Veteran Stories: Karlwilhelm Olsen
PFC Karlwilhelm Olsen
US Army 35th Division
BORN: Frederikshavn, Denmark May 27, 1923
DIED: Bluffton, SC - March 1, 2024
Dad had a large family, many brothers and sisters. His father, Johann Christian Olsen, was born in Bergen, Norway. He relocated to Denmark, and worked in Frederikhavn (in Jylland, in the north of Denmark by the sea) as a harbor policeman. He had met my grandmother, Georgine, when she rode horses in a circus act. There are many family stories, but I will only tell one. One of my dad’s brothers, when he was very young, was dying. My grandfather was not a religious man. He prayed to God that if his son lived, he would become religious. His son lived, but it was a year before my grandfather fulfilled his vow. He read the Bible and other religious books and always carried a Bible with him. I know that he actually read it because I have one of his Bibles and he took copious notes on every page (which I can’t read). Each evening before the family dinner at the dinner table my grandfather would read and discuss the Bible for half an hour before the family would eat. Many people came to my grandfather as if he were a priest, seeking advice and comfort.
My dad would say that he came to America by chance because one day he took a shortcut on the way home from work. At the time he worked in a sardine factory. It was winter and the lake was frozen over. He crossed the frozen river as a shortcut and ran into a friend on the way. The friend offered my dad the proposition to sail as a cabin boy on a one time trip to America on a Danish Merchant Marine ship. Two of dad’s brothers already had a career sailing with the Danish Merchant Marines. When dad got home he asked his mother (he was sixteen years old), and she told him to ask his father. His father gave his permission and also had to pay a fee in order for my father to be able to sail. He only gave my father one piece of advice: “Watch out for loose women.” My father was surprised. He never heard his father speak that way before.
It was war time and the Nazis were attacking merchant ships. During the voyage all of the lights were put out and everyone was warned to be quiet because an unknown ship appeared nearby. It was nighttime. It turned out to be a British ship, so they were safe. Halfway into their voyage my father received news that his brother Arthur had been killed when the ship he was sailing on was torpedoed by a German U-Boat. My middle name is Arthur in memory of my uncle who perished at sea. Later my father lost another brother the same way, Samuel, when his ship was torpedoed near Newcastle, England. At the same time, my father received the news that the Nazis had invaded Denmark.
In America he was given the choice to stay or to return home. Besides the fact that the Nazis had taken over his country, my father fell in love with NY and America. He was a young man who had lived a sheltered and quiet life in a small village in Denmark and New York beckoned to him like some kind of Disneyland. My dad always loved sweets and chocolate. One of the first things he loved was banana splits and his favorite candy bar was Baby Ruth.
A Dane named Mr. Leonhart, who owned a resort in Kent Connecticut (the Flanders Arms), gave my father a job there as a busboy. Sometimes I said to dad that we should go back and visit, bécause the resort is still there today. We never made the trip. Because of his immigration status, dad was supposed to stay in a certain geographic area, but he broke the rule and in the summer he went to Florida and worked as a lifeguard. Dad was very athletic and was a great swimmer and skier. While in Florida there was a ferocious hurricane. When he tried to return to Kent, he was arrested and incarcerated in Hartford for breaking the immigration rule. With his Danish accent, instead of saying “l went to jail,” dad would say “l went to Yale” and then he would smile, because he knew the difference and thought it was funny. Mr. Leonhart retrieved him from Hartford and brought him back to Kent.
The military wanted to put my dad in the navy because of his prior experience. He declined because he lost two brothers at sea. He said “There are no foxholes on a ship.” Basic training was at Fort McClellan, Alabama. He took a lot of flak from the southern boys because he was a yankee from New York. Dad didn’t know anything about yankees and rebels or the civil war. He could barely speak English. The cook liked my dad and wanted him to remain at the base and work in the kitchen, but dad said no because of the hostility against “yankees.” He couldn’t wait to leave the south.
After basic training he was shipped out to England. He enjoyed his time there, especially when he could go on leave and mingle with the British girls. Now it was time for war. He was sworn in as an American citizen and sent directly into combat in the infantry. He was assigned as a jeep driver for an officer. Everyone else in my father’s group was killed in combat. The jeep driver assignment saved his life. He fought in five major battles and received the bronze star. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and served as a radioman and as a mortar man. France awarded my dad the Legion of Merit for participating in a significant battle at St. Lo. There were many close calls. A sniper’s bullet once whizzed by my dad’s ear while he was eating from his mess kit. One night when he was supposed to be in the watchtower his captain made a last minute change and that night the watchtower was blown up. The soldier who took dad’s place was decapitated. Dad saw many terrible things and lost many buddies, but he said very little about those things. People would call him a hero, and he would say that he was no hero. “The heroes were the ones who never came home,’’ he would always say.
Finally they crossed the Rhine and went into Germany. “The smell of death was everywhere in the air” and there was much destruction in Germany. Next dad was supposed to be sent to Japan, but Truman dropped the H bomb and then the war was over. Dad sailed home on the Queen Mary and when he got to NY harbor, the famous Andrews Sisters were in a small boat in the harbor singing for the GIs and welcoming them home.
Dad lived in Brooklyn, most of the time in Bay Ridge where many Scandinavians lived at the time. Eventually he got a job as a structural maintenance mechanic with the Port Authority of NY and NJ where he worked until retirement. In the late 1950’s dad got word from my grandfather that my grandmother had died. My grandfather said that she died from a broken heart because two of her sons were killed and the rest were scattered all over the place. When I was in tenth grade dad and mom bought a house in Wantagh, NY on Long Island. In 2005 I accompanied my dad to Denmark for a special reunion of all the Danish seamen who sailed in WWII. It was a grand and marvelous time. Her Majesty the Queen, the Prime Minister and the Admiral of the Navy all took part, among many other dignitaries. I have many happy memories of this event. Just one that I will mention was sitting up all night at the Maritime Hotel drinking whiskey with all the Danish seamen and listening to all of their great stories and recollections. I was the only one in the crowd who couldn’t speak Danish, so because of me they all graciously spoke in English so that I could enjoy a good time with them too. They were the best. It was a blast.
In May 2023 my father celebrated his 100th birthday. He is my greatest hero and was the best dad in the world. When I was a kid and we were on vacation, I watched him jump into a lake and save a girl from drowning. In a crisis situation he was the best person to have around. He had lightning fast reflexes and made snap decisions that were always correct. He always kept a cool head and kept his wits about him. Growing up, every weekend just he and I went out wherever I wanted to go. I think that we visited every museum in NYC. Every pay day he took us all out to a restaurant for dinner. I could order anything I wanted. My favorite was lobster, and my favorite restaurant was Lundys in Sheepshead Bay. He watched many war movies and documentaries and I would sit with him. To a kid they were boring, but I knew that they were important to him. I remember at the theater being bored as I suffered through a screening of “The Night of the Generals.” He was the most kind, gentle, and unselfish man in the world. He had style and he knew how to be courteous and show respect to a lady. He’s the only man in my life that I’ve ever seen pull a chair out for a woman to sit down. He knew how to dress and act with class. He had the greatest sense of humor and was very sociable. The ladies loved him for his good looks but also because he was a great dancer. No matter what suffering or crisis he personally faced himself, he always kept a good attitude and his sense of humor right up until the end of his life. The only crisis where he showed sorrow was if it was not him but one of his children or someone else who was suffering for some reason.
He’s home now with his parents and his siblings whom he loved and missed so much. I hope someday that I will join them. Dad and mom loved each other very much. God forbid if any one tried to say one bad word about mom in front of dad. Remember at the beginning of my narrative that my dad worked in a sardine factory? In 2005 dad and I visited his family home where he was born and grew up. We knocked on the door to the apartment in the home where he had lived and explained who we were to the young lady there. She graciously let us into his apartment to look around. The first thing dad did was to reach over the refrigerator and look for something on a shelf back there. I asked him what he was looking for. He said that before he sailed to America he had hidden a can of sardines there.
Long overdue, many years later dad finally received the Legion of Merit that he earned in WWII. The ceremony was in Charleston, SC. Here is dad with the official from the French Consulate who pinned the medal on him.