World War II veteran in Spokane recalls contribution to D-Day

Clarence “Willie” Hauser has had his fair share of good luck.

Not only has he made it to the ripe old age of 96, but he did so the hard way – by working the fields of his dairy farm in rural Wisconsin until he had enough money to retire. He’d spend hours out in the hot sun, often without a hat on his head, and never with an ounce of sunscreen on his body.

But that all pales in comparison to his time in the military during World War II. As the United States and its allies geared up for the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 – or D-Day, as it’s termed – Hauser was in England, busy repairing instruments on B-17 Flying Fortress bombers that helped clear the way for troops on the ground.

He wanted desperately to fly, his daughter Doreen Hauser-Lindstrom explained, but each time he got up high he’d get sick and have to come back down. So he was grounded permanently – far away from the war and the massive casualties sustained in what still remains the largest seaborne invasion in history.

To this day, he still considers the planes he helped maintain as the integral cog in the turning point of the war.

“That’s the bomber that saved the world,” he said while sitting in his room at Spokane Veterans Home. “I really do believe that.”

As he recounted his time in WWII, and on D-Day specifically, which was 73 years ago Tuesday, behind him was a group of photographs snapped just a few weeks ago, when Hauser and a few others from the home visited Fairchild Air Force Base and saw a B-17 bomber up close.

One photo features one of his good friends, Roger “R.D.” Shafer, who served in the Vietnam War, posing behind Hauser as he sits in his wheelchair.

“He’s a good man,” Shafer said of Hauser as they reminisced.

To which Hauser responded, “You are too.”

“Don’t push it,” Shafer retorted.

But no matter how good Hauser is, or how lucky he’s been, he’s still part of a rapidly diminishing group. According to 2015 data provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, there were about 23,000 WWII veterans living in Washington.

“It is a dwindling population,” said Chuck Elmore, who was the Spokane County Veterans Services director for nine years before retiring. “The average WWII vet is in their 90s. It stands to reason it’s going to be a dwindling.”

Numbers weren’t immediately available for the amount of WWII veterans still alive in the Spokane area.

“When you think about it, the average WWII vet was born around 1920 or a little after,” Elmore said. “My wife’s cousin is a WWII vet, and he’s getting to be 95 or 96.”

Hauser, who moved to Spokane from Florida after his wife was diagnosed with cancer more than 10 years ago, used to attend biyearly meetings with members of 401st Glider Infantry Regiment. It was something he looked forward to every few years, his daughter said.

“They were a really tight group,” she said. “It was just a time for them to get together. They had a real camaraderie.”

For Hauser, it was a time to reminisce, or to ignore the stories and memories from the war altogether. Hauser-Lindstrom, who was born when her father was 51, said he would often choose not to talk about the war, even when pressed by family and friends.

“We’d try to ask him some questions and he just wouldn’t tell us,” she said.

But even though he spent D-Day in England, cobbling together equipment to put into planes that would be piloted by his friends and servicemen, some of whom wouldn’t return home, he said he had an affinity for his time overseas.

“If I had to go anywhere, I’d just go back there,” he said, staring toward the sunlight shining into his dimly-lit room. “It’s a different country. But I still liked it there.”