Wally Franiel remembers childhood behind enemy lines

Nearly 70 years after he was liberated from a forced labour farm in Germany, 83-year-old Wally Franiel still dreams of lines of Allied Lancaster bombers approaching from the horizon.

"There was this dream of bombers overhead for miles and miles as they go towards you, bombs falling and explosions ...and they're getting closer and closer but I always manage to wake up before they arrive, which is good," he says with a laugh.

Wally, as he prefers to be called, was just a young boy when the Second World War began. But it did not take long for its effects to reach his hometown of Czestochowa, Poland.

He soon became accustomed to the sound of planes flying high overhead, followed by the sudden explosion of a bomb hitting the ground nearby.

"The worst part during the bombing was at night," remembers Wally. "Because you heard the planes, you didn't know where they were, you know, you just had a feeling that any moment you could get a bomb on your head."

In 1940, his mother was picked up off the street by German soldiers and sent to a work camp near Hamburg. It was several years before he saw her again, and by then she had become an "old lady," he says.

In January 1943, Wally's father was sent to work in a munitions factory in Koblenz, Germany. Because Wally and his younger brother were both underage, they were ordered to go with him.

While their father worked in the city, the two boys were assigned to work on a nearby farm.

At the time, Wally was 12 years old.

'Then hell broke loose'

Wally had learned what he calls "basic" German – colours and the days of the week – at school, but that was all he knew when he arrived at the farm where he was expected to help out around the house and yard.

As he worked, he'd watch Lancasters and other planes cross the skies overhead. Occasionally, an anti-aircraft gun on the edge of Koblenz would bring one crashing to the ground in the surrounding farmland.

"And then one day – I remember it being the fall of 1944 – there was about 2,000 planes coming ... and they were loaded – you could tell," recalls Wally, describing how the ground would shake and windows shudder from the vibrations.

"I think it was a Saturday, beautiful evening about maybe 5 o'clock, and they were flying back over Koblenz as always – but this time their leading planes were shooting rockets down towards markers – and then hell broke loose."

At the munitions factory where he was working, Wally's father ran for a nearby bomb shelter but couldn't keep up with his fellow workers because of a leg injury.

While the others huddled for safety inside the shelter, he watched from a hundred feet away as two bombs landed on the shelter's roof, killing the 480 people inside.

"Now that I think ... my family survived the war but there were a lot of times so close … too close for comfort," Wally says.

'Made in Poland'

For the first year or so on the farm, "you got the feeling that you're going to stay there forever," Wally recalls.

"You'll be on the farm and won't amount to anything, kind of a slave, shoveling things that don't smell too good – but when the Allies started flying and bombing ... it was obvious that slowly Germany will collapse. It was a totally different feeling."

Wally, a natural storyteller who punctuates his tales with laughter, becomes more serious when asked if he remembers what it was like when the Allies arrived in his village.

"Certain things you don't forget," he says. "When the Allies actually came to our village, they were shooting and you could see German tanks – they were really noisy because their tracks were made out of steel so you could hear them miles away."

The family he was living with dressed the then-14-year-old in a Hitlerjugend uniform and sent him out to the street while they hid inside their home.

"So I just marched over the village – it was maybe four blocks – and I met the very first American soldier," Wally says. "He was really nice looking, maybe in his mid 20s, tall and had a small machine gun."

"He went 'hands up' so I raised my hands. I only knew three words in English [that] I thought at the time would be the proper thing to say – so as I was raising [my hands] I said 'made in Poland.'

"He jumped on me and started hugging me … it turned out the American battalion – they were all from Chicago and most of them were of Polish descent."

'If they start shooting, they'll have to kill me too'

Seeing Wally's warm reception from the Allied soldiers, other villagers came out of hiding. Meanwhile, a group of German soldiers stationed there – many of whom were just teenagers – took refuge inside a nearby barn.

Because he spoke both German and Polish, Wally helped as a translator to coax the frightened soldiers into surrendering. After hearing the American commander threaten to blow up the barn, Wally went inside to coax the German soldiers to give themselves up.

"They didn't want to come out – they were scared, right?" Wallys says. "So I said 'just give me your hands' and I took two soldiers by the hands and I said 'well, if they start shooting, they'll have to kill me too.'"

The frightened soldiers trailed out of the barn behind him, and were immediately offered chewing gum and cigarettes by the Americans.

"Like they were buddies that knew each other for a long time," he says with a laugh. "It was totally different than when Germany invaded Poland – but that's another story."

'It took me a long time to forgive, but never forget'

Wally and his family moved to Canada in 1950, first to a farm near Lethbridge and later to Calgary. In 1984, Wally opened his first camera shop.

Standing behind the counter where he's spent the past 30 years swapping stories and delivering punchlines, Wally grows sombre when asked what Remembrance Day means to him today.

"During the war, I've seen a lot of people killed," he says. "It took me a long time to forgive, but never forget.

"There was one American soldier, I guess he was killed during the action … He still had a rifle in his hands when he got killed and I looked at him and I still can still see his image. Then I kind of realized this kid actually lost his life to free me and millions of others, of course, so November 11, it's kind of special for me.

"I'm really thankful to [the soldiers] and their families – the ones that survived and lived and those that already died or laid down their lives – I do not wish anybody to go through what I did."