Firm as the mountains around us,

Stalwart and brave we stand,

On the rocks our fathers planted,

For us in this goodly land.

—Ruth May Fox, “Carry On”

While not all the Latter-day Saint POWs at Dapecol may have been particularly religious at the time they entered military service, they shared a common heritage. They were from Latter-day Saint families and nearly all from predominately Latter-day Saint communities with their distinctive culture, religion, and pioneer history. To read many of their genealogies is to take a long walk back through Latter-day Saint pioneer history.

Peder Niels Hansen, Staff Sergeant Peter (Nels) Hansen’s grandfather, joined the Church in Denmark and was among the last of the handcart pioneers to arrive in the Salt Lake Valley. He eventually settled in Sanpete County, Utah, among other Scandinavian Saints.[1]

Isaac Russell, the great-grandfather of Captain Robert G. Davey, was baptized along with the future Church President John Taylor by the early Church Apostle Parley P. Pratt during Pratt’s mission to Canada in 1836. Russell later joined Heber C. Kimball in 1837 to open the British Isles Mission. Sarah Ann Butterworth Davey, Captain Davey’s grandmother, left her native England and pushed a handcart across the plains to join the fledgling band of Saints in Utah. She lived in the Davey home until her death in 1927.[2] Davey’s father, Charles Edmund Davey, served in the bishopric of the Cannon Ward in Salt Lake City, Utah, for more than thirty years, including thirteen years as bishop.[3]

Jacob Hamblin, Private Orland K. Hamblin’s grandfather, was the famous Latter-day Saint pioneer, missionary, and diplomat to Native Americans in the West.

One doesn’t even have to go back a single generation to find the influence of the early Church. First Lieutenant George Robin (Bobby) Brown was born in Colonia Juárez and raised in the close-knit, isolated Latter-day Saint colonies in northern Mexico.

Brown’s ancestors include a New England shoemaker; a rough Kentucky blacksmith; an English bricklayer and his middle-class English wife, who arrived penniless in America; successful southern plantation owners and former enslavers from Tennessee; and Scandinavian emigrants just learning English and the skills needed to survive in the West.

These Latter-day Saint soldiers descended from the resilient pioneer stock that survived persecutions in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois; went on to colonize the western desert, making it “blossom as the rose” (Isaiah 35:1); and built an ordered religion and society.[4] These differences in national origin, background, occupation, and social status were cast aside in the crucible of the pioneer experience. A new, unique culture and heritage emerged, which became the culture of these POWs and their families.

Leonard J. Arrington, a prominent historian and former official Church historian, made this observation about the Latter-day Saint pioneers: “The resiliency—the rebound power—of the Mormon people was perhaps their greatest asset. . . . Whether it was a grasshopper plague, prolonged drought, a winter of attrition, an Indian war, or ‘invasion’ by hostile troops, the Mormons always seemed to rise from their ‘bed of affliction’ to meet the almost overwhelming challenge.”[5] This resilience, enabled by their religious legacy of sharing one another’s burdens, was a defining characteristic of early Latter-day Saints and the culture of these POWs.

These young men grew up during the Great Depression, mostly in rural areas. As unlikely as it may seem, that may have been a blessing. They learned to be resourceful, to make do, to be self-reliant, and to deal with hardship and failure. Staff Sergeant Peter (Nels) Hansen was the second of fourteen children raised on a wheat farm and cattle ranch in Caldwell, an old Latter-day Saint settlement in southern Alberta, Canada.[6] Captain Robert (Bob) Davey’s family lost their once-prosperous furniture business in Salt Lake City in the Great Depression.[7] First Lieutenant George Robin (Bobby) Brown learned early in life what it took to survive on a ranch in the remote regions of the Sierra Madre in northern Mexico. Many also learned at an early age to handle firearms and to hunt. Brown was twelve years old when he shot, cleaned, and skinned his first deer. The military was not his first experience with firearms.[8]

From his mother, Brown was also the recipient of an especially comforting gift: the love of music, especially the singing of hymns. His mother, Ruby, taught him and his older sister Nelle to sing duets—tenor and alto. They both had beautiful voices and sang hymns largely because that was all that was available in their remote home in the mountains of northern Mexico. After the family later moved to El Paso, Texas, Brown continued to demonstrate a flair for music and drama, performing in several community theater productions, such as Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, and in a radio drama at a local radio station.[9]

All things considered, these Latter-day Saint soldiers and their families seem unremarkable for the time—ordinary families trying to make their way in the depths of the Great Depression. But however unremarkable their Latter-day Saint upbringing and religious faith may have appeared, that upbringing and faith may have been the most important preparation these young men could have received for future events then unimaginable.

Notes

[1] Later Hansen’s father, James Hansen, along with some others from Sanpete County, Utah, moved north to settle in Alberta, Canada, in 1887, where Hansen was born and grew up on a cattle ranch. Histories of Hansen and his ancestors may be found at familysearch.org under James Edward Hansen (KWCD-SZK), Peter Nelsen Hansen (KW86-JCJ), and Peder Niels Hansen (KWJ8-XVF).

[2] Marilyn Springgay, email message to author, April 23, 2017.

[3] “Obituary of Charles Edmund Davey,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 1, 1941.

[4] Early Church members viewed the colonization of the Great Basin in Utah as a modern fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that the “desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” Isaiah 35:1.

[5] Leonard J. Arrington, The Great Basin Kingdom: Economic History of the Latter-day Saints 1830–1900 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), 161.

[6] Wendell J. Ashton, “A Spirit of Love,” Instructor, April 1947, 175.

[7] Springgay, “Robert Gray Davey,” 13.

[8] Brown and Zundel, “George Robin Brown . . . His Story,” 6–7.

[9] Brown and Zundel, “George Robin Brown . . . His Story,” 12; Nelle B. Zundel, “George Robin Brown,” in The Life and Posterity of Alma Platte Spilsbury, comp. Viva Skousen Brown (Provo, UT: privately published, 1983), 297–98.