Clayton L. Mitchell crossed from the United Kingdom to mainland Europe in early January 1945. He was assigned to the Canadian Scottish Regiment. As platoon commander of B Company, he was killed in action on April 10, 1945, during the battle for Deventer. This occurred after crossing a German anti-tank ditch on the grounds of the psychiatric hospital Brinkgreven.
Nick Janicki, the last surviving liberator of Deventer, recalled the moment in the newspaper De Stentor:
"We came from the psychiatric institution ‘Brinkgreven.’ I crossed the fields heading toward the city center. Mortars were falling, heavy fire — my commander, Clayton L. Mitchell, was killed. I dove into one of the houses for cover. I wanted a cigarette. I reached for my tobacco tin — it was crushed. A bullet or a fragment, I don’t know. I guess it just wasn’t my day to die.”
Nick’s day had not yet come.
Clayton L. Mitchell was temporarily buried in Oxe and was one of the first to be reinterred at the Canadian War Cemetery in Holten on December 17, 1945, in grave 1-B-7. A memorial on the grounds of Brinkgreven in Deventer commemorates this tragic event.