News-Info-Alerts

Re: WW II Memories

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: November 12, 2002

"WWII vet recounts days as POW

BY FRED BATISTE, Daily Star Staff Writer

Joseph Frindik's experiences as a soldier and prisoner of war during World War II still brings laughter and tears to the 82-year-old Live Oak Village resident and Albany native.

"What I've been telling you, you'll never hear it on television," he said, adding he has seen the 106th Infantry Division on television and actually saw himself on documentary programs.

Drafted three months after his brother, John, Frindik was 22 years old when he was sent to Fort Knox, Ky., for basic training. He said the funny thing about that assignment was that his brother had also finished basic training earlier at the fort and they placed him in the same barracks his brother had moved out of.

"Of course my brother was a gambler. On pay day he'd win all the money from the sergeants and officers," Frindik said with a laugh, adding people often mistook them for twins.

He recalled instances during basic training with officers mistaking him for his brother.

"Frindik, we got a problem. What in the hell makes you think you can come back and take basic training over again?" the sergeant asked him.

"Look, I'm not the same one," Frindik replied.

In another instance, the captain in charge of the training division told him they did not want him to come back for he gave them enough trouble. Frindik lobbied his case, saying they had him confused with his brother.

Joseph finished basic training and later completed instructor and gunnery school, finishing with the highest score on the final exam in both.

In 1942, Frindik was transferred from Fort Knox to Camp Campbell, Ky. He said no one knew what he was supposed to do at his new station, so he was put on permanent guard duty. He took it upon himself to call the post locator to find out what he was supposed to be doing at Camp Campbell.

"I'd like to get together with Joe Frindik. I understand he is at this base," he said.

The post locator said she had no one at the base by that name and asked him if he was sure he knew what he was talking about.

"I said, 'Of course, I do,'" he said. "She asked 'Who are you?' I said 'I'm Joe Frindik. I'm trying to find out where I'm supposed to be.'"

Frindik became a tank commander in the newly formed 20th Armored Division before the Army Air Corps came calling for fighter pilots.

They were getting ready for their invasion of Europe and they robbed the Army for all of the intellectual ones, Frindik said. He took an Air Force-administered exam and made a high score.

He was sent from Camp Campbell to Miami Beach, Fla., for additional physical and mental testing. The Army Air Corps, which eventually became the U.S. Air Force, sent Frindik and other training pilots back to their ground forces after officials realized they were training too many pilots.

He returned as an infantry squad leader with a heavy machine gun squad and trained with the premise that they were going to be sent to the Pacific Theatre to fight the Japanese. However, he was sent to New Brunswick, N.J., to be sent to Europe.

Frindik recalled the scene of being on the Atlantic Ocean as he was heading to Europe.

All he could see was convoys of troop ships and battleships, he said.

He made it to England and began to train for the D-Day invasion in 1944. He did not make it to the invasion, for his regiment could not cross the English Channel due to rough water.

Four days later, his regiment went across the Channel and later proceeded up the Seine River. They started chasing German forces, but they kept running out of ammunition chasing their retreating foes.

Now attached to the 106th Infantry Division, Frindik entered Belgium. Little did he know he was on the doorstep of one of the second World War's bloodiest war scenes and site of the Battle of the Bulge, the forested Ardennes region.

His regiment sent out patrols and found the Germans in the Ardennes in December 1944. Commanders instructed them to attack the Germans. The first battalion began fighting on Dec. 10 and were wiped out two days later, he said.

Frindik's squadron was told to prepare to fight. As they approached the front, they came across a fallen soldier with a hole in his head and his steel helmet nearby.

"That scared the dickens out of us," he said.

The Germans kept shelling Allied forces, ripping them to pieces, he said. He was knocked out and suffered a broken leg from the impact of a nearby concussion shell. A German commander gave them a 10-count to surrender or be killed. They subsequently surrendered and were marched 90 miles to awaiting trains.

The trains to the prison camp had 100 captured soldiers in it with no bathroom facilities and kept them their for 12 days, he said. Their captors gave them soup and water.

"You can imagine how the place was smelling with no bathroom," he said.

Last week Frindik pulled a piece of paper folded in his shirt pocket. It was a copy of telegrams sent to his parents from the Army. One portion of the page, dated January 1945, stated Frindik was missing in action while the other portion, dated April 1945, informed his family he was a prisoner of war.

They arrived at the prison camp 12 days later. The German officer in charge told Frindik that the Americans were on the wrong side of the war and they were going to have a cold war with the Russians after they defeat the Germans.

He estimated hundreds of prisoners of war were killed during Allied air raids of the prison camp. A concussion shell hit the prison barrack he was in and caused the roof to come down, injuring his spine and knocking him unconscious.

"We made a joke that the Air Corps was our worst enemy," he said.

When captured, Frindik estimated he weighed 175 pounds. By the time he and fellow prisoners of war were freed in spring 1945, he was so skinny he could have play music on his ribs, he said. His foot was blackened by frostbite from the cold. He also recalled when a soldier had his toes amputated by a captured Russian doctor in the camp with no anesthesia.

Allied forces later freed the prisoners of war and secured an airport to get them to safety. Frindik remembered a joking comment an English officer made to them as they boarded.

"OK sick, lame and lazy get on the plane," he remembered the officer saying.

They were sent to Camp Lucky Strike in France for six weeks before being sent back to the United States. The soldiers had to be fed intravenously because their shriveled stomachs could not hold food, he said.

They wanted to fatten us up before we went home, he said.

©The Daily Star 2002 "