page_title: Donald Prell
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Donald Prell / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Lt. Donald Prell
context_page_description: Donald B. Prell was an American World War II veteran, venture capitalist and futurist who created Datamation, the first magazine devoted solely to the computer hardware and software industry.
context_section_description: Prell was born in Los Angeles, California, and graduated from Los Angeles High School in the summer of 1942.  In his freshman year at UCLA, he enlisted in the US Army.  In 1944, aged 19, he graduated from Officer Candidate School, Ft. Benning, Georgia, and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant, Infantry.  Serving in the European Theater of Operations in command of the second platoon of the Anti-Tank Company, 422nd Regiment, 106th Division, during the Battle of the Bulge, December 16-19, 1944, he was wounded and captured.  Captured at the same time as Prell was Richard Bordeaux Parker, who commanded the first platoon of the Anti-Tank Company.
  On March 27, 1945, he was briefly freed by Task Force Baum, a clandestine U.S. Army mission to liberate Oflag XIII-B authorized by General George S. Patton, Jr..  The raid was a fiasco, with many POW casualties, including Patton's son-in-law, Lt. Colonel John K. Waters, who was seriously wounded.  (Patton reported the raid as the only mistake he made during World War II and General Dwight Eisenhower reprimanded him for it.)  Prell’s freedom lasted only a few days as he was recaptured after attempting to locate friendly forces. A month later, he escaped from a POW camp south of Nuremberg, and found his way to freedom. 
  After the war, he resumed undergraduate studies at UCLA and graduated in 1948. While at UCLA, he was an active member of the American Veterans Committee, which was committed to integrating the U.S. military. Prell was involved with successfully ending racial discrimination of patrons at Oakley's Barbershop in Westwood.  Prell was a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology with Hans Eysenck’s Program Research Team at the University of London from 1948-1951. It was here that he learned to use Hollerith punched card tabulation machines, the forerunner of today’s digital computers.
caption: Lt. Donald Prell 1946.
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