Stanley Ash aged fast. His mother died giving birth to the youngest of her 12 children. His little brothers ran wild up on the Heights, keeping the police busy, especially on Halloween. And Europe was in trouble, a slave to Nazi Germany.

Ash did his best before dying at the age of 20, four days after landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He fought for his brothers and he fought for his country, and he's now part of a young Belgian woman's life, a woman the same age Ash was when he died.

Amelie Paquet volunteers for Flowers of Remembrance, an organization created to show appreciation for the Americans who stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Ash is one of 16,000 men buried in two cemeteries near the English Channel.

Paquet places flowers on Ash's grave each year, driving four hours from her home in Belgium. She reads the words engraved on a glowing white cross in a perfectly manicured field of glowing white crosses.

Stanley W. Ash PFC 115 Inf 29th Div New Hampshire June 10 1944.

Who is this man? Paquette wondered. What was his childhood like, his family, his hometown?

Paquette e-mailed us to find out, and after an initial column asking for help, two of Ash's younger brothers,

Albert, of Goshen, 78, and Warren, of Washington, 77, stepped forward to bring us back. They sat with their wives yesterday in Warren's living room, in a house down a dirt road.

They've long since retired, a pair of blue-collar fellows who were rough around the edges growing up and who worked in sawmills and wool mills and shoe shops.

They are Stanley's lone remaining siblings, along with Betty, who lives in Unity. They didn't know Stanley all that well. Not really. They were kids when he died, barely in their teens.

"All of a sudden he joined the service," Warren said, "and then he just disappeared."

They knew, however, what Stanley tried to do for them, that he took over the family after their mother, Blanch Hillsgrove of Concord, had died giving birth to Betty.

Hazel, the oldest, raised Betty in California. Ruth, next in line, married soon after and settled in Contoocook.

That left Edgar and his nine sons in their house on Robinson Street, No. 15. Edgar worked for the Boston and Maine Railroad. He loaded and unloaded baggage. He worked 12 hours a day and never remarried. The family was poor, using kerosene lamps for light, a wooden backhouse for a toilet and catalogs for toilet paper.

Stanley took control. He was a high school kid with parental responsibilities. He worked at the tannery in Penacook. He cooked, he cleaned the house, and he cleaned the clothes. And he tried to keep his younger brothers, including Warren and Albert, in line.

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