JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
Bill Warrick of Rancho Bernardo, a World War II veteran of the 16th Armored Division, grabbed a snack yesterday at the House of Czech and Slo- vak Republics in Balboa Park. |
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To this day, the men are thanked for their bravery, their commitment, their service.
It has been 62 years, but it might as well be yesterday.
A grateful group of people of Czechoslovakian heritage gathered in Balboa Park yesterday at the House of Czech and Slovak Republics to host the men who liberated their nation in the waning days of World War II.
“Everywhere we go, the local Czech community has been very supportive of us,” said Bill Warrick, 81, a Rancho Bernardo resident and veteran of the 16th Armored Division, which is holding its reunion in San Diego this week.
Warrick had made a call to the Czech and Slovak House to see if its members had any interest in visiting with his group for a bit. The veterans try to contact Czech community leaders in every place they hold their reunions.
The answer: You bet.
The president of the house, Carl Tatina, was born in Chicago, not the former Czechoslovakia. But the soldiers' actions are well-known and still appreciated by people of Czech descent, he said.
“Their May 6 is like our Fourth of July,” said Erik Peterson, 87, another of the veterans, speaking of the day the U.S. Army rolled into the city of Pilsen, ending the Nazi occupation there.
The 16th Armored Division – part of Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army – helped clear out the remaining German soldiers to secure the city. There were anxious battle moments, mixed with wild celebration.
The war ended two days later. Peterson, a tank driver, remembers waking up the next morning to find more than 100 Czech women greeting his unit, which was camped just outside Pilsen. They held trays full of food: ham and eggs, biscuits, apple juice. One gently washed his face and hands.
Almost every year for the past 17 years, the Shelton, Wash., resident has gone back to Pilsen to take part in the annual celebration of the liberation.
“They treat me like royalty,” Peterson said.
They're old men now, but their eyes still gleam when they recall how they were greeted in Pilsen. They're still amazed at the way the residents, finally freed from tyranny, reacted.
Veny Vlasak is a Czech immigrant who attended yesterday's event. The San Jose man, who has a daughter in San Diego, grew up in Pilsen.
For years, Vlasak said, the Communist government that ruled Czechoslovakia after the war suppressed what the American soldiers had done. Schoolchildren were taught that it was Russian soldiers dressed in American uniforms who had liberated Pilsen, or they were told the Russians had arrived first.
But the people knew better, he said. Vlasak said his grandmother told him what the Americans had done.
Communist rule ended in 1989, and the people wasted no time in honoring the Americans and the liberation. The first of many celebrations was held in 1990 in what's now the Czech Republic.
Eugene Elke, 83, of New Braunfels, Texas, has returned to Pilsen six times. On one visit, two women in their 60s wanted to meet him. It turned out he had signed a card for their mother at the time of the liberation, and they still treasured it.
“I signed it again,” Elke said.
Ira Hall, an 81-year-old veteran from San Jacinto, remembers being followed by a woman who kept shouting his name. It turned out she was the daughter of schoolteachers he had befriended at the time. He had given the family food, and had playfully tugged at her pigtails.
“She told me, 'For 60 years, I remember your name.' ”
George Thompson, 83, of Prescott, Ariz., sits in a wheelchair today.
And when he has gone back to Pilsen, how was the former tank mechanic treated?
“Like a rock star,” he said, beaming.
Michael Stetz: (619) 293-1720; michael.stetz@uniontrib.com
