With more than a dozen “honor flights” of war veterans to Washington D.C. scheduled throughout the summer this year, one 100-year-old World War II veteran says the flight he took in the spring put a check mark on his “bucket list.”
On a Saturday morning in late April Freddie Stachoviak was one of the 114 veterans on the “Mission #79” flight out of 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.
Very few are left, the organizers of the honor flights say.
Honor Flight Network is a non-profit program dedicated to transporting United States military veterans to Washington, DC, to visit the memorials dedicated to their service, at no cost to the vets.
More than 317,000 veterans have been honored this way since the organization’s founding in 2005, departing from cities around the country, according to the nonprofit’s website.
World War II is a chapter in Stachoviak’s life he remembers well, though he would rather keep it to himself, he said in an interview with Milwaukee’s Fox 6. He humbly told the affiliate he didn’t think it was “very interesting.”
Seated next to his great-grandson on the steps of the WWII Memorial in Washington, DC, the veteran did open up to the Fox reporter about his three years of service as an army medic in the European theater.
“The Milwaukee native landed in Normandy shortly after D-Day in fall 1944. From there, he was sent to Arlon, Belgium, just in time for the largest, deadliest conflict yet – the Battle of the Bulge,” Fox6 chronicled.
He was barely 20 years old.
Stachoviak said as a medic he and others transported casualties on the battlefield to a makeshift medical facility.
“I think it was a converted school, and they turned it into a hospital,” he recalled. “And we took the patients out of the ambulance and into the wards.”
He continued, “One time we went into the rooms there and the fellow couldn’t feel his leg. He said he didn’t have any feeling in there. Guess what? They had to cut it off.” The patient apparently didn’t realize it yet.
When asked how as young person he could process those images, he said you can’t.
“You just try to forget it and think to yourself how lucky you were,” he said.
“I think he’s always thought that his job wasn’t important because he wasn’t in the battles, he wasn’t getting shot at,” his great grandson Nick Stachoviak told the affiliate. “But if he wasn’t bringing people in, they weren’t getting treated, and they were going to die.”
Many veterans humbly see their part in the war as insignificant, which keeps some of them from accepting the distinction of the honor flights, as they don’t believe they deserve it, Karyn Roelke told Fox6. Roelke is president of Stars and Stripes Honor Flight.
“Any contribution when you leave home and serve your country is significant,” she said.
Those wishing to take honor flights, learn their schedules, or volunteer for the program can find a local hub and more information on the organization’s website.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more. His late father Lowell was an aeronautical engineer who helped design American bombers that flew in WWII.
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