{"id":21162,"date":"2010-11-13T04:22:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-13T08:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=21162"},"modified":"2010-11-13T04:27:02","modified_gmt":"2010-11-13T08:27:02","slug":"tale-of-two-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=21162","title":{"rendered":"Tale of two wars."},"content":{"rendered":"

Found this story on NPR about a solider that fought in WW2 and Korea<\/a>. It would not be such a abnormal thing until you learn that he fought in the German Army in WW2 and the US Army in Korea.<\/p>\n

When Welzel was 2 years old, his father got a job that took the family from Ohio back to Germany, where they had emigrated from before the war.<\/p>\n

Young Hank Welzel became young Heinrich. He grew up under the Nazi regime, complete with a requisite membership in the Hitler Youth. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because of his past he never told anyone because of what might happen. <\/p>\n

\n“You had to consider yourself a German if you wanted to stay alive. … You had to play the game,” Welzel says.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 10, 1944, just shy of his 18th birthday, Welzel was captured on a hill north of Florence, Italy. Soon afterward, an American officer who spoke perfect German began to interrogate him.<\/p>\n

“Should I tell him I was born in the United States or shouldn’t I?” Welzel thought to himself.<\/p>\n

“The next guy was like sittin’ 10 feet over \u2014 the next German soldier, waiting for his turn and, you didn’t know who to trust,” Welzel recalls. “I never told anybody that I was an American citizen by birth. That was my secret. It was my highest secret, so I didn’t dare tell him.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He served as a Medic in both wars, it does not say what awards that he might have gotten in the German Army, but he recived a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart in Korea. Then he went on to deal with what we now call PTSD and the fact that he was not sure who to trust with his past given of how people might change the way that they looked\/treated him.<\/p>\n

Welzel finally sought help in the early 1990s for what was diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. He has not fully come to terms with his war experiences yet, but after a life spent keeping his past a secret, he has found the best therapy is to open up and discuss what he has been through.<\/p>\n

Today, Welzel and his wife live in Freeport, Maine, in a house he built. He helps his son with a lilac nursery business and keeps himself busy building benches from reclaimed lumber and selling them at farmers markets. At 84, he says his goal is to get to 100.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A interesting story to say the least. Also about the German units, in a book I was reading about the Gro\u00dfdeutschland<\/a> the Allied troops divided German units into “White” and “BlacK” units based on how they conducted themselves in the war. The Gro\u00dfdeutschland was considered one of these “White” units. Also there seemed to be a act that allowed the wear of German military awards that were “De-Nazied” in 1957<\/a> that would show that regardless of what the Nazis did that individual bravery would still be honored. Which would directly relate to the person in the story. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Found this story on NPR about a solider that fought in WW2 and Korea. It would … Tale of two wars.<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}