WAR HERO STILL CALLS FDL HOME

Retired Lt. Col. James “Maggie” Megellas has been all around the globe, but Fond du Lac still holds a special place in his heart.

“I still consider this my home,” said Megellas, who arrived in Fond du Lac with his wife Tuesday. “I was born here, went to school here. We have roots here.Megellas, who has spoken to about 125 groups since 2003, said he will talk about his war experiences, his book “All the Way to Berlin” and his recent trip to visit troops in Afghanistan.

Writings

Megellas said he chose to write “All the Way to Berlin” to add the human side to the history of the “young men who answered the call that were at the frontlines fighting” in World War II. “There wasn’t anything I could add to the history of it, but I could add a perspective to it,” Megellas said.The book was released in 2003 and is now in its sixth printing.

Megellas, 89, has not slowed down. In addition to his speeches, he also continues to write.Megellas, who spent two years in Vietnam with the Army, is featured in an interview titled “Will We Make the Same Mistake?” in this month’s issue of “Vietnam” magazine.He said he will write a book titled “The Honor and the Shame” about the Vietnam War. The book will discuss the human side of the war and the reception of the troops when they returned home.”I’ll do a great honor to the men who served over there because they deserve it,” Megellas said.He’ll have to find time to write the book now, he said.”I’ve got to clear my desk for a couple of years at least,” Megellas said.

Afghanistan

Megellas is also planning on writing and publishing an article about his recent trip to visit troops in Afghanistan.”That was quite a trip for a World War II veteran to make,” he said. “The whole thing was just an incredible experience.”Megellas said he stayed in a camp along the Pakistani border in a valley between mountains on the “frontline on the war on terrorism, if there is one.” “It was within range of the Pakistani border and within range of Taliban artillery,” he said.The soldiers quickly accepted Megellas as one of their own.”I was accepted as one of the guys, never mind 61 years of difference in our service,” he said.He did everything with the soldiers, including going on a patrol when he was outfitted with body armor and a rifle and “jammed” into a Humvee.”This is an incredible thing that the military would take anybody with them,” Megellas said.

Medal of Honor

Congressional Sixth District Rep. Thomas Petri, R-Fond du Lac, introduced a bill on June 6 in the U.S. House of Representatives requesting that the president award Megellas with a Medal of Honor for acts of valor on Jan. 28, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. “I’m very appreciative about that and very grateful for that,” Megellas said.The bill has been referred to the Committee on Armed Services, said Petri, who has known Megellas his entire life.”They sometimes act quickly and sometimes they don’t act at all,” Petri said. “We’re hoping that we can get them to take a serious look at it because Jim is certainly a true war hero.” “We worked through the process at the Pentagon and after a number of years, despite considerable interest and support from our community and, of course, from the people who served with Jim throughout his campaign in Europe, we basically did not get a favorable decision,” Petri said.He introduced the legislation with U.S. Rep. David Obey “to attempt to move the process forward again,” he said.Megellas said if he is given the Medal of Honor, he will return to Fond du Lac first to discuss it.

60 YEARS LATER, A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR FINALLY GETS TO THANK ONE OF HIS LIBERATORS

Face To Face

There was a knock on the door Tuesday afternoon, and a trim, handsome man took a step into the foyer.

“I’m George.”

With that, a handshake and a hug, a chasm of nearly 60 years closed. George Salton, who was 17 and weighed 75 pounds when he was freed from a Nazi concentration camp on May 2, 1945, met James Megellas, one of the American soldiers who liberated him.

Megellas, now 88, was among the first soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to enter the Wobbelin camp near Ludwigslust, Germany. He looked Salton in the eye and said:

“In you, I see living proof of what we fought for in World War II.” The moment between Megellas and Salton took a year to arrange after Salton’s daughter, Anna Eisen of Southlake, learned that she lived five minutes from a Wobbelin liberator by reading Megellas’ 2003 book, All the Way to Berlin: A Paratrooper at War in Europe. It meant far different things to the two men.

“For me, it was a day of glory,” said Salton, who is now 77. He grew up in a small Polish town and had been in 10 camps in three countries before the liberation.

“My hope and my strength were gone,” he continued. “I am very cognizant of the fact that my life was ebbing, and Jim and the other troopers saved my life. If they had arrived three days later, I would not be here.”

By May 1945, Hitler had been dead just a few days, and many of the largest, most infamous camps had been liberated as the Nazis fell. The camp at Dachau had been freed just three days earlier.

American forces liberated 11 of the 20 major German concentration camps, said Tim Baker, a librarian with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. There were also dozens of smaller labor camps, he said.

Megellas was 28 at the time and a hardened veteran of the Battle of the Bulge. He could not believe what was behind the chain-link fence that he and his buddies came upon.

“We didn’t know about concentration camps,” he recalled Tuesday. “We’d been in combat two years, and we’d seen a lot of men killed in battle. But this was a horror you’d never forget — men weighing 50 or 60 pounds.

“It was a defining moment in our lives — who we were and what we were fighting for.”

And it was just that — a moment. The troops moved on a few days later after, Megellas notes, making the stoic Ludwigslust townspeople view and then bury the bodies.

Megellas had a long career in the Army; he and his wife, Carole, moved to Texas three years ago, and his book is about to be translated into Dutch.

Salton came to America and, he said, “lived the American dream.” The retired electrical engineer lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. In 2002, he and Eisen collaborated on The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir.

“They’re the same — they put it behind them for so long,” said Eisen as Megellas showed her father around his upstairs study, full of medals, commendations and photos. “We met families of liberators. But most of the soldiers are no longer alive, so this is great.”

MAGGIE MEETS PRESIDENT OF GEARBOX SOFTWARE

In May 2006 James Megellas met Randy Pitchford the president of Gearbox Software.

Randy is one of four founders of Gearbox software and under his guidance as President and CEO, Gearbox has grown from an idea into a leading independent game development studio who’s titles have sold over 12 million units worldwide earning gross revenues of over $350 million.

In 2005, Randy served as Co-Director and Executive Producer of Gearbox’s original franchise “Brothers in Arms”. In March of 2005, Gearbox launched the franchise with publisher Ubisoft Entertainment on three platforms to achieve record sales and tremendous critical acclaim making it the best selling and highest rated WW2 action game ever released on the Xbox video game system.

Maybe Gearbox will do a World War II game about Maggie?!