This is the third episode of a three-part story told in detail by Alphonse Wolak, a young soldier who enlisted in the Air Force and served as a side gunner in a B-24 Liberator in WW2.
Alphonse Wolak was 18 when he enlisted and shares his raw and riveting tales from the frontlines of European Theater at age 81. You'll be on the edge of your seat as he recounts the fateful day his unit was spared from an artillery strike, and the harrowing reality of life in a POW camp. His story is not just a testament to human resilience in the face of adversity, but also a vivid reminder of the sacrifices made by countless individuals during this tumultuous period.
Listen as he details the incredible story of his capture, treatment in a German hospital, and his eventual journey home aboard the USS Santa Paul. Alphonse's story is a poignant reminder of love, sacrifice, and the enduring spirit of those who fought in WWII. This is an episode that takes you beyond the pages of history, into the heart of a soldier who lived it. Don't miss this chance to hear a firsthand account of a time that changed the world forever.
This is the third episode of a three-part story told in detail by Alphonse Wolak, a young soldier who enlisted in the Air Force and served as a side gunner in a B-24 Liberator in WW2.
Alphonse Wolak was 18 when he enlisted and shares his raw and riveting tales from the frontlines of European Theater at age 81. You'll be on the edge of your seat as he recounts the fateful day his unit was spared from an artillery strike, and the harrowing reality of life in a POW camp. His story is not just a testament to human resilience in the face of adversity, but also a vivid reminder of the sacrifices made by countless individuals during this tumultuous period.
Listen as he details the incredible story of his capture, treatment in a German hospital, and his eventual journey home aboard the USS Santa Paul. Alphonse's story is a poignant reminder of love, sacrifice, and the enduring spirit of those who fought in WWII. This is an episode that takes you beyond the pages of history, into the heart of a soldier who lived it. Don't miss this chance to hear a firsthand account of a time that changed the world forever.
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. 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.
Alphonse Wolak:
The reason I went to fight was not only to see the world, but for the simple reason that if we want freedom, we have to fight for it.
Mark Wolak:
This is the third and final episode of a very special story told in detail by my uncle, Alphonse Wolak, of his military service in the famous Eighth Air Force, the European Theater of England, Germany and France in World War II. He was a side gunner on a B-24 that flew missions at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, one of the deadliest battles for US soldiers in history. Alphonse was 18 years old when he joined the military. He was interviewed and asked to tell this special story when he was 81 years old. The interview was conducted by James Sorensen in October 2004 and is in the Library of Congress Veterans History Project.
Mark Wolak:
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. We created three episodes from this interview. This is the final episode. The commitment and great sacrifice of people across the United States and allied countries at this time in history was simply remarkable.
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. I said now, if this happens if you guys make it home, write to my mother, but all through the night the American shells every so often would come over that house and not very often but about four o'clock in the morning, all of a sudden the guards they didn't kick us, we just kind of shook us, " and we all got up and they marched us out of that house and the house on a little bit of an all it was a nice moonlight night because we were saying, boy, isn't this a nice evening, yeah, yeah.
Alphonse Wolak:
The guy said you know it's Christmas. I thought of it by God. Yeah, it's Christmas day. We started walking up the road, went down and it kind of went up again. We got down to the bottom of the road and all of a sudden the artillery fire came in and they blew that house all to hell.
Alphonse Wolak:
We talked about it later. And this one infantry man, he said you remember that? Off and on fire through the night. He said, yeah, that's American artillery was raining in on this. They must have saw it, dude. This was a German command post and they knew we were prisoners and they waited until we got out of it. Talk about luck.
Alphonse Wolak:
Well then they took us to a you know, about four miles from there was a prisoner or a war camp. American prisoners, I would say there was at that time maybe 200 of us. It was mostly infantry, army, army guys. I don't think there was four or five of us were from the Air Force. They'd feed us there. But here's how much we got to eat. We got a loaf of bread about this long and about this wide in the morning for 12 men. They make 12 slices for 12 guys.
Alphonse Wolak:
Nothing else In the afternoon, you'd get a bowl of soup without salt in it. Sometimes there'd be some beans or corn, or I never noticed any meat. That's all you got to eat. Well, you don't understand. You're hungry and you didn't get too much water because they just, I don't know, they didn't have it, or what. But anyway among this nine of us. We're all in one room.
Alphonse Wolak:
We all slept on the floor. There was no blankets, no bunks, nothing. There was no heat and we'd all talk together about different situations and stuff. Except we had one guy. They called him Smitty, and he would never join in the conversation. He'd just sit in the corner by himself and some of the guys get worried about him. Come on, Smitty, join in here. Hell, we're all in the same boat. What the hell is the difference? No, that's all right. All this and stuff.
Alphonse Wolak:
Every morning they would have roll call. They'd line us up, count us off, then we were done for the rest of the day, till the afternoon we'd have another roll call. Well, this one morning I think it was the sixth or seventh day we were there we were all lined up to be counted off and by that time there was a few more guys come in, so I'd say there was pretty close to 400 fellows in that camp. Smitty was standing. There was one guy between him and me and I always tried to talk to him and he never had much to say. Right out of a clear blue sky he turned around to us and said I'm going to see my mother.
Alphonse Wolak:
He took off with him A fence with two foot bob wire on this side and a fencing in between, then a roll of cappuccino wire on that side of it, then another high fence. Well, the commander of the person camp hollered at him and all of the guys hollered at him and he ran to that fence. He started climbing it up, machine gun, and a tower opened up, shooting the bottom. Forgetting he'd stopped, he crawled up that wire, crawled down the other side, got through the cappuccino wire, climbed the other side. They still hadn't shot at him they were shooting the bottom, climbed down the outside wire, started running across the field. That's when they killed him. But it's something that I've seen in my dreams the guy he just broke. What was life like?
Alphonse Wolak:
How long were you in Well life in the person camp? It wasn't just too bad. They didn't bother us too much. We had to live by rules. The only thing is there wasn't enough food. I weighed 162, I think, when I got shot down. I came out I think I weighed a little bit over 115., but the guards didn't bother us too much, but what it was.
Alphonse Wolak:
unimaginable living conditions. We slept on boards, there was no blankets, and the lice, oh my God. The lice. And then jumping, please you, like anybody with white hair or light hair or not light hair, dark hair In a week's time you were white. It was the eggs of the lice and the fleas would. They would bite you around wherever your clothes were tied, like on your belt or around your wrists, so bad it was just. And then the rats. The rats there were the size of cats. They'd come in at night before they come into the barracks, I don't know, but they would distribute your sleep and some of the guys, but the worst part was the stress you were under was the big thing and the lack of food.
Alphonse Wolak:
Well then, from this camp they loaded us on a train. They separated me and these other four airmen from the infantry. The infantry had a special camp for infantry, special camp for officers and a special camp for airmen, and I was. We were shipped to Nuremberg, germany, just outside of.
Alphonse Wolak:
Nuremberg, in a big camp, there and there at the main camp. What saved us was the fact that the American government had made a deal with the Germans, through neutral Switzerland, to send American Red Cross boxes of food to the prison camps. We got one box a month to form in. That saved our lives. See, what happened to me was, for some reason my system needs more salt than in most people, and there was no salt the first two months I was in there. There was no salt and you had to eat the food without the salt. It wasn't doing me too much good. But then when the parcels started coming in, they had salt in them, parcels with just a few little packets. But that food saved us. We were never survived at all. It wasn't possible.
Alphonse Wolak:
Everybody flew in was at least a sergeant, because the rules of war said sergeants could not work. So we didn't do no work. We had snowball fights. And another thing that drove you crazy was the British would, at night they'd come and bomb the city in Urenburg to destroy the Tiger Tank factories. We were only, at the most, half a mile away from that city, and by the time you're starting to fall asleep, all of a sudden you'd hear the sirens go off in the city of Urenburg and you're hoping oh, they're not coming here to wait. But then after about 20 minutes later from the steady siren and go whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, which meant the interview was close. Then you'd hear the bombers coming. Then you'd hear the bombs coming up and we were lucky to never hit our camp.
Alphonse Wolak:
I watched out the window, which I wasn't supposed to be doing, but I had my head just above the rim because the guards had orders Anybody looking out the window at night shoot. I saw two British planes get hit, crushed the city of Urenburg Then. Another case we had there next to our camp, present camp was a camp for Russian. One day the word went out to our camp that the Russians are dying of typhus. So the Germans got word to Urenburg into the American government and they flew two doctors in with typhus shots. We all got typhus shots in that camp. The Russians did, and not unusual to see them laying all over the ground.
Alphonse Wolak:
The German street of us way better than the Russians, because they knew this would be say in February or early March. They knew they were losing the war, because we could hear the artillery at night, American artillery moving towards Urenburg. They had a bunch of guys in the camp what they call a escape bunch that tried to figure out ways to escape out of the prison camp.
Alphonse Wolak:
One night they had a meeting and they said the lead guy told them he said one of you guys got to get out of here and that the SS have taken over the prison camp, which I didn't notice the difference in the guards, though I heard about it the next day. The SS were going to meet some bitches. There was no way you could describe them as a soldier. They weren't human Right. What would they do? The brutality, some of it, but they didn't shoot no Americans. But now and then they shoot Russians just for the hell of it, but they didn't bother us.
Alphonse Wolak:
Well, evidently the guys two guys, I guess got out, and they must have got to be Americans, because next day they had a hell of a fight for the city. Oh gee, first Moses man, Because SS had said they were going to die to a man in Nuremberg that's where the Nazi party was born, you know and we stayed underground by that time a bunch of guys had got permission to dig trenches to live in and they roofed them over, was drowned on top, and all of us that could get to them we lived underground.
Alphonse Wolak:
They had an awful fight that one night. Oh man, no, the bombers were over. The fighter bombers were over all night long. In the morning it got kind of quiet.
Alphonse Wolak:
He said, hey, american tanks. Well, we didn't leave it. Oh, he said, those are Americans, those are Shermans. So we got out and looked. Sure enough, here come two German tanks Coming into the town next to us. We watched them go by. And oh, the Moses, the hell. But they went on. Behind them came another one, Anna, a squad of infantry, and they came to the prison camp.
Alphonse Wolak:
By that time the German guards had all laid down their guns, so they talked to some of us and they said well, we have to go, but there's a bunch of guys coming behind. Then the artillery started up again and I looked outside at German artillery.
Alphonse Wolak:
We were firing at the prison camp because it was hitting pretty close. We all died on the ground and it cleared up again when we come back next time. Here come three Jeeps, american Jeeps drove into the prison camp, talked to them. We had two American officers, prisoners. There was more than that, but these two were what we called the head of the prisoners. Just before dark, six by six pulled up.
Alphonse Wolak:
At least, yeah, at least. And so the guys started loading up. The driver probably said, oh hell, we can take more than that. The other guys started climbing in. I climbed in and I was sitting on the back end of the seat, right next to the back of the truck, and we took off on a merman and we were oh, I was saying we'd roll an hour or so when we were going down a highway. And all of a sudden I heard an airplane and these guys were talking a little bit.
Joe Boyle:
I told the guys. I said, hey, that's a.
Alphonse Wolak:
German plane and gosh, damn, unless he's going to strafe us. So I said, tell the guy to stop. Some came to my mind and said the guy wrapped on the side of their hood and he said stop, why? German night fighter out here? So he stopped and here you could hear that plane coming. And I knew from what I'd learned in England and stuff that the German night fighters their guns were synchronized to radar. So when they flew over a road at night.
Alphonse Wolak:
Those guns would not go off unless they picked up an object like a convoy. Then they'd open up In being. We were stopped when the guns did open up and they did. That fighter just strafed like hell. From the time the radar hit us and the gun started, it was past us. The bullets were bouncing down the road and then he went around. He was coming back again. The guys said what should we do? I thought, boy, let's all jump up. And we did and out to the side of the road laid down. He'd come past that time and he didn't fire, he just went. So he loaded up again. These guys told me this is you. Stay right on that damn side now and you watch that sky. You hear anything, you let us know.
Alphonse Wolak:
So I sat there till daylight we called him to Lucky Strike Camp in France. There's something funny that really happened. Maybe I shouldn't put it in here, but the truck pulled in and he stayed like from here, oh, maybe a hundred feet from the hospital, and we jumped out and, by the way, there comes a stirrup on the mirror. What was it? So we did? There come two guys rolling, a great big can of some kind with a couple of holes and nozzles on it. We stripped, well, we were lousy, I mean, with the lice and the fleas and everything else. So we stripped our clothes off. Well, we just threw them on a pile. But some of the guys kept their shorts. Those go off too.
Alphonse Wolak:
Don't come off through on a pile. Lots of nurses walked out of the hospital. Wow, look at that. Hey girls, I understand they haven't seen a girl for six months and well, I won't tell the rest of it because there's one, none there. But anyway, they were making jokes about it and stuff. But these guys came up and they had that powder sulfur powder, whatever they called it that sprayed you with, killed all the mugs and took us in.
Alphonse Wolak:
Doctors, checked us over, decided diets for us and stuff, and one of the Red Cross women was in there. She said you just thought of the prison camp. I said yeah. She said what would you really like to eat? I said, lady, it might sound strange to you, but have you got a salt shaker? She said yes, but for what? I said? I am so short of salt it's killing me. So she brought a salt shaker and I walked around.
Alphonse Wolak:
The rest of the guys were eating apples and everything. I was walking around shaking the salt into my palm, why? I told the doctor about it. He couldn't figure it out. So they weren't us not to eat too much at a time, because your stomach was shrunk up into a ball. I mean, I ate half a pork chop. I was full, but they kept a good eye on us. They were worried about why I got hit here, whether I had a fracture or not, but they took X-rays. It was not wrong there. I came home on the USS Santa Paul. It was a troop ship. There was about 1,500 of us on there. It took a seven-day journey. Landed in New York, we came around what they called the.
Alphonse Wolak:
Liberty. We were all looking at that absolute silence on that ship. The guy standing not too far from me said well, policy said I don't know about you guys, I'm from Texas, so I came home and I took it easy around here. I loved farming so I worked.
Alphonse Wolak:
It didn't bother me too much. Then in 1948, I went back overseas. I would see our crew one night at the base in England when things were getting kind of rough. We'd play poker at night. I mean, the pilots would come to our barracks and we were a tight crew, better than a bunch of brothers. We'd get together and discuss things and we'd play poker. One night we were sitting around playing poker. For some reason the top third gunner said say policy, said I don't want to get serious, but say we get it over there. Well, you guys want to be varied overseas or, if it's possible, you can be sent home. It's the government arranged after the war and we also agreed most of us that be buried where I fell. Of course we didn't expect it, but I remembered that promise, we decided be buried where we fell.
Alphonse Wolak:
So I'm being a lie. But we made a deal that anyone made it that they'd come back and say a prayer or a rest and we're buried. So in 1948, I went back. I had a promise to keep. We trained together as a crew and the officers. We had our pilot, navigator and bombardier and co-pilot. Tell you the truth, if they walked in the door tonight, I'd go with them. Our base commander, our first one was General.
Alphonse Wolak:
Arnold, and after that we had a new man, and if you want to see other formations how we formed up before we went to Europe, this is a photo that was taken from another bomber on the right side.
Alphonse Wolak:
And David, my mother ran the farm and while I was all right until I went back in 1948, my memories came back and then I drank quite a bit at the time and one night I went to I'd go to Danzel, but I wasn't dating anybody, I don't know, I just my wife felt like this part Went to Danzel, to Danzel, and went down to the men's room from the bar and saw a girl sitting with a sailor in the bar and I and the sailors never got along. So I wobbled over to her and asked her to dance. The guy says you got to ask me, boy. I was just waiting for him to get up. I remember her saying she grabbed the drum she says, oh, I'll dance with him.
Alphonse Wolak:
He'd been drinking. I danced with her and got acquainted and I'm being worried.
Alphonse Wolak:
So, like I told you, what happened was we fell in love and got married and started a family, Been on a honeymoon ever since 54 years. Yes, you can't beat that. We have 12 children, set of twins, 23 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, and one on the way. The reason I went to fight was not only to feed over old, but for the simple reason that if we want freedom, we have to fight for it, and I'll regret my time in the service at all. In fact, I had a wonderful experience outside of the bombing and the fighting. I made a million friends and I'm proud to say I have something to offer to the children and grandchildren that they can walk the streets and save my grand powers in the war. Thank you.
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. Man, what a story, Mark. That was your uncle. Alphonse is something else. Just that dialect and the way he talked and his cadence. I was hanging on every word.
Mark Wolak:
He had such an ability to stick with the details of that story from the beginning to the end. It is just remarkable.
Joe Boyle:
An 81-year-old man remembering things so succinctly. What struck me was how he stayed so positive.
Mark Wolak:
You know, the living conditions was freezing cold, there was no blanket, no heat rats, lack of food. He even mentioned the stress which I think we minimize In one portion of that story he was going to be shot the next day. He's supposed to sleep.
Joe Boyle:
The last thing he heard before they went to sleep was he's going to be shot tomorrow. It's just unbelievable. Which was Christmas Day the following day.
Mark Wolak:
The Eighth Air Force had one of its largest casualties in World War II 47,000 people were either killed or injured, and 26,000 of those were killed. I also found out that in the Air Force, 77% of the Americans who flew against the Reich before D-Day would wind up as casualties. For Elphonse to come home after being a POW, he was one of 23% of the people. He did have some injuries, but it didn't kill him, which is just amazing.
Joe Boyle:
Turns out, Alphonse was awarded the Flying Cross, the POW Ribbon, a Purple Heart for his injuries and, of course, the Victory Medal.
Mark Wolak:
I'm struck also by the tremendous sacrifice in the United States at the time, which was to basically build airplanes, build ships, fight this war for freedom, and many, many, many, many sacrifices at home. Food was rationed, rubber for tires was rationed. People made sacrifices at home along with sending their young people to fight this war.
Joe Boyle:
It turns out that Alphonse's mother, according to our notes, received a letter from the War Department that her son was missing in action. When he walked into the yard one day, she was totally shocked to see him. It's just amazing, isn't it? You talk about sacrifice. She probably had him dead and buried already in her mind.
Mark Wolak:
It's been a really remarkable story. I'm so glad that we could share this one. Joe, We'll look forward to hearing our listeners' reactions and responses and maybe think about another similar story for our future.
Joe Boyle:
This was a privilege. Thanks for introducing me to Elphonse. I'll tell you that.
Mark Wolak:
Yeah, it was a wonderful way to share his remarkable story. Thanks, Joe.
Joe Boyle:
Thank you, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Please join us again next time on Stories in Life on the radio with Mark and Joe, and visit our website at storiesinlife. buzzsprout. com. That's storiesinlife. buzzsprout. com.