BELLOWS FALLS — My dad, Steven J. Michniewicz, was born in Bellows Falls. Except for his tenure of service in the U.S. Army during World War II, he spent all of his 85-year life there. He didn't talk about being in the war at all, until his last few years, when he started to share some with my sisters and me.
At one point during the war, he and his fellow troops were stationed on a boat – for a month, I believe - awaiting the next action.
They played lots of poker, and my dad (the quintessential taciturn Vermonter with the poker face) won so many times that he was able to send enough money back to build himself a home upon his return from the war. I grew up in that house; he died in it.
They sailed to England for a period of training at the base in Glatton, and then he was in Africa - Algiers, I believe. He was in the Army Corps of Engineers, and he worked on building landing airstrips, among other things. There, they fought the Germans. Afterward, they moved into Italy. Toward the war's end, they were in France.
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One day, my dad and his buddy discussed having a meal made of the tomatoes in a French field, combined with another food. My dad went for one item; the other fellow who went to get the tomatoes stepped on a landmine. Gone.
In France, a German fighter plane came bearing down on my dad and his colleagues in an open field. Perhaps just a month earlier, they would have been machine-gunned down by the plane. But it was so late in the war that the pilot knew it was over, and after zooming down toward them, he tipped his wings to either side and flew off, leaving the servicemen unharmed.
My dad died in 2005. These photos only begin to hint at the hardship he endured, and they don't at all speak to the horror and suffering that war brings.