Milwaukee WWII Vet Celebrates 100 Years with an Honor Flight
With more than a dozen “flights of honor” of war veterans in Washington DC planned throughout the summer this year, a 100 -year -old old World War II veteran said that the theft he had taken in the spring put a check on his “bucket list”.
One Saturday morning at the end of April, Freddie Stachoviak was one of the 114 veterans of the flight “Mission # 79” outside Milwaukee. But he was the only former soldier who was a member of what is called the greatest generation, the men and women who helped win the Second World War.
It remains very little, say the organizers of the flights of honor.
Honor Flight Network is a non-profit program dedicated to the transportation of military veterans in the United States in Washington, DC, to visit the commemorative monuments dedicated to their service, at no cost for veterinarians.
According to the organization’s website, more than 317,000 veterans have been honored since the organization’s foundation in 2005.
The Second World War is a chapter of Stachoviak’s life which he remembers, although he prefers to keep him for himself, he said in an interview with Fox 6 by Milwaukee. He humbly told the affiliate that he did not think it was “very interesting”.
Sitting next to his great-grandson on the marches of the Second World War Memorial in Washington, DC, the veteran opened to Fox journalist during his three years of service as an army doctor in European theater.
“The native of Milwaukee landed in Normandy shortly after D -Day in the fall of 1944. From there, he was sent to Arlon, Belgium, just in time for the biggest deadly conflict to date – the battle of bulge,” said Fox6.
He was barely 20 years old.
Stachoviak said as a doctor, he and others had made victims on the battlefield in a fortune medical establishment.
“I think it was a converted school, and they transformed it into a hospital,” he recalls. “And we took out the patients from the ambulance and in the neighborhoods.”
He continued: “Once, we entered the rooms there and the guy could not feel his leg. He said he had no feeling in there. Guess what? They had to cut it. ” The patient has apparently not yet realized.
When he was asked how much he could process these images, he said you couldn’t.
“You just try to forget it and tell yourself how lucky you were,” he said.
“I think he has always thought that his work was not important because he was not in battles, he was not shot,” said his great-grandson Nick Stachoviak to the affiliate. “But if he doesn’t bring people, they didn’t treat each other and they were going to die.”
Many veterans humbly see their role in the war as insignificant, which prevents some of them from accepting the distinction of theft of honor, because they do not believe that they deserve it, Karyn Roelke told Fox6. Roelke is president of Stars and Stripes Honor Flight.
“Any contribution when you leave the house and serve your country is important,” she said.
Those who wish to take honor, learn their schedules or volunteer for the program can find a local center and more information on the organization’s website.
The contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best -selling author of Under the line And nine other criminal novels and non-fictional titles. See Lowellcauffiel.com For more. His late father Lowell was an aeronautical engineer who helped design American bombers who stole during the Second World War.
