Posted on 08/17/2009 5:04:52 AM PDT by real saxophonist
Monday, August 17, 2009
WWII a big part of man's life story
Mike Peters
Age is catching up with him now, as it does when you're 85.
He spent some time in the hospital last week, scaring his family with a “heart episode.”
But Nick Golovanoff of Greeley is still going. Still telling the stories. Still finding a laugh here and there.
He and his wife, Mary Alice, haven't lived in Greeley long. They came here so their daughter could help. She is Sandi Selders, wife of former Greeley mayor Tom Selders.
But being old is not the story of Nick Golovanoff. The story came more than 65 years ago, in a Stalag Camp, in a town with an unpronounceable name, on the other side of the world.
World War II was exploding everywhere, and Nick Golovanoff was still a kid. The day after he graduated from a Denver high school, he was on a bus to basic training in the U.S. Army. It was June 1943.
They went to basic training, learned about anti-aircraft weapons and how to shoot down planes, then were shipped to England.
“We found out then they didn't need replacements in anti-aircraft,” Golovanoff said, “but they needed infantry. They gave us two weeks training and sent us into Europe to fight the Germans.”
Two years later, he was in the prisoner of war camp in the strange country with the strange name — Czechoslovakia.
“They landed us in Europe and we took the slowest train ride in my life,” Golovanoff said. “As they took us to the front, the Huertgen Forest where the fighting was strong. I was 19 years old.”
It's still hard for Golovanoff to talk about Fletch. “We were in a gully, eight Americans surrounded by 100 Germans, and Fletch was my best friend. We'd been together since Colorado. ... He got shot and I ran to help. ... My closest friend died then. Everything about the war came to me then.”
After Fletch died, the remaining Americans were taken prisoner and forced to march to a POW area.
“They were moving us, making us march hard, and I was worried about getting shot,” Golovanoff said. “But we were marching up a hill and something — a voice, maybe — said ‘Fear not.' I don't know where it came from, but I wasn't as scared after that.”
They ended up in a work camp in Czechoslovakia. He said there were Czechoslovakian slaves there that worked in the nearby mines and factories, 14 hours a day. The prisoners of war didn't have to go to work, but they got little food and water.
“The Germans knew by then they were losing the war and things were pretty tense,” Golovanoff said. “Then one day in May, we got up and all the guards were gone. We learned the Americans were closing in on one side and the Russians on the other. The war in Europe was over.”
But Golovanoff had an odd task ahead of him because his parents were Russian. He was born in America but spoke fluent Russian from his parents. The camp was liberated by Russian soldiers, and they asked Golovanoff to help with translations.
He remembers how brutally the Russians treated the German soldiers. “The camp was run by the SS ( Schutzstaffel), and the Russians hated them. They had trials, and the jury were the slaves and POWs. I was the interpreter. They asked the jury if a guard treated them well. If the jury said yes, he'd become a POW. If the jury said the guard was too rough or hurt anyone, they just took him outside and shot him right there.”
It lasted 11 days, and Golovanoff was shipped to a hospital and finally back home to Denver. Three months after he was freed from the POW camp, World War II ended. He still remembers the dancing and shouting in the streets in Denver.
Two years after the war, Golovanoff was driving tourist buses into Grand Lake and he met a pretty girl named Mary Alice, who was waiting tables at Grand Lake Lodge. They were married in 1948.
They have three children, nine grandchildren and now nine great-grandchildren. Nick was a tour bus driver, a taxi driver and eventually put in 30 years with Goodyear Tires, retiring as a supervisor.
Nick and Mary Alice live at a senior home in downtown Greeley now, quietly, in their apartment. Their daughter Sandi helps them when they need it; other family members do too.
Nick Golovanoff is like a lot of those vets today, in their 80s or 90s, getting around OK, but slowing with the years. Sometimes they don't want to remember what happened more than six decades ago, in a country or village with an unpronounceable name.
It's hard, sometimes, to remember the friends like Fletch, or the days in camps where you thought you'd probably starve, or the trenches and tanks and explosions.
But we can't forget.
And we must remember to tell people like Nick Golovanoff “thank you” once again.
Staff writer Mike Peters' column about Weld County people appears Mondays in The Tribune. His humor column, the Gnarly Trombone, appears Saturdays.
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This mirrors much of my dad’s life. He ran away from home to join the war, got caught, and was sent home. When he graduated from high school, he joined up right away. He ended up a replacement in the 132 Field Artillery, Battery B, 36th Texas Division. They were the first army in Italy, France and Germany. In January of 1945, he was captured and spent 5 months as a POW.
Now, at 83, he spends his time writing about his war experiences. It was a defining time in his life, but he never talked about it until recently. To this day, when he talks about it, his blood pressure goes up.
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