Sixteen years ago, Lloyd Oczkewicz welcomed a visitor to his Everett home. He opened a small leather-bound book. In tiny handwriting on yellowed pages were words he scrawled in 1945 at Stalag IX-A, a prisoner of war camp in Germany.
There is no forgetting the World War II veteran, nor the details Oczkewicz shared that day in 1998 when I was honored to meet him.
In the prison camp where he spent three months, Oczkewicz secretly kept a diary in the little black book. Decades later, his entries would be transcribed onto typed pages.
Prisoners at the camp outside Ziegenhain subsisted on little more than a cup of watery soup and a slice of black bread each day. His weight dropped from 165 to 125 pounds. In the diary, he wrote about meager rations and brutally cold German barracks. Mostly, he wrote about home.
“I love to lay in my bunk and think of my future life with my dear Maggie, the best wife a man could have, and Davie (his first child), and God willing, in time, sisters and brothers for Davie,” he wrote in the diary. “I love to daydream of the day when I can be out of the Army and be just plain Mr. again.”
Oczkewicz — he was nicknamed “Oskey” — died Sept. 22, surrounded by his close family and friends. He was 94. Born at home in Everett on Nov. 12, 1919, he graduated from Everett High School in 1937. Before going to war, he had married Marguerite “Maggie” Larsen in 1942. They were married 46 years and had four children. She died in 1989. After the war, he worked at the Robinson Manufacturing mill in Everett.
“He was just a wonderful dad,” said Judy Rettenmier, one of Oczkewicz’s daughters. He also is survived by his second wife, Fran, son Dave Oczkewicz, daughter Janet McNiven, sister Rita Hooper, six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Another son, Gary, preceded him in death.
Rettenmier said her father rarely talked about war or captivity during her childhood.
“The first I knew anything, I was looking through my mom’s old yearbook and out fell these telegrams, ‘We are happy to inform you that your husband is MIA,’” said Rettenmier, who was puzzled by the find. Her mother told her that missing-in-action messages had been good news, compared with word that someone had been killed.
In his later years, Oczkewicz brought history to life by sharing his wartime experiences with school groups. After his first wife died, he began reconnecting with veterans of the U.S. Army’s 42nd Rainbow Division. He served in Europe with the division’s 242nd Infantry Regiment.
He was 25 when he was captured. It was January 1945, and his company was involved in the battle of Hatten near the French town of Haguenau.
Oczkewicz remembered being overrun and surrounded by German forces, even as he directed artillery fire on the advancing enemy.
He was hunkered down in a pillbox on the Maginot Line, a line of fortifications the French had built along its border with Germany after World War I.
His company endured a night of mortar fire, but had lost contact with their command post. They awaited U.S. help that never came.
“This was the worst feeling of my life, up to that time, when I realized we had to give up,” the young soldier wrote in his diary. He showed me a list of fellow soldiers who hadn’t made it, with “KIA” beside so many names. “A lot got killed,” he said the day we met.
He was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star medals for his battlefield actions.
In 2005, with his daughter, Judy, and her son, Casey Rettenmier, Oczkewicz returned to France for a two-week trip. They found the bunker where he had been captured and took pictures of the site, which has since been painted as a soccer ball.
He and his wife, Fran, previously made the trip in 1998, which was the first time he had been in Europe since World War II.
Long after he graduated from Everett High, Casey Rettenmier, now 34, returned to the school with his grandfather, who spoke about World War II to a history class.
With his grandfather, he also attended Rainbow Division veterans events. “A lot of them have passed on now,” said Casey Rettenmier, who has many photographs and recordings his grandfather made during the European trip.
There is no forgetting what Oczkewicz said when I met him 16 years ago: “We had a duty.”
Judy Rettenmier treasures the picture taken with her father and son at the now peaceful place where he was captured.
“Without him surviving, none of us would be sitting there,” she said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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