Elmer Sigismund William Wolff

MY STORY &
WORLD WAR II MEMORIES
Elmer Sigismund Wolff
MY STORY & WAR MEMORIES




I was born on December 18, 1923, in Chicago, Illinois. My parents were Sigismund Wilhelm Wolff and Bertha (Meissner) Wolff. I had two older sisters born in Germany: Elitia (Lydia) born July 19, 1919, and Erna Elsie born January 25, 1922. Lydia died in 2009 and Erna died in 1989.

MY PARENTS:
My father was born in Germany on April 4, 1897, and died on February 24, 1939, in Chicago, Illinois.

My mother was born in Germany on January 24, 1898, in Germany and died June 23, 1974, in Hinsdale, Illinois.

They were married on August 21, 1918, in Zagarow, Poland.

I recall hearing that my parents were born in a part of Germany that was lost to Poland at some point. My Dad was in the Polish Army and eventually deserted back to Germany. Mother and my two sisters eventually snuck over the border months later to join him.

They left their home in Westerfield, Germany and traveled to Bremen, Germany where they sailed to the United States on June 30, 1923, on the “SS Hanover”, arriving in New York City. They made the move to Chicago, Illinois where my Dad’s brothers lived. My Dad started working at a dairy in Forest Park, Illinois. I was born in December of that year after they arrived in America.

My sister, Lydia Langley, wrote “Sweet Memories of Mother” which further explains our parent’s decision to leave Europe.

“My parents were married after World War I in 1918. Europe was still adjusting to many changes. My parents lived in an area that had been Germany but was now Poland. It was a difficult time with a new government and new rules. My dad, with many more young German men, was drafted into the Polish Army. Living conditions were bad, many men rebelled, my dad was one of them, and they crossed the border into Germany illegally.

At this time, I was about three and my sister was just a baby. We were living on my grandparents’ farm with my mother.

My dad found work in Germany, found a home for us, and was anxious for his family to join him. My mother tried to obtain passports for us but was refused time after time. So she heard of guides who were helping people in her situation. She hired on, and they planned a dangerous night trip. The trip involved crossing a body of water and my mother recalled the “ping, ping” of bullets hitting the boat. The guide carried me and my mother carried my sister to keep her from crying. God was with us. We made it safely.

I can’t imagine what courage it took for my mother to leave her parents, endangering her children and herself in order to hope for a better life.

After my parents were settled in Germany, they began plans to fulfill their dreams of America. Both my mother and father had siblings living in the Chicago area. My dads brothers sponsored us and we were on our way. By this time, my mother became pregnant and we came to Forest Park, Illinois in August of 1923. In December, my brother Elmer was born … our first American.

We settled in Forest Park about two blocks from St. John’s Lutheran Church and that became an anchor for us. At that time, German services were held and German was taught in their school. I thank God for my mother and father … for their faith, courage, and foresight to give us a better life.”



MY PATERNAL GRANDPARENTS:

My paternal grandparents were Gottlieb J. Wolff and Emilie (Lindner) Wolff, both born in Germany. I don’t know when my grandfather was born.
My grandmother was born on November 18, 1860, and died on August 7, 1928. They had three boys born in Germany: Gustav born in 1885, Emmanuel born in 1894 and my father, Sigismund Wilhelm was born in 1897.

MY MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS:

My maternal grandparents were August Meissner and Luise (Hauf) Meissner, both born in Germany. My grandfather was born on June 24, 1862, and died on April 4, 1938. My grandmother was born on May 1, 1869, and died on May 1, 1946. They had seven children: Helene, Reinhold, Ludwig 1889-1960, August 1891-1952, Elsa Frida 1893, Emilie S. 1895-1972 and my mother, Berta.

(See “A Family Story” written by Emilie Kunst – 1955
at the back of the story.)
MY MATERNAL GREAT-GRANDPARENTS:

My maternal great-grandparents were August Meissner and Julianna (Schwemmer) Meissner. My grandfather died in 1872. They both died in Germany. They had 3 children: August 1862, Amanda 1863 and Olga 1865, all born in Germany.

At the back of my story is “A Family Story” written by August Meissner’s daughter, Emily as told to her by her father starting the story at age 4 when his mother died. It contains much family history from Germany and the move to the United States by members of the Meissner family.



MY CHILDHOOD:

I have been told by my sisters that I got away with murder being the youngest and the golden boy. We lived in a house and my parents had a car. I didn’t have to do any chores. My favorite foods were roast beef, mashed potatoes with gravy and a vegetable. It is still my favorite food.

We always had a dog. I played in the alley with the neighbor kids, but we didn’t have organized sports.

As a young boy, I delivered papers and what papers were leftover were burned for heat.

I went two years to an all-boys’ school called Lane Tech and later transferred to Lakeview High School.

I also parked cars at Wrigley Field before games. We lived only a few blocks away, so I would empty out our garage and driveway and park the cars on the street charging between 25 cents and $1.00. It was illegal to do this, and there were cops on horses patrolling.

I also caddied in the summertime. It wasn’t a moneymaker, but fun talking with all the golfers. I took the streetcar and then walked a bit to the golf course where I was paid $1 a round.


I worked for one year in Chicago for Chicago Name Plates as a photographer.


MY WAR MEMORIES:

I enlisted in the US Air Corps on December 7, 1942, when I was 21 years old. I signed up for aviation as my first choice, but that doesn’t get you there. You have to prove you have the aptitude for it. Preflight testing found me in California for three days. Then they sent me back to South Dakota. After passing my pre-flight requirements, I trained in a series of aircraft.

The plane I remember most is the P-38. I did not choose that airplane at first. They said it had a lot of problems and I did not want to be flying around in it. I chose the P-39 but by the time I was ready, the P-39 was out of service. So I flew the P-38 which turned out to be a better airplane after all.

I was a P-38 Pilot in the US Air Corps in the 339th Fighter Wing which was stationed all over the South Pacific. I flew 64 missions providing long-range escort to bomber formations.

These Pacific locations included Middleburg and Morotai in Indonesia and Palawan, Sanga Sanga, Tauri Tauri and Leyte in the Philippines.

A normal mission would involve attacking ground troops and installations with machine-gun fire from my P-38 Lightning. Opposing forces nicknamed them the “Fork Tailed Devil”. You got shot at a lot, but we did some shooting too. We did a lot of strafing and that sort of thing.

If we needed a new landing strip, we got out the bulldozer and made our own strips. We were not picky when it came to food and ate anything they put in front of us.

I remember when the war was over. I was on a transitional base on Dulag Strip in the South Pacific on Leyte Island in the Philippines.

We had flown our P-38 Lightning Fighter aircraft there from our permanent base on Palawan, the southernmost island of the Philippines, to stage out and fly ground support missions while our echelon was dismantling our operation and moving up to some more forward base not officially disclosed for the final assault on Japan. Leyte was not a nice place by then. Our living conditions were not good. We had no showers for the first week and chow amounted to “C’s rations (Rat Rations). We continued to fly ground support missions, dive-bombing, fire-bombing (napalm) and strafing in the mountains north of Manila.

That evening after hearing of a Naval Officer’s Club at the Naval Fleet Pier, three of us pilots went to look for some refreshments. Imagine our surprise when the Marine guards would not let those dirty Army Air Corps officers enter the building.

Not to be easily discouraged, we loitered around the entrance to the club until a group of Naval officers was about to enter. We filed in behind them and when questioned by the guards replied, “We’re with them,” pointing to the Naval people.

Once inside, we commandeered a table and proceeded to drink cold beer at 10 cents per can.

Later in the evening, the Marine guards entered shouting, “The war is over!” Remembering the remainder of our squadron in the transient camp, we purchased all the beer our jeep could hold and headed back to camp.

After congratulating all our friends on having survived the war, we had a rather pleasant beer bust until some fool brought out a weapon and started shooting to celebrate. Yours truly left the scene and made himself very scarce.

We, along with our ground echelon, returned to Palawan where we monitored the occupation of Japan.

I had 63 missions and an R&R to Australia behind me at this time when the choice of a promotion to captain and staying two more months or going home was offered. I chose the latter.

This was probably not the best choice. It took three days to fly to the South Pacific in December 1944. However, it took a two-week wait for transportation in Manila and then a 27-day voyage on a Liberty Ship to arrive at Portland, Oregon the day after Thanksgiving 1945. We had just a cot to sleep on and had to stand up to eat our meals. We went through some storms, but no rough seas.

When we arrived in Portland, I boarded a train and traveled back to Forest Park. I was just so glad to be home … back to the roast beef, potatoes, and gravy.

I was in the US Air Force from 1942 – 1946.

Before enlisting, I had been working at Gulf Services. They checked the timesheets and found I was making 40 cents an hour. They wanted to know if I wanted to come back, but by then I thought I could do better than that. I was hired at a new business but it was a rat race.

I met my future wife when a turn of fate brought us together in Chicago. Virginia Schenfisch had gone to my mom’s home to wait for her father to pick her up. My Mother had remarried and my step-father was Virginia’s uncle. When her father arrived to pick up Virginia, he told us that he was short-handed on the farm in North Dakota. After some discussion, I accepted short-term work with her father on his farm because I didn’t have any definite plans at the present time.

I didn’t know anything about farming. Back then, I didn’t even know what a spud was. I spent a couple of weeks in North Dakota. Virginia and I liked each other a lot and kept writing to each other after I returned to Chicago. By the next harvest, after many letters back and forth, and my return to the farm, we began our life long journey together.

We were married on November 16, 1946, at St. John’s Lutheran Church at Forest Park in Chicago.
We spent a couple of days on our honeymoon in the Great Smokey Mountains.

After working in Chicago for two years, Virginia’s father made us an offer to go to Makoti and farm. I decided to take a shot at it. We lived in the suburbs and I had to go north to Virginia’s job and pick her up after work. We would come home, have a meal and start all over again. We were tired of the long commute in Chicago and needed a change. I bought an old truck and we loaded up our things and headed to North Dakota. The truck broke down once but we got that repaired. There was no electricity or running water then and we started rebuilding the place. We bought a tractor and a plow and we just jumped right into it. We bought a cow, some pigs, and a few chickens.

We have one daughter, Susan, who was born March 30, 1953, in Trinity Hospital in Minot, North Dakota. She was named after my P-38 Lightning aircraft, “Thweet Thue.”

Susan later married to Andrey Anderson. They have two children: Colin and Ginger (our grandchildren).

Colin married Maria Jo Bammen and they have Sally who was born in 2017 (our great-granddaughter).

Ginger adopted Sebastian (our great-grandson) but was unable to care for him, so Susan and Andrey adopted him.

In August of 2015, I had a dream come true when I flew a World War II P-51D Mustang plane once again. Warren Pietsch made it happen when he took me up in the Texas Flying Legends Museum plane. I was 91 years old. Pietsch is TFLM chief pilot and Vice President of Operations and a Dakota Territory Air Museum Board member.

Virginia and I were not aware when we arrived in Minot for the Dakota Territory Air Force Museum’s Sweepstakes Breakfast that a flight for me would be part of the day. Pietsch asked me if I’d like to go on a flight with him in the P-51 Mustang “Little Horse”. I could not let that opportunity go by and I took him up on the offer. I have always wanted to ride in one of them. Pietsch planned the flight in observance of national “Spirit of ’45 Day” to commemorate the anniversary of the end of World War II.

I took the back seat in the P-51 and we took off with the crowd at the air museum watch. Our flight took us over Minot and the Sawyer area. When we returned from the flight, I said, “It was terrific!”

I noted that since I was sitting in the back, I didn’t have the airspeed indicator to watch when we were flying and wondered what the speeds were. The plane flew up to 300 mph. I expressed my thanks to Pietsch for the flight. “It was an honor to give it to you,” Pietsch said.

While my Air Force reunions are fewer now, I did attend a mini-reunion of Texas-based veterans right here at the park, which I remember fondly.

We bought a motor home in 1983 and we went to California to visit my father and step-mother in Elk Grove near Sacramento, California. We also went to Yosemite. We went to Arizona to visit my half- brother Harold Raschke and wife Dorothy and visited the Grand Canyon. Virginia loved the motor home.

In 1984 we started visiting Mercedes, Texas and decided to winter down south. We would use the motor home to drive back and forth to North Dakota when we wintered in Texas.

We came here first because the Confederate Air Force was located in Harlingen, TX and they had a number of old airplanes. We visited Llano Grande sporadically in our 30’ motor home, and then more regularly. At this time, our motor home was one of the largest rigs at the park, and I remember it being a tight squeeze. We lived in a motor home for four years. We gave up our motor home lifestyle when it finally got to be too much. We bought a home on Chapultepec and lived there for 11 years. We have been at Park Lane since 1995. A former Mercedes resident once owned a plane similar to the one I flew, so once again we had a reason to visit the area.

We have seen the park grow from a small close-knit friendly park to a larger, friendly active park. We reminisce that at one point all that was offered for meals were hamburgers. We recall fondly attending many of the dances. We still enjoy some of the bigger shows and look forward to attending the Oak Ridge Boys show.

We attribute our long-lasting marriage to being each other’s best friend. We enjoy life with another good friend, our ten-year-old Yorkie, Chi-Chi. I regularly walk Chi-Chi and am recognized as the “the big guy with the small dog.” While I am the more outgoing of the two of us, Virginia always enjoys reading a good mystery.

Even though we aren’t as active as we once were, we still enjoy being part of the community.

I am a former avid golfer and I can be found most mornings having coffee in the annex while enjoying spirited conversation with other early-risers. In North Dakota, the closest golf course was 12 miles away. But I had a group of friends that I played with regularly. When we went to Texas, I played quite a lot of golf but had to give it up about 10 years ago.

We have seen many changes over the years, not just here in the park, but in life in general. Technology advances continue to amaze us and we are not sure where it will all lead. When asked what significant advances or inventions come to mind, we laugh and point out one early improvement on the farm that enhanced our lives greatly: an enclosed cab on the tractor.

In 2018, Virginia and I decided to become permanent residents of the State of Texas. We have not missed the winters in North Dakota!

I have been on the Honor Flight to Washington D.C.

I am proud to have served my country during World War II as a fighter pilot of the P-38 “Thweet Thue”.
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Elmer Sigismund Wolff