Prison ID photo of McCullen taken Christmas week, 1944, at Stalag IIA

Dan McCullen (second from left on second row) with fellow POWs after their liberation in 1945

On November 22, 1944, the day before Thanksgiving, Private First Class Dan McCullen of the 84th Infantry Division was in the W¸rm River Valley in Germany, holed up in a cellar and under fire from German Panzer units and his own forces.

“While we were in these cellars, at least three of our artillery shells hit us directly. At that point, I reached in my ammo bag and retrieved the large red apple I had gotten from the farmyard that afternoon. I took a big bite, popping it as they do and whispered to Squeak, perhaps rather loudly, ‘Gee, just like a movie, ain’t it?’ “

But as McCullen, B.A. 1947, writes in his moving memoir, Lest We Forget, the movie soon turned grim – he was captured within hours. He had been in the European theatre only for a few months, bivouacking through French orchards and battle-worn Paris, increasingly losing friends to enemy rifles, mortars, tanks, and mines as they approached the front.

“One boy apparently was hit in the pit of the stomach by the eighty-eight; all that remained were his legs,” he writes of their march into Germany. “We were supposed to have been issued arctic boots to protect our feet from the mud, but only those people wearing size six shoe or less were lucky enough to get arctics. That victim was to be identified by process of elimination; he had such small feet that he had on arctic boots.”

Overtaken in the bombed-out cellars, his decimated division was loaded into cattle cars where they remained for four long days as their train crawled deep into the Fatherland. He fought hunger, thirst, and sickness as he tried to recall phrases of German from his war-shortened studies at Millsaps.

From November 22, 1944, to May 2, 1945, McCullen was a Prisoner of War at Stalags XIB and IIA and at a work camp at G¸strow. He remembers the experience as a period not of mistreatment so much as of neglect. When the artillery had roared above him in battle, he said the Lord’s Prayer over and over “as if it were an incessant chant.” And his faith remained strong within captivity too, as he relates in a moving chapter about celebrating Easter 1945. In time, his prayers were answered – freedom came in the form of Stalin’s soldiers.

But liberation brought with it the worst side of war, for he witnessed brutal acts by the Russian troops against German civilians, revenge for the unspeakable depravities forced upon their own people. To curtail looting and random violence, McCullen and other U.S. soldiers stayed in the homes of civilians, recognizing that their duty was toward humanity regardless of nationality or race or religion.

“Dora [a fellow soldier] and I stroll over the country all day,” McCullen wrote in his diary three days after liberation. “Just enjoyed being free to go where we like. Occasional shots were still being fired. The dead still lie in the streets, untouched, except by vehicle wheels.”

VE Day came on May 8, and the skirmishes in the defeated Germany settled down. Within a month McCullen rejoined the U.S. Army in Belgium and began his return to his family in Mississippi. He completed his degree at Millsaps two years later and spent most of his career as a lawyer in Jackson.

In the 1970s, McCullen began writing down his war stories in the form of long letters to his daughters. He wanted them to know what he had experienced and how it shaped the rest of his life. With the encouragement of friends and family, he turned his letters into a tightly woven memoir that has sold well with minimum advertising. McCullen has found it particularly gratifying that school children and fellow veterans have thanked him for sharing his story.

“Lest We Forget is, in my opinion, an excellent way for a student of history, a researcher, or merely an American patriot to get an accurate picture of the tribulations and emotional strain to which the ‘little guy’ is subjected in war.,” writes retired U.S. Army Major General Alexander R. Bolling. “Mr. McCullen has told his story factually and without unnecessary embellishment. I found that refreshing,”

Some soldiers find themselves in war, others lose themselves. Private McCullen did neither. That is to say, he remained himself – a dedicated Christian who never lost his faith in God or in the great potential of his fellow human beings. He held tightly to his religious beliefs not because of what he saw in the war, but in spite of it.

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Millsaps Magazine  |  Millsaps | Last Edited May 11, 1999