Brothers at War

Brothers at War

By Jane Green

The founder of the Dowell family in the United States to which William Newton “Newt” Dowell belonged came from England in the 1600s and settled in Maryland. His first name is lost to history. His son Philip married Mary Tydings, and they had 10 children. Over time, descendants headed south to North Carolina and west from there to Tennessee and Kentucky. Adley Dowell, Newt’s grandfather, took his family north from Kentucky to settle in Clay County.

Around 1920, a man named Shepard started a coal mine in Fayette Township in northern Vigo County. The village that formed nearby was called Shepardsville. Newt, his wife Carrie Sutherland Dowell, and their four children left Clay County to settle in Shepardsville, where Newt went to work in the mine.

Over the next 11 years, Newt and Carrie had nine more children—a total of 13, although two girls died very young. Of the children who grew to adulthood, there were six boys and five girls.

Newt had Dowell ancestors who served in the Revolutionary War, but he and his more recent ancestors had escaped service in the Civil War and World War I. Newt’s large family lived and worked quietly together in the Hoosier heartland, taking part in the small pleasures people enjoyed back then. With that many family members, some disputes must have come up, but they resolved them amicably.

World War II would change that.

Chapter 1: The Eager Soldier

Historians still debate the starting date of World War II because conflicts that could be counted as part of the war were occurring in Europe and Asia throughout the mid-to-late 1930s. It is safe to say, however, that by 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, the major countries of Europe were at war, as were Japan and China.

Americans still recovering from World War I and suffering from the Great Depression had no desire to jump into another foreign war, but the Franklin Roosevelt Administration and most Members of Congress believed it prudent to restart the draft—the conscription of men into military service. The World War II draft began in October 1940, with draftees entering military service as early as November 18.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, answered the question of whether the US should enter the war, and millions of American men either volunteered or were drafted into the United States Armed Forces. New provisions for the draft enacted into law on December 20, 1941, made all men between the ages of 20 and 44 liable for military service and required all men between 18 and 64 to register. Another change in the law a year later made registered 18- and 19-year-olds liable for military service.

Of Newt and Carrie’s six sons, five became eligible for the draft during World War II. One of the five, John Henry Dowell, born in 1915, received a deferment, probably because his job as a coal miner was deemed essential to the war effort.

The youngest of the five, Thomas Franklin Dowell, born in 1928, did not get called up until 1946. He joined the Army Corps of Engineers and later switched services, making a career in the Air Force. The sixth son, Harold Ray Dowell, born in 1931, missed World War II but served in Korea as a private first class in the US Army.

Of the three other draft-eligible sons, Samuel Huston Dowell, born on October 7, 1925, was the most eager to go to war. He enlisted as a private in the US Army on November 27, 1943, one month after his 18th birthday. He had been delivering coal to people, so the Army categorized his civilian occupation as “semiskilled driver of vehicles like buses, taxis, trucks, and tractors.”

At 5'10'' tall and weighing 135 pounds, he was as skinny as a rail. He was a good-looking kid, with sandy brown hair, blue eyes, a ready smile, a light complexion, and a long rectangular face. According to the 1940 Federal Census, he was still in the 4^th grade at age 14. His older brothers had dropped out before high school.

Sammy had no firsthand or even secondhand memories of World War I, so maybe to him the thought of being part of a monumental national effort to defeat enemies that had attacked the US was thrilling and ennobling. If he thought that, he wouldn’t have been wrong—it’s just that there were also some major downsides that he didn’t know to think about.

The Army placed Sammy in the 106 Division, 423 Infantry Regiment. The 106^th was created after the US entered World War II and consisted of three regiments. Sammy caught up with the Division at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. On March 28, 1944, the Division moved to Camp Atterbury, about 30 miles south of Indianapolis near Edinburgh, Indiana, where it stayed and trained until October 1944.

So far, war wasn’t so bad for Sammy, but things started to speed up in October. The Division went briefly to Camp Miles Standish in Massachusetts and then shipped out of New York City for England.

They trained for almost three weeks in the Cotswold region of England. Sammy must have felt a bit at home in the Cotswolds, with its gentle hills, peaceful pastures, and winding rivers. Three hundred years earlier, the region had been a battleground in the English Civil War. The area is now a major tourist destination, but when Sammy was there, the British Royal Air Force had pockmarked its landscape with 35 runways.

Shortly after celebrating Thanksgiving in 1944, Sammy and his fellow Americans packed up for France, where the dark side of war awaited them. Upon arrival, the division joined the Allies’ ongoing Rhineland Campaign, which aimed to push the Germans back along their entire Western frontline.

But the Germans had some ideas of their own. At 5:30 a.m., December 16, 1944, Germany launched a massive counterattack on the heavily wooded Schnee Eifel ridgeline on the German side of its border with Belgium. Sammy’s 106th Division was in the middle of the German onslaught. Thus began The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive—the Germans’ last major effort to push farther west into Europe.

If the positives of war hadn’t already been exhausted for Sammy, they soon would be. Unwise Allied military decisions and overconfidence combined with bad weather to enable the Germans to surround two of the 106th's three regiments: Sammy's 423rd and the 424^th. The stranded units tried their best to break through, but the size of the German force was overwhelming. To avoid a massacre, the regiments surrendered, resulting in a heretofore unheard-of capture of almost 7,000 US soldiers.

Sammy and his compatriots were transported to a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp called Stalag 9B in the town of Bad Orb not far from the major industrial city of Frankfurt, Germany. The camp was a horror story, lacking facilities sufficient for the housing, health, and welfare of thousands of men. The Red Cross visited Stalag 9B, documented its woefully inadequate conditions, and demanded improvements, but the Germans countered that the POWs would only be in the facility temporarily.

At least one POW kept a diary, and this typical entry describes what Sammy’s life in Stalag 9B was like: “How badly I need a bath. Frigid weather. No fire. Ate the last bite of cheese which I had hoarded so carefully. This continual gnawing hunger is terrible and so weakening. How I dream of home.”

As Allied forces fought their way farther into Germany, Allied aircraft became a threat to the POWs, with bombing and strafing of the Frankfurt area including the camp and inadvertently killing a number of prisoners. On April 2, 1945, Allied forces liberated Stalag 9B.

Twenty-year-old Samuel Huston Dowell survived long enough to be liberated from Stalag 9B, but he died in Germany on or around April 25, 1945. Germany surrendered 12 days later on May 7^th.

Sammy’s army medical record states that he was killed-in-action and was not in a medical facility when he died. His remains were interred in the Lorraine American Cemetery in St. Avold, France, Plot K, Row 34, Grave 33.

Next week: The Rejected Soldier

Chapter 2: The Rejected Soldier

Walter Eugene Dowell, born on September 19, 1918, was nicknamed Brigg by his family because that is how as a toddler he would say the word “bring.” He looked a lot like his younger brother Sammy—they were the same height and had the same light complexion and sandy brown hair and the same long face. Brigg was twenty pounds heavier and had gray eyes instead of blue.

Brigg had registered for the draft on October 16, 1940, but he wasn’t called up to enlist in Evansville until June 10, 1943. He was 25 years-old and unmarried. Brigg had left school after completing the 8^th grade; his civilian occupation was listed as a laborer. He probably was working for one of the Federal Government’s public works programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps or the Work Project Administration, which were designed to help pull the country out of the Great Depression

He entered on duty in the Army as a private in Company M of the 1534^th Service Unit at The Fort Benjamin Harrison Reception Center, which was the largest draftee reception center in the United States. The fort was just a few miles from Indianapolis.

As Brigg began basic training, he and his platoon leader discovered that his ability to process certain tasks was slower than that of his platoonmates. They pulled him aside for tests and then put him in the hospital for more tests, including a spinal tap.

What was wrong with Brigg? Military medical records from World War II are available to the public, but in Brigg’s case, the National Archives, which is the repository for such records, ordered that his diagnosis be withheld. That suggests that his illness was of a sensitive nature.

One possibility is that Brigg had syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that can take years to manifest itself and can cause the neurological symptoms Brigg had experienced. The spinal tap that Brigg received helps detect syphilis as well as other diseases.

The Army treated many, many cases of syphilis. Brothels would open near military facilities, leading to rapid spread of the disease to the women who worked there and to their male customers. Fortunately, by 1943, treatment for syphilis was easy because of the discovery of penicillin, although the damage that the disease had already caused could not be repaired.

According to Army policy at the time, if an infected soldier had completed training, his illness would be treated, and his military service probably would continue. If the disease was detected before enlistment, the draftee usually would be excused from service. Brigg’s case—if he in fact had syphilis—didn’t quite fall in either category.

A Medical Evaluation Board reviewed and decided the military future of cases that involved serious medical issues. Brigg’s records indicate that he received medical treatment and then was honorably discharged for disability. He had served in the Army for about a month.

By the end of July 1943, Brigg was back home in Shepardsville, working in the mine with his dad.

Next week: The Broken Soldier

Chapter 3. The Broken Soldier

William Marion Dowell, known as Billy, was born on June 21, 1923. He was five years younger than Brigg and two years older than Sammy. Other than having the same fair complexion, he did not share their looks. At 5’7” tall and weighing 165 pounds, he was shorter and stockier. He had brown hair and eyes and a chubby, square face.

He was 19 years old and unemployed when he registered for the draft, and about a year later, he was called to enlist on January 26, 1944, in Evansville, where Sammy had enlisted two months before. Brigg had been back home for about six months.

The Army sent Billy to the war’s South Pacific Theater, where Japan and the harsh environment were the enemies. Thanks to a quirk in the bureaucracy of record sharing, information regarding which unit Billy served in is not publicly available like that of Sammy. However, based on the length of the typical enlistee’s training, Billy probably arrived in the South Pacific by June 1944.

The Army was participating in at least four different major Pacific military campaigns in June 1944. Four more campaigns were conducted in the region before war’s end. The US Army, Navy, and Marines worked in a coordinated effort

Regardless of which campaigns Billy experienced, all had several things in common: the Army was trying to retake territory from the Japanese, who were in entrenched defensive positions; the fighting was intense; the terrain was a combination of steep, rocky mountains, muddy swamps, and thick jungle; the heat and humidity were several times worse than Indiana’s; mosquitos and other biting or stinging insects were rampant; and tropical diseases, especially malaria, were common.

Mosquitos can transmit at least four malaria-causing parasites directly to humans. Two of these types can persist in the liver and cause relapses by invading the bloodstream weeks or even years later

In December 1944, Billy was treated for one of the recurring types, malaria vivax, which can be deadly. Even with treatment, malaria tortures its victims over long periods of time. Billy was also treated for impetigo, a highly contagious, itchy, oozy bacterial infection of the skin that normally clears up in 10 days.

Billy’s malaria symptoms included at least some of the following: pain in the abdomen or muscles; chills, fatigue, fever, night sweats, shivering, or sweating; diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, rapid heart rate, headache, and mental confusion. So many soldiers in the Pacific war—Allied and Japanese—became sick with malaria (an estimated 60 and 65 percent) that commanding officers would have to take the disease into account when calculating military decisions.

Billy sustained multiple battle injuries—shot in the lower leg and wounded by shrapnel—in April 1945. He recovered in a Navy hospital for several weeks and then was sent back to duty.

The war was over in Europe by April 1945, but in the Pacific, the worst was yet to come in terms of casualties. For example, the final land battle of World War II, the invasion of Okinawa, began on April 1^st and lasted 82 days. US Marines and Army troops fought against Japanese soldiers who were using complex underground defense systems.

More than 12,000 Americans were killed or missing on Okinawa, and over 36,000 were wounded. Seventy thousand Japanese soldiers died there. As many as 100,000 to 150,000 civilians were killed.

Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945. Billy’s term of enlistment was until the end of the war plus six months, so he made it back home around February 1946.

Next week: War Hits Home

Chapter 4. War Hits Home

The American public gave its returning soldiers heroes’ welcomes. Billy no doubt appreciated the outpouring of gratitude and respect.

Soldiers coming home from war often try to put the experience quickly behind them, sometimes by not talking about it. Friends and family might really want to know what they went through, but many veterans don’t feel it’s right to share the horrors they’ve witnessed or experienced. Holding it in is a service to loved ones and can help veterans focus on reintegrating into a peacetime world.

For some soldiers—perhaps 25 percent of those returning from World War II, according to experts—their reluctance to talk about their experiences and their avoidance of anything that reminded them of those experiences are matters of self-protection. These veterans can become withdrawn, jumpy, hypersensitive, and irritable; have angry outbursts, nightmares, and flashbacks; consistently drink or use drugs, and contemplate self-harm.

Family, friends, coworkers, and medical professionals have long observed that some men returning from battle display these signs and symptoms. These observers have given this syndrome a variety of names. “Soldier’s heart,” “traumatic hysteria,” “combat fatigue,” “shellshock,” and “war neurosis” are some of the most common.

Psychiatrists began to study the problem seriously when it became apparent that combat fatigue affected many Vietnam War veterans. By 1980, the psychiatric community named the malady “posttraumatic stress disorder” (PTSD). They also concluded that PTSD could happen to anyone traumatized by disaster, physical or mental pain, or seeing others in pain—it wasn’t just a wartime thing, it wasn’t just a male thing, and it could arise years after the trauma occurred.

Anyone who had Billy’s wartime experience would have accumulated an emotional burden. Billy saw plenty of blood and gore, watched friends die or have parts of their bodies blown off, and he had gotten sick and wounded himself.

On top of all that, Billy came home alive, but his brother Sammy not only had worse experiences—he didn’t come home. Sammy was the brother closest to Billy in age, so his loss would have hit hard.

Billy might not have found out Sammy’s fate until he got back to Indiana. Even if he had already known that Sammy was dead, he wouldn’t have heard the details of Sammy’s time as a POW until he got back to the States—his brother suffering and dying at only 20 years old, and they didn’t even have his body to bury.

If Billy felt guilty about Sammy, how did he feel about Brigg, who was living safe at home while he and Sammy fought—and Sammy died? In a mind still reeling from war, it might seem logical that if anyone had to die, it should’ve been Brigg or Billy, the older two of the three brothers.

And how did Brigg react to being rejected from the military? He wasn’t the only man who had failed to qualify for the Army, but he was almost certainly the only one he knew of who had been accepted into the Army and then kicked out after a month.

At a minimum, Brigg must have found his situation to be embarrassing. What other emotions were triggered when he learned how Sammy had suffered and died and when Billy came home with battle scars and the lingering effects of malaria?

Next week: Two Cases for WarChapter 5. Two Cases for War

As kids would do years ago, Billy must have spent a lot of time in the woods next to the family home, often playing with Sammy. He would have known those woods like the back of his hand. Maybe they had played cowboys and Indians there, hiding behind trees, pretending they had guns. After they got a certain age, their father, just as his father before him, got his sons shotguns and taught them to hunt.

On the afternoon of Thursday, July 11, 1946, the temperature was in the 80s, and Billy might have thought those woods were inviting him in for some shade. Maybe he accepted their invitation, sat down under an oak, put his head back, closed his eyes, and thought of what used to be and what was now.

Now that he was home, he was earning just enough money doing odd jobs to make him realize he had no money. If he went to a bar, he had to depend on the generosity of others buying rounds, knowing that he could not reciprocate. The other options were to get money from Pop or Brigg, the family’s breadwinners, or go to work in the mines. None of Billy’s options satisfied him.

On that same afternoon, Billy’s younger sister Audrey Dowell might have considered how strange it was to have the house so empty. It was not unusual to have twenty or more people going in and out of the house on any given day. But on this particular Thursday, only she, Billy, her sister Thelma, and Brigg were there.

At the beginning of the week, Newt and Carrie had taken her little brother, Harold, up to Detroit to visit her brother John and her sister Etta who lived up there now. Brother Thomas had enlisted in the army a month after Billy got home and was at Fort Lewis, Washington. Although sisters Muriel and Margaret were married and on their own, they and their families visited frequently.

Thelma was living at home again with her two kids; her husband had taken off shortly after he got back from the war. On that particular Thursday, however, Thelma’s mother-in-law was babysitting the two children, making the house seem even emptier.

The impending return the following week of Carrie, Newt, and Harold added another dynamic to the situation. Newt had placed an order at the local tavern for a case of beer and a case of soda pop because he wanted to throw a party for the family upon his return.

However, according to press accounts, an air of tension had developed between Brigg and Billy over when the drinks would be picked up. Newt had said he would pick up the drinks upon his return, but it seems that Billy was pressing Brigg to pick them up that night when the four siblings would be having dinner together at the tavern.

At first glance, Billy’s argument made sense. Why should Newt have to make a special trip to the tavern to pick up the drinks when Billy and Brigg would be there that night?

But Newt probably had suspected that if he let his sons pick up the drinks, at least the beer would stand a good chance of being consumed by the cash-strapped and thirsty Billy well before Newt would arrive home from Detroit. Newt apparently trusted Brigg to stand his ground on this one.

At the tavern, after the siblings finished their meal, Thelma headed back home to do tasks while the children were away. Audrey went over to talk to some friends in the dining room. Billy and Brigg went to the bar.

After a few minutes of light conversation, Billy apparently raised the issue of Newt’s drinks. The specifics of their conversation are undocumented, but considering the ensuing events, they might have gone along the following lines, with Billy starting:

“Say, brother, let’s save Pop a trip and pick up that those drinks now?”

“Billy, I told you, Pop said he didn’t want us to get it today. He thinks we’ll drink it all before he gets home. Not just you and me, but the girls will tell their husbands, and we’ll be having one big party we shouldn’t have.”

“Well, what if we do? We can just buy some more.”

“Who’s this ‘we’? You mean Pop or me. Look, I know Pop. Plus, it’s not that easy to buy cases of drinks these days. Pop ordered this in advance. We drink it up, we can’t just go buy more. And he’d be mighty annoyed because he’s got plans for those drinks.”

“Oh, so you and Pop have become best buddies while you been sitting on your butt back here safe and sound?”

“I haven’t been sitting on my butt. You’ve been back for months, but I don’t see you hurrying to go down in that mine and earn your keep. I know digging coal is not war, but it’s not easy, either. And it’s not like I didn’t join up just like you did.”

“Oh, you joined up all right,” Billy chuckled sarcastically. “You served a whole month before they kicked you out.”

“That wasn’t my fault. It was a medical issue,” Briggs protested.

“You say you’d’ve been happy to go to war, but they wouldn’t let you. Well, you got a shotgun, I got a shotgun. What say you and I try it out in the woods? A little bit of local war. Maybe a little more like Sammy experienced than what I did, but that’ll even it out for us. First one who shoots the other wins and gets to decide about getting the beer. Then we put this behind us.”

Brigg replied with a punch to Billy’s jaw, knocking Billy off his barstool. Billy got up and lunged at Brigg. Men came from the bar and tables to pull the brothers apart. Audrey came running to help make peace. Without saying another word, Billy left with Audrey. Brigg paid the tab and headed home separately.

Next week: The Battle of the Backwoods

Chapter 6. The Battle of the Backwoods

Brigg had no reason to hurry to get home from the tavern. He probably figured that time would let the heat burn out of Billy, and they could talk things through.

According to accounts from Audrey and Thelma, when Brigg got home, Billy was sitting in Carrie’s rocking chair on the front porch with his 12-gauge shotgun across his lap.

“Put up that gun, Bill,” Brigg said.

“I won’t,” replied Billy and called, “Hey, Audrey, turn off the lights out here.”

The lights went off. Brigg shrugged his shoulders and got his 16-gauge shotgun. The brothers went into opposite ends of the woods. The sisters hid under a bed.

Was Billy’s mind back in the Pacific in a jungle somewhere, fueled by the adrenaline of hunting while being hunted?

Billy began the shooting and, over the course of perhaps a half hour, fired 12 shots.

Although Brigg had his shotgun, he did not fire it. He didn’t have the anger Billy had. But what could he do? If he ran out of the woods and hid until someone talked sense into Billy, he’d just add to his reputation as someone who tried to avoid a fight.

Maybe Brigg considered letting Billy wound him just to get it over with. They’d take him to the hospital, hopefully he’d heal up, and life would get back to normal.

Billy’s twelfth shot hit Brigg in the gut.

“You got me, Bill!” Brigg yelled out as he fell.

According to Audrey’s and Thelma’s accounts, Billy peered out, saw Brigg was down and ran to the house, shouting “Call the ambulance! I got him!” Then Billy ran to the cornfield across the road and hid.

The Dowell brothers went their separate ways for the last time that night. The ambulance got Brigg to the Vermillion County Hospital in Clinton by 11 p.m. Shortly thereafter, a police car deposited Billy at the Vigo County jail in Terre Haute. At 1:30 a.m., Brigg died of his wounds—the doctors couldn’t stop him from hemorrhaging. Billy was charged with first degree murder.

Next week: Rest in Peace

Chapter 8. Rest in Peace

After a telephone call from home informed Newt and Carrie of the tragedy, the couple started the seven-hour drive home from Detroit. John and Etta and their families left for Shepherdsville the next day.

During the car ride, Newt and Carrie must have searched their memories for conflicts between Brigg and Billy that would help them make sense of the duel. The boys’ age difference with several kids in between them made a longstanding grudge unlikely, especially since Billy was only 23.

Reporters from Indiana-based newspapers flocked to Shepardsville to feast on the details of a crime that transgressed the bonds of family. Newspapers throughout the country from as far away as Vermont picked up the story, all focusing on the craziness of brothers shooting at each other over a case of beer and the fact that one of the brothers was a war hero.

Audrey had revealed to at least one journalist that Billy had told her on the way home from the tavern that he intended to kill Brigg. But once Newt and Carrie arrived home, details related to the crime stopped filtering out. It seems likely that Newt had made it clear to his offspring and their spouses that any discussion with outsiders would only make matters worse for the family.

The Vermillion County coroner ruled homicide in Brigg’s death; Billy refused to attend the coroner’s hearing. With no more details coming out from the investigation, the press coverage stopped.

The Vigo County grand jury indicted Billy on first- and second-degree murder charges on September 10^th, and Billy was arraigned on the charges on October 4^th. He pleaded not guilty to both charges. The judge set his trial date for January 2, 1947.

Prosecutor Jack Jett called Billy’s lawyer, George Nasser, to his office early the morning of Billy’s trial. Jett offered George a deal that Billy accepted. Billy pled guilty to a charge of manslaughter, and the judge sentenced him to 2-21 years in the Indiana Reformatory, the state’s prison for younger adult criminals.

The two lawyers explained to the press that neither side thought that Billy would be convicted of first-degree murder and that the plea deal saved court costs. One press report indicated that the prosecutor had taken into account that Brigg had been arrested at some unspecified point for burglary whereas Billy had won the Purple Heart and had a clean legal record.

Although it is questionable logic to justify a plea deal partially on the fact that Brigg had been arrested on—not convicted of—burglary charges, the deal itself seemed to make sense, especially from Newt and Carrie’s perspective. Billy wasn’t a coldblooded murderer or a threat to the community. His crime was within Newt’s family. Newt’s son Billy shot and killed Newt’s son Brigg on Newt’s property with guns from Newt’s house. Neither son was married or had children.

If the circumstances of the clash between Billy and Brigg took place today, the effects of PTSD almost certainly would have played a role in Billy’s defense. Billy was not a high achiever when he left Indiana in 1944, but he was not a man who would have shot his brother over a case of beer—that change in him came from his wartime experiences.

Brigg was buried in Pleasantview Cemetery in Tecumseh, Vigo County, on July 16, 1946, with his whole family but for Billy in attendance. His parents applied for and received from the War Department a gravestone noting his service in the Army.

Bill returned to live in Vigo County after his release from prison in the early 1950s. On July 15, 1955, he married 27-year-old Willadean Brockmeier, who was divorced with two young children. The couple had five additional children.

Bill’s early years out of prison were a little rough. His driver’s license was suspended for a year, and he was caught driving while it was suspended. He and Willadean were taken to court for defaulting on a loan.

Over time, however, Bill seemed to find his footing. Both he and Willadean became active in church, where Bill became a deacon. He died on October 21, 2014, when he was 91, surrounded by his family. Willadean, equally well-loved, passed away on March 20, 2019, also at the age of 91.

Like Brigg, Newt, Carrie, and a number of other members of the Dowell family, Bill and Willadean are buried in Pleasantview Cemetery.