The Wayne Powers Case

When Wayne E. Powers, a US Army private from Missouri, was arrested for desertion on March 22, 1958, it sparked an international incident in which President Dwight D. Eisenhower received tens of thousands of protest letters from French citizens via the US Embassy in Paris. Powers was the last American soldier from World War II to be charged as a deserter. His story serves as a unique footnote in mid-twentieth-century American history. 

Powers was born on March 14, 1921, in Livingston County, Missouri. He married Ruth Killian on September 19, 1941. According to later statements by Powers, after their baby Francis died in childbirth in 1942, the relationship with his wife soured. In 1943 the young auto mechanic was drafted into the army. Arriving in France a few days after D-Day, Powers was assigned to drive a supply truck to the front lines in Belgium. On one of his trips later in 1944, he met a local woman, Yvette Bleuse, in Mont d’Origny, France. Shortly thereafter he left his unit without authorization, and he and Bleuse began living together. By January 1945, Powers was officially noted as a deserter. 

While he lived with Bleuse, Powers had many run-ins with authorities. The first one occurred when he was picked up at her house by the US Army’s American Criminal Investigations Division (CID) on November 17, 1944. They were under the impression Powers was a German spy. During his interrogation at Saint Quentin, France, he was beaten and lost two teeth. After Powers spent two weeks in detention, the CID determined he was not German, ordered him to return to his unit, and released him. Instead, Powers went back to Yvette Bleuse’s home.

In late December 1944, French civil authorities were contacted about a soldier in Mont d’Origny and directed to Bleuse’s house, where they found Powers hiding between a bed and a wall. While driving away with him, they came upon an American military police roadblock. The French officials transferred him to the MPs, who put him on the next American convoy going north. After telling the sympathetic driver he wanted to stop for just one more night in Mont d’Origny, Powers was driven to Bleuse’s door and let off. Powers remained there as a deserter for the rest of the war and past the German surrender on May 7, 1945.

In August 1946 the French police were informed that Bleuse was hiding a German soldier in her residence. During a search of the house, Powers was found in the attic. The police quickly determined he was American, not German. While they had no interest in detaining Americans, Powers knew they would inform US authorities of his whereabouts. He subsequently created a hiding place under Bleuse’s basement stairwell, where he escaped detection a couple of weeks later when American soldiers came looking for him.

In 1949, Ruth Powers filed for divorce on grounds of desertion. The divorce was granted on January 17, 1950. Wayne Powers continued to live with Bleuse in hiding, and over a thirteen-year period they had five children together. Bleuse worked in a textile mill to provide for the family, while Powers tended house and took care of the children. There were rumors in the village that he was living with Bleuse, but for the next several years, all searches by French police proved fruitless. 

While responding to a car accident outside Bleuse’s house in 1956, a policeman spotted Powers peeking out of a window. After two years of surveillance and multiple searches, authorities found his hiding spot under the stairs. He was finally captured on March 22, 1958. 

Widespread French media coverage of Powers’s arrest suggested he had chosen “love over country.” Many French citizens feared he would meet the same fate as Eddie Slovik, a US Army enlisted man who was sentenced to death and executed on January 31, 1945—the only such US military execution for desertion during World War II. When Powers’s story was broadcast on Radio Station Europe N1, sympathetic announcers asked listeners to write to President Eisenhower via the US Embassy in Paris. By March 27, about 32,000 letters had arrived. Eventually more than 100,000 were sent, almost all in favor of pardoning Powers. 

The story also gained traction in the United States. The Associated Press and LIFE magazine both published stories in which Powers said that he had panicked and deserted after his truck was stolen, although the details of the incident remained unclear. The LIFE article included photos of Powers with Bleuse and their children. 

Powers’s court-martial was held in Verdun, France, on August 1, 1958. One of his defense attorneys, Lieutenant Leon Avakian, informed him that the maximum sentence being considered was life in prison, but aided by public pressure, Avakian was able to negotiate an agreement that the sentence would be reduced to time served, a dishonorable discharge, and forfeiture of pay. During the court-martial, however, it was revealed that Powers also had been absent without leave in early 1944 and had broken a regulation (“drunk on pass”) while training in Massachusetts. These incidents were used by Colonel Roy Kauffman, head of the military court, to alter Powers’s plea agreement and sentence him to a ten-year term of hard labor. An appeals board commuted Powers’s sentence to six months. Since he had already served four months, he was only jailed for an additional two months before being released on October 2, 1958.

Wayne Powers resumed his life with Yvette Bleuse, whom he married two years later. The couple had two more children. Powers died on January 24, 1982, of cancer, and was buried in Mont d’Origny. At his request, his casket was draped with an American flag.