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  • Marc Sorin of Rouen, Normandy, France holds Army ID tags found by his father, Georges, in 1944 in a French forest during the liberation of France from German occupation. This summer, Sorin located the family of the soldier, James L. Sutherland, who left the tags hanging in a tree. (Photo courtesy of Melanie Houtin)

    Marc Sorin.JPG

  • Symbols of freedom: These Army ID tags belonging to Prt. James L. Sutherland of Terre Haute were found in a French forest by Georges Sorin, who kept them in this tin until his death in 1994. Sorin's son Marc of Rouen, Normandy, France, now hopes to share the tags with Sutherland's survivors in Terre Haute and Illinois. (Photo courtesy of Melanie Houtin)

    Sutherland Dog Tags.JPG

  • Georges Sorin (above) found U.S. Army dog tags belonging to Terre Haute native James L. Sutherland in France in 1944. (Photo courtesy of Melanie Houtin)

    Georges Sorin.jpg

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September 9, 2010

MARK BENNETT: A line of union between two families of chance

Mark Bennett The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — On the first day of my senior year at Indiana State University, I found a seat in a Holmstedt Hall classroom and waited for my macroeconomics course to begin.

The prof walked in, sat down at his desk and started the roll call. As he worked his way alphabetically through the A’s, my fellow students responded with “yes” or “here” or “present.” Then, just as he reached the B’s, the prof — sounding miffed — declared that “from now on, there will be no English spoken.”

This was a huge problem.

After a lifetime of strictly monolingual communication, I had no idea what I would say when this guy called out “Bennett.” So, being proactive, I got up, approached his desk and asked — sheepishly in Hoosier-inflected English — “Is this Econ 300?”

The prof peered over his half-glasses and with a half-grin said, “No, that class was moved upstairs. This is a French course.”

My study of the French language, unfortunately, began and ended that morning. Since then, I’ve often regretted not learning to speak French, especially during the past month. That ability would’ve come in handy with a story involving people from two different parts of the world, connected by a single moment in time 66 years ago.

As you may have read in an Aug. 8 Tribune-Star story, a Frenchman named Marc Sorin was trying to find the American soldier whose U.S. Army dog tags were found dangling from a tree in a French forest by Sorin’s father in August 1944. American forces had begun the liberation of France from German occupation with the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. When the U.S. soldiers reached the village of Port-Brillet, they stopped in the wooded area, perhaps to wash up in a pond. For some unknown reason, the soldiers had to leave quickly. The tags were left behind, and Sorin’s father — Georges Sorin, who worked in the forest — discovered the ID tags and safely placed them in a small box as “symbols of liberty.”

Georges Sorin kept the tags until he died in 1994. In 2002, Marc Sorin asked his mother for the tags, hoping to find the soldier who wore them, or his survivors. The name on the tags was James L. Sutherland, with Laura Sutherland of Route 4, Terre Haute, Ind., listed as his next of kin. Marc Sorin wanted to know if James L. Sutherland lived through World War II and raised a family. Either way, Marc Sorin wanted to share the tags with Sutherland’s relatives.

That moment is, apparently, near.

Through a series of connections between Sorin’s friends in France, the VFW Post 972 in Terre Haute and the Tribune-Star, Marc Sorin discovered that James L. Sutherland survived the war, returned to the U.S., raised a son and daughter in Terre Haute and died here in 1995. Laura Sutherland turned out to be James' mother. Sorin also has communicated via e-mail, through a friend of a friend — a Paris art student, Heather Seavey, who speaks French and English — with Sutherland’s daughter, Diana Stephens of Charleston, Ill., who then relays information to her brother, James R. Sutherland of Terre Haute.

Stephens and her brother have learned details about their father’s Army service in France, something he rarely discussed. “It was really beneficial, especially for me,” Stephens said Tuesday.

She and her brother also have learned that Marc Sorin wants to share the tags with the long-ago soldier’s family, sending one to the Sutherland survivors and keeping the other one “and, thus, draw a line of union between two families of chance — one American and the other French.” Beyond that, Sorin seeks no limelight, and isn’t planning a meeting with Sutherland’s children. Communicating through e-mail is enough for Sorin.

“This story is not my own,” he wrote in a note to Stephens, translated by Heather Seavey. “And my simple wish is that these identification tags be given back to the family so they do not end up in collectors’ pockets.” He hopes to get the tags to the Sutherlands soon.

Sorin is 54 years old now, married and the father of two grown sons. He works for France’s national rail service, and lives in Rouen, Normandy.

The story of the lost dog tags caught the attention of a French journalist, Melanie Houtin, who, ironically, spent a year as an exchange student at Terre Haute North Vigo High School a decade ago. Houtin, who returns to Terre Haute every few years and also served as a Tribune-Star intern in 2004, lives near the Sorin’s hometown and works for the Quest-France, a daily newspaper in LeMans. She interviewed Sorin last week and transmitted photos of him to the Tribune-Star.

Last month, when Sorin told his mother he’d located the American soldier’s family, “She was really happy,” he told Houtin.

Sorin also said he wants to solve two mysteries about the dog tags — the exact location where his father found them, and why the soldiers in Sutherland’s Army unit had to leave the forest so quickly. The only two people who knew the exact spot where the tags were found — Georges Sorin and one of his close friends — are deceased.

Back in the States, Diana Stephens and James R. Sutherland are looking forward to seeing their father’s original Army tags. They’re also mulling whether to visit France and see the region their dad helped liberate.

Since the story was published in the Tribune-Star and picked up by other U.S. newspapers, Stephens has fielded numerous calls “from people I don’t even know.” Second and third cousins reached out to her through Facebook. “It brought our family together in ways that wouldn’t have happened otherwise,” she said.

She also got a call from her uncle, James L. Sutherland’s brother.

“He validated that my dad would’ve been proud of all this,” Stephens said.

The French translation of those words is “Il valide que mon pere aurait ete fier de tout cela.” The smile Stephens undoubtedly wore as her uncle spoke is understood in any language.

Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.

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