If you two hadn’t saved about 200 letters you received from William “Bill” Wilch during World War II, his stories — some filled with laughter, others that will bring the reader to tears — never would have been told. Wilch, 90, of Middletown, said his girlfriend at the time and his future wife, Mary Rita, and his mother, Helen Wilch, who lived on Iglehart Street, kept the correspondences and photos in the envelopes he mailed to Middletown.
Later, Wilch collected the letters, placed them in a box, put them in his closet, and told one of his curious sons, Steve, never to read the letters. He didn’t want his son to learn about the war, at least not through his dad’s eyes and words.
“He said, ‘That’s not something for you kids,’” Steve said, imitating his father by slamming his fist on the kitchen table. “He meant it.”
Growing up in Middletown, Steve, one of five children, remembered countless, sleepless nights when he heard high-pitched screams coming from his parents’ bedroom. What he learned later, those yells were the result of his father’s nightmares that were played over and over in his head. When Steve became a young adult, he watched war movies and TV shows with his father, and that’s when his father shared a few WWII stories.
When “Saving Private Ryan,” starring Tom Hanks, was shown in Middletown in 1998, I watched the movie with Wilch and another World War II veteran, who has since died. When Wilch got home that day, his eyes filled with tears, he told his son: “I got stories to tell.”
Eventually, he opened the box of letters and let his son inside.
“It’s how I learned about why he was having those nightmares,” Steve Wilch said.
There were about 100 letters that Wilch sent to his mother and 75 he mailed to his wife of 63 years ago who died four years ago. Steve Wilch became engrossed in the war and its impact on his father. He couldn’t help but consider how the family’s history would have been written differently without fellow soldier Burton Burfeind, a member of the 29th Infantry Division, 115 Regiment, who was credited with saving Wilch’s life more than once and keeping him from being a POW.
Burfeind was killed on Sept. 9, 1944 in France.
It was Burfeind’s advice to Wilch that became the title of Wilch’s memoirs: “Don’t Just Kill Them, Murder Em. Shoot Pee Wee, Just Shoot.”
Some in the family didn’t like the title because they thought it misled readers into thinking it was a violent book, instead of a collections of letters. Wilch told his son to keep the “gory” details out of the book.
“It’s sad, happy, joyful,” Steve Wilch said of the book that was just released.
Steve Wilch said the book is a “tribute” to his father and all the men who served during World War II. Steve Wilch, 63, said he “cried myself silly” as he was writing and editing the book.
Wilch interrupted his son: “It’s not about me.”
The 5-foot-8 Wilch was nicknamed “Pee Wee” and the name stuck.
“They always put me with the four tallest guys,” he said with a smile.
When it was time to dig a foxhole, Wilch dug 5-foot, 8-inches deep. Then when the 6-foot-4 soldier stepped into the hole, his head stuck above the hole. Keep digging, Pee Wee was told.
“It became a big joke,” he said.
Wilch, who had received a Knight of the Legion of Honor medal, the highest honor that France can bestow upon a person, and other WWII veterans were invited to have dinner at a French restaurant in Columbus. There was a TV crew there from France, and they were so intrigued by Wilch that they drove to Middletown and interviewed him in his home. The TV special is set to air on June 6, D-Day.
Steve Wilch looked down again at the table, this time at a picture of all the letters.
“They gave me a gift,” he said of his mother and grandmother.
And now he has repaid the favor.
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