by Glenn Goss
In June 2025, 100-year-old D-Day veteran Warren Goss reunited with the French farm girl who had hidden him from a German patrol more than eight decades earlier. Her name is Simone Phillipe. She was 14 years old in 1944 when she and her sister, Marie-Josèphe, risked their lives to shelter the young American soldier in the hayloft of their family’s barn.
The reunion took place at that very same farm in Normandy. Now 95, Simone embraced Warren as family, their shared memory bridging eighty-one years and the distance between war and peace.
Private First Class Warren Goss of the U.S. Army’s 531st Special Brigade, Engineers Shore Regiment, attached to the 4th Infantry Division, landed on Utah Beach in the early hours of June 6, 1944—just ahead of the first wave. His unit’s task was to secure the beachhead, clear German bunkers, and prepare the way for the troops and supplies that followed. Afterward, they were to move inland toward Sainte-Mère-Église to support the paratroopers who had dropped in during the night.
“It was tough going,” Warren recalled. “Everyone was lost.” Separated from his unit, he made it as far as Sainte-Marie-du-Mont that afternoon and spent his first night in Normandy lying in a ditch beside a cemetery. From there, he saw another wave of paratroopers descending and, for a terrifying moment, thought they were German reinforcements before realizing they were Americans. He remembers the grim sight of paratroopers who had been killed or drowned in the flooded fields below.
For the remainder of the war, Warren served as a lead scout on combat patrols—dangerous missions that required creeping into enemy territory to locate German positions, machine-gun nests, and artillery batteries. Sometimes, those patrols were ordered to clear buildings or bunkers outright.
About a week after D-Day, Warren and two other soldiers were sent out on a night patrol near a farmstead in the Norman countryside. They stumbled into a fierce firefight with German infantry. Caught in a grenade battle, Warren decided his best chance of survival was to throw his grenades “where they weren’t”—to create confusion and escape. He never learned what happened to his two comrades.
Alone, disoriented, and hunted, he crawled through the dark fields until he reached a farmhouse. What happened next, he has long described as nothing short of miraculous.
Two young girls appeared out of the darkness. Their names were Marie-Josèphe and Simone Phillipe—ages sixteen and fourteen. They quietly led Warren to the barn attached to their house. German soldiers were occupying the farmhouse itself, sleeping inside while Warren climbed into the hayloft above. There he stayed the rest of the night and into daylight, hidden only a few yards from the enemy.
Had the Germans discovered him—or realized the girls were sheltering an American soldier—all three would have been shot on the spot.
The next morning, Marie-Josèphe and Simone came to him with whispered words: “Les Boches sont partis.” The Germans are gone. Warren slipped away, safe for the moment, and never saw the sisters again.
Days later, Warren made his way back toward the beach. Remembering the kindness of the farm family, he wanted to repay them with food. The beach by then was choked with supplies and equipment. When he found the supply tent, he was turned away. But Warren managed to “acquire” a box of K-rations and carried it back to the farm.
The girls were gone, but their father greeted him warmly. The two men couldn’t communicate much, but they shared a simple meal at the kitchen table. The farmer showed off his trained dogs—one of which, to Warren’s astonishment, sat on the table wearing sunglasses and puffing on a pipe. They laughed together for fifteen minutes before Warren moved on.
Over the years, Warren returned to Normandy six times. In 2024, he traveled there with his daughter Rhonda and his nephew Glenn for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. During that visit, their host family recognized the story and knew the location of the very same farm. They also told Warren that one of the girls—Simone—was still alive. Her sister, Marie-Josèphe, had passed away in 2016.
One year later, in June 2025, Warren returned again, this time with his daughters Rhonda and Paula. Through the help of the local family, the long-awaited meeting was arranged.
Warren has always believed that angels watched over him that night. His mother had sent him a letter when he was stationed in England before D-Day. Inside was a handwritten copy of Psalm 91, along with a note:
“Warren, this was written a thousand years ago, and it is for you. Believe it.”
She prayed that psalm every day from her upstairs window, kneeling on a wooden stool, until her son came home. Warren kept that letter with him throughout the war and has held fast to its promise his entire life.
Psalm 91:11
“For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”
Two young sisters—Marie-Josèphe and Simone—were those angels on that fateful night in 1944. And in June 2025, the soldier they saved came back to thank one of them in person.
