Dale Bowlin should have bled to death in the snow on Feb. 21, 1945.
The Vancouver veteran was 92, however, when he died eight days ago.
Those extra years resulted from an ironic few minutes during the U.S. Army’s push into Germany during World War II.
Bowlin was grievously wounded by an American artillery shell; he was saved by a German who risked his own life to rescue Bowlin.
It’s a story several Columbian writers have told over the years, but it deserves another telling following Bowlin’s death on Nov. 13.
The forward artillery observer and three other GIs had been captured by German soldiers when an American artillery shell exploded nearby. A fragment hit the back of his left knee, severing the artery.
He crawled toward a German bunker and passed out. He woke up in a German hospital and learned that his left leg had been amputated above the knee.
“A German soldier saved my life — a soldier I’d been shooting artillery at 10 minutes earlier,” Bowlin said. “He risked his life instead of staying in that bunker.”
Bowlin’s face became familiar at events in local schools and at veterans’ observances. And not just his face. He wasn’t squeamish about his artificial leg. He would show it to kids, describing one high-tech component as his “$42,000 computer-controlled knee.”
His willingness to be a role model for amputees was another transition in Bowlin’s life, his daughter said Friday afternoon.
“When I was growing up, he was very private about it,” Janet Bowlin said. “My mom told a story about when dad got back to his home town. He was riding a bicycle and heard somebody say, ‘There goes that crippled Bowlin boy.’ ”
People who’d known Bowlin for five years would see him limping and would ask if he’d hurt his leg, she said. They didn’t know he had a prosthetic limb.
That changed in the 1980s when a friend, Bob Hidden, told Bowlin that he needed some exercise and insisted that they go swimming at the Marshall Community Center.
“A woman told him that her husband had lost a leg to diabetes and ‘If he could do what you’re doing, he’d still be alive.’
“He was so overwhelmed. He became proud of what he achieved and started a support group,” she said.
In his later years, Bowlin said he considered what that German soldier might be thinking now about their encounter.
If they could ever meet, Bowlin said in 2015, “I hope he would feel the risk he took was worthwhile.”
There will be a service at 3 p.m. today at First United Methodist Church, 401 E. 33rd St., Vancouver.
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
