Potts participated in D-Day invasion

Editor’s note: This is the 25th in a series of stories about past and present Jackson County residents who earned the Purple Heart Medal, which is awarded to military personnel wounded or killed in the line of duty.

The names of those profiled in these stories will be placed on a special monument for Purple Heart Medal recipients to be built soon in Holton’s Linscott Park.

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Nelson Potts of Mayetta, a private first class in the U.S. Army during World War II, was among those storming the beaches at Normandy, France, on “D-Day” — June 6, 1944.

Potts became a prisoner of war only hours after setting foot on the beach.

It was reported at the time that Potts, a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, was the first Native American to go missing following the Normandy landing. 

Potts had been captured by German soldiers and taken to a POW camp in eastern Germany, where he would remain until the end of the war.

Potts would receive the Purple Heart Medal for his bravery after returning home, following the liberation of his POW camp by the Soviet Red Army about a year after he was captured by the Nazis.

He was born Oct. 27, 1911, in Arpin, Wis., to Joseph and Rosann Potts, and his family moved to Mayetta in 1919. He was inducted into military service on March 5, 1942, at Fort Leavenworth, serving as a rifleman, it was reported.

Potts was not the only member of his family called to military service during World War II. His brother Garnett served in the European Theater with an anti-tank company, and another brother, Maynard, fought in the Pacific Theater.

Following his training at an army camp near Salina, Potts set sail for England, landing there in the fall of 1943. He served with the Army’s First Division — the “Big Red One” — and landed on the beach at Normandy during the D-Day battle with the Germans, who would eventually capture him.

He was taken to Stalag 4A, a German Army POW camp located northeast of Dresden, where it was reported 284 other American prisoners of war were being held. His capture was first reported to the International Committee of the Red Cross on the same day he landed in France, it was reported.

It was also reported that following the Allies’ bombing of Dresden in February 1945, the German captors would withhold Red Cross parcels from American and British soldiers, making living conditions at Stalag 4A tougher for those troops until the Russian Army arrived two months later to liberate the camp.

Potts returned to the United States and was awarded the Combat Infantry’s Badge by Colonel John P. Wheeler, Commanding Officer of the Army Ground and Service Forces Redistribution Station, on Aug. 31, 1945, in Hot Springs, Ark. He received his honorable discharge from the Army on Oct. 9, 1945, at Fort Lewis, Wash., it was reported.

Potts returned to Jackson County and worked in construction. He died May 26, 1992, at his Mayetta home at age 80.