Ever wondered what it was like to be a side gunner in World War II? Prepare to be transported back in time as we hear from Alphonse Wolak, a B-24 Liberator gunner, who lived through the harrowing experience of being shot down and captured by German soldiers. Guided by his first hand story, we navigate the chilling realities of war, unveiling the physical and psychological demands these brave men faced. His tale is not just a testament to personal courage but a tribute to the collective bravery of those from the United States and allied countries.
He parachutes from a damaged B-24 at the Battle of the Bulge, is captured by German soldiers, and narrowly escapes from a potential execution. His story describes in detail an astonishing picture of human tenacity and resilience.
The episode concludes with an emotionally stirring performance from the University of Johannesburg Choir, a poem honoring our soldiers, and a thank you to all those who've served and continue to serve our country, preserving our freedom.
Alphonse Wolak's vivid memories of war, survival and returning home is a poignant reminder of the many unsung heroes of WW2.
Ever wondered what it was like to be a side gunner in World War II? Prepare to be transported back in time as we hear from Alphonse Wolak, a B-24 Liberator gunner, who lived through the harrowing experience of being shot down and captured by German soldiers. Guided by his first hand story, we navigate the chilling realities of war, unveiling the physical and psychological demands these brave men faced. His tale is not just a testament to personal courage but a tribute to the collective bravery of those from the United States and allied countries.
He parachutes from a damaged B-24 at the Battle of the Bulge, is captured by German soldiers, and narrowly escapes from a potential execution. His story describes in detail an astonishing picture of human tenacity and resilience.
The episode concludes with an emotionally stirring performance from the University of Johannesburg Choir, a poem honoring our soldiers, and a thank you to all those who've served and continue to serve our country, preserving our freedom.
Alphonse Wolak's vivid memories of war, survival and returning home is a poignant reminder of the many unsung heroes of WW2.
Welcome to Stories in Life. You're on the radio with Mark and Joe. We share stories that affirm your belief in the goodwill, courage, determination, commitment and vision of everyday people.
Mark Wolak:
Our goal is that through another person's story you may find connection. No matter your place in life. The stories we select will be inspiring and maybe help you laugh, cry, think or change your mind about something important in your life.
Joe Boyle:
Join us for this episode of Stories in Life.
Mark Wolak:
This is the second episode of a compelling story that is shared by my uncle, Alphonse Wolak, about his journey as a side gunner on a B-24 liberator in World War II. In the first episode we heard how Alphonse learned how to be an effective side gunner and gave up the radar work during World War II. In this episode, you will hear more about his surviving the crash of a B-24 liberator that was shot down near St Vith in Belgium, how he parachuted to safety and then was taken prisoner of war by German soldiers. A reminder to listeners that my dad was an older brother of Alphonse and, because he did not pass the medical requirements for military service, he stayed home to work on the farm with his mother, my grandmother, who was widowed with seven children.
Mark Wolak:
Alphonse was 18 years old when he joined the military and he was 81 years old when he was interviewed for this very special story. The interview was conducted by James Sorensen in October 2004 and is in the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. As you listen to Alphonse tell his story, you will hear a unique dialect of the Polish community where I grew up in Benton County, Minnesota. My relatives on my dad's side all spoke with this dialect that was learned from their parents and grandparents who immigrated to the United States in 1881. This story is just one small example of the commitment and great sacrifice of citizens across the United States and allied countries. It is simply remarkable.
Joe Boyle:
A side gunner or a waste gunner on a B-24 Liberator was a challenging and intense role. Side gunners were responsible for defending the aircraft from enemy fighters and attacks. They were situated in a cramped and exposed position within the aircraft. Life as a side gunner was physically and mentally stressful. The gunners had to contend with extreme cold at high altitudes as well as the constant threat of enemy fire. They were required to remain vigilant and alert at all times, scanning the skies for approaching enemy aircraft and firing their machine guns to defend their bomber. Side gunners faced the risk of being shot at by enemy fighters, anti-aircraft artillery and even the possibility of the aircraft being hit and going down. The close quarters and constant noise from the engines and gunfire added to their stress. Many of these brave individuals played a crucial role in protecting their bomber and crew and contributing to the overall success of bombing missions during World War II.
Alphonse Wolak:
That's the hardest thing for a man to accept when you think about it. That's who it has to be, because if you lose, it's better to lose one than to lose the whole squad, because every time a bomber leaves a squadron there's a hole. It took us all a long time to get over that. Then on our 18th mission, we went to Wilhelm Schaven. The Germans made their fighters but did not the factories out. Those kind of targets were really defended heavily with anti-aircraft fire and German fighters. We started the bomber run on there.
Alphonse Wolak:
On this trip I had a good friend. We were flying in the lead squadron. That day we were on the right side of the lead squadron. The bomber that my friend was in was on the left side. He was a right-waist gunner so I could see him. Every so often. When the anti-aircraft fire had come up and stuff, we'd look at each other. We were probably 300 yards apart. We waved at each other. The anti-aircraft fire was getting heavy. I was watching the sky and stuff for fighters and the bomber was flopping and there was a close hit. The strap would come into the plane and the pilot would call anybody hit. No, we just went back to look at them, guys and the bomber disappeared.
Alphonse Wolak:
Just then there was a direct hit. Must have hit him in the bombs because we were carrying the bombs yet and it's unbelievable how quick a four-engine bomber can disappear in the sky. There was one big flash of flame and smoking pieces. Oh, I felt bad, oh boy. But here's the strange thing about this. After this bombing run, I just got to the bar and there was not much room between two guys, so I started squirming my way in there and I happened to the guy just was going to take a drink the one on the right and I just as I bumped him.
Alphonse Wolak:
He was just going to take a drink and he turned around. Jesus Christ, here is my buddy.
Alphonse Wolak:
Well, we, just I had to grab his arm to believe he was alive. I said it is really you, Bill. He's yeah, he's a really me. He says you made it too. I said yeah. Well, I said last time I saw you, what happened? How'd you get out? I said I watched that stuff floating halfway through the ground. I didn't. He said, Al, it's a funny story.
Alphonse Wolak:
But he said remember how we used to? We're waving each other and stuff and then that heavy flak started coming up. I said, yeah, well, he said I was watching them puffs coming up to our bomber and something told me to put on my chest pack. Ordinarily we didn't wear them until we had to. We wore a harness you had to pack by you. You grabbed them and he said just like that, something told me put your chest pack on.
Alphonse Wolak:
He said parachute, he said. I reached down and grabbed it, snapped it on. He said that's the last thing I remember. I came to about 300 feet above the ground. My parachute was open, he said.
Speaker 4:
I said well, that's why I didn't see you.
Alphonse Wolak:
Then because now you know that as we did something, Boy, did we drink beer that afternoon! We had broken through into the bulge and heavy bombers all 3000 of us were supposed to go out and bomb German tank concentrations, German headquarters, German airfields and the crossroads where the Germans had to come to. So we were assigned to bomb a German air base and we had the briefing that morning and the officer, the weatherman, come up first and told us the conditions of the weather and the ordinance man got up there and he said you should have no problem with flak today.
Alphonse Wolak:
As far as we know, there's only four guns can shoot at you. That will be in the range of your formation. Well, we felt pretty good. Anytime you can have only four guns to net instead of 400, you're bound to feel good. And we started out, got toward pretty close to the target and I know that wasn't the shell fired until we got on the bomber when the bombers opened the bomb bay doors which the engineer does and the flak start coming up and it was off to the left, to the right and four burst at a time, but not really serious.
Alphonse Wolak:
All of a sudden the tailgunner called and we know we're on the bomber, the bomb, you can weave the bomber. He called the pilot. He said sir. He said I've been watching this flak coming up. It started out about four hundred yards behind us and he said they're walking them in us. He said the last three salvo was not too far behind us. Pilot couldn't do nothing. A little later, over the hell of a roar. After it was over, the pilot called and you guys hit no. Tailgunner called again. This time he didn't say sir, he said Charlie, that last one was only about a hundred yards behind us.
Alphonse Wolak:
He said you've got to do something, but we couldn't, and so you're waiting, boy.
Alphonse Wolak:
You are waiting because you know boy the next one was right below us because when we flew through the smoke of the shells it was completely dark in the bomber. You could hardly breathe from this stuff Got out the other side tailgunner called again. He said, and he was in the panic. He said they almost got us that time, Charlie, you've got to do something. There was a hell of a roar and I got knocked out. I had the steel helmet on and I got hit right above the rim. It cut my forehead and I got knocked out.
Alphonse Wolak:
When I came to, my face was wet. I wiped my hands all blood. I wiped my blood out of my eyes and there was a. All I could hear was swish, shwish, shwish. I looked there was no front to the bomber and there was no tail. I was lying in the waist section of the bomber which was going down like a falling leaf. It would go so far, it would come back, it would go so far, and I was stiff with fear and I had shrapnel in my arms and in my legs with just small pieces. All I can say right now is by the grace of God, my chest pack was lying next to me when two feet could have fell out. It was there. So I snapped it on and bailed.
Alphonse Wolak:
I must have bailed at a high altitude. It had to be below 10,000 feet, above 10,000 feet the degree. You have to have an altitude mask on and I drifted along a long time. I know that Up there we ever been in a parachute. My boy practiced jumping. There's no sound. There's no sound until you get within, I would say, a thousand feet of the earth. It's absolute stillness.
Alphonse Wolak:
It's the most beautiful thing. And I could tell by the. I could see the trees and I could almost estimate how fast I was falling down. And you're coming to a fighter. I thought I'd heard them, guys in parachutes being strafed by German fighters and I thought that would be for me. He circled me and he made two rounds. Evidently he was radioing my position on somebody on the ground.
Alphonse Wolak:
Then, when he made that last round, he came, he straightened out and he came past me and saluted me. I saluted him back and by then I could see things on the ground and I was coming down and I still say the town I'm pretty sure it was named Bram and the whole town was on fire. And here the German or American fighter bombers looked like horts they're not in the town. And I was going to do that, but the wind drifted me just enough, so I came down on the edge. Well, when I was we're in two, three hundred feet of the ground, I could see us Whole bunch of German soldiers standing there looking at me and I was wondering if they were going to take a shot at me, but none of them did I came down right in the middle of them At the ground, at my feet.
Alphonse Wolak:
I didn't fall, spilled my chute. I stood with my hands up. The rifles were all on me and the squad leader had a German Luger in his hand pointed at me and he said you carrying a.45? And I almost fainted. I said you speak English? Yes, he said before the war I was going to the Institute of Arts in Chicago. I said I'll tell you again. Carrying a.45? I said yes, he said where? I said out of my flying suit. Well, he said they said something to the soldiers in German. They said now you take that.45 out. He said be very careful. I zipped my flying
Alphonse Wolak:
suit open, held it open and I went in and just made sure these fingers were in, reached in and got my.45. Just as my arms went into my flying suit you could hear all the safeties going off. I pulled it out and then the squad leader, the guy, came over and turned it up for anything else, any other weapons, and he said your hit. My one eye was busted, except for blood. At the time I said, yeah, well, he said we'll see you Get you fixed up.
Alphonse Wolak:
So him and I, two other soldiers, took me down a little road through the woods and evidently a P-47 fighter had saw all this and he must have cut his engine and dropped down silently because all of a sudden there was one hell of a roar. We hit the digits and he strapped their road. It didn't hit any of us. So I got up, almost made a fatal mistake. The squad leader had dived into the ditch on the left with me. There's two other men that dived on the other side and I was up first and the squad leader was still down. I saw he was dead.
Alphonse Wolak:
The machine pistol was laying right next to him and I, like a damn fool, picked that up first. And while he's trying to get up, I grab him his hand, help him out of the dish. I'm standing there with the machine pistol in my hand, holding hands with a German soldier. All he said was Danko, thank you. And I gave him the gun and took him off. So he took me to command post. The officer was right there. The first thing the German commander did was steal my pocket. The house and the barn are built on one building, so they put me in the barn part. And, god, was it cold? Jesus first, moses man, was it cold? Well before that, this squad leader took me to a building where they put a bandage on my head and the doctor took some of the small pieces out of my arms.
Speaker 4:
And they had this.
Alphonse Wolak:
They had the American medicine which he must have got in a raid German dump or American dumps, when you're a big Belgian and he took me to this building and opened the door, shoved me in, closed the door, tarquert and Hale everything else. Jesus was getting cold, but being raised on a farm.
Alphonse Wolak:
The farmer had three big pigs in a pen, so I jumped in and slept between them, nice and firm. In the morning I was still asleep and I heard the door open and then I heard such a shouting Because they couldn't find me. I didn't think they were going to pen. I got up and I walked out to the room. And then this by this time I and the squad leader were pretty kind of acquainted. He said where the hell were you?
Mark Wolak:
I said I was raised on the farm.
Alphonse Wolak:
I said I slept between those pigs at night, nice and firm. So they gave me some dates, which wasn't much, and then squad leader said now, you, you come with, so I'm walking with him now.
Alphonse Wolak:
We're walking down the road to another place and here come two German barge with eight American soldiers. They had a big old squad, Because they're American squad leaders that start talking to me. He said where'd you come from? I said, well, my mama would load up yesterday. She would go and out with you. We were in the Netherlands. The Germans would dress up as Americans and talk to the prisoners to find out what basis you came from, and there's that.
Alphonse Wolak:
I said if you were to read the American you wouldn't ask me that question. Oh, he said what the hell? We're in the same boat, I said I know, but well gee, sergeant, you can't, that's all you can say.
Alphonse Wolak:
You look at the condition we're in and I could tell on the patch he had on the shoulder they were in the rainbow division. I asked where are you taking? Well, he told me, but that didn't mean nothing. So now here was nine of us and he put us into, walked us into a little bit of a town and as we came into the town, right up against the house was a big German Tiger tank sitting right up close to the house. They took us in there to and the squad leader explained well, you'll be here for the night. So we sat down on the floor. There was just room enough for all nine of us in there and we had one German guard and evidently in the next room was a command post, because those officers always coming in and out the door. The door was like here on this side of me, and I was sitting against the wall next to the door, a German officer walked in. Excuse me. He looked around, looked at me, said leader, which means fire in German.
Mark Wolak:
I said yeah, I never saw such a hate in the man's eyes as he had for me he once said something to the guard.
Alphonse Wolak:
The guard would yell and one of the Americans looked at me. He laughed a little bit. He said boy, she didn't like you, did he? I said no, I said, by the way, what did he say to the guard? He said you're supposed to be shot in the morning, just like that. Yeah, such a hatred of the American fliers.
Alphonse Wolak:
Well, so I kind of resigned myself to that idea and then I told the other guys my name and address and stuff and I said now, if this happens, if you guys make it home right to my mother, by the morning, and said by the morning breeze, where the sun shines bright on the moment, where we had my throne, the wherever was to be, on the bonny bonny pants on the road.
Speaker 4:
O ye, who take the high road and I'll take the low road and I'll be in Scotland. A folly, but me and my shoulder will never meet again On the bonny bonny pants on the road.
Joe Boyle:
And now it's time for Stories in Life. Art from the Heart, deep Thoughts from the Shallow End. Each episode, we bring you a poem, a song or a reading, just for you.
Mark Wolak:
This is a poem by Archibald MacLeish called the Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak. The young dead soldiers do not speak. Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses. Who has not heard them? They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts, they say we were young, we have died. Remember us. They say we have done what we could, but until it is finished it is not done. They say we have given our lives, but until it is finished, no one can know what our lives gave. They say our deaths are not ours, they are yours. They will mean what you make them. They say whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing, we cannot say. It is you who must say this. We leave our deaths, give them their meaning. We were young. They say we have died, remember us.
Joe Boyle:
Man, oh man, when you stop and think of it, this young guy is, at the most, 20 years old. He joined up when he was 18. So yeah, he was 20 years old Farm kid from Minnesota, shot down over Belgium, grabs his pack, bails off, captured by the Germans, and he hears that they plan on shooting him the next morning. Can you imagine the stress that guy is under?
Mark Wolak:
Oh, and just you know he talked about stiff with fear. I totally believe that.
Joe Boyle:
Who wouldn't be?
Mark Wolak:
Yes, but you know he still had the sense of humor to recognize how really crazy that was to help this German officer up and give him back his gun.
Speaker 4:
He picked up his machine gun.
Joe Boyle:
Oh, he could have got shot right there.
Mark Wolak:
Yeah, it's amazing, really an amazing story, and I love his attention to detail. He's got such a great attention to the detail.
Joe Boyle:
Well, you remembered everything quite vividly. Yes, he did.
Mark Wolak:
So this next episode now will be his story of POW in Nuremberg, stalig 13D and Joe. You and I stood on that spot, that's right. About a year ago. It was a remarkable thing to see, but I'm excited about this next episode because he gets home. He comes home, yep.
Joe Boyle:
It ends nicely, but there's a lot of ground to cover in the meantime.
Mark Wolak:
Yes, absolutely Well. Thanks for listening everybody. It's been a great episode. It's a wonderful episode.
Joe Boyle:
Mark and I want to thank all the brave men and women who have served our country in war and during peacetime, in the preservation of freedom. As Alphonse Wallach said, if we want freedom, we have to fight for it.
Mark Wolak:
The choir you heard on this episode was the University of Johannesburg Choir singing Locke Lomond from their album when Our Earth Stands Still.