Keeping the stories alive
For Bob Woytula, writing war histories connects him to his father
Thirteen years of research, 10 personal war histories complete, no end in sight.
Bob Woytula spent about 1,000 hours on just one of the books he has compiled about his father Mike’s time serving in the Second World War.
Woytula was inspired to tell veterans’ stories because he finds the personal histories fascinating and it’s very important to him that theses stories are recorded, especially for the war vets’ families.
“This is my way of remembering the vets that I bring to life for the families – to the children, to the grandchildren,” Woytula said. “These are their fathers and grandfathers. This is why I do this. I don’t glorify war but I think sometimes we lose the perspective on why we have the freedoms that we do today. It’s because of these men.”
Woytula is very aware that time is running out to hear veterans’ stories first hand. Recently, he’s mourned the loss of three veterans he knew personally.
“When these guys pass away, it really bothers me,” Woytula said. “These men are part of our Canadian history where it’s written but we can also talk to the vets and that’s precious. Right now we have a combination (of written and oral history) but the Second World War vets are probably about 91 years plus and in a few years they will all be lost. When they take their last breath, that’s it. We can’t ask any more.”
No one can imagine what these men have been through, added Woytula, who’s read about 250 books about Canadians’ participation in wars.
“I think experiences are captured in three major ways, sight, sound and smell and when you’ve never been to war, you can’t understand it,” Woytula said.
By telling their stories, perhaps it will provide a greater understanding of the men who returned from war, he added.
Mike was born in 1917 and died in 1961 at 44 years old from heart problems. Woytula was just 13 at the time.
“Because he passed away so young, as
I got older I started to wonder about my father’s time in the war,” Woytula said.
But life happened and he didn’t get a chance to delve into the details until much later.
“I really started to dig in 2005,” said Woytula, who is now retired. “It was then that I tried to make sense of where he’d come from and what he was involved in. There were some surprises.”
One of those surprises was finding out Mike was charged with bootlegging in the Crowsnest Pass where he grew up.
“I think people did these things because times were tough,” Woytula said. “So he did what he had to do to survive.”
Woytula said he eventually got his father’s military records and went through all of it to see exactly what Mike did during his time in the war.
Woytula put together a book to tell that part of the story.
When Mike left to go to war, he left behind his wife, Sophie, and Martin, his twoand-a-half-year-old son, Woytula’s oldest sibling, who has since died. It took another whole album to showcase all the postcards Mike sent to Sophie while he was away.
During the process of gathering information and trying to make sense of it all, Woytula said his sister, Janet, who is two years older, offered support and encouragement that he appreciated.
Mike started his military career in Calgary on Feb. 4, 1942, and was enlisted as general reinforcements, which Woytula said was typical of enlisted soldiers.
Mike then went back east to the Debert military camp. By August 1942, Mike was in the 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division, stationed in a big Canadian army camp in Aldershot, which was in the south of England, Woytula explained.
Mike, who was the oldest, had two brothers – Emil, born in 1920 and August, born in 1924 – who were both stationed with Mike at Aldershot for a short time. From there, Emil went to Scotland and August went to Italy.
“My dad ended up being a dispatch rider,” Woytula said. “You look at his record and his training and everything and he was riding a motorcycle in and around the front lines. It was a very dangerous job because at times he had to go behind enemy lines to report on gun positions.”
Woytula found a report about Mike that said he received the Commander-in-Chief’s certificate for continuous good service.
The report said Mike was a skilled rider who was frequently exposed to sniper and artillery fire, often navigating horrible roads and enduring the worst weather. It also said he had a keen sense of direction and often navigated unknown territory.
Woytula said when Mike was honoured with the award only eight men were recognized out of 800 in the Fifteenth Canadian Field Regiment.
During his time overseas, Mike kept moving through Europe with the Canadian troops.
Mike was hospitalized for two weeks in April 1945. The records did not show any details, Woytula said.
Mike was sent back to England to await his trip home.
When Mike got home, he worked in the McGillivray Mine in the Crowsnest Pass but times were tough so he decided to move the family to Prince George in 1955 because jobs were plentiful. Woytula said his dad was a good provider and did the best he could.
Woytula knows his father returned from the war suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder – he remembers his dad diving onto the floor at the sound of a backfiring car – and the entire family suffered from the affects of the trauma his father had survived, he said.
“It can make a family very dysfunctional,” he said.
As the veterans returned to their communities, Woytula said he noticed how many of them coped.
“What I noticed with a lot of the vets when they came back was because of what they’d seen they ended up in the Elks, the Lions, the Rotary – the clubs contributed to the community, because I think they’d seen so much devastation and death, that they tried to reverse that,” Woytula said.
He remembers his dad turning to the Royal Canadian Legion. There Mike could spend time with other veterans who knew what he was going through and Woytula thinks it helped his father.
“They were all in a war and they all understood,” Woytula said. “That was their therapy. That was their healing.”