Even though he was wounded twice during his tour of duty in Europe during World War II, Casimir Szefler doesn’t see himself as a hero. He just had a job to do and when he finished, he came home to Bayonne to pick up his old life as an electrician at Elco Boat Works – and after that, other jobs.
Closing in on 90 years old, Szefler keeps busy tending his garden, although he admits that the images of his days in Europe during the war are always with him.
But the last thing he expected was a letter in mid-April from the Consul General of France in New York awarding him the Legion of Honor Chevalier by the president of the French Republic.
“I was the lead scout and I had dealings with the French underground.” – Casimir Szefler
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Although he had been honored by the state of New Jersey in 1999, Szefler said he was more than a little shocked when he read the April 15 letter inviting him to attend the ceremony at the French Consulate on May 8.
“This prestigious distinction underlines the deep appreciation and gratitude of the French people for your contribution to the liberation of our country during World War II,” the letter said. “We will never forget the commitment of American heroes like you to whom France owes so much.”
The son of Polish immigrants
Born in 1921 in Bayonne to parents who immigrated to the United States from Poland, Szefler grew up in the area of Linnet Street. When he graduated from Bayonne Technical High School in June 1938, he saw a career ahead as an electrician.
Still spry despite his age, Szefler knew the exact date he entered service – May 30, 1943 – although other details such as the names of places he had seen during the war took a few minutes for him to recall.
“It’ll come back to me,” he said in struggling to remember the first place he was wounded when he was chasing down the last of retreating Germans out of the French village of Celemery. He recalled seeing the last vehicle leaving the village, which carried an anti-aircraft weapon, and its blast grazed his chest with shrapnel and concrete.
“I was backed up against a brick wall,” he said.
The wound did not disable him. Medics treated him with the new miracle drug Sulfa (antibacterial sulfonamides used to treat wounds on the battlefield) – and he went on fighting.
While not in the original D-Day landing on June 4, 1944, Szefler was immediately behind it, landing in the water to fill in the depleted ranks, and continued the fight deeper into France, then into Belgium and Luxembourg in time for the Battle of the Bulge. By the end of the war, he wound up in Austria (after briefly wandering into Czechoslovakia) where a local kid pointed out the building where Adolph Hitler was born.
Didn’t start out there
Oddly, Szefler didn’t start out destined for Europe.
After entering the service, he went to Camp Campbell in Kentucky, where, after some testing, he was given a choice of going to Officers’ Training School or the Army Special Training Program. He opted for the latter and went to Ohio State University. But before he could complete any of the certificate programs, he was reassigned to be part of the D-Day operation and sent back to Fort Dix in New Jersey.
Here, he was assigned to a unit headed by First Lieutenant Neil Gallagher, also from Bayonne, who would later go on to be a member of the House of Representatives. Gallagher led the unit into action in Europe, where Szefler – because he could speak Polish and had a gift for picking up local languages quickly – often met with members of the French and other underground operations for his unit.
“I was the lead scout and I had dealings with the French underground,” he said, recalling them mostly as women riding bicycles. He was later invited to a reunion in 1986, where he met some of the key leaders of the underground movement in Europe.
Recalling odd moments, Szefler recalled Gallagher asking him to accompany him and a one-star general to investigate a front line position.
“I was a BAR [type of automatic weapons] man and Neil asked me to fire a few rounds in the air and I did, suddenly a number of Germans appeared,” he said. “Some of them were pushing a [disabled] car with an officer in it.”
Not until much later did Szefler find out that he, Gallagher, and the one-star general were responsible for the capturing of more than 100 German soldiers as well as the officer in the car, who turned out to be a German general.
His second wound occurred when he was crossing the River Steille near Nanci, France. The apparent victim of enemy artillery, he woke up in a hospital, and spent time in rehab.
When the war ended on May 8, 1945, no one bothered to tell them.
“Nobody told us right away,” he said.
In France, he recalled local people treating Americans as liberators, yet he found no open hostility even in Germany.
“I never had anything against the German people,” he said, refusing to call himself a hero. “We served. We did what we had to do.”
When he came home after the war, he didn’t talk about his experiences for the most part, not even to his family.
Yet he retains the memories, even if at times he struggles to recall the name of a place.
But he remembers having lunch in Paris’ city hall after the city was liberated, and remembers how the French went all out in every way. He – doing this interview a few days before he was honored – anticipates that the affair at the French consulate will be even more spectacular.
“I really don’t know what to expect, but I know it will be overwhelming,” he said. “The French tend to go whole hog for things like this.”