Former Casselton Reverend a WWII Veteran

By Brad Tastad

The Reverend John Mehl spent 10 years serving at the Martins Lutheran Church in Casselton from 1977 to 1987. During that entire decade virtually no one in his parish of nearly 1,000 people knew that Mehl served for three years in the Army, seeing heavy action in the front from 1943 to 1945 during World War II.

“Nobody knew,” commented Casselton citizen Ken Habiger, a long-time resident of Casselton. “I didn’t know until I attended a meeting of World War II veterans in Fargo many years ago. As I was sitting there, I saw this man who looked very familiar to me. I remember asking myself, ‘is that John Mehl?’ And sure enough, I went over to talk with him, and it was the reverend.”

Habiger and Casselton citizens not only found out that Mehl, who today lives in Fargo and spends winters in Arizona, was a combat veteran, but that he was also seriously injured during one of his war-time missions. An injury that easily could have killed Mehl.
Unpleasant memories

The reason the parishers of Martins Lutheran Church and the citizens of Casselton did not find out that Mehl was a WWII veteran until after he had left Casselton in 1987 was because of what Mehl experienced during the war.

“I saw a lot of death all around me during the war years,” recalled Mehl when contacted at his wintertime home in Mesa, Arizona. “When I came home, I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to try to forget what I had been through and all the death that I saw.”

As a Sargeant in the motor pool of the 5th Armored Division of the Army, Mehl was in command of units that were responsible for engaging enemy positions with tanks and half-tracks. As the leader, Mehl would put himself wherever he was needed to best help out during particular missions.

He sometimes was in command of a tank or a half-track. “We were at the front, so we always were greeted with resistance,” remembered Mehl. “Most of the damage we sustained came by airplane attacks.”

His units were not strictly about attacking enemy positions in armored vehicles. There were times when Mehl was in command of units that also transported ammunition and fuel to the armored vehicles and trucks at the front lines in France, Germany and Austria. “The cargo we carried during those missions was highly volatile,” pointed out Mehl.

It was during one of his convoy missions where Mehl was the lead driver of a truck carrying ammo and gasoline, that he nearly met his death.

“We always ran our convoys at night, to try to avoid being detected,” recalled Mehl. “But that didn’t happen on this night. We were attacked by German planes. One of the planes dropped a bomb that exploded right next to the truck I was driving. I was hit with shrapnel in my left knee, back, hip and face. It was a very serious injury. I still have fragments of shrapnel in my body from that bomb today. And it’s been over 60 years.”

The physical injuries were not the only scars Mehl has endured over the past seven decades. The emotional suffering finally took its toll on the reverend.

Because of his shrapnel wounds and more recently being diagnosed as suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, Mehl was declared to be 60 percent disabled when he underwent examinations at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Fargo last fall. “Over the years I haven’t talked about what I went through in the war very much at all,” said Mehl. “Not with anyone. I saw too much and underwent a lot of stress. I just didn’t want to talk about it.”

But after his diagnosis of PTSD, Mehl is talking about his experiences, but almost grudgingly. “They have to draw it out of me,” said Mehl. He has also become a member of the Disabled American Veterans organization.
Turning to the church

Ironically, it was because of his experiences in WWII that Mehl decided to become a minister when he got out of the service in 1946. “It had something to do with it,” said Mehl. “What I went through influenced my decision substantially.”

A 1943 graduate of Volga, SD High School, Mehl graduated from South Dakota State University after his return to the United States from the war, and did his graduate work at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minn.

His first service as a minister was a missionary assignment in Madagascar, an island to the east of the continent of Africa, where Mehl remained faithful in his service for 12 years, from 1953 to 1965.

His return to the United States in 1965 came about when Mehl became the Reverend of a Lutheran Church in Northwood, where he remained for seven years. From Northwood Mehl moved to Edmore, where he was the reverend of the Lutheran Church in that small town from 1972 to 1977.

Then the job at the Martin’s Lutheran Church in Casselton became available, and Mehl spent the next decade in Casselton until 1987. “We had many happy years in Casselton,” remembered Mehl. “It was a wonderful parish to be involved with. The congregation was very helpful all the time.”

Even when Mehl officially retired from the ministry, he did not completely give up his service to God as a reverend.

The past 17 years he has substituted as a minister for various parishes in Fargo and the surrounding area. “If there was a sickness or a church needed someone in situations like that,” explained Mehl.

In both of his present home locations in Fargo and in Mesa, Mehl remains busy as the Chaplain for hospitals in both Fargo and in Phoenix. “I go to the hospitals when I am called upon,” clarified Mehl. He is also chaplain of the VFW Post in Casselton, a position he began last fall.

The decade he spent at Martins Lutheran Church in Casselton were good years for the church, and the parishers appreciated the work Mehl did in those 10 years.

“John was just a genuine preacher, he was wonderful,” said Casselton resident Reuben Braaten, a member of Martins Lutheran Church. “He came into our church at a trying time and mellowed the whole situation to normal and helped us become a church again. He was just a great preacher and a blessing to our congregation for 10 years. We loved him.”