Harry Nyhus, 92, would rather talk about growing up on his family’s farm outside Port Angeles than about his experiences during World War II.
But for one afternoon, on June 25, it was Nyhus’ role in the war that brought some 40 people together in his Magnolia home — family, friends, French consular officials — as French Honorary Consul Jack Cowen awarded him the Legion of Honor Medal, the highest decoration given by the French government.
Nyhus served in the elite 99th Infantry Battalion during World War II, a group made up of Norwegian-Americans trained to liberate occupied Norway. Instead, the battalion ended up fighting its way through France and Belgium. In fact, the 99th did not reach Norwegian soil until after the war, where it helped de-arm some 400,000 German troops.
“I’ve probably been through as much as anyone else in some of the hard things,” Nyhus recalled a week after the ceremony. “I saw a lot of things the average person doesn’t see. I saw it all.”
Members of the 99th had to speak Norwegian and German and, not least, be able to handle themselves on skis. Before overseas deployment, the group underwent extensive mountain training in Colorado — the better to operate behind enemy lines in their homeland.
The 99th landed in Normandy in June 1944, two weeks after D-Day, and made its way toward Paris with Allied forces. Because they were attached to various units throughout the war, some of the men wrote “Homeless Waifs” on their trucks.
Homeless Waifs or not, the 99th found itself in the thick of combat. In December 1944, the Battle of the Bulge was fought in the snow and record cold. The Allied progress from the Normandy beaches to Belgium — a distance of fewer than 300 miles traversed in seven months — was slow and costly.
Nyhus is humbled by the suffering he saw around him and by what he and his fellow soldiers endured in a war that took approximately 60 million lives.
“Lots of combat all the time,” Nyhus said. “It was there all the time.”
After the war, like so many other GIs, Nyhus slipped back into the American mainstream, completing dental school at the University of Oregon before setting up two practices in Seattle, including one in Magnolia. The widowed father of five retired two decades ago.
His daughter, Tamera Nyhus, said her father sometimes tears up at his war memories.
A farm boy on the peninsula
Nyhus moved to this country from Norway when he was 10 and worked the family farm outside Port Angeles. He remembers using dynamite to clear stumps the size of Volkswagens and how one day, sent into town to buy more explosives, he met with resistance because of his age.
Someone in the store vouched for him: “This kid’s been using it for years,” a man said. “He’s OK.” And so the 14-year-old climbed back on his bike with a load of dynamite and pedaled home.
“I was always busy,” Nyhus recalled. Tamera Nyhus can attest to that. She remembers how her father, returning home in the evening, “would sit one hour after working on patients all day. Then he’d dig a ditch or climb a tree with cleats on.”
A friend of Tamera’s, Mike Smith, co-owner of Leroux Fine Apparel, had a 1950s-60s kid’s eye view of Dr. Nyhus. Smith recalled how sometimes lutefisk was put in front of him as a playful challenge.
“He’s a special person,” Smith said. “And he had a great sense of humor, in that Norwegian way. He would say something straight-faced, and when you’re a kid, you’d ask yourself: ‘Am I suppose to laugh?’”
Nyhus has a deep love of animals, his daughter recalled. She tells the story of how, on the family farm, she found a beehive in the barn with hay placed beneath it to keep it warm and dry. Her father found the hive while topping a tree.
The family sense of humor is still in play.
Tamera tells another farm story: how her father dug a 61-foot well at the bottom of a hill without hitting water. They brought in a local guy with a “witching stick,” which led him to the top of the hill — where they found water. Father and daughter both laugh at the memory.
At other times, when his memories drift back to his youth on the farm, Nyhus remembers the hard work.
“Times were different. You had to do it. It was there,” he said — an apt commentary on his life.
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