Prisoner of War WWII paratrooper’s D-Day mission aborted when Germans
captured him and comrades
By Josh McAuliffe
Published: Scranton [PA] Times December 14, 2014
Paul Demciak spent roughly four months on the European continent in 1944
— plenty of time to produce a lifetime’s worth of harrowing experiences.
In the waning hours of June 5, 1944, Mr. Demciak and his fellow
pathfinders with the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the Army’s
82nd Airborne Division landed behind enemy lines to do their part in the
Allied invasion of Normandy.
The Gouldsboro resident was among the first pathfinders, specially
trained units of paratroopers charged with setting up the lights and
navigational devices needed to guide the rest of the parachute soldiers
to their drop zones.
Mr. Demciak and his compatriots’ plans were upended, and, as the first
wave of troops stormed the Normandy beaches on D-Day, they were taken
prisoner by German forces. Thus began a brutal ordeal that would last
over the summer months.
“The Germans really gave us a rough time,” said Mr. Demciak, 92 and the
recipient of three Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars with “V” Device and
the French Legion of Honor.
Preparing to serve
A native of the Heights section of Wilkes-Barre, Mr. Demciak spent his
teen years working instead of going to school because he had to help
support his family after his father died.
In November 1942, he was drafted into the Army. He intended to join the
Marines, but said a partial plate in his mouth prohibited it.
He did medical training at Camp Barkeley, Texas, then volunteered for
paratrooper school.
“I wanted that extra $50 a month, so I could send it to my mother,” he
said.
Upon completing paratrooper training at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, he
was sent to Ireland, then England, where he was chosen for pathfinder
school. His days were made up of nine-mile runs, learning to properly
pack a chute and, of course, many practice jumps.
“That’s a feeling, you know — jumping out of a plane,” Mr. Demciak said.
Finally, the time came to mount Operation Overlord — the invasion of
Normandy.
Mr. Demciak’s crew set off on its mission in a C-47 around 10:30 p.m.
June 5, 1944. By midnight, they had arrived at their drop zone just west
of the French town of Sainte-Mère-Église. Mr. Demciak and the other
members of his crew jumped out of the plane at an altitude of only about
300 feet, with German forces firing at them from the ground.
“I could see the tracers coming at me,” Mr. Demciak said. “I was praying
they wouldn’t catch my chute.”
Due to the low altitude at which they dropped, Mr. Demciak hit the
ground with a hard, painful thud.
The scene was virtual chaos, and the group had little chance of carrying
out its objectives because of heavy German fire and the fact that they
couldn’t find their Eureka navigation device. “Everything was
disoriented,” Mr. Demciak said.
Mr. Demciak spent the next several hours dodging bullets and mortars
while tending to injured men with the limited medical supplies he had.
He then joined the ranks of the wounded when he was hit in the back with
a grenade, then in the left leg with shrapnel.
That afternoon, the battered group was spotted in an orchard by a group
of SS officers.
“I could see the lightning on their collar, and I knew they were SS,”
Mr. Demciak said. “They were buggers.”
He had heard stories from other soldiers about how the SS would kill
guys with their own weapons, so he quickly ditched his carbine and
trench knife. (He had etched his name in the knife’s leather holder, and
after the war he received the knife in the mail from an anonymous
source.)
|
Instead of killing the Americans, though, the Germans marched them to a
truck.
For the remainder of the summer, Mr. Demciak and the other prisoners in
his group were moved to a series of POW camps. They went by train until
an Allied bomber blew out the engine. Then, they were forced to march.
“We marched, and marched and marched,” Mr. Demciak said. “All that
marching, it must have been 600 miles.”
They’d go days without food, and when they finally got some, it was
typically a measly few bites of stale black bread.
Subhead
One day in August ’44, the prisoners were placed on a boxcar for
transport. During the trip, the train was strafed by an American P-47.
Mr. Demciak hit the deck, but was hit by a .50 caliber bullet that tore
his right arm to shreds.
He got up and asked his friend next to him, “Are you OK?”
“And then he got hit,” Mr. Demciak said. “His brains flew all over me.”
Putting his medical training to use once more, Mr. Demciak managed to
get a piece of rag and tied it around his arm to try to stop the
bleeding. He could see the jagged edges of bone protruding out.
The Germans took him to a hospital near Tours. He was placed on an
operating table, and after listening to the doctors chattering in
German, he jumped off the table, scared that they were about to cut his
arm off. Instead, they placed it in a splint.
He was moved again, from Tours to Toulouse, near the Mediterranean. By
then, maggots had descended on the dead flesh of his arm.
It was now early September. A few days into his stay there, members of
the French Resistance raided the hospital.
“They shot the guard and threw him down an elevator shaft,” Mr. Demciak
said. “They took nine of us out of that hospital. We went out three
different gates.”
From there, Mr. Demciak and the other freed prisoners were taken to a
warehouse. The next morning, they were placed on an English Dakota
plane. Mr. Demciak could hear bullets ricocheting off the plane as it
took off.
The plane landed in Naples, Italy, and Mr. Demciak was taken to an Army
hospital.
He weighed 98 pounds. When he jumped out of the plane over Normandy, he
was 160.
“One of the guys there said, ‘Where the hell did you come from?’” Mr.
Demciak said. “I said, ‘I just escaped from a German hospital.’”
The doctors there quickly got to work on his arm. When they took off the
flimsy piece of crepe paper covering his wound, a nurse passed out when
she saw the maggots.
Those maggots proved useful, though, Mr. Demciak said. Through feasting
on the dead flesh, he said, “they kept my arm alive.”
By November, Mr. Demciak was back in the States being treated at Fort
Dix, New Jersey. He was there for most of 1945, and from there was
transferred to Woodrow Wilson General Hospital in Staunton, Virginia.
There, doctors took a bone fragment from his leg and inserted it into
his arm.
“There was like a bridge in it, with four screws, and they saved my
arm,” he said.
Mr. Demciak went back to Fort Dix for a spell before being discharged in
December ’46. The pain hadn’t stopped by then, but he had nonetheless
completed his brave and valuable service to his country.
Meet Paul Demciak
Age: 92
Residence: A Wilkes-Barre native, he now lives in Gouldsboro.
Family: Husband of the late Sophie Demciak
Professional: Retired from Tobyhanna Army Depot, where he first
worked as a guard, then as a criminal investigator.
Military experience: During World War II, Mr. Demciak served as a
pathfinder with the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the Army’s 82nd
Airborne Division. He and the members of his crew were captured by SS
forces on June 6, 1944, the first day of the Battle of Normandy. He is
the recipient of three Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars with “V” Device
and the French Legion of Honor, among other commendations.
|
