6/6/11 – Nothing to do with the Outdoors

My Uncle Ed was an Army Ranger during World War II. I don’t know too many of the details since it was never talked about. Every now and then a tidbit would come out, but even they didn’t add up to much.

I come from a family that loves to talk, so it always seemed odd that what he did in North Africa, Italy, Sicily and on Omaha Beach was never brought up.

I knew he was in Morocco. I knew he was wounded in both Italy and Sicily, patched up each time and sent back into the fray. I knew he was on the second wave that hit Omaha Beach and had a grenade blow up next to him that took him out of action. For the next six months he laid flat on his back in a hospital in France as they kept taking bits and pieces of shrapnel out of him.

I knew that when the nuclear bombs went off in Japan to end the war, he was on a troop ship heading to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan.

And that’s it. Three years of his life overseas summed up in those few words.

As a kid growing up in the 60s’ it instilled in me a fascination with the European Theater. Movies, books, articles and anything else I could get was read or watched.

When I was fifteen I decided to read the small collection of books my dad had laying around the house about WW II. One after the other I read The Naked and the Dead, Maybe I’m Dead, Slaughterhouse 5, The Thin Red Line and Catch 22.

Then there were all the movies, too many to remember all the names.

I was sitting in a study hall my sophomore year at St. Lawrence High School, reading Maybe I’m Dead by Joe Klaas. The brother in charge was walking slowly up and down the aisles, probably checking to see that we didn’t have comic books or Playboy’s tucked behind something we were supposed to be reading.

When he got to me, he took the book out of my hand. He read the cover and the description on the back cover. Read the page I was open to and handed the book back to me. He smiled a bit and shook his head.

“At least you’re reading,” was all he said.

Many years later we were at a family gathering at my brothers house. I was off on the side with my uncle chatting and drinking a couple of beers. I decided to just start talking about WW II and see where it went.

He joined the Rangers because it paid a little more than the regular Army. His dad, my grandfather, had died in 1937 and left him, the oldest, more or less in charge. His ranger checks would go back to his mom and his four siblings.

When they got to Morocco to start working their way across North Africa, he stopped getting paid. So he figured if he wasn’t getting paid, he’d quit, like any job. He went AWOL. The MPs found him four days later and went to arrest him.

“Are you Edward Fronczak?” they asked him.

“No, I’m Edwin Fronczak,” and he got out all of his IDs to prove that.

The military had Americanized his name and changed it without telling him. Which is why he wasn’t getting paid. He refused to go back till they fixed the problem. He hung around Morocco for another two weeks while the problem got fixed.

He mentioned a couple of things about pretty Moroccan women, but didn’t go into detail.

He told me about getting wounded in Sicily and Italy, but not how. He was patched up both times and sent back into battle. That’s what they did with Rangers. I heard a couple of more stories about pretty Sicilian and Italian women, but again, no details.

He never mentioned Omaha Beach by name, but did acknowledge the grenade going off next to him and taking him out of action. He did spend 6 months in a French hospital on his back getting shrapnel taken out. He said he was fine after 4 months, but milked it for another two. He was in no hurry to go back into battle and he was reluctant to give up the sponge baths he was getting from the pretty French nurses.

At the end of the 6 months it was pretty well known that things were going to be ending in Europe, it was just a matter of a little more time. They needed someone with his talent for the invasion of Japan, which they already knew was going to be brutal. He was trained more for that and was on the transport ship on the way to Japan when the war ended.

He mentioned that every now and then a small sliver of steel would work its way up to the surface and he could scratch it out. This was over 40 years later.

And that was it. No mention of battles, no mention of any of the things he saw or did while in the middle of it. Just a few more stories about pretty women. To end the conversation, he chuckled and for the first and only time I got to hear him swear.

“It was the hardest fuckin’ job I ever did, but it had to get done. We all just wanted to get the damn job done and go home.”

“I did a pretty good job of it.”

I was reminded of all this over the weekend. The History Channel had something on about Omaha Beach. They picked it apart in a way that I had never heard before. Apparently at one point the military had pretty much decided to give up Omaha Beach and the men there as lost. But the decisions of a couple of people, one flying in the face of what he was supposed to do, changed things around.

I couldn’t help but think of my Uncle laying on the beach full of shrapnel, probably assuming he was going to die. But when push came to shove, he preferred to tell the funny stories and stories about pretty women and never once mentioned the brutality he had witnessed.

Now I hear people talk of our “Warriors” in other lands. I cringe when I hear that word. To me Warrior means someone that is out to conquer and destroy, not protect the way of life they have and want.

And I can’t help but think of my uncle doing “the hardest fuckin’ job I ever did” and just wanting to do the best job possible so he could go home and get on with his life.