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In this episode of America’s Veteran Stories, we delve into the profound life and service of George Champa, a courageous World War II veteran. Tune in as George shares his personal experiences from being at the front lines in Normandy to later working with the occupation forces in Germany. Through the harrowing tales of survival and the heavy responsibility of handling fallen comrades, George recounts the untold stories of valor and sacrifice that define our history.
SPEAKER 07 :
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Monson.
SPEAKER 08 :
And welcome to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. And the show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy, France for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings. Returned stateside realizing that we need to know these stories. We need to broadcast them and archive them. Hence, America’s Veterans Stories was born. But we have such a treasure trove of interviews that we thought it might be a great idea to rebroadcast some of these so that you can hear history from the men and women who lived it. And today we’re going to be doing part two with World War II veteran George Champa. George, welcome to the show. So tell us a little bit about yourself, George. I know people can go back and listen to the other show, but just do a quick recap of where you grew up and what you did those first days at D-Day.
SPEAKER 10 :
My name is George Shapa. I’m a World War II veteran. I served in Normandy and five campaigns in France, Belgium, and Germany. I’m 95 years old. Uh, I, uh, the Wooden Graves Illustration Company is not something I wanted to do. I wanted to get the Air Force. The mags were not quite good enough until I was actually, uh, after I was drafted, I was in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And the Air Force was looking for pilots because we were, you know, pretty short on pilots at that time, which was March, 1844, a couple of months before the invasion of Normandy, France. And so they had no guy requirements. And so I took the test and passed, but my company commander wouldn’t let me go. And he just put me in the company because he was irate because I didn’t get his permission. And it was a situation where the guys at the Air Force Base right next to us were looking for pilots and they were recruiting. At that moment, I didn’t think I had to get my company commander’s approval. I just said, yeah, you know, I fought this guy in 2023, but now you lowered the IRA cards to 2030, and so I just took the test. So my company commander transferred me into another unit that was going overseas right away, and they were short one man, and so that was me. And so I went to the Navy, and… On the ship going overseas, the guys are always kidding me because when you’re carrying a chopper, a president said, no 18-year-old gets put on foreign soil, but when you carry a shipper, I’ll take your hand. And so then we arrived in England and we provided our company up. There’s 120 to 150 men and officers, four or five crews at the headquarters. And they sent us in the different directions. And so, we went to Dispo, England, and we were in the 4th platoon. So, while we were there, we didn’t know…unknown to us, if they had selected us, one of our platoons should be in an exercise called Exercise Tiger, right off the coast of England, in preparation for the invasion. And we were on an LFT. There were four LFTs out there in this Exercise Tiger. And… we all the teams were sunk by a German e-boat, and there were almost 800 guys that were killed. Oh my gosh. And so we lost 16 guys, 24 guys of our first platoon, and so that was a big blow to us. And I didn’t think about it at the time, but later I thought, wow, I had a 25% chance of being out there. It says the platoon is out there because there are platoons participating. Of course, a platoon would not be participating if it were a war war. So, I escaped death, and that’d be all. Then, on a ship going over tees, again, we got a big explosion in the middle of the night. There was a German torpedo plane that dropped the torpedo, and maybe going to shut it down before it took the ship to do a huge explosion in the middle of night. So, again, I escaped, yes, but I’m really hit by that torpedo. Then we got in the invasion of France, and, of course, there were like 4,000 ships out there altogether, 10,000, 5,000 ships. And we were on a ship that we were bringing on this troop ship And so we were anchored offshore, broadside to the shore, and the Germans were firing artillery at the ships out there. And we could hear the 88s be moving over our heads. And we were all standing on one side of the ship against the bulk of the ship, like, drifting in the water because of all the weight on that side. We didn’t have a turn to get in the…get on the rope ladder to get down the landing track. So, finally, that finally happened. So, we started in the shore, and we could hear the 88s, and you could see ships getting ripped and exploding, and the tanker exploded, and bodies in the water. And we were going in, and we could hear the 88s going over us. I guess whoever was driving that, I thought at the time, he turned around and went back out, let me see, back in again, back out, and back in again. We went in, but I found out later in the year for it, actually, that the reason we turned around a few times before going in, the guy driving that landing trap was looking to approach the land so he wouldn’t have to wade in the water because the Germans had to… I forget what they call them now, but they were… huge chunks of iron were kept the ships and the landing craft actually going in all the way. So we had to wait for sure. So our job was to gather the dead. There were many paratroopers who were dropped there in error. Paratroopers came down over and they drowned. I remember they were landing below the bodies and wrapping them in their parachutes and We had a detachment separate from us. We were segregated at that time from the Negroes, but we had a service company. They job was to dig a grave like a day and at least one grave a day, but they did that for only days, like two, three days at the most, because we got German prisoners from then on digging the graves. So we initiated 17 temporary commissaries throughout the rest of Belgium and Germany.
SPEAKER 11 :
Wow.
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And it was documented that we buried about 75,000 red Americans and Germans because we handled the German dead, too, because they didn’t. So stop me when my time is up here because I’m trying to talk fast. We’re getting a lead chapter that I did. It’s called 537th Major Extraction Company. So we went through… We went through France, the temporary cemetery in Belgium, and just in Germany. We participated in the Battle of Borg, which was the largest battle the U.S. Army ever fought. And we had 17,000 buried in the temporary cemetery before we moved here in Belgium, not quite in Germany, but we moved from there, and it’s about 17,000 buried there before we moved into Germany. Wow. And then we got into Germany, and they had to be more temporary cemeteries. They ended up in Eisenach, which was 100 miles from Berlin. And that temporary cemetery was disinterred, and the war ended, but Mary H. and none of these… We had the Memorial Day services there during the Assyria for Mary, and all of the bodies had to be disinterred, and they had to re-identify their bodies. They were put on boxes and shipped to Holland and London and buried again in another temporary cemetery where they were until the war ended about two years after the war before they were just returned again from temporary graves and put in a casket. And at that time, which is 1947, a couple years after the war, the Mexican had a prerogative of having a loved one to be married, shipped, the U.S. and private cemeteries that they chose at no charge, they’ll remain there. So these cemeteries over there that have up to 10,000 graves, that only represents 40% of what was there because the other 60% were returned home. But I tell that story a lot because people actually into the cemeteries don’t even realize But that’s the case, and they don’t even realize that there’s no date of birth on the crosses and the stars of David, only the date of death, which is approximately a lot as I know. So I didn’t see that until 50 years after the war, when I went back. My late wife had passed away in 1981. For 10 years, I lived by killing. Then I met the woman I’m married to now in 1991. And so 1994, he and my two kids talked me into going. I had a chance of going back to the 40th anniversary when Reagan was president, but I didn’t want to go back. But 10 years had gone by, 1994, when I became the next president. And they took my kids and my fiancee. So that’s when I realized that there’s no date of birth in the crotches. And that really bothered me a lot when I found out why American Federal Monument Commission that I talked to said that’s the way we’ve been in World War I. And so we just followed World War I. Stupid. Very stupid. Because when people go through the cemetery over there, There’s a number of them, however. There’s about seven in France. There’s two in Belgium. There’s one in Holland. There’s one in Luxembourg. I’ve been to every one of these cemeteries in recent years, except one. You can see them in it. They have no idea how old the soldier was doing still because they didn’t have a date of birth. And so there’s no way it can be changed now because they’re all white marble crosses, marble encoders from Italy, and they’re all engraved. And so there’s no way it can be changed. If something bothered me then and still bothers me now, and I’ve been back there many times Since the 50th anniversary, when I went back the first time, I’ve been back there every five years for the five-year anniversary. Awesome. And a couple of years, about three other years in between. So I’ve made a lot of trips over there because I’ve done films over there. My films are about the icons of freedom. I started doing filming when I was 81 years old in 2006. I’ve done six films. My most recent film is My Laugh. I lived at age 94, and when I was leaving, we were after doing the drama on June 12th. A couple of days after that, I got another birthday on the 95th birthday. So, six documentaries, this one was done. Well, I was doing it, and I couldn’t make it clear, and I thought, The sixth one was done in June of 2019, which is the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. And so I took the governor of D-Day Veterans with me, thanks to American Airlines, who has helped me a lot on my drone, my last four drones, actually. And over there, we had actually 22 people on the airplane. There were seven veterans and their companions, and two American Airlines pilots that I chose to come with me and help with our work over there, and just my mechanic crew and my job. So there were 22 of us on the airplane. And then when we got there, I picked up another three people because I had a shouted death driver, and I had two people who came from Belgium that have been with me on several of my good friends of mine through my trenches.
SPEAKER 08 :
So… Well, and let’s just talk, yeah, let’s just talk just a little bit about that quickly, George Champa. And that is, it’s Let Freedom Ring for All is your website. And if people go… What’s that?
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right. Let Freedom Ring for All. And people can see my website. They can see excerpts of all of my films. I’m very familiar with the introduction and two of my films, and John Boyd gave the introduction on one of my films. And the films, you know, had awards, a couple of them. First prize in one, second prize in another. But I have been very, very busy since 2006. For 14 years, doing this, you know, I’ve been going through no progress. And I’m telling you, I work day and night, lack of sleep, and I don’t know how I did it, really, with everyone’s health or age. I went younger, young for my age, and I’ve gone through a lot of stress, a lot of blood and tears, as they say, but I’ve been very fruitful. very rewarding for me to do what I did. And the films were out there. I was showing them in school. I took the young high school history teachers, four of them on my first film, and I took two other history teachers from another school on my second film along with a young female journalist and a young male high school student. And so those first two films were on PBS stations. for a couple of years. My other films have been on other stations. All of this has been for no profit. I’ve had to raise the money to fund it, which is a really difficult part. There’s a lot of
SPEAKER 08 :
I understand that. But, oh, my gosh, it’s so important, George Chompa, what you have done here. And that website is Let Freedom Ring for All. This is Kim Monson with America’s Veterans Stories. The Center for American Values is located in Pueblo on the beautiful Riverwalk, and it was founded for several reasons. One, to honor our Medal of Honor recipients, and they do that through over 160 portraits of valor of Medal of Honor recipients, but additionally, They are teaching these foundational principles of honor, integrity, and patriotism through many of their educational programs and also their On Values presentations. So for more information about the center, go to AmericanValuesCenter.org. That’s AmericanValuesCenter.org. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
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All Kim’s sponsors are in inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmonson.com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 08 :
And we’ve got on the line with us George Champa, World War II veteran. And before we get into the occupation, George Champa, I’m looking at your website, Let Freedom Ring for All. It is absolutely a beautiful website. And there are… How many films did you do? Seven films? Is that right? And people can… Six? Okay. Can order those. And… You know, this is so important that the next generation understands this history. So this is a beautiful work that you have done on this, George Champa.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. Okay. You worked for 11 months on the grave registration detail after the D-Day landings. And then once Hitler had, or the Nazis had surrendered, you then worked with the occupation forces. So tell us a bit about that, George Champa.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. We ended up in Germany, as I said, near Eisenach, and at a disinterred cemetery that we had there. We didn’t want any…the government didn’t want any cemeteries to remain and to terminate. So, I and a couple of other fellows were sent to Mannheim to terminate. We were in the Army in the rocket station and our job there was the 233rd Salvage Reflecting Company. I don’t know where you get the word salvage. Our job was to receive equipment from all of the organizations that were going back to the state, guys being discharged. So, we received all kinds of equipment except vehicles across the road from us to the vehicle yard. So, I worked one day on and one day off. And so, in that work, I met a lot of German people and I’d ask them, you know, I didn’t speak out when they saw what they were doing there. Invariably, they would say, whenever anyone did speak out, somebody would turn them in, and they’d end up in a concentration camp like the rest of the people that were put in concentration camps. And then one day, I went to a circus, and I met a girl there. And to make a long story short, she was on a flying trapeze with two other girls. And so I met her, and before I met her, one day a gentleman that was handling the vehicles across the road from us came over and asked if I could give him a pair of paratrooper boots. Everybody wanted paratrooper boots. And so I said, sure. And just kiddingly, I said, yeah, if you’ll give me a Jeep. And he said, sure. So he gave me a Jeep. So I had a Jeep illegally for seven months.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, my gosh.
SPEAKER 10 :
And I almost got court-martialed over it. Anyway, I’ll tell you about that in a second.
SPEAKER 08 :
George, go back. I didn’t understand. What is it that everybody wanted? They wanted paratrooper what? Boots. Oh, boots. Boots. Okay, got it. Boots. Okay, got it. Okay.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, paratrooper boots were better than the other boots that the GIs had.
SPEAKER 08 :
Got it. Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER 10 :
They look better. In fact, I have a pair here in my house. It’s five TV issues. I can show you what they look like. Anyway, to pick up from there, long story, but I met this German girl in Flying Trapeze. So she, this was in Mannheim. Then went to Heidelberg and went to Heilbronn and Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. And so I had one day on and one day off, so I used to follow her around. And I got to know the circus people, the GI, that met this lovely little girl, Margo. So anyway, my wife doesn’t believe it. Nobody believes it. And we had a very platonic relationship. It was not my idea, hers. But anyway, believe it or not, you know, I tell guys, you know, I do this girl on the circus. Oh, the beard lady? I said, no, not the beard lady. The young lady on the flying trapeze. Anyway, I sent her her name on a friend of mine, Dr. Margo. And in fact, on one of my film covers, you see the mirror. No, no, excuse me. Not her, you’ll see me holding a little two-year-old German girl. You’ll see my Jeep with little German kids in my Jeep. She’d say, my Jeep. And it sounds like the MyPolo man. Yeah. This is my Jeep. And so anyway, I followed her around from place to place. So I got into trouble a few times, stopped by the military police. But the third time I got stopped, there were a couple of fellas that kept wanting to borrow the Jeep. And I would lock it up, and I’d come in at night. I’d throw a chain around a steering wheel to the side of the Jeep so we couldn’t drive it. But one morning, I came in in a hurry, and I didn’t lock it up. We took the Jeep out, and we got drunk and got in an accident. So next thing I know, they’re towing the Jeep in the yard. When they come to me, they say, George, the commander wants to know where we got the Jeep. And we’ve got to tell him. So what happened was I met with the company commander along with these two or three fellows. I can’t remember now, two or three. Anyway, the company commander’s name was Lieutenant Sterling Carpenter. I’ll never forget that name because he looked at me, where’d you get the Jeep? And I explained to him how I got it. He said, don’t you know that government, that stolen government equipment? I said, well, sir, I didn’t steal it. I just borrowed it. Well, it didn’t go over too well. But anyway, he said, this is very serious. I’d have to think about this overnight. Come in tomorrow morning. So next morning, he looked at me. He said, I know how old you are. I had just turned 20. Okay. And he says, I know how you are, how old you are, and I know what you did in the war. And you did a horrible job. And he said, you know what? I’m going to look the other way.
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Wow.
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And so he did. We did. I could have gotten a short living or prison for stolen military equipment. But anyway, I got out of that deal. A few weeks later, I shipped out to come home, went to Bremerhaven. While I was up there at Bremerhaven waiting to come home, this is now in December of 45. Everybody waiting to come home wanted to get home for Christmas. Well, on the 19th of December, it was obvious we weren’t going to get home for Christmas unless we got on a Queen Mary. Everybody went AWOL. So I got on a train. You had to carry your rifle after the war. I had my rifle over my shoulder. And it was cold. I had overcoat on. I got on that train. I’m standing up all the way, 350 miles. It seemed like I was all by myself in that one car. And then down came my friend. And I met her father, who was her sister’s P.O.W. And he was my size, and I was small. You know, I only weighed 112 pounds when I landed in D-Day.
SPEAKER 03 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 10 :
And I didn’t weigh much more than that when I met her. And so I met him, and I met her mother, and I knew her sister, because her sister was with her in a flying trapeze, and another girl. And so I spent Christmas with them. And so then when we left… We went to the train station and it was raining and we got into a telephone booth and just looking at each other. And, you know, I really, I really, I don’t know, it was infatuation and loneliness and love, but, you know, she had tears in her eyes and so did I. And so the train came, and I got out of there and started walking toward the train, and then I started walking backwards and waving to her. So that was the end of that. So anyway, she was four months older than I, so she would have been 95 in February. So she’s still living. I know the address street where she lived. And I thought about writing a letter there, but that happened.
SPEAKER 08 :
You know, in the last interview that we did, George Champa, at least kind of what I heard is that meeting this girl, you said platonic relationship, but with the very difficult 11 months that you had had on the grave registration detail, that that was really a gift to you to be able to kind of come to terms with things.
SPEAKER 10 :
Absolutely. You hit it right on the head. If I hadn’t come home right away, as it was, my sister said I used to have nightmares, but I don’t remember ever having a dream or a nightmare about it. But I really got a chance to chill out, and it was a great relationship for me. I got to meet German people who I hated, the Germans, because what I saw in the war, and I got to see I think it was just regular people and fun-loving people and playing their accordions. And I never forget the… I’ll take the name of that song. I can’t think of it now. Roll Out the Barrel. Oh, yeah. Roll Out the Barrel.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
Roll Out the Barrel is fun, yeah. And accordions. And anyway, and her sister’s name was Heidi, the German name. And Margo was my friend’s name. But, yeah, I think God had a hand in this. People tell me God has a hand in my doing these documentaries because they’re all about the high cost of freedom. Because I and people doing the same job as I did, and also the medics, we saw it firsthand, everything. infantry as tough as it was you could get away from it you got you got the reliefs uh you got skills where you got away from the combat but we never did get away from it and i i figured six times i told you two times there’s been about six times that i know of that i escaped death and uh i almost got hit by a buzz bomb i got a piece of a shrapnel home uh it uh The thing I can’t believe when I think about it, how lucky I was to live through it all, even though I wasn’t in the infantry. We carried a rifle, but our job wasn’t to seek the Germany. Our job was to stay alive. The very unfortunate guys, and that’s also many of them that bothered me so much. I don’t think I’ve told you before, but as a kid, I had a big fear of death when I was five years old. And again, I was seven years old because of a couple of deaths in the family and witnessing the funerals and the wakes in the homes of the little kids. So I became very, very nervous. We moved to California when I was nine years old in 1934, the two-year-old Chevrolet, nine of us in that car going to California. Amazing. And, you know, do you have children? I do. If you have children and you ever went any place with them before you ever got there, what did they say to you? Are we almost there?
SPEAKER 08 :
Are we there yet?
SPEAKER 10 :
Are we there yet? I originated that in 1934. Good for you. It took us a week to go cross country without stopping at a restaurant, a hotel, and my mother heating up a little Monson burner. I still have that. eating canned goods, because we never ate in a restaurant, stayed in a hotel or motel, drove straight through. They’d drive at night to keep from hearing me. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? So, yeah. Anyway, then when we got here, they put me in a Catholic school, and I was… I started the first grade when I was five, because in Boston, no kindergarten. It started… school in year five and you had to have your consuls removed before you could start school and so when I came to California at nine years of age I was in the fifth grade in a Catholic school and at school you had to attend the funeral mass with the parishioners and so I dropped out I wouldn’t go to that school so they had to put me in a public school and for some reason or other I got back again to Catholic school in the sixth grade and I dropped out again I went to public school in the eighth grade because I didn’t like the priest. He didn’t pronounce my name right. When he’d come in the classroom, call out names, and I would say, George, she, I’m, and my name is Champa, and this is an Irish priest, so I’m never afraid of Father Hennessey. So I got out of there, and I went to public school in the eighth grade, and I was the smartest kid in the class. I knew how to diagram a sentence. The other kids didn’t know how to diagram it. You know what I’m talking about?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I do.
SPEAKER 10 :
Diagramming a sentence? Mm-hmm. They had me go to the blackboard to show them, you know, the noun, the pronoun, the adverbs and adjectives and all of that. And so that’s what I did. I went to college school, eighth grade and then high school. I graduated the same day I was 17, June 16th, 1942. And so I worked for a year in an airplane factory. And I worked on these, let’s be me, dive bombers. My job is to sew them up on the tarmac and be finishing touching.
SPEAKER 08 :
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SPEAKER 05 :
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SPEAKER 06 :
All Kim’s sponsors are in inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmonson.com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 11 :
God bless America, land that I love.
SPEAKER 08 :
Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out my website, AmericasVeteranStories.com. I’m thrilled to have on the line with me World War II veteran George Champa. He was on the grave registration detail. He landed at Normandy on D-Day. He also served in the occupation forces after the war was over. But we were talking about him growing up and what he was doing. He worked for a year with airplanes, these dive bombers. So tell us about that, George Champa.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, well, working on doing the finishing touches in the cockpit got me excited about buying one of those. And my brother was in the Air Corps, so my brother-in-law, when I looked at them with their hats chipped and walking on a swagger and all the other guys in the Air Corps, and the girls were all in love with the Air Corps guys. And I thought, oh gosh, this is where I want to be. So I tried to sign up when I turned 18 because I worked in the Douglas Aircraft for one year. And I flunked the ITF, and I think I told you that before. My eyes were 20-22, so I didn’t make it. I tried twice. And so then after I got drafted, I had the opportunity to try it again because they lowered the eye requirements to 20-30, which I took the test and passed. My company commander wouldn’t let me go. I told you that story.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right.
SPEAKER 10 :
And how I got crazy registration. So going back to the Army of Occupation again, so I think I pretty much finished that story. I don’t want to repeat myself.
SPEAKER 08 :
Let’s talk about you going back to Normandy. As I was looking at your website, Let Freedom Ring for All, I saw a picture of a guy that you and I both know, and that is Ralph Peters. He is from Holland. And it’s amazing to me, George Champa, that even today, Ralph Peters, his grandfather, his father, and now Ralph, they take care of graves of American servicemen. And, you know, going back to Normandy when I went back in 2016, the people of Normandy revere you World War II guys. It’s just kind of an astounding experience to witness.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yes, they actually throw more praise on it than they do here in this country. They’re amazing. People over there in France. When I talk about France, I’m talking about Normandy. The Normandy people are unbelievable. I think I said to you in my recent film, And you can see excerpts of my recent film on my website as my others. And the Normandy people are unbelievable. The first generation is mostly gone now, but they taught their children well, and their children taught their children well. And they treat you like a rock star over there. But getting back to what you just asked me about Ralph Peters, Ralph Peters, There’s a young man that I met in Harlem, and he did some work with us when I was doing a film there called They Will Never Forget about people who adopt graves of American soldiers. And this is where Ralph comes in. Ralph does not beautify graves. We have our ABMC, American Battle Monuments Commission. They’re the ones responsible for building the cemeteries and maintaining them. But what Ralph and people like him do, they adopt a grave or more than a grave at more than one cemetery. And they go there from time to time and put flowers there. And an interesting thing that happened when I was doing that film, at the end of the film where we interviewed people who adopted graves, I realized that nobody had adopted a Jewish grave. And so I’m looking at this grave and I said to Ralph, Ralph, No one has adopted this grave, and it was raining, and you’re quitting. The fun was done. I said, I feel really bad about this. And so I said, will you see if this gentleman’s grave has been adopted as from Massachusetts where I was born. He was a lieutenant. And he went into the office and found out, yeah, that grave has been adopted. So I looked at another grave, Albert Schley, and I said, check on him. So he did. He went in there and found out, no, he had not been adopted. So I said, you know what? I want to adopt it. I said, I won’t be here to put flowers on the grave. But Ralph said, well, I’ll do it for you. So Ralph and I are co-adopters of Albert Schley’s grave. It turned out Albert, what Ralph does, and other people like him, they research who the soldier was. They do marvelous things. Right. And Holland, especially, is really big on this. But anyway, when he found out Albert was from Illinois, he couldn’t find his parents. They were gone. Nobody in his family, but out from the newspaper about Albert. Albert was 19 years old when he was killed. That was the age when he was killed. And he was a violinist. And he… Anyway, we found out where he went to school, everything about him, Ralph did. And so then, a couple of years later, Ralph found that… He found McFellow’s nephew And so Ralph got in touch with his nephew, and so did I. And so Ralph goes there from time to time, and when he goes, he takes a picture of himself by the grave and the flowers. So Ralph and I have been friends ever since that. And he’s a lot older than when I met him. When I met him, he was, let’s say, he was… I’m talking about 12 years ago. But I had met Ralph’s father, and Ralph’s father has passed away. Ralph actually still lives with his mother, I think, and he was very slow about getting his driver’s license and various things, but a great guy. And so there’s other people that do the same thing. Some of the people there in Holland, they have their own website. And they have all these pictures of these guys that are buried there in Holland. And in Holland, there’s 8,300 graves there. And so they learn all about who that soldier was. And some of them meet the next of kin by going to the States. And sometimes the people from here go over there. and meet these people. And so I know a number of people over there who do this, who have a website and adopt many graves. And there’s a museum there called, remember the museum, which is just two miles away from the Henri Chapelle Cemetery. Under Chappelle Cemetery, at one time, it was 13,000 graves, a little over 13,000 graves in a temporary cemetery that we had buried those bodies. And now, it’s over 9,000 graves. What happened to the others? Two years after the war, as I said earlier, the Mexicans had a prerogative of having a revenge at home in the casket. Any cemetery they chose, there was no charge. That’s what happened to the others. So it went from 13,000 plus to 9,000 plus. And the greatest, if you haven’t ever seen a cemetery, any of you listening who travel to Europe, be sure to go to American permanent cemetery, military cemetery, and you’ll be glad you did. I tell you, you cannot believe. You cannot believe. You’ll never forget it. Although, as I said a little earlier, people who go there and see the graves and come away not even knowing the date of birth. Because often I talk to groups and I say, I mean, you’ve been over there and they put up their hands. Okay, what did you see on the grave stones? What does it say? And nobody, I haven’t found anybody that knows the date of birth on the tombstones. Unbelievable.
SPEAKER 08 :
So was the date of birth on their dog tags, though?
SPEAKER 10 :
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s definitely known how old they are. They just… for some reason, didn’t put it. They didn’t do it in World War I. They just carried the same thing through in World War II. So, yeah. Let’s talk. All of that, the date of birth is not on the dog tag, but all of that information is known because Grazer Illustration Guide had to make records of all of this. Okay. And so it’s all known. It’s all known. They just didn’t do it. They didn’t know. They just didn’t do it.
SPEAKER 08 :
Interesting. Huh.
SPEAKER 10 :
Do you think it was because… Nobody’s asked me that question before. I had to think for a minute. Yeah, it’s just, it isn’t that they don’t know. I talked to the ABMC. We’re in Arlington, Virginia. I was in touch with them quite a bit. And they said, no, it was just done that way because that’s the way it was done in World War I. That’s the only answer. If you contact them now yourself and say, why wasn’t the date of birth on the tombstones? It would be interesting. Call them up and ask them that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay. Okay, that would be on my list.
SPEAKER 10 :
American Battle Monuments Commission, Arlington, Virginia, get a hold of the PR person and say, you know, I know this was no date of birth. Why? I’ve got to do that myself also. I haven’t done it. I haven’t done it except initially back when I was there for the 50th anniversary. That’s 25 years.
SPEAKER 08 :
Do you think that… I’ve been to Arlington, but I don’t recall whether or not date of birth is at Arlington. Do you recall that?
SPEAKER 10 :
No, because I have never been to Arlington. Okay. I don’t know. Apparently not, because he said it wasn’t done… for World War II, but now for more recent burials in Arlington, I don’t know. It’s a good question. I’m going to check on that myself because guys are getting killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, or whatever. They probably have their date of birth on the markers. I don’t know. It’s a good question.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, we’ll have to check that out. Yeah, we’ve got about, George Champa, we’ve got about four minutes left. And I just want to talk a little bit about this work that you’re doing with Let Freedom Ring for All. You said the mission is to reach high school students in particular, stressing the importance of freedom and delivering the factual message so that many young American lives that were sacrificed to ensure our safety and lifestyle that we all enjoy. So to, you know, to inform people, this is noble work. This is important work, George Champa, that you’re doing. We’ve got just a couple of minutes. Tell us just a little bit more about that.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, and you know, I’d like to take a couple of minutes, and you may not even want to broadcast what I have to say, but I’ve seen thousands of young men’s bodies. And I think now what’s going on in our country, you sacrifice at a young age. You didn’t get to handle many of them, even a girlfriend, wife, children, like I have. I feel very guilty about it. And I think you guys need your life for what it is. on in this country, and so fear for what was going to happen with this country, where my kids and my grandkids, I won’t be around to see it. But when they’re destroying statues like Christopher Columbus, you know, and I’m Italian from first-generation Italian-like parents, and they were very proud Americans. And we’ve got Columbus Day in the Catholic Church, you even have the Knights of Columbus. And now all of a sudden we decided to rename Columbus Day to GMP’s Day. And I think, what the heck is that all about? I mean, black people have Martin Luther King holiday, and now they’re going to take an Italian Columbus Day away? But I just heard yesterday from somebody, I don’t know how true this is, it was reversed. There were two senators who came up with a legislation to rename that Columbus Day. But those people, I think Columbus, Ohio will probably be changing their name. And you know what? If it keeps going on as bad as this is, they’ll probably change the name of America to something else. Name that’s America, that’s Gucci. And so I’m just wondering where the country is going to go. And the sacrifices all these young people made for freedom. And you know what’s going on in the country. I don’t have to tell you. You can see the pictures and hear. If you can’t see, if you’re blind, you can hear what’s going on. And it’s not good. And it doesn’t seem like it’s getting any better. And there’s this Antifa that’s definitely a terrorist organization. And they come right out and say they want to abolish the way the U.S. is. They want to change it. And so that upsets me a lot, being a World War II human gone through. And now I have to listen to this crap? I don’t like it. And we’ve got to do something about it. It’s got to change. How to change it, I don’t know, but you know, I’m not a racist at all. And I have had black friends, and still do, and Jewish friends, and liberal friends, and I’m a conservative. But you know what? I think all we can do when you talk about religion and politics is what you have experienced, and that’s what you become. But then sometimes when you experience something and become something, you can also change. I changed from one political affiliation to another. And so, you know, what makes you change is experience. experience. Right. That’s what it’s all about.
SPEAKER 08 :
We’re not a perfect country, but you saw so many young men give their lives to stand against tyranny and evil. And we do have a responsibility to fight tyranny and evil. And I so thank you, George Chompa, World War II veteran, for this great conversation. Thank you for joining us for this episode of America’s Veterans Stories. While some of the details may be a bit dated, the courage, sacrifice, and stories of our veterans never go out of style. For more incredible stories, past and present, check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com or catch new episodes each week. Until next time, thank you for listening and for honoring those who served. We indeed stand on the shoulders of giants. God bless you and God bless America.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you for listening to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.
SPEAKER 01 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
