The Veterans
Mrav Hakobyan, an Armenian who fought in the Battle of Stalingrad. During close combat, house-to-house fighting, a German soldier attacked him with a shovel. As a result, he had to have his right forearm amputated. |
Herbert Drossler, born Nov. 24, 1925 in Thuringen, Germany. At the age of 17 he was drafted into the German army, serving under Rommel in the 21st Panzer Division. He was stationed in France and fought in defensive action during the Normandy invasion. He saw fierce combat in Tilly-sur-Seulles and was finally captured by the Americans in August 1944. Initially he was in a prisoner-of-war camp in Audrieux, but then was moved to a local farm near Caen. He continued to work there for five years because his German hometown was occupied by the Russians. He didn't return to Germany until 1980, and then only to visit. He became a French citizen in 1961. |
Milivoj Borosa, born in Zagreb, Sept. 11, 1920. Trained as a pilot at the Yugoslav Navy School, but after the German invasion he was conscripted into the German air force, and trained as a navigator in Greifsvald. He was sent to the Eastern Front in December 1941. In June 1942 he and two ethnic Russian conscripts stole a bomber and flew to Tarasovo, 300km inside the Russian front lines. They landed despite being fired at by the Soviets and attacked by a German fighter. They were taken prisoner and sent to the infamous Lubianka Prison in Moscow. In December 1943 he was assigned to one of the newly formed Yugoslavian units and flew the Tupolev SB bomber until the end of the war. He was repatriated in April 1946. |
Ernst Gottstein, born July 3, 1922 in the Sudetan town of Schreibendorf, now a part of the Czech Republic. Of German descent, he volunteered for the Wehrmacht, joining a tank outfit in 1941. He fought on the Eastern Front, getting to within 12 miles of Moscow. He then suffered through the harsh winter of 1941, and was wounded in the shoulder in April of 1942. He was sent back to Vienna to recover and volunteered for the Afrika Korps to avoid being sent back to Russia. He saw heavy action during the battle of El Alamein, and after the defeat retreated with his unit to Tunisia, where he was wounded in the battle of Tunis. He was evacuated to Berlin and then to Denmark, and was sent back into action in northern France. He was involved in extensive combat during the German army's retreat including defensive action on the Siegfried Line. |
Thomas Gilzean, born Dec. 5, 1920 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Certain that war was imminent he volunteered for Royal Engineers and trained in bomb disposal. After serving in Egypt he was sent to Benghazi, Libya. When Rommel's troops attacked his regiment had to retreat, but not before booby-trapping the hotel in which they had been staying. The building subsequently blew up, killing many German officers who had moved in. He survived the seven-month siege of Tobruk, and was then posted to Burma where he fought with the famed Chindits, seeing heavy action at Imphal. He returned to Britain and joined the XXX Army Corps fighting in Belgium, Holland and at the Battle of the Bulge. |
Karl Ulber, born in Vienna, May 28, 1923. Joined the German army in October 1941 and trained as a paratrooper, but was sent to Russia in October 1942 to fight partisans in the Smolensk region. In March 1943 his regiment was sent to the front near Massejenki to counterattack the Russian army. He also saw action in France and Italy before being taken prisoner in 1945. He was released in March 1946 and returned to Vienna. |
Lavik Blindheim, born Aug. 29, 1916 in the Norwegian town of Voss. He was in training to be an infantry officer when the Germans invaded. He became part of the Norwegian army's resistance effort, moving back and forth across the Swedish border until 1941. He went to Britain on an epic journey that took him from Stockholm to Moscow, on to Odessa then to Teheran, Basra in Iraq, Bombay, and finally by boat to Glasgow. He was interrogated by British Intelligence and then sent to London where he was trained as a commando and saboteur. He then parachuted into Norway in April 1942 where he organized and ran resistance groups for the rest of the war. |
Alfons Ukkonen, a Finn who joined the German army to fight against the Russians in defense of his homeland. |
Fernand Du Bois, born Sept. 9, 1924 in Cuesmes, Belgium. A student during the German invasion, he and his family tried to escape to the coast but had to turn back. In a field near Abbeville they were attacked by a German Stuka. His father was killed and he was severely wounded by shrapnel and sustained third-degree burns. He was taken to a German field hospital in Montreuille-sur-Mer, where German doctors saved his life. He remained a civilian under the occupation until early in 1944 when he was ordered to report to a forced labor office. Instead, he went into hiding and joined local partisan groups in the Mons area. In October 1945 he became the driver for an American colonel, and then volunteered for the newly formed Belgian army, fighting as a part of Patton's 3rd Army. He saw action with front-line troops in Kirsheim, Mainz and Trier. |
Bjorn Ostring, a Norwegian born in Gjoevik on Sept. 17, 1923. In 1934 he joined Vidkun Quisling's Norwegian Fascist Party, organizing youth membership. Although he fought against the Germans when they invaded, upon the Norwegian army's defeat he tried to join the German military, which he did in the spring of 1941. In January 1942 he was sent to Leningrad where he saw heavy fighting, losing half of the men in his unit. Quisling then requested his return to Norway where he became the traitor's head of security. After the war he was sentenced to seven years in prison for treason, but was released in 1949 after serving only two years. |
Tako Ivanov Krustev, born June 20, 1920 in the village of Dolna Melna in western Bulgaria. He moved with his family to Sofia when he was 7 and graduated from high school in 1939. He joined the partisans, and was arrested in February 1944, imprisoned and tortured. When the new government took power in September 1944 he volunteered for the newly formed Bulgarian army, was trained by the British, and saw action in Serbia and Macedonia in an attempt to stop the retreating German units from regrouping with others in Hungary. He remained in the military after the war and retired with the rank of Lieutenant General in 1991. |
Fernand Kaisergruber, a Belgian born in Antwerp on Jan. 18, 1923 of colonial parents who lived in the Congo. As a youth he joined the Rexist Fascist Party under its leader Leon Degrelle. After the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940 he voluntarily went to Germany and worked in a factory in Cologne. He joined the German army in September 1941 and left for the Russian front in June 1942, where he remained until November of that year, experiencing very heavy fighting. He returned to Russia in July 1943 as a part of a Waffen-SS unit, fighting in the Tcherkassy pocket where thousands of German troops were surrounded. While retreating in February 1944 he was wounded twice and broke a leg, but finally made in back to Germany. |
Tong Q. Eng, born in Canton, China, Nov. 22, 1916. He moved to Newark, N.J., when he was 12. In May 1943 he was conscripted into the U.S. Army and trained in communications and Morse code. In early 1944 he was shipped to New Guinea in preparation for the invasion of the Philippines, where he landed in May 1944 at Laoag. He saw very heavy combat from determined Japanese defenders all the way to the liberation of Manila. After the Philippine campaign he was transferred to Korea, and was demobilized in 1946. He returned to the United States to live in New York City. |
Adolph Straka, born in Duplje, Slovenia, Feb. 27, 1925. Left when he was 17 to work in a steel mill in Mosham, Austria. He was conscripted into the German army in February 1943 and later that year was sent to Dijon, France. He was there for six months and then sent to the Eastern Front in Vitesbk. After a month of heavy fighting he was captured by the Russians and identified as a Yugoslavian, which not only meant he got better treatment than Germans, but after three day he joined the Soviets and fought with them until the end of the war as a tank driver and, later, a commander. |
Daniel Bokobza, born March 22, 1924 in Madhia, Tunisia. He joined the French army in October 1943. After being moved to Morocco and Algeria he arrived in Britain in July 1944, and after a few days he was sent to Normandy. As well as fighting in the Normandy campaign he also took part in the battle of Paris. He then participated in the fighting in the Vosges region, earning a Croix de Guerre for his part in capturing 200 Germans. On April 29 he crossed into Germany near Kielh and was demobilized in October 1945. |
Israel Barsuk, born March 1, 1919 in Kremnchuk, in the Ukraine. His family moved to Moscow where he completed his schooling and then worked in an automobile factory. In the fall of 1939 he was drafted into the Soviet army. He was made a political vice-commissar, and continued his studies until June 1941, when the Germans invaded. He saw heavy combat in Zaportzwe, in the Ukraine, and when his commander was killed by a sniper's bullet he became the leader of a battalion of 300 men. He was wounded in September 1941 and spent four months in hospital. After he was discharged he was considered unfit for active duty, but convinced his superior officers to send him back to the front where he joined a tank unit in Gorky. He fought with them until late 1942 when he was transferred to Moscow to supervise supplies for armored troops. He immigrated to the United States in 1985. |
Jean Mathieu, born Aug. 7, 1923 in Lapoutroie, Alsace. When the Germans occupied the region he was sent to a work camp in Northern Bavaria. In January 1943 he was conscripted into a German infantry division, but deliberately spilled boiling milk on his leg. This act bought him six months, after which he received notice to join the German navy, which he did as a member of the crew of a torpedo boat based in the Baltic in Swinemude. He was transferred to coast guard duty in June 1944, but because of the Normandy invasion this duty was superfluous, and he was retrained as an infantryman in preparation to be sent to the Russian front. At this point he deserted, and hid out in Lapoutroie until December 1944, when he joined a unit of the Free French forces. |
Giovanni Doretta, born March 14, 1921 of Italian parents in Paris. He lived in Paris until 1935, when his parents returned to Italy to work the family farm. He was drafted on Jan. 21, 1941 and trained on World War 1-era artillery as a part of the elite Alpini Cuneense division. In August 1942 his unit was sent to the Russian front in the Ukraine. When they arrived at Izium new orders from the German High Command meant that they had to march 300km to Stalingrad. They fought in the bitter cold, dressed only in summer uniforms, until forced to surrender to the Russians on Jan. 27, 1943. The prisoners were put on a train for the Ural Mountains and during the journey a typhoid epidemic broke out; only 10 of the 80 soldiers in his car survived. He was then sent to Moscow to work in a factory, and later, to guard German prisoners of war. He was repatriated on April 1, 1946. |
Eugeniusz Witt, born March 6, 1922 in Baranovicz, Poland. His father was an officer in the Polish army and after the German invasion in 1939 he never saw him again. He and his mother were transported to Siberia by the Russians, where he worked on a collective farm as a carpenter near the town of Biijsk in the Altaj Mountains. In 1941 he was freed and joined the Polish army that was being formed under General Wladyslaw Anders. He was trained in Uzbekistan and then sent to Iran and Iraq, where the army was re-equipped and reorganized by the British. In January 1943 the British authorities asked for volunteers to train as paratroopers. He volunteered, and traveled on a troop ship to Glasgow, arriving in March 1943. He was selected for special forces training to work behind enemy lines as a radio operator, but was sent to London instead where he was a communications coordinator working with underground forces in Poland. He immigrated to the United States in 1948. |
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