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Veteran, 93, recalls combat from D-Day to the Bulge

The Herald - 5/21/2017

(First of two parts)

John Wartonick, a veteran of World War II, who turns 93 today, describes himself as a loner. In fact, he sits alone in his Bristol home daily, one which is currently a project of The Home Front, one where veterans organize and assist veterans and/or their families with different programs.

Wartonick was raised in Terryville during the Depression of the 1930s and said that at age 8 or 9, he "was displaced" with his being enlisted into the WPA, or Works Progress Administration, which gave employment to unskilled workers in needy times and he did that for two months. In doing so, he was able to send $72 a month to his parents, who couldn't find work to help themselves and his two older sisters and younger brother. He also worked the tobacco fields in Windsor.

"They took us by bus and when we got home, we were all covered with tobacco stains," Wartonick said. "Then, we did it again the next day and throughout the summer."

His family didn't have a washing machine at the time so after returning from the fields Wartonick would head to Zeiner's Pond, now known as Zeiner's Lake. He would go into the water with his clothes on and afterwards hang them up in the woods to dry before returning home.

A few years later, Wartonick decided to get away and do something on his own. There was no work and he was bored and thought that serving in the military would provide him with food, shelter and something to do. He joined the Army at age 15 and a half as a career soldier because he didn't want to "mope around anymore" and in doing so used the birth certificate of his brother, Anthony, who had died as an infant.

"I joined the infantry in 1938 and we trained with brooms, not rifles," Wartonick said. "One of my first jobs was guarding Eleanor Roosevelt at a U.S. airport. I was one of four that guarded her. She would fly to Ireland to get the kids of the richest people to bring them here. She was like our social workers today and had a nice personality. You were to escort her and didn't have the right (permission) to talk to her. She was a big person with a nice personality."

Wartonick and his unit had previously arrived from New York City to Scotland by way of the Queen Mary, which wasn't in official service at the time, but actually was. The Queen Mary was fast and could outrun submarines if need be. The American soldiers were dropped off near Scotland in being put on schooners to get ashore. From there, they went by train to Bristol, England, to prepare for the invasion.

"We trained in England in the bog," Wartonick said. "Some soldiers got lost in the quicksand. It wasn't easy being in the infantry and you wanted to remain a loner for this type of duty, because of the deaths of soldiers training with and around you."

At midnight on June 5, 1944, one day before D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, France, Wartonick and his fellow infantrymen arrived near Omaha Beach.

"We got there at night," Wartonick said. "A transport plane carried us in wooden gliders and would release us. When you landed, most of the gliders would break apart. We didn't know exactly where we were when we landed here and there and were given orders that if we couldn't band together, that we should head back to the beachhead and be reassigned to another group moving forward."

From there as the infantry advanced inward, it would be dodging enemy tanks, machine guns and whatever else was thrown their way. Soldiers from both sides were making the supreme sacrifice.

"Never make friends," Wartonick said. "Be a loner. You don't want to see a buddy blown up in the heat of battle. That's the kind of people they (the infantry) wanted. You don't want to know nobody because if they die in front of your eyes you'd be broken up. You didn't want to know nobody."

Did Wartonick ever kill an enemy soldier?

"Sure I did," Wartonick said. "The infantry was diversified. Everyone had a clicker to I.D. one another and every day you had a new password. If you thought you saw someone you would click them and ask the password. If the other person didn't answer, I shoot you. That happened to me once. You just shoot him."

As far as being a prisoner of war, Wartonick isn't sure because he was never recognized as such. However, he was captured for a day by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, which took place from mid-December of 1944 to Jan. 25, 1945.

"There's so much going on with everything that a lot wasn't recorded during the war," Wartonick said. "If you were a little private, no one records. If you were a high ranking officer or someone, there might have been."

But it appears that he was an official POW and this took place in the Black Forest near the Ardennes.

"I was a secret scout and there was a big German Panzer tank (moving up) that was as wide as the street and the only thing I could do was throw a hand grenade to stop it," Wartonick said. "Before I could pull the pin out, someone grabbed my hand before I could pull it. This was near the Rhine River and there were German soldiers who had been behind the tank. In the heat of battle, you never take prisoners. I was interviewed by a German colonel and I only gave him my rank. He asked me a couple of times and I wouldn't give him any information he could use."

With this showing of patriotism for his country, the colonel stopped questioning him. He called for a 10-year-old Hitler Youth and talked to the boy, who was dressed in German military attire and carrying a rifle.

"He told him to take me out back (in assuming to shoot me, which was common) and told him to come back in five minutes," Wartonick said. "I spoke German, so when he took me outside, I told the boy that the sky is full of U.S. bombers. I told him (General George) Patton was only an hour away. The kid got scared, took off his S.S. Hitler uniform and underneath he had his civilian clothes on. He didn't want to shoot me, so he fired his rifle in the air and must have run off. Before this, he hit me in the back of the head and when I woke up, Patton's men had gotten me."

In looking back today, despite fighting for his life often, Wartonick holds no animosity for the German soldiers.

"They had a job to do just as we had one to do," Wartonick said.

(The second and final segment of Wartonick's story will appear next Sunday.)

Bob Montgomery can be reached at bmontgomery@bristolpress.com or by calling 860-584-0501, ext. 1808.