Chuck Leety was the younger son born to Marie and Earl Leety, and sandwiched between a pair of sisters growing up in Pennsylvania. He had an older sister, Marie, who was eight years his senior; a brother Robert, four years older than him; and Sally, who was six years younger than him.A Young Soldier's DeathThe Crash SiteJuly 15, 2016: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Jean Leety's first name.

"I don't remember too much about him," Chuck said of his brother this week, seated at the dining table of his Sandy Hook home. "Because of that four-year difference, we didn't have sports together, and we didn't have any classes together."

Chuck vaguely remembers that his brother had "a nice girlfriend," and also that his brother was "just a nice guy." Today, thanks to a gift from his son, Bob, who was named for his late uncle - and years of work by a stranger in France - the Leetys have a better idea of how and where Robert died.

Chuck and his wife, Jean, were visiting their son and daughter-in-law in Pennsylvania earlier this month. The weekend trip was both for Father's Day, and to celebrate Chuck's birthday. When Chuck was getting ready to head to bed one night, "my son said, 'Not so fast. I have something I want to show you,'" he recalled. "And then he gave me this."

"This" is a small box with a pair of pilot's wings nestled on a cushion inside it. The wings had been on Robert Leety's US Army Air Force uniform when he died in March 1945, toward the end of World War II. They had been in France, where Robert died, until about five weeks ago.

The following morning Bob added to the gift: a notebook filled with full-color photos and pages of information about Chuck's late brother Robert. It is the first time the Leety family has had such a trove of information about the son who was killed in action four months after turning 20.

"It's a pretty thorough collection," Chuck said of the unexpected gift. "I was astounded."

Much of the information is new to the family, according to Chuck.

"We knew he crashed and died during World War II, and that was about it," he said.

The collection from Bob Leety adds details and photos to a project Chuck's aunt, Emily, had done at the turn of the century.

"They were so close in age, and very close with each other. They were like brother and sister, instead of cousins," Chuck said of his aunt and older brother. "She wrote a summary of Bob, and their life, and sent that to me around 2000."

Bob Leety had not expected to create such a collection of information about his uncle, he said this week. But he had a program about World War II running on television one night, "something on PBS or the Discovery Channel," he said June 29, "and I thought 'What would pop up if I just put my uncle's name into Google?'"

The results were pretty normal, he said. But then something unusual appeared.

"There was a Facebook link in there," said Bob. "I clicked on that, and one thing led to another, and I found out that this man in France, Pierre Lindauer, who owns the property that my uncle's plane crashed on, was looking for information about him."

Mr Lindauer's post, said Bob, "was basically looking for anybody that might have some information.

"When I clicked on what he had already, I was just gobsmacked," he added. "Pictures of my uncle's plane, the day of, or the day after it had crashed. This is stuff I had never seen before, and I started thinking 'I bet no one in the family knows about this!'"

"And then I saw the pilot's wings, and a zipper pull," he added, "and I thought 'Those are my uncle's wings! Those are a big deal.'"

Once Bob reached out to Mr Lindauer, the two began sharing information. Bob Leety decided it was time to put all of the new information together.

"I did this for my father," he said this week. The notebook that was presented to Chuck Leety on Father's Day is complemented by an online file that duplicates all of the information found in that blue binder.

"My dad's vision isn't great, so while I wanted him to have the paperwork, the maps and pictures, I also wanted him to have electronic versions of everything so that he would be able to blow things up on his computer screen," he said.

Bob and his sister, who is a teacher in Massachusetts, each did presentations with the electronic presentations. Bob was invited by his church to offer the presentation for Memorial Day. His sister added her new information to the annual Memorial Day presentations done at the school where she teaches.

The connection between Bob Leety and Pierre Lindauer was made on May 23. Bob worked on the gift for his father, he said, "right up until Father's Day."

Robert Miller Leety joined the US Army Air Force in February 1943. He enlisted during his first year at The College of Wooster, in Ohio, two weeks after he turned 18.

Two years later the plane he was flying - a P47 Thunderbolt fighter - went down. It crashed on March 15, 1945, while returning from a mission in Germany.

According to a letter the family has from Lieutenant Richard O. Johnson, who was a friend of Robert's, the pilot had been leading a flight down in the "Bitche Area," Mr Johnson wrote, referring to a commune in northern France near Lorraine. Mr Johnson had written to Marie Leety Nonnemaker - Robert and Chuck's older sister - two months after the crash.

"…he spotted some German tanks. He started down on a strafing pass and the whole sky was filled with flak. His plane was hit and started burning. He tried to crash land and in doing so he hit some trees and he was killed in the crash," Mr Johnson's letter continued.

At the time of his death, Robert was a first lieutenant with the 366th Fighter Squadron, 358th Fighter Group. He had reenlisted after completing 60-65 missions, and had earned the Air Medal with 11 Clusters, the Distinguished Unit Citation, American Theater Ribbon, and a Purple Heart, among other honors.

"He was the group leader for a number of aircraft," Chuck Leety said June 27. "After he was hit, two wingmen circled to make sure there was no sign of life at the accident site.

"Letters from each pilot, who affirmed what they did, were submitted to the War Department," he added. "The only thing at the site was the tail section."

When Emily had reached out to the War Department a number of years ago, he said, part of the information provided to her were copies of those letters acknowledging the men had done their duty that day.

Chuck Leety was ready to enlist after his brother was killed, he said this week.

"I was all set to sign on, but my father was dead set against it," he said. While the Sole Survivor Policy did not go into affect until 1948, Chuck said his parents were not willing to risk losing their surviving son, so he was not allowed to enlist.

About ten years ago, Pierre Lindauer found Robert's crash site.

"The plane and Robert were totally incinerated," Mr Lindauer wrote to Bob. "The remains of the plane disappeared after the war, probably recovered by scrap dealers; only small pieces of the plane are still in place."

One of the photos Mr Lindauer shared with the Leetys shows a man standing on the tail of the plane. The photo is dated "15 03 45," the day of the crash.

"The picture of the plane was taken in 1945 after the recovery of the body by the US authorities," Mr Lindauer wrote.

Robert M. Leety is buried in Lorraine American Cemetery, in Saint-Avold, France. While the family has not been to that cemetery, Mr Lindauer has visited, and shared with the Leetys a photo taken of himself kneeling next to Robert's gravestone.

"That was amazing," Bob Leety said, "I don't think I had ever seen a color of my uncle's grave marker - only black and white one, that looked like it had been copied about 100 times before it got to me.

"One of the things I have been amazed at, was how much he was able to get on his own about my uncle," he said.

In 1999 the wings that had been pinned to Robert's uniform were found, according to another of the e-mail exchanges between Bob and Mr Lindauer. A zipper pull was also found with the wings. Mr Lindauer's son, Luc, and one of Luc's friends, Damien Bauer, were the ones who uncovered Robert's insignia.

Mr Bauer, according to Pierre Lindauer, is a collector of material concerning the US Army Air Force. He continues, Bob Leety was told by Mr Lindauer, to visit and place flowers on Robert Leety's grave site two to three times a year.

"My son found the badge about 3 feet into the ground," another one of Mr Lindauer's e-mails conveys. "I transmitted to my son my passion for American soldiers and we knew that we could find some debris buried in the ground."

Bob had asked Mr Lindauer if he would be willing to part with the treasured pin.

"I thought afterwards, 'That was pretty presumptuous of me,'" Bob said this week. "I doubled back in another e-mail, and added 'That is, if you are willing to part with them.'"

Mr Lindauer's response to Bob Leety, he said, "was along the lines of 'Of course. Let me make sure you get this straight: We owe Robert our freedom.'"

"He kept saying 'They're going home now, where they belong,'" Bob added.

Mr Lindauer takes care of his town's history, and so he is interested, he told Bob, "in everything that concerning Dambach, Neunhoffen, France especially from this period of 44/45, when the Americans came to liberate France and, therefore, our dear Alsace."

After finding the crash site a decade ago, Mr Lindauer said in one of his Facebook posts, "I began to take some steps with the municipality where the crash occurred and also with the American embassy in Strasbourg to erect a monument in his honor."

In one of his final e-mails, Mr Lindauer noted that he was happy that "Robert, in a way, finally returned home."