I often think of Kevin Lee as the modern day energizer bunny, but before Kevin there was Dave Mulliner! Dave Mulliner was one of my early mentors in branchology and a guiding light in underwater photography! Dave and Chet Tussey although both were in the early 70's at the time never missed a diving trip to the Channel Islands. On one such trip Dave and I were dive buddies and had an unnerving experience! One that put me off balance but certainly didn't faze Dave and I understood later when I learned more about his life experiences which put our incident at the bottom of his worry chart. Anyhow, we surfaced from a dive at San Clemente Island and found that our dive boat had slipped anchor and now appeared to be some distance away. We waved for a pickup but the boat (unnamed but still in business) wouldn't send a dinghy out to pick us up. Dave immediately sized up the situation and said to me "Well, Mike it looks like we are in for a swim." In the context of this situation the reader must realize that at this time Dave was almost 25 years my senior! I thought to myself, if Dave is up to it-Let's do it! So we swam on the surface of the kelp back to the boat! A most tiring journey!

I understood later after hearing of Dave's second world war experiences why our misadventure was no big deal! Dave was a gunner and photographer on a B-24 flying out of Africa for bombing raids to the Ploesti oil fields in Romania as At first the stories were light hearted as he told of carrying beer in the plane to cool it down for consumption by the ground troops upon return. All did not end well on one flight! Getting to the target meant flying over the Italian Alps. One his last mission, the plane was so shot up coming back that the Captain ordered everyone to bail out as the plane would be unable to cross back over the Alps to get back to base. Dave was captured and spend eight months as a prisoner of war in a stalag in Germany! Dave was eventually able to escape (not surprising given his nature) and hooked up with an American Armored unit advancing into Germany! The commander told Dave that the unit was going forward and not backward so it might be a while before he could be repatriated with the Air Force but in the meantime he was welcome to serve as a 50 cal gunner on a self-propelled howitzer! And that's how Dave finished the war! Pretty heady experience for someone in his early 20's!

The reader is invited to read the reference articles below to fully appreciate Dave's contributions to the world of science! I am deeply indebed to Dr. Hans Bertch of Imperial Beach for making this material available

References:

Bertsch 2007 Mulliner in Memoriam
Microsoft Doc Format
Dave Mulliner Festivus Memorial Issue
PDF Format

Michael Miller
Webmaster
San Diego, Calif

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