Obituary: Ex-POW never gave a hint of trauma he experienced

Lloyd Nutter, a B-17 navigator in World War II who flew 29 raids over Germany before he was shot down and endured 11 difficult months as a prisoner of war, died Sunday. He was 87.

The cause was lung cancer, said his son, Bruce Nutter.

A first lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, Lloyd Nutter was on his second-to-last bombing run before a scheduled leave when anti-aircraft artillery downed his plane near Leipzig, Germany, in May 1944.

He was captured and sent to Stalag Luft III in Sagan. That camp was still abuzz about more than 70 Allied prisoners who had tried to tunnel their way to freedom two months earlier in an episode that became known as "The Great Escape," Lloyd Nutter said in "Luck of the Draw," a compilation of POW experiences collected at Air Force reunions.

Prisoners at Stalag Luft III suffered from crowding, cold and constant hunger, Bruce Nutter said. Assigned to work as a cook, Lloyd Nutter once had to prepare a small portion of ground horse meat for 147 captives.

"He made meatballs that were a quarter-inch wide," his son said. "He had to measure carefully and make sure every meatball was the same size as the next guy's, or else they'd fight and tear each other apart."

When approaching Russians forced the Germans to abandon Stalag Luft III, prisoners were marched 62 miles in a blizzard to a camp near Nuremberg, Lloyd Nutter recalled. The POWs were forced to walk again to a camp near Munich before Allied troops liberated them in April 1945. Mr. Nutter, who lost a small toe to injuries on the marches, was awarded the Purple Heart.

He joined the Air Force Reserve and was activated during the Korean War before retiring as a colonel in 1971. Meanwhile, he took jobs in Sacramento as an accountant for the state and Mobil Oil Co. before spending 40 years as a salesman for New York Life Insurance Co.

"He never talked about being a POW, because it was pretty horrible stuff," Bruce Nutter said. "When I was younger, the subject never came up. But most of his memories were of that time."

Lloyd Arthur Nutter was born in 1920 in Oakland, Ore. His father left when he was a young boy, and his mother moved the family and ran a diner in Redding. He worked part-time jobs while attending high school and studied at Sacramento Junior College for a year before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

He volunteered for the Army Air Cadets but was put on hold because the manpower quota was filled. He went to work temporarily for a contractor on Shasta Dam, where he was lowered in a bucket over the face of the towering structure to paint marks on the concrete surface for surveyors to read from hundreds of feet away. Later, after pilot and navigator training, he joined the 401st Bomb Group, 612th Squadron in the 8th Air Force in England.

After World War II, Mr. Nutter married Jane Bonham in 1948. They raised a family in a home on a 10-acre farm in rural Antelope that was destroyed by the blast from a massive munitions train explosion in Roseville in 1973. The family moved to Roseville, where Jane Nutter died in 2001.

Mr. Nutter was active in community groups, including the Rotary Club. He became an avid supporter of the Sacramento Blood Bank, donating a lifetime total of more than 34 gallons of blood.

Mr. Nutter never gave any hint of trauma from his terrible wartime experiences, his family said. He was a warm, gregarious man who enjoyed golfing, fishing, sailing on the Sacramento River and attending his grandchildren's activities. He enjoyed telling jokes and performing goofy gags, including wearing fake eyeglasses and handing out cards depicting his "pride" and "joy" – bottles of household wax and detergent.

"He must have handed out 3,000 cards," said his daughter-in-law, Maureen Nutter. "He got the biggest pleasure out of that. He just wanted to make people smile."

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