The Real Quest to Return the Last Surviving Son to His Parents
Father Sampson began the paperwork necessary to get Fritz back to the US. To the relief of his parents, Frederick Niland made it home in 1944. Back in the US, he served out the rest of the war as an MP in New York. Then in May, 1945, Michael and Augusta Niland received unexpected good news. Their son, US Army Air Forces Technical Sergeant Edward Francis Niland, who had been shot down in Burma the preceding May and listed as missing, presumed dead, was not actually dead. Edward had parachuted safely from his stricken B-25. He wandered the Burmese jungle for days, before he was captured on May 16th, 1944, and made a prisoner of war.
Edward survived the miseries of a Japanese POW camp, until it was liberated by British forces on May 4th, 1945. He had lost a lot of weight in captivity, and returned to New York a skeletal 80 pounds. However, he returned, alive. He lived in Tonawanda until his death in 1984, aged 71. As to Fritz, he went on to earn a dentistry degree from Georgetown University after the war, and became a dentist. He died in San Francisco in 1983, at age 63. His and his brothers’ story was recounted in Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers, and the fictional Private Ryan of Steven Spielberg’s movie is loosely based upon him. The Pentagon helped with that movie, but it does not cooperate with all flicks. Below are some movies that the US military wanted no part of.
