Two surviving WW II veterans share war stories in a Warsaw coffee shop
This post was provided by News Now Warsaw
By Dan Spalding
News Now Warsaw
WARSAW — In what might have been one of the more unique moments in recent local history, two World War II centenarians — Charlie Garner and Bob Gast — sat in a Warsaw coffee shop on Friday and talked in detail for more than an hour about their wartime experiences.
The event was prompted by U.S. Rep. Rudy Yakym, who organized the meeting at Maggie’s Coffee and Treats shop on Buffalo Street as part of a weeklong series celebrating American war veterans.
Maggie’s was chosen because it’s the home base for a large group of veterans who meet there monthly.
The gathering was announced just a week or so ago and attracted about a dozen veterans, all of whom were quietly riveted as Gast and Garner traded war stories about their time in Europe, dating back more than 80 years.
Garner, who will turn 102 in July, remains especially sharp in his recollections, and Gast, at the age of 103, admittedly had a few minor memory lapses, but gained momentum as he provided details of when he was shot in the forearm and hospitalized.
The unstructured conversation between the two (believed to be the only surviving World War II veterans in Kosciusko County) was bolstered by Yakym, who asked about their recollections.
Kosciusko County Veterans Service Officer Darryl McDowell also helped keep the conversation moving.
Garner said he remembered counting 500 bombers flying over the skies over Omaha Beach.
Gast remembered, “Actually, we were the first troops into Paris … We ended up just riding in there on trucks.”
At one point, Garner said he dug four fox holes in one day in a small town in France in 1944.
“We pointed our mortars in four different directions, and I said, ‘Does that mean what I think it does? And he said, yes, it does.’ We were surrounded for four days,” Garner said.
Gast, as he has said before, made it clear he did not consider himself to be a hero.
He recalled that in his platoon, “You couldn’t get any closer to the enemy. Nothing’s ahead of you except Germans.”
He added, “We were assigned to find and replace the 28th Division. We found them and they were destroyed.”
Yakym asked them about their thoughts when they realized the war in Europe had ended.
Garner said they celebrated with bottles of champagne.
“The mood was good,” Garner said. “But the problem was we knew we were being sent back to the states to get ready to go to Japan. I got back to the states on July 13, 1945 … we had to be back at Camp Atterbury on the 14th, and I was sitting there with one pitcher of beer, and a lieutenant came over and said, ‘The war is over.’
Garner added, “I went in as a private and came out as a private. I had a wife at home and I wanted to be back to her. I was fighting for her as much as I was fighting for the United States because it was important.”
After Friday’s event, Yakym was asked about the opportunity to listen to their stories.
“These guys are war-torn, they went all through Europe, fighting to ensure Europe and the rest of the world would forever be free. They made tremendous sacrifices, they lost many friends in war, and to sit there for an hour and hear their stories — for me — it’s a little emotional,” Yakym said.
“It’s a memory that I will certainly carry with me for the rest of my life.”
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