There are some family stories in which history seems almost impossibly cruel in its repetition.
For the Cassell family, war brought that repetition across two generations. During World War II, brothers Harley Mack Cassell Sr. and Amos Cassell were both held prisoner by Nazi Germany. More than two decades later, Harley would experience a parent’s worst fear when his own son, Harley Mack Cassell Jr., serving during the Vietnam War, was captured and held for months in Cambodia.
It is difficult to imagine one family enduring such an ordeal once. The Cassells endured it twice.
Amos Cassell was born October 2, 1923. During World War II, he served in the United States Army, enlisting on February 26, 1943.
Less than a year later, his family received the message every wartime parent dreaded.
On March 13, 1944, a government message from Washington, D.C., informed his mother:
“The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regrets that your son Pvt. Amos Cassell has been reported missing in action since 21 January in Italy. If further details or other information are received, you will be promptly notified.”
The uncertainty surrounding Amos was especially agonizing because his brother, Pvt. Harley Cassell, was already a prisoner of war in Germany.
The March 30, 1944, edition of the Enterprise carried the alarming headline:
TWO PATRICK BROTHERS HELD PRISONERS BY NAZI GOVT. SON MISSING
Mrs. Roxie Cassell of Patrick Springs had been notified through the International Red Cross that Amos was being held as a prisoner of war by the German government. According to the newspaper, another son, Pvt. Harley Cassell, had been in a German prison camp since February 14, 1943.
The Red Cross informed Mrs. Cassell that a letter confirming Amos’s whereabouts would soon arrive from the Provost Marshal.
Meanwhile, she had received a number of communications from Harley. He wrote that several of her letters and packages had reached him. Despite being a prisoner himself, Harley included a request that spoke volumes about the importance of the Red Cross to American servicemen held overseas: he asked his mother to be good to the Red Cross because they had been good to him.
For one Patrick County mother, there was now the almost unimaginable reality of having two sons held prisoner by Nazi Germany at the same time.
Months later, there was finally encouraging news about Amos.
The September 14, 1944, edition of the Danville Register and Bee reported:
Pvt. Amos Cassell Returning Aboard Gripsholm; Due Home by Oct. 1
Amos, an infantryman and son of Mrs. Roxie A. Cassell of Patrick Springs, was identified as an exchange prisoner of war of Germany who was expected to arrive in the continental United States sometime late that month.
Remarkably, he was the only Virginian among 233 exchanged Army men being returned aboard the Gripsholm.
The MS Gripsholm was a Swedish passenger ship used as a neutral vessel during World War II to exchange prisoners of war and civilian internees between the Allied and Axis powers.
For the Cassell family, Amos’s return meant one son was finally coming home.
But Harley remained behind.
The family would wait until the spring of 1945 for the news they had prayed to receive.
The May 23, 1945, Danville Register and Bee announced:
Pvt. Harley Cassell Freed From Nazis; Prisoner 2½ Years
It was the first word received from Pvt. Harley H. Cassell since a letter he had written from a German prisoner-of-war camp on October 25, 1944.
Harley wrote his sister, Mrs. C. J. Clifton of 702 Kemper Road, Danville, VA that he had been liberated on April 21 and was headed home.
The newspaper identified Pvt. Cassell and reported that he had been a German prisoner for thirty months after being captured during the North African campaign on February 7, 1943.
His words to his sister captured both the joy of freedom and the deprivation he had endured:
“I’m a free man now after so long a wait. I am OK in every way except starved. Chow and white bread sure taste good.”
Harley was waiting for a plane to carry him back to the United States.
The following day, May 24, 1945, the Enterprise brought the news closer to home, reporting that Mr. and Mrs. Billie Cassell had received a letter from their liberated son, Pvt. Harley Cassell.
The Enterprise reported that Harley had been a prisoner of Germany since February 14, 1943, and that the last letter his parents had received from him was dated December 9, 1944.
Now, at last, he wrote that he was en route home by plane.
The war that had taken two Cassell brothers into enemy captivity was finally releasing its grip upon their family.
But history had one more astonishing chapter waiting for the Cassell family.
Can you imagine surviving a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, returning home, marrying and raising a family—and then learning that your own son had been captured during another war?
More than twenty-five years after Harley’s capture in North Africa, his son, Harley Mack Cassell Jr., was serving his country during the Vietnam War.
And once again, the Cassell family waited for a prisoner of war to come home.
The August 23, 1968, Danville Register & Bee reported that Mrs. Lucille Murphy Cassell was optimistic about her son’s eventual release from Cambodia after speaking with Oklahoma Congressman Victor Wickersham, who was working to secure the freedom of Harley Mack Cassell Jr. and ten other American soldiers.
The soldiers had been taken prisoner the previous month after their patrol boat strayed into Cambodian territory while on a mission in Vietnam.
Mrs. Cassell, then of 405 Chatlaine Avenue, Danville, VA said she was pleased with Congressman Wickersham’s handling of the case and had spoken with him by telephone the previous afternoon.
Harley Jr. was 21 years old and a Specialist 4 in the United States Army. He had been assigned to the patrol boat as a seaman.
The boat departed Cong Tam, a base near the Mekong Delta city of My Tho, on July 15. Its destination was Binh Thuy, another base just upriver from Can Tho, the largest city in the delta.
The journey up the Mekong and Bassac Rivers and across a major canal should have taken two days.
The boat never arrived on the night of July 17.
It was later disclosed that the vessel had been seized by Cambodia. The United States government apologized to the Cambodian government for what it described as a “navigational error.”
For Lucille Cassell and her family, the waiting began.
She had not heard from her son since his capture.
Harley Mack Cassell Jr. was a native of Danville and had gone to Vietnam on February 1.
He had attended George Washington and Dan River High Schools and completed his high school education after entering military service on December 12, 1966.
Before being drafted, he had worked at the Porter-Disston plant.
Harley Jr. had one brother, Curtis Lee Cassell, seventeen, who was living at home, and one sister, Mrs. Patricia Ann Mills of Danville.
While government officials and elected representatives worked toward the men’s release, the Cassell family could do little but hope, pray, and wait.
Harley Sr. knew better than most what his son was experiencing.
He had once been the young soldier held captive in a foreign land, separated from everyone he loved and wondering when—or whether—he would see home again.
Now he was the father waiting for his son.
Just before Christmas 1968, the waiting ended.
The December 23 edition of The Bee reported that a young Danville soldier had returned home after six months in an Asian prison camp.
Twenty-two-year-old Harley Cassell Jr., dressed in uniform and noticeably thinner than when he had left home, stepped from a bus in Danville at 12:56 a.m.
After six months of captivity in Cambodia, he was home.
Waiting for him were his family, a houseful of friends, a celebration—and something that must have seemed wonderfully ordinary after months as a prisoner: the opportunity to sleep in his own bed.
His mother, identified in the article as Mrs. Harley F. Cassell of 504 Chatelaine Avenue, said her son appeared none the worse for his months in captivity except for his weight loss. Harley had weighed approximately 175 pounds at the beginning of the ordeal but only 158 pounds when he was released.
Much of the weight loss was attributed to his diet, which consisted primarily of the traditional Cambodian foods of fish and rice. Harley said the meals were not particularly agreeable to the captive Americans.
Conditions improved after the first month when Australians began sending food.
The greater enemy then became monotony.
The soldiers were permitted to play volleyball for two hours during the afternoon. Otherwise, Harley recalled, there was little to do except play cards and read books.
Perhaps one of the most striking details of his account was that the Americans did not even realize they had entered Cambodia when they were captured.
“We didn’t know where we were,” Harley explained. “Nobody was suspecting anything.”
The Cambodians fired upon them as a warning before a boat came out to meet them.
The captured Americans were taken to a Cambodian naval training center, where they were questioned intermittently during their first week of captivity.
After that, their days became a familiar routine to prisoners throughout history.
They hoped.
And they waited.
Amos and Harley Mack Cassell were two of the ten sons and two daughters born to William “Willie” Abraham Cassell and Roxie Anna Campbell Cassell. Their large family included Mary Lucy Cassell Clifton (1898–1991); Willie M. Cassell (born 1899); Annie Susan Cassell Doss (1901–1968); Carter Cassell (1903–1995); Lemly Charlie Cassell (1908–1997); Thomas Jefferson Cassell (1909–1975); Robert James Cassell (1910–2000); Roy Larkin Cassell (1914–2001); Claude Otis Cassell (1916–1997); Harley Mack Cassell (1920–1994); Amos Cassell (1923–2002); and John David Cassell (1925–2003).
The Cassell family’s roots in the area extended back further generations. Willie Cassell was the son of John Robert H. Cassell (1856–1948) and Druscilla Ruth Spencer Cassell (1859–1939). Roxie Anna Campbell Cassell was the daughter of John Campbell and Missouri Campbell (1850–1928).
History is often told through battles, campaigns, treaties, and dates, but its true weight is carried by families. It is found in mothers waiting for word of missing sons, in letters traveling thousands of miles from prison camps, in brothers separated by war, and in fathers who understand all too well what their captured sons are enduring.
For the Cassell family, two generations knew the uncertainty of captivity and the long wait for freedom. Yet their remarkable story is ultimately not simply one of war or imprisonment.
It is a story of survival.
It is a story of homecoming.
And it is a story worthy of remembrance among our Patrick Pioneers.
Sources include the Enterprise, Volume 68, Number 13, March 30, 1944; the Danville Register and Bee, September 14, 1944; the Danville Register and Bee, May 23, 1945; the Enterprise, Volume 69, Number 20, May 24, 1945; the Danville Register & Bee, August 23, 1968; and The Bee, December 23, 1968.
For questions, comments, or story ideas, Woody may be reached at [email protected] or 276-692-9626.
Enterprise March 30, 1944
