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Silver Star banners awarded to 4 Mo. veterans

(l-r) David Mauldin (Vietnam), Don Hentges (Vietnam), Gov. Jay Nixon, Wilburn Rowden (WWII), and Roger Stottlemyre (Vietnam). Nixon awarded the four veterans with Silver Star banners at a ceremony at the Mo. Capitol.
(Marshall Griffin/St. Louis Public Radio)
(l-r) David Mauldin (Vietnam), Don Hentges (Vietnam), Gov. Jay Nixon, Wilburn Rowden (WWII), and Roger Stottlemyre (Vietnam). Nixon awarded the four veterans with Silver Star banners at a ceremony at the Mo. Capitol.

Four mid-Missouri veterans today were awardedSilver Star bannersat the State Capitol, in honor of their past military service.

Among them was 88-year-old Wilburn Rowden of Jefferson City, a World War II vet who served as a radio operator onboard a B-17 bomber.  His plane was shot down over Germany, and he spent the rest of the war as a POW.

“In accordance with what I read and hear about the other prisoners in Japan and Korea and so forth, we had humane treatment, considering," Rowden said.  "Some of it wasn’t too humane...a lot of times, things were pretty rough…food was the biggest thing, we had no food.”

Rowden was among a group of prisoners forced to march more than 500 miles over 88 days to Bitterfeld in central Germany, where they were handed over to American troops on April 26th, 1945.

Silver Star banners were also awarded to three Vietnam veterans:  Roger Stottlemyre, Don Hentges, and David Mauldin.  Stottlemyre now works asExecutive Director of the Missouri Gaming Commissionand is the former superintendent of the Missouri Highway Patrol. 

Marshal was a political reporter for St. Louis Public Radio until 2018.