Author Spotlight: Jim Wilsky Writes About World War II and Friendship

Jim J. Wilsky of Writing Wrongs answers the call for World War II stories in honor of the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

Welcome to another Author Spotlight! This month I’m pleased to feature Jim J. Wilsky of Writing Wrongs, who answered the call for family stories of World War II. I know you’ll enjoy this post about his father and his best friend. Jim is a crime writer who also writes fantastic historical fiction short stories and happens to be one of the better interviewers on Substack. Definitely check out his Author Insights posts for the interviews and to discover great writers.

I watched the ceremony in France honoring the few remaining veterans from the D-Day Invasion on June 6, 1944, and I was moved to tears more than once, just like the story of Skee and Hatch moves me. We owe these men our deepest debt of gratitude.

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Two Farm Boys

Normally I write fiction but this story is true. This is a very condensed non-fictional story that could easily be a full-length novel. It is already written in my head. Fully documented in my memory. Memories that are supported by well-remembered firsthand conversations and private discussions. Maybe someday I will write it, but it is intensely personal, and I fear that I wouldn’t do it justice, or convey the message it deserves.

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They were the best of friends, the two of them. Skee and Hatch, those were nicknames that they would later have bestowed upon them but in truth they were probably always meant to be named that. If you knew them as I did, the names somehow fit them like a glove.

They grew up in during the Great Depression, a period of worldwide economic hardship that lasted roughly from 1929 to 1939. Skee and Hatch lived through it like only the young can. They were both serious, earnest, hardworking and athletic but at the same time withdrawn and somewhat uncomfortable in any large social settings or gatherings. The hardscrabble times they spent their adolescent youth in were equal parts challenging, desperate and soul crushing but they made do with what they had. Perseverance was a must. It was one commodity that there was an abundant supply of.

Skee was the son of a Polish immigrant parents. His father was a bricklayer by trade as so many Poles were, but he had saved and scraped to buy three acres of farmland outside of a small midwestern rural town. Hatch was the son of a farmer who owned a very small family farm, in operation dating back to the mid 1800’s. If not in school, they would be working more times than not. In the rare times they were not working, they might be fishing or hunting and most likely barefoot and dirty. But grinning all the while. As the Great Depression marched on, so the boys grew into young men. Lacking the entertainment options of today, they played every organized sport available, or entertained themselves with the creativity born from imagination and fueled by having no money.

Then the outside world stepped in, stopped everything and changed things forever, not just for those two boys but for the entire globe. Like millions of others worldwide, they would be swept up into an unimaginable catastrophe and an even harder struggle. Skee and Hatch could not have possibly seen or comprehended what would be.

World War Two began with Hitler taking power in Germany and blitzkrieging his way across Europe and beyond. The dark and ominous clouds were forming of the terrible approaching storm. Hitler went unchecked for several years and America was not directly involved until the surprise aerial attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, December 7th , 1941 – “The Day of Infamy”. The United States immediately declared war on Japan. The Axis powers consisting of Germany, Japan and Italy would soon be formed and the nightmare would not end until the Japanese formally surrendered aboard the U.S.S. Portland at Truk Atoll, on the 2nd of September, 1945.

The war had raged on almost every continent in the world for six years. People now don’t seem able or willing to grasp the scope and reach of this horrible global conflict, a conflict that has no equals before or since. The sobering statistics are inconceivable and unimaginable. It is estimated that the total number of people who perished, whether military or civilian - whether in battle, disease, famine, outright barbarism or just sheer slaughter was anywhere from 70-85 million people. When you have an estimated range of 15 million, it should strike home the fact that the world had suffered through a cataclysm like no other.

To choose a conservative number, think about 80 million deaths. Let that sink into the modern, sensible and sensitive mind. 80 million. This includes the confirmed deaths of at least 6 million Jews who were systematically exterminated by the Nazis. The leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin and an ally of the U.S. and Britain, would go on to far exceed the genocidal total that Hitler committed on his own people during and after the war. The current bastardization of the all-too loosely used words like Nazi and Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing or even Whatever Means Necessary are ignorant to facts, uninformed in terms of real history, and disgraceful to those who know the true meanings.

So, when the world began to slide down into the hell that waited, when the world exploded, Hatch had just graduated high school and Skee was still a high school senior. The impending storm had started, and they both decided to enlist, along with another high school buddy named Art Toros. (NB: If my father was still alive, he would have absolutely demanded that I mention Toros). He would later be killed in action against the Japanese on the Tarawa Atoll, Betio to be specific. He was just one KIA of almost 1,000 Marines who died on that tiny piece of well-fortified heavily defended valuable real estate.

The boys, and they were still just boys, for the first time in their young lives would soon part ways. Skee managed to slip through the wide-open cracks in the system’s age requirements for enlistment. Hatch had always wanted to be an Army Ranger. He was a born risk taker, always jumping off of things. Skee and Toros had always dreamed of being Marines. They loved the history, values and traditions of the Marine Corps. So, off they went in two different directions but with a common goal. They would say later that they never expected to see each other again.

Skee

Herschel J. “Skee” Wilsky

Skee did indeed join the Marine Corps and after boot camp sailed off on an old, refitted passenger liner whose destination was the Pacific Theater of war, specifically, a forward base in Samoa. From there, he and his Marine brothers made an amphibious landing on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island chain. There started a grueling and extended 6-month campaign against the Japanese. The island was constantly reinforced by the Japanese. The naval superiority of the surrounding sea was up for grabs. The jungle and mountainous landscape, extremely low supplies, along with the tropical environment took its toll on both sides.

Having survived the entire 6-month campaign that ended in victory and suffering from malaria as well as yellow jaundice, Skee along with other 2nd Division Marines were sent to New Zealand first, and then stateside. Barney Ross, the middle weight boxing champion of the world at that time who had enlisted in the Marines as well, was also on Guadalcanal. When he returned to his hometown of Chicago, he was besieged by the press wanting to know of his exploits and a resulting series of articles ran in the Chicago Herald received world-wide acclaim. To many people’s amazement, Ross could not stop talking about a fellow Marine who had been highly decorated for extreme valor and bravery. In one newspaper clipping Ross was quoted as saying in part, “He was a shrimp sized fellow, quiet and one who always kept to himself. I still don’t know his real name, just a country boy from the Midwest. He was a one-man army though. Expert rifleman and a crack shot. A man of controlled rage and superior fighting spirit. He was the best we had.” Many more comments were made by Ross about the man everybody called Skee.

Hatch

As his buddy had done in the Marine Corps, Hatch fulfilled his dream. He became an Army Ranger and a paratrooper. Little did he know that he would become a key part of the largest invasion force the world would ever see. Operation Overlord or better known as D-Day, the Normandy invasion would ultimately spell the end of Hitler and the Nazis.

The night before D-Day, Hatch and his fellow Army Rangers boarded planes and gliders that would fly through the night skies, headed for the French countryside. In the total darkness and inundated with anti-aircraft fire filling the air, they jumped. Jumped into the dark void, behind the enemy lines and the terrible beachhead that would soon go down in history. Drop zones were missed, men were shot before they landed, jumps were made at too low of an altitude, and planes full of men were lost before being able to perform their drops. Once on the ground, the rest of the night would be the longest of their short lives. Many were not sure of their locations and could not find their rally points. Small groups roamed and found other units, joining together.

As for Hatch, he landed in a dark sodden field with only one other paratrooper nearby. The two began a silent but frantic search for others in his unit, or any unit. The night wore on, their numbers slowly grew and then culminated when they stumbled onto the small town of Sainte-Mère-Église. They joined the fight that had already begun. This town would become widely known, due to a paratrooper named John Steele, who’s chute had become entangled on a church steeple. Hatch would survive D-day and several more months in France as the Allies retook the country. He would go on to participate in the disastrous Operation Market Garden dropping deep into Nazi occupied Netherlands. He would survive that as well.

Life After the War

Those boys, now men, reunited back in their hometown in late 1945 after the war concluded. They were the lucky ones, but sometimes privately contemplated that luck, when remembering friends and buddies who did not survive. They were not ashamed of their wartime actions, instead viewed it as doing what had to be done. To rid their country – and the world – of the true evils that had existed and threatened all people. To survive. To win. When they did that, their nature was to try and move forward, flourish the best they could and not let the past dictate the future.

They were both somewhat blunt, very matter of fact and uncompromisingly straightforward as was the case with many of that generation. Their entire lives up to that point had made them who they were. So they chose to simply, which was of course not simple at all, pick up things where they had left them four years earlier. They enjoyed each other’s company more than ever and their wives became close friends.

Families were begun, careers were undertaken, and life resumed. Skee and Hatch would never attain great wealth in monetary terms, but they lived productive, rich lives in terms of what ultimately matters. My sister and I were the lucky ones too. We had been given life and raised by a father and mother who had been tempered by trying times and formed with all that included. They knew and passed along to us the knowledge of what life would entail; the hope we needed to always have and the despair that would sometimes visit us, the hardships that everyone endures and the better times we should appreciate.

The Final Salute

Many years later, on the overcast and chilly day of my father’s burial there was a small contingent of young Marines who carried out an honorary gun salute. It was a very small quiet cemetery, almost eerily quiet and when the volley was fired in that quiet setting, it seemed to amplify the sound and emphasize the end. Afterwards, an old and stiff Army Ranger slowly gathered the spent cartridges and placed them in a small box.

He walked over to me with a slow gait and handed me the box with the saddest smile that I have ever seen, or ever will. I solemnly nodded to Hatch and stared into his faded blue eyes, once bright and azure, now almost void of color. They held visions and memories of the past. I felt in that moment that I glimpsed those visions too. Those eyes of his had seen the very best of a life full lived and the true bond of a lifelong friendship, but they had also witnessed the pain, fear and sorrow of men in the very worst of times.

Hatch started to walk away but then stopped and faced me again. His face hardened but his chin faltered, only momentarily. He seemed to gather himself again and his back straightened. His chest expanded. He snapped off a crisp salute, then did a perfect turn to face Skee’s casket and saluted again.

A week or so later, Hatch visited my mother to check up on her, to see how she was doing. She said that it was clear to her that he was even more frail than he had been a week earlier and that his time might be nearing. She also told me that he had brought a big box with him. Inside were a pair of his old paratrooper boots and he asked that they be given to me, the next time I came home for a visit. A month later, he was gone too. I still have those boots and occasionally when I pull them out to look at them, I imagine where they had been, the dangerous lands they had traversed and the dark miles they had traveled.

“Skee” Wilske, middle row first on the right