Stan Scislowski used words to heal from the horror of a war he couldn’t get out of his mind.
His words will help generations remember.
The Second World War veteran from Windsor and author of Not All Of Us Were Brave, died Sunday at age 90.
“The page in our Canadian history would be empty,” friend Andrea Grimes said Monday of a world without Schislowski’s words.
Grimes said a psychiatrist urged him to write when and what he had witnessed from the muddy battlefields in Italy. At age 73 he had his book published and Grimes said he was still writing and emailing his stories to her. She cried as she read his accounts of battles near Monte Cassino in Italy.
“I could feel the dust in his nose and the sweat rolling down his back and the pain of hunger in his belly, the way he wrote.”
Scislowski joined the Perth Regiment 11th infantry in 1943 and spent 18 months fighting in Italy.
His stories of war have been told to countless high school students, featured in Canadian history books, been on TV on the History Channel and form part of a documentary the local historical society hopes will be used in schools across Canada.
Matthew Pritchard, a historian with the Windsor Historical Society, remembered Scislowski Monday as a great writer and mentor. He was a “bona fide hero” who sometimes forgot to wear his medals to speaking engagements and was honest enough to say he was terrified in the heat of battle, Pritchard said.
Scislowski had a larger-than-life personality and was a celebrity in Italy where he made seven trips back to remember his comrades who didn’t make it home.
“In ’44 they broke through the Gothic Line which were these German defences in northern Italy that no one was supposed to be able to break through. He was one of the first guys to go over the first hill of the lines,” said 27-year-old Pritchard who heard the stories while driving the veteran to events.
“He said they were climbing up the hill and the enemy was shooting down at them and he said at that instant he weighed a thousand pounds and couldn’t get up off the ground. He said he thought he was going to be lying in that mud forever and his whole unit was down lying in the mud. Then he said slowly he looked over and one of his friends got up.
“Then he looked over to his other side and another one of his friends slowly got up. He said by the time the third guy got up he realized that he had to get up this hill and keep on going.”
Scislowski was only 19 when he signed up and he could relate to high school students decades later in a powerful way.
“When he would speak … you would be in the Massey Auditorium and you could hear a pin drop.”
He broke the tension with humour. He was wounded after being hit by a grenade and thought his guts were spilling out, Pritchard said. It was vegetable soup from a can he had tucked in his flak jacket.
He was injured carrying another soldier off a battlefield. Pritchard always remembers that when Scislowski spoke of it, he talked of watching women and children run into a farmhouse for safety. “At that point he said he turned and said ‘God, Christ take me. Just spare the children.’”
Scislowski was a prolific writer who, near Remembrance Day in The Star, would relay the story of some young Windsor lad who was too young to die. For the veteran it was easier to focus on the memory of one fallen soldier than the faceless multitude as he said in a 2012 tribute: “In remembering one … you remember all.”
Family and friends will remember this one veteran, writer, chemist and father of six at his military funeral Saturday at 10 a.m. at Families First Funeral Home on Dougall Avenue. Visitation is Friday from 3 to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m.
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