Robert Polich
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Army
Robert Polich served in World War II in the European Theater.
He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a bomber pilot.
He was a prisoner of war.
Source: Minnesota Legionnaire, November 2008 (reprinted below with permission; for article and photos, see www.mnlegion.org/paper/html/polich.html)
“21 Years Old and Flying the Fortresses”
Bob Polich’s B-17 crew needed 30 missions to earn the right to come home. On the 29th mission, the radio on Polich’s Flying Fortress warned him, ‘Red Leader, you’re on fire.”’It was the last mission for the young pilot from Minnesota’s Cuyuna Iron Range.
“When I look at young people today,” said Bob Polich from his lakeside home near Deerwood. “I think of what we were doing when we were that age.”
What Bob Polich was doing was flying B-17s over Germany.
Polich, now 88, says the war was a long time ago. Still there are thing about the 29 missions he flew that are still so fresh that they can bring him to tears or overwhelm him with guilt or make him laugh about the crazy things he used to do.
Bob Polich grew up in Crosby, the largest city on Minnesota’s most southern of its three Iron Ranges. Polich’s parents had emigrated from Montenegro. His father worked in the iron mines in Michigan before moving to Minnesota where he plied his trade in the underground mines of the Cuyuna Range.
His father was 32 when he died of pneumonia in 1931, and the loss of the family’s wage earner and the Great Depression provided a double whammy to the Polich family as they made their way through the 1930s.
“We didn’t have two pennies to rub together, but it was wonderful. It was the best time of my life,” Polich said. “Everybody was poor.”
Polich’s mother got a $21 a month widow’s pension, and the rest of the family income came from scrambling. “We picked berries, we did whatever we could to make a nickel or a dime. But we never took welfare, not ever. We were too proud.”
Polich graduated from Crosby-Ironton High School in 1939 and worked a year in Civilian Conservation Corps camp before taking a job building a highway. He later worked in the mines, following in his father’s footsteps.
That career was soon interrupted, though, when Polich got his greetings from Uncle Sam in early 1942. A few months later he was working as an anti-aircraft gunner on the California coast. His gun was perched on a cliff that later became the Torrey Pines Golf Course.
It was during this time that Polich married his high school sweetheart, Eunice. “When she was in ninth grade and I was in 11th grade, we started dating. She was 19 and I was 21 when we got married. We were married for 60 years and we had five children.”
The gunnery job, however, was not Polich’s cup of tea. “I didn’t like it. I wanted something better.”
On a bulletin board on the base, Polich noticed a poster asking for volunteers to fly airplanes. “It said you had to have two years of college education, but I lied. I took the test and I was one of 13 guys in the whole battalion that passed.”
Training began at Maxwell Field in Alabama, and the first time he went up in a Stearman with an instructor was the first time Polich had ever been in an airplane in his life.
The training went well, but ended with some disappointment. “I really wanted to be a fighter pilot, but either I wasn’t good enough or they just needed more bomber pilots at that time, but I got picked for bombers.”
And then there was that little problem with the two years of college. “I dodged it all the way through flight training. Every time they asked to see my paperwork, I’d say that my mother was sending it, but it was wartime you know.
“Finally, three hours before I was supposed to get my wings, the C.O. called me in. I think hey realized that I’d never been to college. He used as much foul language as I’ve ever heard, but in the end he said the government had too much money invested in me to wash me out now.”
“I knew a cadet wasn’t supposed to lied, but I had. Later that day I got my wings.”
B-17 training was in Florida, Georgia and Arkansas. During that time, Polich was given his crew, the same crew he would basically have with him through training and combat missions in Europe.
The B-17, or Flying Fortress, was a huge, 4-engined bomber with a crew of 10. In addition to the pilot and co-pilot, there were two other officers, the navigator and bombardier. The six non-coms included a radio man, two waist gunners, a tail gunner, a ball turret gunner and a top turret gunner.
The crew was supposed to fly their plane to England, but the Fortress developed an oil problem after the flight to New York. Instead the 10 young men were put aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth, a luxury liner that had been converted into a troop shop.
For Polich and his officers, though, it was still pretty swanky. “We shared a stateroom and got to eat in the nice dining room, with tablecloths. It was very luxurious. We were enjoying it a lot while there were 18,000 servicemen down below who didn’t have it so nice.”
The crew arrived in Chelveston, England, and joined the 305th Bomb Group, part of the 8th Air Force.
Polich’s first mission, as might be expected for a rookie, was as tail end Charlie in the massive formation of bombers. The mission went all right until it was over.
“After we landed, the tail gunner jumped out of the plane and ran away. He went berserk. So we had to get a new tail gunner.”
The 305th flew three times on D-Day, June 6th. “We arrived just before troops landed. Our job was to bomb the beach and make fox holes for the guys landing on the beach. I remember looking down and seeing those thousands of ships down there. I felt sorry for those guys landing. They were getting slammed, while we were flying overhead with no opposition. Nothing.”
Later that day, Polich dropped bombs on the German positions just a few miles inland, and then on the third mission, the B-17s targeted German positions about a hundred miles inland.
The missions began to pile up, and Polich was promoted to squad leader after his 13th mission, a group leader after his 21st mission, and wing leader after his 27th mission.
“You know, I really wasn’t a very good officer, but, dammit, I was a good pilot. I knew every rivet on that airplane, and the men trusted me.”
Polich said he had great relations with his crew, and sometimes would sneak off to drink at the non-commissioned officers club rather than the officers club, which he found a little bit stuffy.
“I also wanted to know every job on the plane, and so I would let the co-pilot take the controls, and I’d go back and do every job back there until I knew them.”
The ball turret, attached to the bottom of the plane, was perhaps the most difficult, especially for the long-legged Polich. Usually small men were picked for the job because the turret was cramped and claustrophobic.
“Somehow I got there, with my knees up by my chin. The SOBs in the plane thought it would be a great joke, so they pulled the plug. I couldn’t move the turret and I couldn’t get out.
“I chewed on them like crazy when they finally let me out, but I have to admit I was scared shitless. I had a whole new respect for that kid down in that damn bubble.”
Polich said the job was so terrifying that the gunner would urinate in his pants on nearly every mission. “And then he’d freeze to the seat, it was so cold down there. He didn’t even know he was doing it.”
As 1944 went on, Polich said he was lucky to keep his commission. “I should have been court marshaled so many times. I was lucky because the colonel at the base like me. He thought I was a good pilot. But I was bad boy.”
Polich recalls four incidents he said should have ended his Army career prematurely.
The first was on the 4th of July, 1944, when he told his men to take the flares out of the plane and use them for fireworks to celebrate Independence Day. “Pretty soon the MPs were there asking that I go see the C.O. He said ‘Polich, what the hell are you doing. Not only did you take flares out of the airplane, but the whole base is under blackout.”
The second incident happened after Polich’s bomber was hit on a bombing run. “One engine was out, and I couldn’t get the other one to feather. I told the leader that I’d have to drop out and get back the best way I could. We radioed for our little friends to provide some support, but they never showed up. W radioed again for fighters, but nothing.
“Finally, over the channel, they came out of the clouds and were doing barrel rolls all around us. They had been there all the time, but didn’t want to give our position away by using the radio.
“When I landed, I went in to be debriefed. The maintenance officer started chewing me out. I was still trembling from the mission, and this guy was bawling me out for using too many RPMs and manifold pressure on the other engines.
“What could I do? I hit him. I knocked him to the ground.”
Polich went back to his room and was soon visited by the MPs again, asking him to report to the commanding officer. “I took a shower, put on my Class A’s, and went to see the colonel.
“The major I hit was there, and the side of his face was all red and blue. The colonel asked him what he had done, and he said that he was chewing me out for abusing the engines. Then he asked me what I had done.
“I said ‘I brought home that ship and those tem men on board.’”
“The colonel turned to the maintenance officer and said, ‘Major, our job is to fix those $&%$#*% airplanes. Let my boy fly them.”
The third incident in Polich’s bad boy career was when he got tired of the fighters always buzzing the bombers’ field. “So I came across their field about 10 feet off the deck. Well, of course, they got the number of my airplane.”
Pretty soon the MPs were at the door requesting Polich’s presence at the commanding officer’s room. “All I could tell him was that I was tired of the fighter pilots showing off and that we four-engined guys can do some flying too. He let me off.”
Incident four was when one of Polich’s buddies, after several libations at the officer’s club, dared Polich to cut off the commanding officer’s tie. The next morning, the MPs were at Polich’s room, and, well, you know the rest.
“He chewed me up one side and down the other. He wasn’t so mad that I had cut off his tie, but hat he was embarrassed because he was escorting a pretty nurse that night. He punished me by making me buy a $25 war bond.”
In the end, Polich’s leadership in the cockpit, and not his antics outside it, allowed him to keep his job.
“The other pilots loved to follow me because they knew I could fly. I didn’t go by the book. For instance, I’d never make sharp turns because I had flown as tail end Charlie and I know how hard it is to keep up with the formation back there. I’d make long, sloping turns that they could follow.”
The crew’s day began with reveille before daybreak followed by pre-flight briefings. The planes would take off, assemble in the sky, and then head out over the channel. Once they got to the IP, the Initial Point, they would turn toward the target that day. Polich would steer the plane through the flak and shells until just before the target, and then turn the plane over to the bombardier who would control the final minute of the flight in.
“I just sat back until the bombs were dropped. You could feel the plane lurch as they went out. I would then take over the ship again, and run like hell home.”
As the months went by, Polich’s B-17 was often hit by flak. On one mission, the plane took a major hit and several of the crew were wounded severely.
“As I approached the field, we sent out flares. That let them know we had wounded on board, and we had priority to land. They would also send out the ambulances.
“When I got on the ground, I steered the plane over to the ambulances. I quickly got out through the nose hatch, and went running around to where they were lowering the wounded crew out of the side of the plane. I was helping to lower one of the men down, and I could see he was trying to say something to me. His lips were moving but nothing was coming out. I was holding his head in my arms. Finally, he was able to say, ‘mama,’ and then he died, right in my arms.
“To this day, whenever I think about it, I start to cry.”
On another mission a piece of flak came through the plane and Polich on his left hand. “I thought something had happened, but I didn’t know what. Finally I took my glove off and it was full of blood. I never reported it though, because I didn’t want to get grounded.
“I remember another time when my co-pilot got hit in the head by a piece of flak and he had blood dripping down his face. He thought that was really funny and he was laughing about it. That’s one thing about Americans. No matter how bad it gets, they always find some humor in it.
“We were so young, God, we were just kids.”
Polich and his crew were required to fly 30 missions to complete their tour. They flew 29.
The final mission was to Leona Oil Works inside Germany on Aug. 24, 1944. “It was one of the biggest refineries in Germany, and it was well-protected. They were shooting the hell out of us. I was the wing leader, and so I had 105 planes following me in. My regular co-pilot wasn’t there because I had the wing colonel with me to help direct the mission. He was flying co-pilot.
“When we came over the target it was obliterated with smoke from a previous bombing run. We couldn’t drop our bombs. I told the colonel, I didn’t come all this way to drop on a secondary target, so he allowed me to take all 105 of those planes around again in a slow turn over Munich, and come over the target again.
“Then we got a message, ‘Red Leader, you’re on fire.’ I looked out, and there was a big hole between the number one and number two engines. I could see some mist spraying out, and I knew it must be gasoline.
“The colonel allowed me to keep leading the wing in, but again we got the radio message, ‘Red Leader, you are on fire.’ I looked out again and there was a huge ball of flame that must have reached out a hundred yards. I radioed for the deputy leader to take over the mission, and I put the ship into a steep dive trying to extinguish the flame.
“I dove down 3,000 feet, but I looked and we were still on fire. That’s when I gave the order to bail out.”
The crew’s four officers used the nose hatch on the B-17 to leave the plane. Polich was the last to exit.
“Whenever I flew, I wore my parachute loose because it was more comfortable that way. So when it came time to bail out, I clipped it up, but the harness was loose. When the shoot opened, it just split me. It pulled my pelvis bones apart.
“That was the first time I was ever frightened--in the air, coming down in that parachute. There was just complete silence. I tried to bring my legs up, but they wouldn't move. That's when I figured out I was hurt.
“When I hit the ground in a pasture, my legs were dead and so they couldn't absorb any of the shock and so I fractured my three lower vertebrae. The neighbors around there were so happy to see me come down that they came over and beat the hell out of me. I woke up a couple days later in the city jail.”
The German guards interrogated Polich and threatened to take him out in the woods and shoot him. Eventually an air officer come by and offered Polich a cigarette, an American Camel.
“I have to say that the German flyers were the finest of people. They all seemed to know English and they would talk to us on our missions. They were not at all brutal like those ground troops down there.”
After the air officer's visit, Polich was taken by truck to a hospital nearby. He was to spend the next five months there, nursed by another prisoner of war.
“I remember when I first got to that hospital, they cleaned me up. That was wonderful. Then, while I was still naked, they put me through the x-ray machine. There were three technicians running that machine, and they were all female. I recall that they were all giggling.”
Polich was flat on his back for three months, and then was finally able to get around on crutches. When he was able to walk on his own, he was transferred to Stalag Luft 3, a prisoner camp for airmen located in Poland.
His stay there was fairly short. On Jan. 14, the prisoners could hear the German guns firing at the approaching allies. The men were taken out of the camp, and in 30 degree below zero weather were marched back into Germany. “All I really can remember is looking at the feet of the man in front of me crunching in the snow.”
Eventually the men reached a rail head where they were transferred to trains for their journey to Stalag 7-A located just outside Munich.
Polich's main memory of the stay in the camp was the kohlrabi, or turnip soup. “It's the only damn soup the Germans knew how to make.”
By April, the 14th Armored liberated the camp. Polich remembers the appearance of Gen. George Patton. “He had stars all over him. I'll bet he had stars on his underwear. What was strange was that when he spoke, he had a very feminine voice. But could he swear. He had the foulest mouth of any soldier I ever heard.”
Polich was put in charge of a group of about 22 men, and was given the keys to a car on the train that contained the food for the ex-POWs. “But we never had to unlock that car because every time we stopped, the Red Cross or somebody was there to give us hot food.”
When the train reached Paris, Polich used his skills in delegation and had one of the non-coms take over the group of men on their way to the ships at Le Havre. Meanwhile, Polich and a couple of officer buddies took some time to visit the City of Light.
Polich eventually did make it back to the United States on a brand new Liberty ship that docked in New York. “They told us we had to stay overnight on the ship. Some of the guys jumped in the water and swam ashore, but I didn't.”
He was processed out at Ft. Snelling, and examined by the Army doctors. He later got treatment through the VA, but was not satisfied with their diagnosis. He eventually had surgery on his back at the University of Minnesota at his own expense.
Also, when he got home, he learned of another tragedy. On that last flight, because he was the wing leader, the co-pilot's seat was taken by the wing's colonel. The co-pilot had to fly with someone else that day, and was killed.
“His son would never speak to me after that. He blamed me for the fact his father didn't fly with me that day.”
He had thoughts at one time of getting into pre-med at the University of Minnesota, but had to forget that idea because of the expense. He did pass the test to get into the program.
Back home on the Cuyuna Range, he bought a building in downtown Deerwood for $900 and opened a bar. After five years, he sold it. “There were a lot of guys coming home from the war and there was some brawling going on. My family was getting bigger, and it was not the right kind of business for that.”
Polich then purchased a supper club, “But the people on the Range weren't ready for white tablecloths and candles and I went broke. He later converted it into a private club, the Sportsman's Club and Restaurant, a business he retired from in the late 1980s.
Polich's wife, Eunice, died a few years ago.
Late in life, Polich had to work his way through some pretty severe delayed-onset Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. “I saw some pictures of kids killed from a bombing mission, and it just set me off. I just went crazy.” After several counseling sessions, Polich is now able to deal with the trauma. “The doctor told me to quit hunting and never kill anything again. And that's what I did. I wouldn't even kill a squirrel now. I gave away all my guns.”
Polich lives in his house on Serpent Lake near Deerwood.
During his time in the war, Polich earned a Distinguished Flying Cross, three Bronze Stars, several air medals and a Purple Heart. In a strange event, one day Polich received a Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award in the military, in the mail from a government office. There was no paperwork with it, and though Polich tried to enquire about what it was all about, he never was able to learn why it was sent to him. He kept it as a souvenir.
