By Alex Rosenblum / Special to the BJV
One of the greatest experiences in my 75 years of existence was my six years of service in the New York Army National Guard. According to my father, I was the first of our Rosenblum clan to ever serve in any army. Our group of Rosenblums resided in south Central Poland prior to World War II in a provincial town named Piotrków Trybunalski. Our Polish family records go well past World War I, and can even be traced on the internet to the time of our early flight in America. Our family history can also be traced on the internet – but only if one is lucky in spelling Piotrków Trybunalski correctly, and also has a working knowledge of the Polish language.
My father did, in fact, almost serve in the Polish army just after the German invasion of Poland in early September 1939, when he was called to nearby Lodz by the Polish army for military service. According to my father, the Polish nation believed that the Polish army had already developed a unique and masterful strategy to counter the anticipated invasion. The plan envisioned the calling up and mustering of all Polish men in their late teens and early twenties. These men would be trained to fight within 60 days. Meanwhile, the Polish air force, which consisted of 22-year-old military biplanes, would hold off and destroy German fighters and bombers. Moreover, the Polish army had prepared and trained several Polish horse cavalry divisions to crush German Panzer tank attacks. In the 1930s, my family owned a horse that made deliveries from the family’s bakery. The horse was friendly and well-trained. I think that many in Poland reasoned that having several cavalry divisions of thousands and thousands of such horses against a mere few hundred tanks sounded quite reasonable.
After much discussion with his parents and friends, my father decided that in Piotrków Trybunalski Jews had three choices: a) stay put and pray for the best; b) pack up bags immediately and try to escape over the eastern border into Russia; or c) support Poland with the belief that Polish Christians and Jews can live together (see Jewish Bundist Movement). And therefore, he decided to report to the Polish army in Lodz.
I’m not sure why my father chose option C – to report to the Polish army and serve in the military. He omitted the reasoning from this logic, but I assume one or several facts about him were influential. He was, after all, a tough young man with excellent boxing credentials in town clubs and organizations; he had a 5th-grade education; and he was no fan of Russian communism.
My Tatteh was unlucky in his choice to not attempt to escape to Russia, but he did survive Auschwitz. His luck continued to improve after that. Following the war, he remarried, and this poor tailor with a tattooed number on his forearm and 5th grade education had three great sons – my youngest brother Saul with his M.D. degree, I with my J.D. from law school, and my middle brother Joe, with his master’s degree in a very interesting and bankable field from some school named Harvard.
When I was contemplating some form of military service at the height of the Vietnam War in the early seventies, my father revealed new information. After making his decision to serve in the Polish army, he and a few other misguided or unlucky young men boarded a rickety bus for the several hours trip to Lodz. As the bus approached Lodz just after sunrise, the passengers could see in the distance trenches filled with Polish soldiers.
Suddenly, there was noise in the sky. My father and passengers could see Stuka dive bombers approaching at high speed. As they neared the trenches filled with Polish soldiers, the planes dove down firing a barrage of machine gun bullets and then released their bombs. At their lowest point, these Stukas were no more than 30 to 40 feet above the Polish soldiers. The airplanes climbed back into the sky, turned and again dove down in attack. Again, one or two soldiers returned fire with their outdated rifles.
Again, the planes went up, turned, and prepared to dive down. At this point, a fellow passenger on the bus asked my father, “What can the poor soldiers do?” An unbelievable scene developed. As the dive bombers approach their lowest point, Polish soldiers jumped out of the trenches and started throwing rocks at the bombers. The passengers looked incredulously at each other.
My father was shocked. He vividly recalled that at that very moment, then and there, he had an epiphany, a revelation. At that moment, he knew Poland in general and Jews in particular were in deep trouble – “oyf groisseh tsuress”!
Passengers unanimously and quickly had the bus turned around and raced back home to Piotrków Trybunalski. There, my father worked in the ghetto (the first Nazi ghetto in occupied Europe, in fact), then was sent to a work camp as slave labor, and was later shipped to infamous Auschwitz.
And some 30 years later, I, too, made the decision to join the military. Going back almost a hundred years, my family background of military service in any armed force consisted of only one member – my father – almost serving in the Polish army. And so, I’ve made the important, reasonable decision to set down for posterity the highlights of my service as an American soldier in a book. Although I concede that my book may not be serialized into a Netflix series, I hope that someday my grandchildren will be curious or bored enough to delve into this record of our family’s martial history.
I submit the following chapter outline of a book I intend to write about my military service from 1971 through 1976. I verify under oath that most of the history is truthful and barely distorted.
CHAPTER 1 – Why falsely declaring myself a homosexual or moving to Canada were not option to avoid. the draft. Why taking some powerful drugs before the medical physical was not an option. Why I finally opted for the National Guard.
CHAPTER 2 – Getting shipped off to basic training in the Army. I am nervous. A general passes me and I salute him with my left hand. I am scared. He is pissed.
CHAPTER 3 – I enlisted in a NY State National Guard transport (small truck) battalion. When our group returns from basic training, our sergeant major asks us if there is anyone among us who can drive a “stick shift.” I inform our sergeant major that I once a drove small car with a stick shift while on vacation. I am told that I qualify to drive a 5,000-gallon gasoline, 18-wheel tractor trailer for six years without EVER getting any lessons or instruction.
CHAPTER 4 – Steve Burrell, a fellow basic trainee assigned to our barracks, was originally from some small swamp town in Louisiana. He introduces himself to me and informs me that he never met a Jew before. He would like to know if it’s true that Jews have horns. I inform him it’s probably not true. He becomes a buddy.
CHAPTER 5 – My future wife visits me on our first Sunday off. She brings a bagel, cream cheese, and lox. Steve Burrell comes by and asks what I’m eating. I tell him cream cheese and lox. He is fascinated and asks if my girlfriend could bring him one LOCK, so he could taste it. I check to see if my horns are showing.
CHAPTER 6 – I am back in the National Guard. We are sent to Camp Smith near West Point to requalify on gas masks. We have to go into a brick building and take off our masks while tear gas is being released. I tell Lieutenant Maloney that Jewish soldiers do not have to endure gas mask tasks because of what happened during the Holocaust with gas chambers. He believes me but when our commanding officer is told – he happens to be Jewish – I have to give back one stripe and go from corporal back to private first class.
CHAPTER 7 – I am back in Camp Smith one year later. We have to prepare for the colonel’s inspection. Lieut. Maloney throws me an old, torn face towel and tells me to wipe down my 30-foot tractor trailer with it. I am caught sleeping under the trailer by the officers and again have to donate a stripe back down to private.
CHAPTER 8 – I am offered a training slot to become an officer. Me? An officer? I couldn’t even hold on to corporal. I laugh when I say no. Maybe I should have been more respectful. I am sent to Camp Smith for training to become company bazookaman. I train all day with a 30-year-old World War II bazooka.
CHAPTER 9 – I am now qualified to fire M-16 rifles and World War II vintage (and no longer used) bazookas; throw grenades; engage in hand-to-hand combat with gigantic knives bigger than any knives that my mother used to gut pike carp to make gefilte fish; and to drive an 18-wheel, 30-plus-foot tractor trailer hauling 5,000 gallons of gasoline. Has this Jewish kid from Brooklyn come a long way? My family is evenly split.
CHAPTER 10 – I spend a total of 6 years wearing a uniform – almost 6 months on active duty in the US Army and five-and-a-half years in the New York National Guard. I survived it all, maybe barely, but survived it all.
I decide to go to law school. I survived it all, just barely.
Author’s Note: If you found my story exciting and at least partly believable, or if your story in the military was as interesting as mine, feel free to contact me. I am especially looking for your stories of the Spanish American War and World War I. I will probably read it. Contact me at [email protected].