Second World War veteran guest of honour at D-Day 80 service

A Kirkby great-grandfather who fought the Nazis after being forced from his home and used as a slave during the Second World War, will attend a service to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

Wladyslaw Nazar (known as Walter), was just a boy when he was taken from his home in Poland by German troops and used as slave labour in Germany and France.

He worked in an ammunition factory and then as a farm labourer before being moved to occupied France. There, he helped build concrete bunkers used by German soldiers in their battles with Allied forces who landed on the beaches at Normandy in June 1944 to liberate Western Europe.

After escaping his captors, Walter joined local partisans attacking German patrols, before joining an American combat division where he was an ammunition carrier and later an interpreter of PoWs.

Now, 80 years later, Walter and his wife Judy will be guests of honour at a special service at St Wilfrid’s Church, Kirkby, on Thursday 6 June.

The 97-year-old, who has lived in Kirkby for more than 70 years, was only twelve when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 triggering the start of the Second World War.

He remembers vividly the day he was forcibly taken from his hometown, changing his life forever.

“My mother sent me to buy some yeast from town, but German lorries pulled up and I was taken with other boys and old men. They took us to a railway station and put us on trains to Germany to a slave camp. We were treated terribly, had very little to eat and slept on straw. I was living with Russian and French prisoners of war.”

After working in a German ammunition factory in Nuremberg, Walter worked as a farm hand until being moved to France.

“We had to build bunkers. I would put metre long steel rods in before the concrete.”

Walter was one of eight slave labourers who managed to escape, joining up with local partisan fighters in France.

“We were demolishing railway lines at night and hunting the Germans; they were hunting us. We needed their weapons and supplies. One day we heard tanks but it was the American army.”

American troops took Walter under their wing, and though still only a teenage boy, he joined the 1258th Combat Engineer Battalion Company B, as the Allies fought their way through France and into Germany.

He became close with a Master Sergeant named Bill, who was originally from Scotland. He asked Walter to return to the USA with him once the war had ended and start a new life in the States.

“Bill was shot and killed by one of the Hitler youth, it was very sad,” Walter said.

When the war finally ended in May 1945, Walter remained with US forces in Nuremberg, around the time of the war crimes trials of Nazi leaders. Eventually, he came to Britain with other eastern European exiles, unable to go back home because of the rise of Communism and the Iron Curtain.

Walter spent some time in Cambridge before moving to Nottingham where he met his wife Judy in 1953. The couple have been married for 66 years, have four children, seven grandchildren and eight great grandchildren.

He spent the rest of his working life in mining – though admits to hating the job so much he once attempted suicide, only to be saved by his friends.

In the 1960s he was able to return home to Poland where he was reunited with his mother and other family members, who he was able to keep in touch with.

Walter has never had any official recognition for his wartime exploits, on account of being underage and not having any official documentation of his time with American forces other than old photos showing him in an American military uniform with his Company.

What he witnessed as a young teenage boy has stayed with him forever, his wife Judy saying her husband still has nightmares about it even today, all these years later.

Walter said:

“It’s a cruel world, when I think of what happened to so many people, especially the women and children. It still comes to me, at nighttime, it goes round and round in my head … you can’t forget that, you just can’t.”

Ashfield District Council chairman, Cllr Arnie Hankin, said:

“It’s a privilege and a honour to be able to welcome Walter and Judy Nazar as we commemorate D-Day 80 and the part so many played in helping liberate Europe from the Nazis.”