A welter of emotions tumbled together, packing an emotional punch akin to booming artillery rounds. Powerful and in some ways indescribable, it was a state of mind difficult to reduce to a neatly categorized roster of feelings and attitudes.
Atlantan Tom Dworschak and brother Scott navigated that emotional minefield in August when they retraced their father’s movements and battles in the late stages of World War II. Their 1,600-mile trek was a study in pride, reflectiveness and loss, sometimes simultaneously, ushering in a new level of respect for their dad.
Credit: Photo courtesy Tom Dworschak
Credit: Photo courtesy Tom Dworschak
They’d often wondered how their father coped before and during his part in the pivotal Battle of the Bulge in December 1944/January 1945. But they had little to go on, with their reluctant father dropping only occasional wartime tidbits. The only visible reminder of Walter Dworschak’s service hung in the hallway of their Champaign, Illinois home, their dad in his ribbon-bedecked dress uniform.
“Dad’s Army 75th Infantry Division landed at Le Havre, France, Dec. 14 of 1944. They were nicknamed the ‘diaper division’ because of their average age of 21,” says Tom Dworschak, who like brother Scott, became a military history buff with a self-described “basement-full” of military history volumes, maps and memorabilia.
A trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, Tom Dworschak is effusive and energetic with a bright smile and ready handshake, but the 21-year Army veteran turns more introspective when talking about “Private First Class Walter’s war.” He’s well-equipped to discuss it with a densely annotated coffee-table-style book on the Battle of the Bulge and a slew of wartime photos.
The Battle of the Bulge was set in the Ardennes area of southeast Belgium, a heavily forested region. The Bulge itself referred to the wedge (depicted on maps) that the Germans created as they pressed westward against the Allied front line. It was the last major German offensive of the war.
Dates, battle details and a thorough knowledge of the military machine spill easily from him as he lays out what he’s learned.
“Standard military doctrine at the time was that when a new division comes into a combat theater it needs to get acclimated,” he says “You just don’t throw a green division into combat.”
The Germans had other plans.
Thrown into battle
Two days after Private First Class Walter Dworschak arrived, the enemy unleased the offensive that became known as the Battle of the Bulge. It quickly became all hands on deck, as Walter and his fellow riflemen, some of them still gangly adolescents, were sent into the fray.
“It’s 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve and they’re ordered to take this little town. It’s pitch black, it’s freezing and they don’t know where they are. And none of them have been in combat before,” said Tom Dworschak. Certainly not his dad, just 20 and the product of a sleepy village on Long Island.
Credit: Photo courtesy Tom Dworschak
Credit: Photo courtesy Tom Dworschak
“Dad’s unit takes the village of Wy, and they spent the next day digging in, so Dad spent Christmas of 1944 digging a foxhole into the frozen Earth.” Crouched in that dubious protection, he spotted men fighting and dying in a nearby battle.
The next few weeks found him and his unit advancing and falling back with the tides of battle, slugging it out in small actions that were part of the larger mosaic. They were eating out of a can. Sleeping in a hole in the ground. Wondering if a morning’s sunrise would be the last one they’d ever see.
And at times, they yearned for one of the most essential supplies for waging wintertime war.
Socks. Dry socks, to be more precise.
Soldiers on the front lines would develop sweaty feet. Or wade through chilly creeks. When night came and the temperature dropped, that moisture froze, creating foot-borne agony.
Walter Dworschak came down with trench foot after spending a night huddled in a creek hiding from opposing forces.
“After about three weeks, he was getting up one day to go on patrol and he just fell over,” said Tom Dworschak. “He was lucky. They saw it right away and medevaced him to a hospital. And he didn’t lose any toes or have any nerve damage.”
He rejoined his unit after recovering, and family members opine that his not having to fight the entire six months before Germany surrendered likely saved his life.
Recollections were rare
Back from the war and busy with career and family, Walter was like many freshly minted civilians whose wartime experiences were tough to talk about with anyone besides a fellow veteran. Post-traumatic stress disorder was not uncommon, although not classified as an official mental malady until years later.
“If you asked him a question, he’d answer it,” said his brother Scott, 61, who lives in Chicago. “But he wouldn’t go any further and he’d make it clear that was all you were going to get.” By age 7 or 8, he’d learned not to bring up the war.
But on occasion, he adds, something would trigger his father’s memories and he’d bring up the conflict in straight-out-of-the blue fashion.
Credit: Photo courtesy Tom Dworschak
Credit: Photo courtesy Tom Dworschak
He was about 10, maybe 11, with his father shuttling him to school on a December Illinois day where a snowpack was melting, creating a shroud of fog.
“Out of the blue, he looked at me and said, ‘It was like this at the Bulge.’ "
Somewhat thunderstruck because his father never volunteered such information, Scott says he didn’t ask for more information — a decision he now regrets.
On their August visit, the Bulge was similarly foggy.
“That’s something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life,” he says somberly. “I feel like he was with us.”
Scott says his dad told him another bare-bones anecdote about his unit being under fire and his beating a retreat back to a command post to have his superiors call in an artillery strike that saved the day. He wishes he knew more.
And as the years passed, the brothers’ determination to retrace their father’s war movements only grew. They began researching old military morning reports, after-action summaries and personnel records, both going online and digging into material at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., seeking a more complete picture.
‘A range of emotions’
That picture came into a much more laserlike focus after they embarked on their trip in August, stopping in Paris, visiting Normandy and then immersing themselves in their dad’s movements.
At one location that they found their father’s unit had passed through, they put a plaque — a picture of their father in his dress uniform and ribbons and medals — up against a memorial wall.
That and other stops were well-planned, including a trip to Normandy. Others were purely serendipitous.
“We’re driving down these narrow two-lane roads,” said Tom Dworschak. “You’re doing 35 miles an hour, and all of a sudden, there’s this memorial over there with Dad’s 75th Division logo on it and you stop and jump out and take a look.”
“It was quite a range of emotions to go to Beffe, Belgium, (where their father also fought German troops as their research pinned down) and I had pictures of that in my mind so many times,” Tom Dworschak says. His voice breaks briefly and he lapses into what appears to be a momentary thousand-yard stare.
Credit: The National Archives and Records Administration
Credit: The National Archives and Records Administration
He resumes. “And then to actually see it with your own eyes. It’s the culmination of a lot of work, and anticipation and excitement.”
Others seek WWII connection
It’s a “my heart is full” feeling that many others have shared. And a few of whom have turned into a vocation.
Myra Miller with Footsteps Researchers in St. Louis says her interest and curiosity grew after she watched a World War II documentary and realized that her father, who died when she was 19, had never talked to her about any of it.
Not only did she research his war experiences and retrace his steps through Europe, she co-founded Footsteps Researchers to provide verified information for others. And she and others on her team lead battlefield tours.
She remembers being on a hill in Europe, staring down into a valley her father’s unit had traversed and then following in his footsteps.
“My heart just went ooowwwwh,” she remembers. She also sat in a foxhole her dad and a buddy had been ensconced in. Incoming fire killed the friend and severely wounded her father. “We were just dumbfounded.”
“I tell people before I take them that they’re going to experience something that you can’t explain to people,” she says, “and then every single time at the end, they say ‘I don’t know how I’m going to explain this.’ "
Those who have done it or watched their friends make the journey note that by and large, this is a phenomenon restricted to World War II. They think the sheer scope of the war with so many U.S. troops involved and the fondness for fast-disappearing “greatest generation” veterans are fueling continuing interest.
They’ve also seen a generation-skipping phenomenon.
Bob Ballagh, a Peachtree Corners resident and Vietnam veteran with many veteran group involvements to his credit, thinks the returning veterans may well have been too busy to talk about their war experiences with the kids. But with grandkids coming along and the pace of life slower, he’s seen that those by-now-older folks have mellowed and are more willing to share what they went through.
Miller has seen that aspect play out in tours she’s led, and thinks she’ll see more.
“I think it will carry on. There’s just something about World War II, especially in Europe.” She thinks descendants wanting more than the bare-bones factoids war veterans left them with will keep the flame alive. There’s also a great deal of interest in war relics, says Miller, who says when her team finds them, they work to return them to family.
Brothers’ mission continues
Tom Dworschak isn’t as convinced such battlefield interest will have truly longstanding legs. But he knows he and his brother will carry on the memories.
“We plan to go again in 2022.” He adds that having reached the limitations of what their research and seeing the visible monuments can do, they’ll get professional help.
Credit: Photo courtesy Tom Dworschak
Credit: Photo courtesy Tom Dworschak
“There are numerous guys out there who make a living out of doing battlefield tours. They’ve lived there. They know the area. They know stuff we’d never know that’s not findable on the internet.”
Standing in the tiny town of Beffe, Belgium, and using then-and-now photographs to pinpoint the spot where their father had stood in 1945 was profound.
As he reflects, “You can see something that your father saw years ago, and it creates a new memory you never knew existed.”
Georgia’s WWII veterans
Georgia ranks last of the 50 states for the percentage of its population who are surviving veterans of the World War II era, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of the most recently released census data tracking veteran status. There are about 13,000 WWII-era vets alive in Georgia, the AJC analysis found. That’s about 0.2% of the state’s adult population. About 640,000 Americans alive last year were World War II-era veterans, the census data estimated, either having served in the World War II period only or continuing their service into the Korean War or Vietnam War eras.
The census data is taken from the American Community Survey, a questionnaire sent each year to millions of Americans. The veteran status each person reports to the ACS is not independently verified against actual military service records. Meanwhile, the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics, part of the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, had a significantly bleaker view than the Census Bureau — it estimated just 240,000 living World War II-era vets nationally as of this past September. The center estimated there will be less than 100,000 living WWII-era vets nationwide three years from now, and that there will be none left alive by 2044 — which will be 103 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor and 99 years after the surrender of Japan.
Compiled by Data Specialist Jennifer Peebles
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