World War II POW laid to rest
World War II veteran Donald L. Dean, who survived captivity in Germany with his dignity and sense of humor intact after his B-17 was shot down over Belgium in 1945, was honored Friday by friends, family and a military honor guard at a Spokane cemetery.
Also attending the service at the Fairmont Memorial Park were 10 members of the Spokane chapter of the American Ex-Prisoners of War. They shared a common bond with Dean, who died March 16 at age 80. It was the second time this year they’d paid tribute to a fallen comrade.
With the passing of every World War II veteran, the nation loses another eyewitness to the most significant event of the 20th century, a war that killed more people, upset more lives and destroyed more property than any other in history.
Upon the dedication of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., last May, it was estimated that veterans such as Dean, now mostly in their 70s or 80s, were dying at the rate of 1,100 a day. When they are all gone, only their stories will remain.
Donald Lloyd Dean was born May 21, 1924, to Claude and Della Dean, Kansas farmers soon to be displaced by drought and the Depression.
In 1939, the family moved to Charleston, Ind., where Dean’s father found work in a munitions plant. The boy was a fair baseball pitcher until he threw his arm out. He had to settle for throwing horseshoes thereafter.
He was called to war in 1942. His father had to sign for him to join the Army Air Corps. Dean trained in Florida, South Dakota and Arizona before being assigned to the 384th Bomb Group as a radioman with a B-17 crew in England.
Dean flew 20 successful missions over Europe. His 21st mission, with another crew who had lost its own radioman, was his last. In January 1945, his bomber was shot down over Belgium.
His own account of the next four months of his life, as told to a Veterans Affairs social worker in 2001, was provided by his son, David Dean, who added details from his own recollection.
“The snow was about 2 feet deep. You can’t tell much from up above. I hit hard; knocked me coo-coo for a time,” Dean said. “I kinda came to and there were these civilians around me. I reached for a cigarette in my pants and five different gun barrels were shoved in my ribs.
“It turned out these civilians did not like anyone bombing their homes,” he said. “I think my minutes were numbered, but then here comes a German soldier with a burp gun, running and yelling. He took me and another guy – saved our lives, I think.”
Back home, Dean’s brother, Roger, saw his father cry for the first time when Dean was reported missing in action.
Dean was forced-marched several times that winter, first to Wetzler, Germany, before being transported to Nuremberg by train. He was then marched 100 miles to Mooseberg. Along the way, a German guard who had been to the United States and “spoke English better than some of the Americans” treated Dean and a group of Australian prisoners very well, Dean said.
The Aussies nicknamed the guard “Hubba Hubba” and once cajoled the German into letting them clean his rifle. They were hilarious together, Dean told his son, and eased the terrible conditions of the march.
“So I ended up in Mooseberg with 10,000 other guys for four months,” Dean said. “Some of Patton’s men caught up with us and liberated us. We were damned happy to see them.”
The prisoners were liberated by Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army on May 19, 1945.
“Our German guards were scared to death, running and hiding all over,” Dean recounted. “The soldier near me, Patton’s man, said, ‘If they ain’t armed, let ‘em run. If they got guns, take care of ‘em.’ “
During Dean’s captivity, he and other prisoners scrounged through their captors’ garbage cans for food scraps to augment their measly portions. Dean’s weight dropped from 170 pounds to 120 pounds. Upon their liberation, Dean said, the men stuffed themselves on 3rd Army rations. Some died as a result.
“The soldiers were handing out chocolate bars to anyone who wanted them,” Dean said. “A lot of guys ate those and just fell over dead. After that they kept us on tomato juice and sandwiches until we readjusted.”
Later, the former prisoners were taken to “Camp Lucky Strike” at LaHavre, France, to board a boat for home. There, Dean ran across “Hubba Hubba” working in a German POW road gang.
“He said, ‘Hell, the treatment is wonderful. I’ve never had so much food. I’m never going back to Germany,’ ” Dean recalled. “Killing one another one month, laughing together the next – that’s the way it is sometimes.”
Dean made it home to Indiana and was discharged in October 1945. He re-enlisted in 1949 and spent 20 years in the Air Force, including hitches at Fairchild Air Force Base, where he married Gladys in 1950. After his retirement, he worked at the Naval Bomb Scoring Unit in Spokane for 18 years.
He is survived by his wife; three daughters, Debra Dean, Pamela Snow and Melody Ellsworth; his son, David Dean; his brother, Roger Dean; a sister, Betty Hensley; 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Many of them spoke Friday at a memorial service at which a Fairchild honor guard fired a salute and presented Gladys Dean with the nation’s flag.
David Dean spoke of his father’s love for family, country and baseball. He said his father coached him through several Little League championships, “and never stopped being a coach.”
During the service, the ex-POWs laid daisies at the urn containing their friend’s ashes. The flower represents the POWs’ first rule: Give the enemy only your name, rank and serial number. “Daisies never tell.”
“I tell you I didn’t have it bad at all,” Dean once said of his time as a prisoner. “I meet in a group that has Bataan guys in it. They were the ones who caught hell.”