Editor’s note: Local author Dan Woll has been itching to tell the story of the Pottstown Five, a tale of five young men who served together and were prisoners of war in World War II. How does this relate to Pierce County? Friendship, that’s how, plus the tradition of honoring veterans no longer with us on Memorial Day. The story is too good not to be told.

In Woll’s words:

“My oldest friend, Ed Dobry, is a Polish kid from Pottstown, Penn. We went through some tough times together and consider each other brothers. Years ago, he told me an unbelievable story about his dad. His dad graduated from high school, volunteered and shortly thereafter, found himself in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge. He was captured and thrown in a barn with perhaps hundreds of other G.Is. He looked around and one after another, he bumped into five high school classmates. None of them knew the others were in the same action.”

Here is their story.  

“When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground.”

—African proverb

As Memorial Day approaches, 99% of the almost 16 million Americans who served in WWII are no longer with us. Time is running out to learn from their stories. One of the veterans not with us is Ed Dobry, Sr. of Pottstown, Penn.

Ed Jr. and I were teachers in an inner city school in 1970. Ed Sr. was a working class war vet. I was young, long-haired and most likely not Ed Sr.’s cup of tea but he accepted me in his house. He never said much to me, certainly nothing about the war, but over time I learned he had been a P.O.W. from bits and pieces of family recollections. The family also owned a partial draft of a never completed book about Ed and his platoon by Ron Bechtel, an author who died during the writing process. Then a video interview by the National World War II Museum came to light.

Pottstown is a small town outside of Philadelphia. When WWII came, its population was about 20,000. It was a steel town, a hardworking place where people worked without a tie and a big night out might include a couple of Polish pierogies chased with a bottle of Yuengling, America’s oldest beer.                           

When draft notices began arriving in Pottstown there was no hesitation in answering the call to arms on the part of five friends, Ed Dobry, Tom Bondola, Paul Reigner, Stanley Davidheiser, and Morris, “Spike” Gauger. They had been together since they were kids. Ed and Tommy were eligible for deferment because they had jobs in defense industries. Stanley was underage. Ed and Tommy declined the deferments. With the help of friends, Stanley forged the date on his birth certificate to qualify. They enlisted together and chose the Army.

Bechtel described their departure: “The five friends were not alone. On February 14, 1943 they marched to the train station with 136 others of Pottstown’s finest. The high school band led the way. It was the last march they would take not laden with stress and fear.”

They were shipped to the European Front. They landed in Normandy on Sept. 17, 1944, and joined Allied troops moving westward in the days leading to the Battle of the Bulge. In that campaign, according to the National World War II Museum, the United States suffered over 80,000 casualties, including more than 23,000 taken prisoner. The Pottstown Five, as they became known, were destined to join that statistic as members of a mortar platoon for Company K of the 104th Division.    

As they advanced on the French city of Rodalbe in pursuit of a German unit, Allied traffic moving in the opposite direction portended trouble. A Massachusetts veteran of Company K recalled, “A long line of wounded on Jeeps, as well as walking wounded, were returning to the battalion aid station for treatment.”

They reached Rodalbe ahead of their tank support. The Germans counterattacked with devastating force. G.I.s who hid in houses were annihilated by Panzer tank fire. The rest of the company retreated to a field outside of the village and dug in. They were soon surrounded by the Panzer tanks and subjected to a withering bombardment. Their ammo ran out. Ultimately 280 men were killed.

Company K was outnumbered and outgunned. Encircled by 10 fearsome Panzer tanks, they were sitting ducks. Capt. Ferdinand Biedermann of the 111th Panzer Grenadiers was under pressure from SS observers to open fire until there was nothing left of the company but a smoldering crater. Biedermann refused to allow the slaughter of helpless young men. He met with Lt. Nathan Edsel who was the ranking American officer. Biedermann took him to a secure location and showed him the American positions, completely visible to the German gunners. There was no way out.

Bondola said, “There was nothing to fight back with. What else was there to do?”  Edsel agreed to surrender. It was Nov. 12, 1944.

The boys were marched to a barn and locked in with 120 other G.I s from their company.  Biedermann showed his humanity again. Outside the barn an angry altercation erupted. The men wondered what was going on until a G.I. who spoke the language said, “There’s an SS officer here. He’s ordering them to burn down the barn.” Biedermann refused.

It was a horrible war and feelings of rage and revenge must have overtaken some, but not Capt. Biederman. (Subsequently his tank was hit, killing his entire crew, leaving him crippled and depressed for the rest of his life.)

In 2015 a National World War II Museum video interview with Bondola brought the story of the Pottstown Five to life again. What abides is his humbleness and acceptance of duty.  He summed up the life of a soldier as “just doing your job.”

He described life in the prison camp as “living like a dog, like a pig.” The P.O.W.s were confined in a “dingy old barn for a barracks.” Nighttime temps dipped below freezing. The prisoners were given one ratty blanket apiece. There were a few potbellied stoves. Each day on the return march from a day of back-breaking pick and shovel work they had to gather up sticks and branches for a fire. They even gathered and burned cow dung in the stove. It was winter in Germany.

The men began to shed weight. Days were sun-up to sun-down work in the cold. Their bodies demanded calories that were not there. Rations were meager. In the morning they were given a piece of bread and a distasteful brown liquid. The guards said it was tea. Lunch was 16 ounces of watery soup—either potato or rutabaga with a piece of bread. Supper was bread and water. They began to shrink, some of them ultimately losing half their body weight. When Ed finally returned to the States his doctor told him he was so emaciated he would not be able to have children.

In camp the prisoners adjusted to the idea that no help was coming. Many of their accounts mention that they feared every day could be their last. Struggling to survive, they looked to each other for support. As Bondola said, “it was no place to start an argument.” At night Ed retreated to his own thoughts and looked at a picture of his mother, the only thing he had been allowed to keep. There was also their faith. They secretly celebrated Christmas even though they had been warned that any celebration could merit death. Bondola said, “Who else ya gonna pray to?” He also found respite in thinking about how precious the simple routines in his life in Pottstown had been—a hard day’s work, a beer at the corner bar on the walk home, and a good meal in his house. When he finally returned home he did just that for 30 years. (The G.I’s did not have to get a job immediately upon returning thanks to what Bondola called “52/20.” Twenty bucks a week for 52 weeks.”)

Their prison yard was surrounded by a tall fence capped with razor wire. Guard towers loomed over each corner. Escape attempts ended badly. Ed tried to escape and was caught. In the process his hip was badly injured. Two G.I.s did escape from the work detail. They were wearing German army boots when captured. The guards brought them back to the yard and shot them on the spot.

Life as a P.O.W. was no safer than life in combat. The Geneva Convention forbids detaining P.O.W.s in a combat zone, yet the men were imprisoned in a camp at an airbase in Parchim, Germany. There, they were subject to Allied air attacks. With no recourse to shelter many were killed in air raids. Author Kurt Vonnegut, who was a P.O.W., wrote about the lack of protection.

“We were loaded and locked up, 60 men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car…On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about 150 of us.”

The same thing happened to the Pottstown crew. They were being transported back to prison by rail, after a day of work in a far away field. Their unmarked train was attacked from the air. Helpless G.I.s were slaughtered. The boxcar ahead of the Pottstown boys was blown up. Their own car had a gaping hole blown in the side. In desperation they jumped out of the moving train, and survived the impact, but their luck was short-lived. Within days they were recaptured and returned to camp.

Back in Pottstown, bad news arrived by Western Union. Bondola’s parents received a telegram on March 11, 1945—an emotionless clipped note in all caps. It said.

“BASED ON INFORMATION RECEIVED THROUGH THE PROVOST MARSHAL GENERAL, RECORDS OF THE WAR DEPARTMENT HAVE BEEN AMENDED TO SHOW YOUR SON PRIVATE FIRST CLASS STEPHEN T BONDOLA A PRISONER OF WAR OF THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT ANY FURTHER INFORMATION RECEIVED WILL BE FURNISHED BY THE PROVOST MARSHAL GENERAL”

As spring arrived, hope blossomed. From the camp, they could see large movements of people every day. The tide was turning. On May 3 an American/Russian force arrived and liberated the camp. In a bizarre coincidence, one of their liberators was another Pottstown High classmate.

No one remembers the men talking much about their ordeal, a familiar story to those who have tried to pull stories from combat veterans. The closest thing Ed Jr. recalls to a reminiscing session for the Pottstown men was their habit of gathering at his house to watch the old sitcom, Hogan’s Heroes. Does that make sense? Consider. It was before people fully addressed the toll of PTSD, or shell shock as it was called then. Perhaps replacing the nightmare of war with a ludicrous farce like Hogan’s Heroes was a coping mechanism. I’ve talked to vets who will talk at length about seemingly trivial memories rather than relive the trauma of combat.

My wife’s father was in the Battle of Metz, 20 miles from the Pottstown Five’s capture. He was decorated for running through a mine field to place a satchel charge. I asked him about it. He had nothing to say. What he did want to share was how angry he felt when enemy shelling caused him to drop a basket of eggs he had found for his starving buddies.

That brings up one last point. The importance of buddies. The Pottstown Five finally returned home in June 1945. They left in a group of five and returned to Pottstown in a group of five. On Nov. 14, 1994 they returned to Rodalbe, France and visited the site of the battle and their capture. What persists through family recollections, author notes and the taped interview is an attitude of “you take what you get.” That’s how they lived.

Bondola’s interview by the National World War II Museum took place in his home. He’s in a modest room on a couch in a comfortable wood paneled room, pictures of the family on the wall. He’s a big man with a full head of hair. At 92, his recollections are still vivid and sharp. Behind a thick pair of glasses his eyes reveal a mind full of memories. He speaks with the self-assuredness of a man at peace. At the end of the interview, Big Tom was asked what he learned from the war. He said, “Not to have another.”

A good story should have some lessons. Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, wrote an excellent book entitled Man’s Search For Meaning, about surviving in the worst of times. He learned that one must have a “why” to survive. The Pottstown Five had a “why.” Ed looked at his mother’s picture, Tom remembered the simple grace of day-to-day life back home, the boys celebrated their faith at Christmas, and of great importance, they believed in each other. The bond of friendship kept them going. Stephen Ambrose wrote in Band of Brothers,“They also found in combat the closest brotherhood they ever knew.” Everything had been taken away from the Pottstown Five except their right to choose how they would react.

On Memorial Day, what are our own “whys?” This is a hard time in our nation’s history. Bondola might repeat himself as he looked at America’s divisions. “This is no place to start an argument.” There may be no better way to honor those we remember on Memorial Day by trying to mend our differences and make this a stronger country.

The Pottstown Five remained in their hometown until the day they died. Together.