Parma Heights World War II Veteran

Recalls Guarding German POWs

Published: Saturday, October 15, 2011, 3:16 PM Updated: Sunday, October 16, 2011, 12:36 AM

By Brian Albrecht

Forwarded by Tom Farley, Mansfield, Ohio

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/10/vet_recalls_duty_as_german_pow.html

           "There are no ordinary lives," said Ken Burns of those who served in a global cataclysm so momentous that the filmmaker simply entitled his 2007 documentary "The War."

          Many who served in so many different ways during World War II are gone now.

          Some took their stories with them.

          But not this one.

          Funny how people can get along when they're not shooting at each other.

          The realization struck Ted Lesniak not long after he started guarding German soldiers at a POW camp in Georgia during World War II.

          More than 400,000 Axis prisoners were shipped to some 500 POW facilities in the U.S. from 1942-1945. Many were put to work in factories and farm fields, receiving minimal pay (as per protocols of the Geneva Convention).

          Lesniak, now 85, of Parma Heights, was drafted right after graduating from East Tech High School in 1944.

"I was the angry guy in basic training," he recalled. "We all reached the conclusion it was either kill or be killed. That was the bottom line."

          So when he arrived at Camp Wheeler, Ga., he initially had more than a few misgivings about guarding some 2,000 German Afrika Korps soldiers who had been captured in 1943.

          Actually, a more accurate description of his role was protecting, rather than guarding, Lesniak said. "You were there to protect them from crazy civilians if somebody wanted to come and kill a Nazi," he explained.

          Most of his job involved watching over POWs who'd volunteered to work in local farm fields. The nation faced a labor shortage due to the war, and "the farmers just loved them to death, they were such good workers," Lesniak said.

          "The remarkable thing was that they all knew what to do. I didn't have to do anything. Just stay out of the way," he added.

          Lesniak recalled spending much of his supervision time in a truck cab -- reading, writing letters or sleeping -- as the POWs worked. He stuck his carbine ammo in his pocket and left instructions to be awakened if anyone saw another Army vehicle approaching.

There was never an escape attempt. As an English-speaking POW told Lesniak, "We're not going anywhere. We're not going to swim across the ocean to go home."

          Lesniak said the POWs got $1 a day for their work, and spent the money on cigarettes, recreational equipment, musical instruments and anything else that helped pass the time in camp.

          Though imprisoned, the Germans maintained strict military discipline; marching wherever they went, and snapping off stiff-armed Sieg Heil salutes during soccer games. Lesniak said they saw the GIs as too casual, which they regarded as a character flaw of all Americans.

          In conversations with the POWs, Lesniak said they'd hash over strategies of the war.

          The Germans steadfastly believed they were going to win, to the point where they'd quiz him about his hometown; asking for geographic, manufacturing and other details.

          "It was like, 'If we ever take over, we'll want to know these things,' " Lesniak recalled with a grin.

          The actual situation at the front hit home when a group of several hundred German POWS who had been captured in the waning months of the war, arrived at the camp.

          Lesniak remembered them as being the last-ditch remnants of the German army -- either very young or very old, beaten, battered, half-starved, "looking like hell" and smelling even worse.

          When confronted with the typical culinary largesse of a GI mess hall, these newcomers who'd just been given hot showers and fresh clothing, broke down in tears, according to Lesniak. One prisoner shouted, "Are we in heaven, or what?" he said.

          He recalled that when Germany surrendered, the Afrika Korps soldiers volunteered "to a man" to fight with Americans against Japan.

          Lesniak said the camp commander called the POWs together and told them: "To fight for America is a privilege. The privilege is granted to citizens only. You guys are not citizens, therefore you can not fight for America."

          The Germans were indignant, Lesniak recalled. "They said, 'We're the best soldiers in the world, and you're going to turn us down?'"

          But soon afterwards, Lesniak said many of the POWs were asking him about how they could become American citizens.

Come time for the POWs to go back to Germany -- and many didn't want to return to their war-ravaged nation -- "it was sad, in a way," Lesniak said.

          When the former guard returned to Cleveland, he brought home a wooden suitcase made for him by one of the POWs using materials purloined from various work sites -- a common practice, as guards looked the other way.

          Lesniak had the suitcase when he went to Bowling Green State University and earned a math degree and a master's degree in counseling.

          He kept it while he worked as a math teacher in Beavercreek, Ohio, then as a school counselor at Cuyahoga Community College and Parma High School before retiring.

          His children -- three sons and two daughters that he and his wife, Helen, raised -- played with that now-battered wooden case.

And these days, when he pulls it out and remembers, Lesniak realizes that those who had to battle the Germans or lost loved ones in the war might not appreciate the sentimental attachment packed in that suitcase.

          He knows how the dark memories can linger. One of his brothers served in the Marines during the war and always refused to talk about the experience -- except once, after a few drinks, when he remembered the days he spent on Iwo Jima, trapped under enemy fire in a foxhole with a dead buddy.

          But to Lesniak, the war also represented a time when enemies could peacefully co-exist; perhaps not as friends, but as fellow soldiers.

          As he said, "Once you got to know them, they became people, just like you and me."