Cpl Robert Deter Rowlands, "D" Co., 2d Bn, 503rd PRCT

[Deleted]

I am amazed at your website filled with information and history about the 503rd PRCT. I have learned so much about the history of the 503rd and very much appreciate all the work that has gone into the preservation and presentation of the history of this magnificent outfit.


My Grandfather was Cpl Robert Deter Rowlands, 33059006, 503rd PRCT, 2nd Battalion, D company. From the jump roster of those who jumped at Corregidor, he was in 3rd platoon. He died May 26th, 1967, of a heart attack. (Maybe this could be updated in the "Taps" section). He died at age 44.

I have been through your website and read many many pages but cannot find much information nor very many images or photographs of my grandfather. It seems that TSgt Harold D Schriefels, the acting platoon leader, didn't contribute much to the base of information used for the website (I wish he'd been in Calhoun's or Lindgren's platoons...) I was only 1 year old when he died so I do not remember meeting him and know very little about him. There are no living relatives who can tell me anything about him. I would like to contact someone who might have known him. If you are aware of anyone from D Company, 2nd Battallion that is still living and would be willing to talk with me to see if they recall anything about him, I would be very grateful.
Rob

[Registrar]

When I started out the website, I never thought that it would develop the way it did.

I have been fortunate that I have had the opportunity to know Lindgren and Calhoun, and many of the other men. Not all of them understood what a "website" was, and what I intended it to be, but Lindgren and Calhoun were two men who were fundamental to the task. Don Abbott was another. All three (and some others who I haven't named) had assisted authors of books in one way or another, and all of them had expressed some measure of dissatisfaction with what had been published. (Similar to the joke about newspapers which goes "newspapers publish everything correctly, except for those things about which you have close personal knowledge and you know they got entirely wrong.") So I was pretty much on my guard to get it right by trying to ensure they were the filters through which things needed to pass.

Lindgren and Abbott had also noted how, although 2d Battalion hadn't always seen the most action, there seemed to be more written about 2 Bn. because it had been an accident of fate that they - as officers in 2d Bn., had outlived the officers of the other companies. I believe that this was because those men (Abbott, Calhoun, Lindgren, Mullaney) who were still alive when I started the site had been among the youngest in the 503d, all of them starting as 2nd Lieutenants, and eventually becoming company commanders.

I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to know Abbott, Calhoun, Lindgren, Mullaney and many of the other men. Not all of them understood what a "website" was, and what I intended it to be, but those four gentlemen were fundamental to the task, and gave me support whenever I needed it.  They were all septuagenarians at the time, and they took to the new technology like the Paratroopers they were.  

Another factor I should mention, is that it was - in the main part - the officers that became more deeply involved in recording the history of the 503d. In the case of the 503d, three enlisted men have told their stories - Chet Nycum, who never got beyond Pfc., for whom I ghost-wrote "My Private War", Bennett M. Guthrie who wrote "Three Winds of Death" [ which is NOT a rare book and can still be purchased from his son, Ben,] and John Reynolds, who wrote a regular column (also titled "Three Winds of Death" in the Airborne periodical "Static Line."

That I would eventually co-produce a documentary film about the 503d on Corregidor would have been beyond ridiculous to contemplate at the time, but currently I am in the Philippines,  assisting Spyron AV Manila with roadshowing the film here CORREGIDOR - THE ROAD BACK . It is to be premiered in the US at the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, VA in April. 

I have passed your correspondence to Nancy Young, Secretary of the 503d PRCT Association of WWII, and recommend you become more closely involved with them. We have a good relationship with the Association, even though I myself am rarely in the USA. I am sorry that I don't have anything about Cpl Robert Deter Rowlands, but I encourage you to read whatever you can find across the website about 2d Bn, and imagine him being within a hundred yards of every mention of what was going on in the "D" Company Diary. Most of that will be in "Bless 'em All" which is now the major portion of the received written history of 2d Bn. 503d PRCT.

Indeed, it's advice I give to all fellows who are trying to research into their fathers, grandfathers, uncles etc. Every soldier had a different war, sometimes even from those in his same unit twenty yards away. Don't ever expect to learn exactly what happened to him, instead, learn about the entire unit experience, and what will have happened to your loved one will be the average of it all.

Thankyou for writing, and joining in with us. I wish you well in your pursuit of information about your Grandfather, and his contemporaries.

[Deleted]

Good advice. And I hope I can see the documentary you are co-producing when it is available for viewing here in the US. I wish more of my generation took the time years ago to rub shoulders with those of the WW II generation and had learned more about the courage, sacrifice, struggle and triumphs experienced by those who endured those times. Maybe there would be a greater sense of urgency today to protect what was purchased back then at so great a cost.