in the Navy for six years.
Breault joined the Navy as an apprentice seaman. And after training as a Seaman 2nd class for two months, he reported to Newport, Rhode Island, for Torpedoman School.
On Jan. 16, 1943, only eight days after he turned 19 years old, Breault was transferred to the USS Corry DD-463, the ship that would lead the allied assault force on D-Day. Breault was promoted to Seaman 1st class and, five months later, to Torpedoman's Mate 3rd class.
Breault's final rank as Torpedoman's Mate 2nd class was bestowed on him on June 1, 1944, five days before D-Day. He was 20 years old.
On June 6, 1944, the USS Corry DD-463 led ships into Normandy, encountering minefields and shell attacks along the way. As Breault was loading a 40-millimeter gun for the ship's gunner, an explosion blew both him and the gunner off and into the waters of Normandy, Cottone and Smith said in their report. On June 6, at 6:33 a.m., another explosion occurred on the ship, and Auvergne's body could no longer be located.
"During this assault, the USS Corry DD-463 was sunk and Auvergne, along with 11 of his shipmates, was missing in action," Cottone and Smith said in their report. "Auvergne Breault was declared dead on June 6, 1945, the day following the expiration of twelve months in the missing status. ... Auvergne's body was never recovered."
Eighteen years after Breault was declared dead, his family had a memorial marker placed for him in their family plot in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Escanaba. Breault was awarded the Purple Heart Medal and other World War II campaign medals posthumously.
All told, 2,500 American troops were killed on D-Day in Normandy. On the USS Corry DD-463, six men were killed, while one officer and 15 men were reported missing, and 32 men were injured.
Cottone and Smith were the only applicants selected from Michigan this year. From June 18th through the 30th, they are set to travel to Washington, D.C., Germany and France to visit historical landmarks and eulogize Auvergne Breault at his memorial marker in the Normandy American Cemetery. Their research will then be deposited in Normandy's archives and made available to researchers and Breault's family.
"When you put into consideration the number of people that died in the war, and you think about each person's life separately, you realize how connected these people were to their families and communities, and how many people they had that cared about them," Smith said. "There were millions of people like Auvergne."
Cottone added that "D-Day was a turning point in the war that led to the end of World War II. After researching Breault, it's so easy to draw a connection to his life to my kids or Ian, he was so young when he enlisted. He fought and died willingly for freedom to be spread around the world. ... His sacrifices and those of his peers were instrumental in freedom being restored through much of the world after D-Day."