Free door opens door to POW’s story
When Editor Mike Wolcott put out the call to hear from “people of retirement age” sharing whatever pearls of wisdom they might impart on the younger generation he was no doubt hoping for first-person accounts. The important part of this “first-person account” is the retelling of someone else’s story.
On my way home to Paradise after working in Chico one spring afternoon I passed by a brand new, still-in-thewrapper screen door laying on the side of lower Skyway about a quarter mile from Home Depot. Always one eager to snag a freebie off the roadside, I managed a quick U-turn at the Steve G. Harrington Memorial Arch and sped back to where I’d spotted the door, but as I crossed the spot on this divided portion of the road I saw another car had already pulled up to it. Somewhat disappointed, I pulled another U-turn at Bruce Road and started back towards Paradise. As I approached the other car, I saw that an elderly man was trying to secure the door to the roof of a small Japanese car with some flimsy twine. “What the heck?” I thought as I stopped. “Might as well help him out.”
I approached the gentleman and offered, if he’d like, to put the door in my van and follow him home with it. He gave me a suspicious look, thought for a moment, then looked at his wife sitting behind the wheel of the Toyota. “I’m goin’ with this guy,” he said as he jerked his thumb in my direction, “Follow us!” With that we loaded the door into my pickup and headed up the hill.
Once underway he started the conversation with, “You’re probably wondering where my accent comes from.” We hadn’t spoken enough for me to notice any accent, but he went ahead with, “I’m from Poland.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” I said, “how’d you end up in Paradise from Poland?”
He proceeded to tell me that he had been a bomber pilot in the Polish Air Force in World War ll.
“But when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 we flew everything to France. Then when the Germans took over France in 1940 we all went to England. At first the English wouldn’t let us fly their planes, but when so many of their guys got shot down they gave us some old fighters and bombers and put us to work. I got shot down over Germany flying an old R.A.F. bomber and ended up in a German prison camp.”
I had recently read a book my dad (also a WWll bombardier) had loaned me, written by one of his fellow Eighth Air Force airmen, one who had been shot down and captured in Germany. In that book the man described the way prisoners were treated (or mistreated) by their German captors, with Polish and Russian prisoners receiving the worst treatment.
“Wow,” I said, “being Polish you must have been treated horribly!”
“No, no!’ he said, tapping his shoulder, “R.A.F.! Because of my uniform they thought I was English! I got treated OK!”
I have since read the British had instructed the Polish airmen in some basic English phrases to use in the event they crashed, not just in enemy territory, but also in England, so the British wouldn’t mistake the Poles for Germans. This bit of training no doubt saved my passenger from untold grief.
“When the war was over, I ended up going back to England,” he said. “The Russians had taken over Poland, and I didn’t want to be a Communist, so I didn’t go back there. The English wouldn’t pay me any veteran’s benefits, so I came to America. I married an American woman and became a citizen. Now I get Social Security! And Medicare!”
We talked about the war and bombers and how good it is to be in America, but as we approached his home on Crandall Way he hadn’t had time to explain how he had finally ended up living in Paradise. We unloaded the door, and he thanked me for the ride. I thanked him for the story and his service and headed for home.
I never got his name, and I didn’t end up with the roadside screen door I had hoped to acquire, but I did get one heck of a good story to share, and the realization the group we refer to as
“The Greatest Generation” is not just limited to our American heroes.