News-Info-Alerts

Re: The Christmas Miracle

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: December 24, 2002

"For 57 years, a former prisoner of war searched for the man who saved his life. Now he's finally getting a chance to say thanks. And he didn't have to go far at all.

By CHARITY VOGEL
News Staff Reporter

Francis Heimiller always knew he owed the mysterious American soldier his life.

But for 57 years, he was never able to say thank you.

This Christmas, all that has changed.

Here's the story of how Heimiller and his lifesaver, another Army Air Forces veteran named Eugene Kulczyk, found each other this month in the most unlikely of places:

Their own hometown.

It was March 1945. Heimiller, a 21-year-old Army Air Forces gunner from Swormville, was lying in a filthy barn somewhere in the vast open farmlands between Danzig and Berlin.

German guards were telling Heimiller, who was a prisoner of war, to move. The prisoners were being forced to march by the German army, which was retreating before the advancing Allies. But Heimiller couldn't budge.

He had hurt his spine falling out of his B-17 bomber when it was hit by enemy fire over Germany, and the pain when he tried to stand up was excruciating. Heimiller decided he would just lie in the barn, and if the Germans killed him - as they often did, when prisoners wouldn't get up and march - well, then that would be the end.

Just then, an American soldier walked up, pushing a little wooden wagon.

The stranger loaded Heimiller onto the wagon, over his protests. When Heimiller tried to shove him away, crying out in pain, the man picked up a wooden stick and threatened Heimiller with it.

"I was ready to give up, but he wasn't," Heimiller remembers. "And he never did give up, either."

For two months and one week - time, to prisoners, tends to be very specific - the stranger, 24-year-old Kulczyk, pushed and pulled Heimiller in the little wagon.

With the straggling train of American prisoners, the two men walked for miles under German guard. They traveled through open fields and down cobblestone roads. They crossed the Elbe River three times. At night, they slept out in the open, or in barns they happened to pass along the way.

As they walked, the two men spoke to each other - but not of home. Beyond exchanging names and swapping military talk, they never discussed their backgrounds.

Instead, they talked about a favorite subject of prisoners of war: food.

Being an American prisoner of war in World War II meant slow starvation. Heimiller, who weighed about 180 pounds when he entered the Army Air Forces, lost 70 pounds while he was a prisoner. Kulczyk was down to a mere 80 to 90 pounds by the time the war ended.

"He talked about one thing, potato pancakes. He was telling me how to cook them and everything," recalls Heimiller, smiling at the memory. "Finally I said to him, "Shut up.' "

On the evening of May 14, the group of prisoners was locked in a barn out in the open countryside. As they slept, their German captors stole away.

The next day a group of British soldiers unlocked the barn door and liberated the starving American men.

"They said, "Hey, Yanks, the war is over,' " said Kulczyk, who was a flight engineer in the 15th Air Force, 783rd Squadron, 465th Bomb Group.

After that day, Heimiller and Kulczyk lost track of each other. They came home to the United States and focused on living normal, happy lives.

Heimiller, now 79, worked for Curtiss-Wright Corp. and then for Continental Can. He and his wife, Lila, have been married for 47 years; they raised two children.

Buffalo native Kulczyk, now 82, worked for Bell Aircraft and then Ford Motor Co. He married his wife, the former Mary Michalak, just months after being liberated - on Oct. 6, 1945. The couple has eight children and many grandchildren.

But something was always missing, especially for Heimiller, who served in the 8th Air Force, 94th Group.

He was on a quest, for decades, to find and thank the man who saved his life. He checked phone books but somehow had no luck. Whenever he would meet another ex-POW or Army Air Forces veteran, he would ask one question: Do you know a man named Eugene Kulczyk?

For 57 years, no one did.

Then, this month, Heimiller joined a discussion group for former POWs at the Department of Veterans Affairs service office on Main Street. When he stood before the group to introduce himself, he finished with the question he was beginning to lose hope that anyone would ever answer:

Does anyone here know a man named Eugene Kulczyk?

Every head in the room turned to look at Kulczyk, who was sitting in the corner.

And both men began to cry.

"I was stunned and dumbfounded when he started coming across the room," said Kulczyk, a man of few words and restrained emotions. Of his actions back in 1945, he said: "I couldn't leave him. You don't think about things being hard - you just do them."

"It put tears in my eyes," said a former POW who witnessed the reunion, Edwin Grzywa, who spent 14 months as a prisoner of the German army.

"It makes me very emotional," added another onlooker, Robert MacPherson, who was a POW for six months in Germany.

But the moment was most meaningful for Heimiller, who finds himself, in 2002, thanking the man who saved his life 57 years ago.

"All I could think of was Jesus carrying the cross, and I was his cross," said Heimiller. "I was never so proud of my country in all my life."

e-mail: cvogel@buffnews.com
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