Veterans Day: From foes to friends

Anthony Nardone navigated his B-17 bomber over Germany, preparing to drop his payload. Meanwhile, on the ground, Henry Boessl aimed his anti-aircraft guns skyward, preparing to fire on the Allied planes.

Nearly 70 years have passed since the men fought in the war that defined a generation.

But their memories — and their tongues — are still as sharp as ever.

"I was a navigator on a bomber, and he was in the anti-aircraft. He's trying to shoot me down," said Nardone, 90, of Irondequoit, beckoning to his friend. "But he's a lousy shot."

Boessl, 85, of Pittsford, is quick to fire back: "Well, somebody must have been a good shot. Cause he had to bail out."

And so it goes at CP Rochester, where both men have been volunteers for decades, outfitting microwaves with easy-to-open latches and customizing wheelchairs for those in need.

In the organization's small workshop, their banter is legendary. Often, it's Nardone telling a cheesy joke, while Boessl stands nearby, muttering and shaking his head in feigned disgust.

But these men, now the closest of friends, were once on opposite sides of a great war.

Gearing up for war

Boessl was four years old when his parents took him along with them to the local schoolhouse, so they could cast their votes. When they walked in the door, they were given slips of paper with two circles on them: a large one indicating "Yes" and a small one indicating "No."

"The question was: 'Should Hitler become chancellor?'" said Boessl. "You took that slip, you walked to the tables, and you marked it. Everybody could see you."

At home, his uncles — one pro-Hitler, one anti-Hitler — would argue about the state of the country. The Hitler critic thought that the voting was done publicly so that Hitler's loyalists could easily identify those opposed to his regime.

Boessl's parents were skeptical of the Third Reich as well. But as the Fuhrer began to tighten his grip, word spread about the fate of those who had spoken out against him or voted against his ascent. Soon, everyone stopped discussing political affairs with one another. Outside of family and the closest of friends, no one knew who to trust. Even the neighborhood children were viewed warily.

"I'd go into the barbershop, which was kind of like an unofficial bar, but when I walked in, the conversation stopped," he said. "You never knew who you were talking to."

At age 10, Boessl was inducted into a pre-Hitler Youth organization, which he likened to a twisted form of the Cub Scouts. When the schoolteacher walked into the room each morning, the students would leap from their seats and yell "Heil Hitler!"

The teacher always gave a hearty 'Heil' in response.

Boessl's father never joined the Hitler movement in the locomotive factory where he worked. A highly skilled lithographer, he never lost his job because he would have been difficult to replace. But his lack of involvement in the Nazi movement brought the Gestapo around several times. Twice they tore the Boessl family home apart, looking for evidence of treason.

Boessl's mother, a seamstress who was equally skeptical, was once hauled before the political block leader, for having told a neighbor to turn down his blaring radio during one of Hitler's speeches.

"My mother packed a duffel bag, kissed me goodbye and said she must have done something, and that she'd probably be put in jail for a month or two," said Boessl.

But she came back a few hours later. The block leader was a former schoolmate of hers, who buried her case deep in the complaint files, hoping it wouldn't be found. But Boessl's mother was told that she needed to join a Nazi organization to get her name off the black list. She started knitting socks for Nazi soldiers soon after.

In 1939, the war began, and the radio stations and newspapers — all operated by Hitler — reported the first news from the front.

"I'll repeat the announcement on the radio: 'The Polish Army has invaded Germany.' But it so happened that the German armed forces were in maneuvers along the Polish border,'" said Boessl. "Coincidence, right?"

In 1943, Boessl was tapped for glider training and was named a future member of the Nazi air force.

He was 15 years old.

Shot down

The United States didn't enter World War II until late in 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. But early on, the country was already feeling some of the effects.

Nardone entered Washington High School on Clifford Avenue. But soon, Rochester started shuffling its students around to accommodate the booming industries in need of space for wartime operations. So Nardone eventually graduated from a different school — Franklin — in 1941.

The following year, with the country now at war, he entered the Army Air Corps. He got his first flying lessons in 1943.

"I was not a good pilot," he said. "My instructor and I did everything but put gloves on — for the first four hours (each day), we'd be fighting."

But the need for enlisted men was growing, so Nardone was given a job as a navigator and sent overseas.

Assigned to a squadron of B-17 bombers, Nardone flew nine missions. On some, the anti-aircraft fire was so heavy that they'd be flying through black clouds of smoke and shrapnel, praying that they wouldn't be hit.

On his ninth flight, a mission east of Berlin, his group was attacked by dozens of enemy aircraft.

"We were exposed on three sides," said Nardone. "Our aircraft was so badly damaged — all the control cables were gone, one engine was out — and we had no control. So I had to bail out."

He parachuted into northeast Berlin, where he was met by German civilians. They surrounded him, waving pitchforks and bats. One of them had a shotgun.

"I think the thing that saved me in that instant was a young man on a bicycle in a German uniform who came in and let them know that I was his prisoner, and they had to back off," said Nardone. "And they did. I think I kind of owe my life to him."

But eight long months were ahead of him. At age 21, Nardone was a prisoner of war.

A 'victorious retreat'

For Boessl, the glider training never materialized. By 1944, the Nazis were losing the war, and the German forces were retreating.

But the newspapers were still hard at work, obscuring the truth for Hitler.

"They called it a 'victorious retreat.' Either that, or they called it a 'straightening of the front,'" said Boessl. "That's the way the news was then."

As Allied forces advanced, Boessl was made into an anti-aircraft gunner. Positioned in his home city of Munich, he'd aim his 88-millimeter anti-aircraft gun skyward, pointing it at a nearly 90 degree angle to the ground. That was the only way to shoot down the Allied bombers, who were flying thousands of feet overhead.

A scrawny 15-year-old, Boessl couldn't lift the heavy anti-aircraft ammunition into his weaponry. Neither could his comrades, most of whom were as young and as slight as he was.

Instead, that work was done by Russian prisoners.

"They looked like bears. They were probably farmers. They couldn't speak a word of German, and we couldn't speak a word of Russian, so they were kept in a separate barracks," said Boessl. "We were told they had volunteered. And it's possible. I'm sure they got better food. They may have been treated better."

As the Allies continued their advance, the repeated bombings ravaged the city of Munich. Boessl's family survived by raiding bombed out houses for piping and firewood, hoping to keep their own home in working order.

But despite the ruinous condition of the city and country, and the increasingly hopeless war effort, Boessl was told that he was ready to start training to become a pilot.

"It made no sense. It was idiotic. But we got out," of the anti-aircraft unit, he said.

He took a train to Augsburg, but upon arrival, he found a city in equally bad shape. Every livable corner was occupied by refugees, homeless, and wounded. With nowhere to put the new pilots, Boessl was sent back to Munich in 1945.

"We were discharged from our unit, which meant we got our passports back," he said. "The moment you were inducted into a military unit, you were not an individual any more. You had to give up your passport. But now I had my passport back."

The journey home

Nardone, meanwhile, was in the midst of a lengthy stint as a prisoner of war. After being shot down near Berlin, German soldiers brought him into the city.

"One guard offered me a part of his rations, which was a piece of black bread and some sausages," said Nardone. "I thanked him because I hadn't eaten in over a day."

Over the next two weeks, Nardone would be taken to various encampments all over the country.

First, he was brought to an interrogation center in Frankfurt, where he was kept in solitary confinement for a week. From there, he was sent to a labor camp in Wetzlar. Throughout his brutal confinement, Nardone is quick to recall the brief moments of humanity between the guards and prisoners.

"A guard was playing accordion — the song 'Lili Marleen,'" he said. "And I played guitar then, so one of the other guards, he brought a guitar for me, and I played: 'Lili Marleen.'"

Next came a trip to a camp in Barth, in the northernmost part of Germany.

"There, I finally got the delousing I needed, some food, and my first pair of good pants, because I was still wearing a flying suit," said Nardone. "The pants were size 38 by 32, and at that point I was a 29 waist and a 29 length. But they were clean, so I wasn't complaining. I had a piece of rope as a belt."

He spent the next eight months in Barth before finally being liberated by Russian troops in May 1945.

After being brought to France — where he had a brief encounter with future president Dwight Eisenhower — Nardone was brought to England. He booked passage on the Queen Elizabeth, and finally returned home to Rochester, whereupon he'd marry his high school sweetheart.

Decades later, upon retiring from Kodak, he started volunteering at CP Rochester.

Coming to America

In May 1945, General George Patton's tanks rolled into Munich. Allied forces set up checkpoints, trying to round up the last of the Nazi soldiers. The roughest soldiers were the American Germans and the Jews, said Boessl.

"Very understandably, the Jews didn't like the German population. And the American Germans, we had given them a bad name, so they didn't like us," said Boessl. "But the average American soldiers were very fair, very decent, especially compared to the Russian occupation zone."

Boessl was stopped at the checkpoints numerous times. But the Allies were only looking for those who were still enlisted in the Nazi army. Boessl was always released because he had his passport.

For the next several years, he tried to find a way out of the country.

"We all wanted to emigrate after what went on in Germany, after we found out about what our country had done. We wanted to get out," he said.

Eventually, American relatives of a close friend offered to sponsor him. After landing in New Jersey, Boessl eventually made his way to Rochester, where he worked for a conveyer company called Rapistan and regularly played his accordion at Clemtonio's, an Italian restaurant in Fairport.

Over the years, he's been asked on occasion whether he now feels guilty about fighting in Hitler's army.

"I say, 'Well, look at the map. America is here. Germany is here — I'm here. Did I go shoot at him over here?' " he quips, pointing to America. "No, he came to drop bombs on me."

After retiring, he started volunteering at CP Rochester, where he met Nardone.

It's been much of the same ever since.

"What do you call a faulty compass?" Nardone recently asked a visitor to CP Rochester.

Seated across from him, Boessl braced himself for the answer.

"It's called a Tate's compass," Nardone continued. "Because he who has-a-Tate's, is lost."

Turning away in disgust, Boessl scoffed and muttered something under his breath.

SDOBBIN@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/Sean_Dobbin