French man Andre Gantois, 73, and Allen Henderson, 65, of Greenville, South Carolina are two half-brothers that were completely unbeknownst to each other until last June when they coincidentally took the same DNA test that revealed their fraternity. What followed was the heartwarming end to a touching story of one man’s 70-year quest to know his father.
Growing up to a single mother in a small village in eastern France, Andre Gantois was known as ‘the young American’ or ‘The American’s kid.’
The only information provided of the father Gantois never met was that his name was ‘Jack’ and that he died the same year he was born while fighting the war in Vietnam. On legal papers, applications and health forms, Gantois would scratch a line through the section that asked for specific family details. After more than 70 years, this routine became a fact if his life that he learned to accept.
Finally in June 2018, at the urging of his daughter-in-law, the retired French postal worker took a DNA test that would change the course of his existential journey to a family living across the globe in Greenville, South Carolina, where he would discover a pair of unknown half-siblings. Through them, Gantois learned true identity of his father, Wilburn ‘Bill’ Henderson, a soldier in WWII that was wounded after D-Day.
Wilburn ‘Bill’ Henderson landed on Omaha beach just after D-Day, fought through Normandy, suffered a head wound in the closing months of the war when met Irene Gantois at a hospital in occupied Germany
Irene Gantois nursed Henderson back to health from his gunshot head wound in Ludres, eastern France. She died of tuberculosis when Gantois was just 15-years-old, never revealing the identity of his father
Andre Gantois shows family photos, including one of his mother Irene Gantois (top center) in Ludres, eastern France. The retired French postal worker figured he’d likely go to his grave without ever knowing who his father was, unable to identify the U.S. serviceman who had fought his way across France after the D-Day landings, taken a bullet to the skull and been nursed back to health in a military hospital by Gantois’ mother
Their father was Wilburn ‘Bill’ Henderson. He landed on Omaha beach just after D-Day, fought through Normandy and was shot in the head during the twilight hours of war. While recovering at a military hospital, Henderson fell in love with the young nurse who brought him back to health – her name was Irene Gantois, she was Andre’s mother.
‘Throughout my life, I lived with this open wound,’ he says. ‘I never accepted my situation, of not knowing my father and, most of all, knowing that he didn’t know about me, didn’t know of my existence.’
Even as Europe, the United States and their allies mark 75 years since 160,000 Allied troops stormed a heavily-fortified 50-mile (80-kilometer) stretch of Nazi-occupied coastline in Normandy, the history of D-Day and its aftermath is still being written.
The big picture, of course, is well known, meticulously documented and preciously conserved to be told and retold for generations to come. The greatest-ever amphibious landing, a triumph of soldiering and seafaring, of industry, ingenuity and logistics, and upon which a new world order was built, will again be commemorated June 6 with respect for the ever-smaller group of surviving veterans and awe for their heroics on the landing beaches: Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold.
Yet all these years later, there are enduring holes in the narrative, too.
Among the thick Normandy hedgerows where German troops dug in and the Allied advance bogged down, soldiers’ bones are still regularly disinterred. So brutal and chaotic was the fighting in France that thousands went missing or couldn’t be identified before they were buried in graves still marked, ‘A comrade in arms known but to God.’
Soldiers on all sides also fathered tens of thousands of children, some of them unable to ever answer that most existential of questions: Where did I come from?
Until a few months ago, when what he calls an unexpected ‘miracle’ changed his life and filled in one of these missing pieces of wartime history, Gantois was among them.
‘You know, Andre actually looks more like my dad than I do, said Allen Henderson. He says to Gantois: ‘Your mannerisms, your smile, your face, I feel almost like I’m talking to my dad’
The two brothers, Allen Henderson (left) and Andre Gantois (right) reunite in Normandy after more than 70 years apart
In this photo taken May 8, 2019, Andre Gantois proudly showcases his tee shirt that reads ‘My Dad is a US Army American Hero’
Allen Henderson, General Manager of HIS Radio Station in Greenville, S.C., speaks via Skype to his brother Andre Gantois who is in France. Henderson took a DNA test on a whim, because the company had a special offer on its prices and learned he had a half-brother in France
Only at age 15, when Gantois was mourning the death of his mother, taken by tuberculosis at age 37, did he get the truth.
‘Listen, Andre, I have to tell you,’ the 73-year-old Gantois recalls his grandmother confessing to him. ‘Your dad was an American, in the war.’ At first, Gantois was lost. but in his twenties, he became determined to find out more.
Having married and with plans to start a family of his own, Gantois felt compelled to put a name, a face, to the patchy story and to fill what his wife, Rosine, now says was ‘a huge hole’ in his life.’
‘He had no name, nothing to go on,’ she says. ‘He told me, ‘I’ll die without ever knowing who he was.” Visits to U.S. offices in France produced only frustration. Gantois recalls that an embassy official told him: ”A lot of people are looking for their fathers, because they want money, they want to be compensated by the U.S. government. But you have to have proof.’ I had no proof.’
Other avenues also proved to be dead ends. Until last June, urged on by his daughter-in-law, Gantois took a DNA test.
Weeks later, in the middle of the night, she called him with the earthshaking results.’You have an American brother, a sister, a whole family,’ Gantois recalls her telling him. ‘I didn’t know what to say.’
After Germany’s surrender in May 1945, when the soldier came to visit her at home in eastern France, she apparently didn’t tell him that she was carrying his child. He returned to the United States, started a family and never spoke to his children about her before his death in 1997.
The trail would have ended there for Andre Gantois had his American half brother not also taken a DNA test. By chance, they both picked the same testing company, enabling it to put them together. The two men and Gantois’ half sister, Judy, met for the first time last September in France.
Allen Henderson took the test on a whim, because the company had a special offer on its prices and, he says, because ‘I thought, well, that would be interesting.’
In this photo taken May 8, 2019, Andre Gantois shows photos of his parents, Wilburn Henderson, right, and mother Irene Gantois in Ludres, eastern France. Wilburn Henderson landed on Omaha beach just after D-Day, fought through Normandy, suffered a head wound in the closing months of the war and met Irene Gantois at a hospital in occupied Germany
Andre Gantois in Ludres, France, talks to his half-brother Allen Henderson, of Greenvile, South Carolina, during a video-conference
After Germany’s surrender in May 1945, when the soldier came to visit her at home in eastern France, she apparently didn’t tell him that she was carrying his child. He returned to the United States, started a family and never spoke to his children about her before his death in 1997.
The trail would have ended there for Andre Gantois had his American half brother not also taken a DNA test. By chance, they both picked the same testing company, enabling it to put them together. The two men and Gantois’ half sister, Judy, met for the first time last September in France.
Allen Henderson took the test on a whim, because the company had a special offer on its prices and, he says, because ‘I thought, well, that would be interesting.’
Both Gantois and Henderson acknowledge how lucky they are not only to have found each other but also that their father survived Normandy and its aftermath.
‘When I was little, he was always telling me stories about being in France and he’d speak a little French and kind of talk about how it was like to lay in a foxhole and guns, bullets flying over your head and guys dying all around you,’ says the 65-year-old Henderson, who lives in Greenville, South Carolina. ‘Amazing that he survived.’
Henderson says he knew straight away when he saw Gantois that they were brothers because the resemblance is so striking.
‘You know, Andre actually looks more like my dad than I do,’ Henderson says. ‘Your mannerisms, your smile, your face, I feel almost like I’m talking to my dad.’
Other wartime families’ histories remain unresolved. They’re only more likely to stay that way with each passing year.
Posting on a French electronic bulletin board in 2016, for example, Jeannine Clement appealed for information about her biological father, a German soldier who was stationed in France before being sent to the Russian front in 1942.
Her mother waved goodbye to him at a train station, ‘in tears and pregnant,’ Clement wrote. ‘She never heard from him again.’
Now at 76 and in poor health, Clement is still waiting.
Andre Gantois says he feels sorry for those without answers.
‘It is not easy to live like that,’ he says. ‘I’ve got closure. The whole issue of my father, that’s it, it’s done. I’m no longer in a fog.’
In this May 8, 2019, photo, Allen Henderson in Greenville, S.C., shows a photo of himself with his half-brother Andre at Normandy, France. Both Andre and Allen acknowledge how lucky they are not only to have found each other thanks to a DNA test but also that Wilburn Henderson survived Normandy and its aftermath to father them. (AP Photo/Richard Shiro)
Andre Gantois shows photos of his father Wilburn Henderson and his WWII dog tag, top, in Ludres, eastern France. The retired French postal worker figured he’d likely go to his grave without ever knowing who his father was, unable to identify the U.S. serviceman who had fought his way across France after the D-Day landings
Andre Gantois in Ludres, eastern France, talks to his brother Allen Henderson, of the U.S, during a video conference. Only now are some wartime families, like Gantois, getting answers to life-changing questions such as: Who was my dad? Gantois, the son of an American serviceman, recently discovered his half-brother many years after the end of the war due to DNA testing
Andre Gantois’s hand rests by the photos of his parents, Wilburn Henderson, left, and mother, Irene Gantois, and at the right a split portrait showing Andre Gantois, left, and his brother Allen Henderson, as young men. Gantois, recently discovered his half-brother many years after the end of the war due to DNA testing
Andre Gantois, his wife Rosine (center) and daughter Isabelle talk to his half-brother Allen Henderson, of the U.S, during a video-conference call in Ludres, eastern France. Andre Gantois figured he’d likely go to his grave without ever knowing who his father was until a DNA test connected him with his half-brother. Having married and with plans to start a family of his own, Gantois felt compelled to put a name and a face to the patchy story and to fill what his wife now says was ‘a huge hole’ in his life