Ollie W. Reed

Rank: Colonel, United States Army

Service Number: O-007244

Unit: 175th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division

Entered service from: Camden County, New Jersey

Died: July 30, 1944

Awards: Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster

Buried at: Plot E, Row 20, Grave 19, Normandy American Cemetery, St. Laurent-sur-Mer, France

Ollie W. Reed was born in July 1896 in Kansas, the son of Orval and Mary Reed. He was a career Regular Army officer who served in World War I. By 1920 he was a 24-year-old lieutenant with the 50th Infantry Regiment stationed in Niedermendig, Germany. He was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia in 1930, and he and his wife Mildred had two sons: Ollie W. Reed Jr., born in Connecticut around 1919, and Theodore, born in Washington, D.C., around 1923.

Promoted to Colonel by June 1944, Reed was placed in command of the 175th Infantry Regiment on June 23, 1944 — just weeks after the regiment had landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, as part of the 29th Infantry Division. On July 30, 1944, Colonel Ollie W. Reed was killed in action in Normandy. He was the highest ranking officer of the 29th Infantry Division killed in World War II.

Tragically, his son, Lieutenant Ollie W. Reed Jr. of the 363rd Infantry Regiment, 91st Infantry Division, was also killed in action in Italy on June 6, 1944 — the same day his father’s division landed at Omaha Beach.