Annony Mouse's Link
Meet The Polish Resistance Leader Who Voluntarily Entered Auschwitz To First Expose Its Horrors To The World
By Erin Kelly
The story of how Witold Pilecki volunteered to enter Auschwitz, exposed its horrors to the world, and then actually managed to escape. (see link)
Salagi's Link
Roy Hopper is another that recently passed. The article is from a few years back. He was a POW but escaped. He was in school with my father before he was drafted during his junior year. The College of the Ozarks (School of the Ozarks back then), even wrote and presented a play about his life.
So many we don't remember the stories about or never heard of the heroic things they did for others.
‘Things have gone my way’ BY CHARLES D. BRUNT / JOURNAL EDITORIAL WRITER Thursday, December 11th, 2014 at 12:05am
Roy Hopper, center, is applauded by friends at his 90th birthday party last Friday. Hopper, whose Army unit landed at Utah Beach a week after D-Day, was captured a few weeks later and held for nine months in a German POW camp before escaping. The Arkansas native built a successful commercial construction company in Albuquerque before retiring. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Roy Hopper has seen a thing or two in the past 90 years. There were the nine months he spent in a German prisoner of war camp; a Kansas tornado; the death of the love of his life; the onset of multiple sclerosis; a broken hip last May; and the theft of his military medals.
But the good things in life always outweighed the bad, he said, which likely explains his sunny outlook, subtle wit and ready laugh. Hopper’s friends gathered at his home last Friday to celebrate his 90th birthday, presenting him with a new flagpole and U.S. and POW flags. “Oh, it was something,” Hopper said.
“Staying positive and avoiding the negative are pillars of Roy’s life,” said Andy Stone, an Afghanistan war veteran who, along with a cadre of volunteers, helps Hopper live as independently as possible.
Roy Hopper joined the Army in September 1943.
Stone, who got to know Hopper through Northeast Church of Christ, helped his friend after the then-octogenarian suffered a broken hip. While hospitalized, burglars ransacked Hopper’s home, making off with some cash, guns and the medals he received for his service in World War II – including two Bronze Stars. The loss of the medals, friend Lewis Wasson said at the time, was particularly hard on Hopper. Through good police work, the medals were recovered and returned to Hopper two weeks later. He displays the medals proudly, along with photos of him being honored for his military service by retired four-star general and former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former First Lady Laura Bush. The Arkansas farm boy, the second-youngest of seven children, joined the Army in September 1943. Nine months later, his infantry unit landed on Utah Beach, just a week after the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
Hopper’s unit joined the fray as Allied troops fought back well-entrenched German forces, but their luck ran out on July 7, 1944, when he and his three-man mortar team were forced to surrender after becoming surrounded by German soldiers and tanks. Hopper later learned that a fellow Arkansan he had known since boot camp, Dale Hembright, was killed that day.
After nine months at a labor camp – where the 6-foot, 4-inch Hopper often was singled out for latrine-cleaning duty – he and two other soldiers escaped during an Allied bombing raid. After days of making their way through the countryside, the freezing, starving and thirsty trio eventually ran into a group of U.S. soldiers.
After weeks of hospitalization – Hopper’s weight fell to about 95 pounds while imprisoned – he returned home to Arkansas. Making good on a promise he had made to Hembright, Hopper traveled to the young man’s hometown to meet his family – and soon met Hembright’s sister, Barbara. They were married more than 56 years when she passed away in 2001. World War II veteran Roy Hopper’s image appears on the cake friends gave him for his 90th birthday party last Friday. Hopper spent nine months in a German prisoner of war camp before escaping during an Allied air raid.
After the war, and a brief time farming in Kansas, Hopper built a successful commercial construction company in Albuquerque.
“Over the years people have asked me if I was bitter about the war,” Hopper said earlier this week. “I tell them I’m the luckiest guy in the world. Why would I be bitter? I lived through a war where everybody was killing each other. Afterward, I was able to make a living – until my health made me have to quit. All my life, things have gone my way.”
Despite an affinity for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Hopper says he’s always been thin – a key to his longevity, he says.
Another tip to living a long life: “Use your brain,” he said, and stay as active as you can. “These days my legs are pretty worthless, so I don’t dare try to walk,” he said. But he’s a master at navigating his motorized wheelchair and scooter.
“He still cooks his own meals and washes his dishes,” Stone said, adding with a laugh, “He’s even been telling me how I should install the new flagpole.”
(well, here's the story but the pictures didn't copy)
My father never would talk about his WWII experiences. Only after he died did I get access to his war records (orders, letters, etc.). Turned out my dad was more of a bad ass than I ever knew. Army Corps of Engineers officer whose tasks included landing on and clearing beaches before landings in the pacific.
It is a great thing that many of those WWII veterans' stories are now being told before they are lost to a generation of proREgressive historians who look at and teach American history through fecal covered lenses.
Dad is 92, was about to be drafted so he went and joined the Army to keep from going into the Marines. ;) He was somewhere in the middle of the Pacific headed to Japan when Japan surrendered. He spent a year as part of the Army of Occupation in Tokyo. Too many are gone, stories untold.