By D.A. Reed
WKTV Contributor

Grand Valley State University Professor James Smither will be the first to admit that you never know where a veterans’ interview will lead you.

Such was the case when Smither, who heads up the GVSU Veterans History Project, interviewed World War II veteran David Zylstra, who mentioned that he had a manuscript of a memoir composed in the 1970s by his second wife’s late brother-in-law from her first marriage. Zylstra have been given the manuscript because he was the family member interested in history.

Released this year by University of North Texas Press and edit and annoyed by Smither, Death and Life in the Big Red One: A World War II Soldier’s Journey from North Africa to Germany, a memoir of World War II 1^st Division combat infantryman Joe Olexa, offers insights into the experiences of an ordinary soldier in extraordinary situations.

Dr. James R. Smither will talk about his book Wednesday, May 17, at 2 p.m. at Marge’s Donut Den, 1751 28th St. SW.

When Smither looked through the large pile of papers stacked on Zylstra’s dining room table, “I realized right away that it should be archived and could probably be edited for publication.”

Smither got in touch with Olexa’s two sons still living in the Grand Rapids area, and they agreed to donate the manuscript and letters Olexa had written home during the war to GVSU and the Veterans History Project.

Smither took a sabbatical to edit the memoir and get it ready for publication.

The Challenge of Fact-Checking

“The real challenge to this was the fact-checking,” said Smither. “(Olexa) wrote the memoir largely from memory. I had to follow the story and check it against both published histories of the campaigns he was in, as well as military records for the unit he served in.”

Matching dates and places where the unit traveled and particular events Olexa mentioned in the memoir took hours of research.

“In some cases, his memory was faulty,” Smither said. “He was remembering the incidents pretty well but didn’t always have them in the right times and places. So I had to sort that out.”

Another challenge was the pseudonyms Olexa used for a lot of his characters. Ordinary combat soldiers didn’t always know each soldier’s name, often only knowing them by their nicknames.

“In (Olexa’s) case, he was going further than that. He was giving them nicknames especially if he didn’t like them,” said Smither with a laugh.

One of the most memorable nicknames was given to one of Olexa’s company commanders who he referred to as “Captain Jitters.” Smither had to find the real name of “Captain Jitters,” and the point Jitters was removed and sent to a psychiatric hospital as mentioned in the memoir.

A Vivid Account of Enlisted Life

Smither said he was impressed by Olexa’s writing style and ease of storytelling. “(The memoir) gives you a much more detailed and vivid account of what it was like to be a combat soldier than you get from most memoirs written by enlisted men,” Smither said. “Usually, it’s the officers that write the better memoirs because they are better educated and have a better idea of what was going on.”

Part of the charm of Olexa’s account of WWII was that he enlisted before the war had even begun.

“Olexa enlisted before the war started and got into the fighting as early as anybody did, and the Americans did in the European theater,” Smither said.

In 1942, Olexa was part of the invasion of North Africa—a portion of the war where there are not many firsthand accounts at all, and none from Olexa’s regiment of several thousand men.

Some Interesting Accounts

Smither said there are many incidents of Olexa’s unit that didn’t make it into history books because they were a “sideshow” for quite a while as a battalion off on their own, conducting small patrols in the southern end of the front in Tunisia.

During the invasion of Sicily in 1943, Olexa was part of a small group of men who were trained to swim onto shore and flash signals to guide the landing craft in. “I had never seen anything about that,” said Smither. “I couldn’t find anything in the records indicating an army personnel ever did this. When I was burrowing around in the unit records, sure enough, I found a report on the activities of the unit he was in, and there he is, listed on the unit roster.”

The more Smither researched, the more he found that “a lot of the crazier stories turned out to be true.”

One such story involved chasing the girlfriends of soldiers out of the woods near the base in England where Olexa spent the last five months of the European war training replacement combat soldiers. The women would camp in the woods near the base and sneak in at night, or the men would sneak into the woods to spend time with them. Olexa had to organize a group of military police and make a sweep through the woods, chasing the women out.

Looking to Add a Website for the Book

University of North Texas Press wanted Smither to focus on the combat and front-line experiences of Olexa’s tenure in the war, forcing him to leave out some of the more eccentric stories.

“The original manuscript was simply too long to go into a print edition,” said Smither. Sections where Olexa is training or in the rear, various encounters with French soldiers in North Africa, and civilians he encountered away from the front were all areas Smither had to cut back.

However, the Press is allowing Smither to set up a website where he will post deleted material and any other supplemental items that he deems relevant. The plan is to include those sections of the text with indications of where they fit into the larger story in terms of pages of the book. Smither also plans to post some of the letters and interviews that he has done with veterans in some of the same places or with similar experiences as Olexa.

Once published, this supplemental website will be accessible from the Grand Valley History Department website via a link on GVSU’s Veterans History Project, which also gives access to other veteran interviews as well.

After the book is in print for three years, the Press plans to publish an ebook version that will have Olexa’s entire memoir so readers can find the whole story in one place.

Giving back to our veterans

Smither has worked at GVSU as a historian since 1990 and has specifically worked with veterans for more than 20 years.

“I always had an interest in military history, and I was able to develop a course in it,” said Smither, whose time outside of the classroom has been spent largely on conducting veteran interviews for the Veterans History Project (VHP).

Even though he does not have a personal military background, Smither said, “As a historian, sometimes you study things that are very far from your own experiences to try to understand them. And military history is compelling because it puts people into very difficult and unusual circumstances, and they have to figure out what to do and how to handle it. I think there is something about that that captures people’s imaginations.”

Veterans History Project: More than Telling Stories

“It’s a way to give back to the people who serve,” Smither said. “Just by listening to them and taking them seriously, you are showing a certain respect for them.”

Smither believes his job is to help veterans tell their whole story, publishing the complete interviews on the VHP website instead of only releasing bits and pieces.

“It provides great raw material for future generations of historians, but it also does something for the veterans themselves,” Smither continued.

For many involved in conflict from Vietnam onward, Smither has found there is often a question of “Why were we there in the first place, and was it worth doing?” Recording their stories helps many veterans find clarity.

“What you see when you talk to (veterans) is (that) a lot of the experience for them is just with them and the people in their unit, and just trying to get by. They were not really as worried about the bigger picture of things,” Smither said. “Recording the stories helps validate the experience…and it helps them figure out what happened. Sometimes I interview a veteran and that’s the first time they actually tried to put their story together. Some of it starts to make sense a little bit better when they start to do that.”

Retired life

Olexa worked in a factory for a short time after retiring from the military but deemed it too noisy. The former infantryman was not squeamish about blood and became a meat cutter, with his last 10 years before retiring in 1981 serving as the meat manager at a Grand Rapids D&W supermarket.

“He was very much just a member of the community after that (military career),” said Smither.

Olexa married Agnes Van Der Weide July 23, 1945, and lived in West Michigan until Agnes’s death in 1993. Olexa passed away December 3, 2000.

D. A. (Deborah) Reed is an award-winning author of young adult novels and a creative writing instructor from the Grand Rapids area. To find out more about D.A. Reed, visit her website: D.A. Reed Author