Eugene Henry Gierka was born in August 1924 in Albany, New York. His parents came from Poland. His father ran a butcher shop. Gierka had two brothers and two sisters. His father emigrated in 1907. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Gierka what it was like to grow up during the Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939.] Gierka went to the tri-city area of Albany, Schenectady [Annotator's Note: Schenectady, New York], and Troy [Annotator's Note: Troy, New York] at the age of ten. He made himself a wagon and would pick-up scrap metal, rags, and soda bottles to get money. He took the money to his mother. He felt proud. He walked to his Polish school. He attended Catholic High School in Troy and had to walk there in all kinds of weather. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Gierka if he remembers where he was when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] His sister and he were listening to the radio when the newsflash came on. That changed their lives. They told their parents. His sister volunteered for a defense job in an arsenal. At 17, Gierka got a job at Behr-Manning [Annotator's Note: Behr-Manning Company in Watervliet, New York; now Norton Abrasives in Worcester, Massachusetts], a defense plant making harnesses for Navy planes. He left high school in his sixth month. He knew he could back to school and wanted to get into the war effort. He operated all types of machinery. He made shell trimmers for the ammunition for the Bofors guns [Annotator's Note: Bofors 40mm antiaircraft automatic cannon]. He spent about a year learning the trade. He was drafted into the Army in March 1943.

Eugene Henry Gierka went to Camp Upton [Annotator's Note: in Long Island, New York; now Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York] to take tests to see what he was able to do. He was sent to the Army Air Force for basic training in Miami Beach, Florida. They stayed in first-class hotels. He could see ships being torpedoed within miles of Miami. That brought home what the war was about. They marched in cadence to a military band. He enjoyed singing songs while marching. Sometimes he had to pull KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police]. He enjoyed basic training. He was then sent to Lincoln, Nebraska to aircraft mechanic school. He was sent from there to General Motors [Annotator's Note: General Motors Company] in Indianapolis, Indiana to the Allison Engine [Annotator's Note: Allison V-1710 aircraft engine] specialist school for the 3rd Air Force. He was then assigned to the 36th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron [Annotator's Note: 36th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron] at Will Rogers Field [Annotator's Note: now Will Rogers World Airport] in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Once there, he was assigned to the 38th Photo Recon [Annotator's Note: 38th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, 3rd Air Force, later 38th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, 26th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing]. Herodotus [Annotator's Note: ancient Greek writer, geographer, and historian] said that circumstances rule men, men do not rule circumstances. On a rainy day, Gierka slipped off the wing [Annotator's Note: of an aircraft] and broke his wrist. He had a medical exam by the flight surgeon. The surgeon immediately transferred Gierka to the 39th [Annotator's Note: 39th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, 10th Photographic Reconnaissance Group, 9th Air Force]. He felt bad because he left his friends who were slated to go to the South Pacific. The 39th was an old National Guard outfit transferred from the 101st Squadron [Annotator's Note: 101st Intelligence Squadron, 102nd Intelligence Wing, Massachusetts Air National Guard] to Photo Recon and slated to go to Europe. Gierka would rather go to Europe than the Pacific. He was training to be a crew chief in the 38th. The 39th was loaded with rank. Gierka got along with all of them. They trained in Muskogee [Annotator's Note: Muskogee, Oklahoma] and then bivouacked [Annotator's Note: a bivouac is a temporary campsite] in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Then he went to New York to go overseas on 26 December 1944. It was a sad day. They went over on a repossessed German ship from the First World War. They traveled for four or five days. He was on deck and noticed the ship was making a slow right turn. They fell out of the convoy because the steering mechanism was broken. The crew rigged up a cable and they caught up with the convoy. His position on the ship was below decks, so he spent as much time as he could on the top deck watching the waves. He was amazed by how rough the Atlantic could get. They only had four lifeboats, but they had rafts of cork. The water was so cold that you would not last five minutes. He bought a box of Hershey candy bars [Annotator's Note: Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar]. The men were fed around the clock due to their being so many troops on the ship. They would go through the line, get their food, and keep going along a plank to eat. They had canvas and pipe beds, six high. It was harsh sleeping. They arrived in Southampton [Annotator's Note: Southampton, England] 15 days later and went to a camp there. Three days later, they took a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] to Le Havre, France.

Eugene Henry Gierka arrived in Le Havre [Annotator's Note: Le Havre, France] and went to Rouen [Annotator's Note: Rouen, France]. They [Annotator's Note: 39th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, 10th Photographic Reconnaissance Group, 9th Air Force] then moved to Amiens [Annotator's Note: Amiens, France]. He felt they were being used as second echelon back-up troops. The Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] had been won by General Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] who was chasing the German troops back into Germany. Gierka and his outfit were 30 to 40 kilometers away. They followed them for about a week. They flew in C-47s [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft] into Maastricht, Holland, the Netherlands. He did not know why except that in Market Garden [Annotator's Note: Operation Market Garden, Netherlands, 17 to 25 September 1944], the Germans were shooting up a lot of troops. They then flew down to Charny [Annotator's Note: Charny-Orée-de-Puisaye, France] to their semi-permanent airfield [Annotator's Note: Advanced Landing Ground Y-28 Verdun/Charny]. They got their 16 aircraft. He had not seen his officers until that time. Charny was between Metz [Annotator's Note: Metz, France] and the Memorial Cemetery of the Veterans of Verdun [Annotator's Note: Verdun, France]. He loved Charny. He got to know the Polish slave laborers who had been interred there. He became the translator when they wanted work done by them. They would do the laundry and feed them in return for food and protection from the 39th. Gierka enjoyed flying piggyback on a P-38 [Annotator's Note: F-4; photo reconnaissance version of Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft]. Many times the radio would act up and be pulled out. The men would be offered rides then. Gierka flew once over the cemetery at Verdun. It was amazing to see how many soldiers had died. Patton moved east quite fast. Gierka then took a C-47 to Maastricht, Holland for a week. He then moved to their permanent camp at Wiesbaden [Annotator's Note: Advanced Landing Ground Y-80 Wiesbaden in Wiesbaden, Germany]. They were exposed to the German population there. They were told not to fraternize or give them cigarettes or soap, but they did sometimes. The most they did was act as backup troops. They could not move their aircraft near the frontlines because if the Germans broke through, they could do a lot of damage.

A 109 Focke-Wulf [Annotator's Note: either a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aircraft or a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter aircraft] came in to strafe the field at Charny [Annotator's Note: Advanced Landing Ground Y-28 Verdun/Charny in Charny-Orée-de-Puisaye, France] where Eugene Henry Gierka was [Annotator's Note: with the 39th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, 10th Photographic Reconnaissance Group, 9th Air Force]. The Bofors guns [Annotator's Note: Bofors 40mm antiaircraft automatic cannon] on the four corners of the field shot it down. A lot of the boys went chasing after the Luger pistol [Annotator's Note: German P08 Luger 9mm semi-automatic pistol] from the officer. That was the only plane that came in to damage them. On 29 July [Annotator's Note: 29 July 1945], a plane flew in without a propellor. It was a P-80 Shooting Star [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter aircraft], and they were told it would be the plane they would be working on when they shipped to the Pacific Islands. They returned to England and then went to Newport News, Virginia. They were supposed to transfer to MacDill Airfield [Annotator's Note: now MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida] to practice maintenance on the P-80. Gierka got pleurisy [Annotator's Note: inflammation of the lungs] on the West Point [Annotator's Note: the USS West Point (AP-23)]. He was taken to a hospital in Utica, New York. While there, the first bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945] was dropped on Japan and then a couple of days later, the second bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, 9 August 1945]. Then the war was over. He went to MacDill, and his discharge papers were readied. He had about 64 points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home]. He got home on 24 November [Annotator's Note: 24 November 1945] with his discharge. The following Monday, he went back to his old job at Behr-Manning [Annotator's Note: Behr-Manning Company in Watervliet, New York; now Norton Abrasives in Worcester, Massachusetts]. He spent 37 years there. He went to R.P.I. [Annotator's Note: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York] night school. He got married the last couple of months of the war. He finished his mechanical engineering school and then worked in design engineering until he retired. Behr-Manning was divesting itself of the high cost of labor and moved. They reduced employment from 3,000 to 300. He then became a consulting engineer for a coated abrasives company. He built five homes in his off time in Saratoga Lake [Annotator's Note: Saratoga Lake, New York]. He rescued some people on the lake and was put in the Congressional records for that. His wife passed away in 2015 and he misses her a lot. They had eight foster children that they put through school. R.P.I., which is equal to MIT [Annotator's Note: Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts].

Eugene Henry Gierka never even unpacked when they [Annotator's Note: 39th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, 10th Photographic Reconnaissance Group, 9th Air Force] were moving. They were only in each place for a day or two. They did not know why they did not see their aircraft. He felt that they were being used as backup troops as there were a lot of retreating Germans. Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] was chasing them into Germany. Gierka was acting crew chief on a P-38 [Annotator's Note: F-4; photo reconnaissance version of Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft]. He was responsible for maintaining the aircraft and assisting the pilot in knowing about the aircraft. They came late in the war and most of their missions were flown from Charny, France [Annotator's Note: Advanced Landing Ground Y-28 Verdun/Charny in Charny-Orée-de-Puisaye, France]. Gierka was assigned to one specific airplane. They did not name their planes. They did have an image of Pluto [Annotator's Note: cartoon character created by the Walt Disney Company] on a cloud with a camera that was donated by Walt Disney [Annotator's Note: Walter Elias Disney, American entrepreneur]. Gierka was married and knew he had a good job waiting for him. He wanted to get back home as soon as he could and resume his life, so he did not reenlist. His service made a man out of him. He learned a lot seeing the mass graves being dug up and seeing what Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] had done to a lot of people. The war made him more loving towards his fellow man. He did not think twice when he went out to rescue some people on a lake once. The coldness of the water would have killed them in a couple of hours if he had not gotten there. Those two boys were 35 years old and Gierka was 65. They stayed friends for quite a while.

Eugene Henry Gierka's most memorable experience was his being exposed as an interpreter to a couple hundred Polish people he had run into. His Polish was of the 1900s era due to his mother and father. He does not believe that people realized how bad the war was. If Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] had been able to continue on with his secret weapons, it could have been bad. He was close to having the atomic bomb. Thankfully, Franklin Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] made a move when he was told and had the Manhattan Project [Annotator's Note: program that produced the first nuclear weapons] go through. Gierka has been given the privilege to speak to various classes about the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939] and about the war. They seem to understand. He feels he is an ambassador for a lot of the troops who returned from World War 2. Gierka feels the greatest time for America was in the 1950s. People were happier and had jobs. Automobiles had higher engine quality. The 1960s were not too bad. His wife was 17 when he married her. He had come home in August [Annotator's Note: August 1945] when the bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] was dropped on Japan. He was on a 30 day furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] after getting out of the hospital [Annotator's Note: he returned from Europe with Pleurisy, an inflammation of the lungs]. He went to a Polish dance hall with a friend. He saw a beautiful girl with a bow in her hair and asked her to dance. He took her home and her father was outside waiting for her. He started berating her for being late. Gierka started talking to him in Polish and explained the situation. Her father invited them for dinner. He knew she was the one. He gave her an engagement ring in six days of meeting her. They got married two weeks later. They lived for almost 70 years together. He misses her, but we all have to understand that is what life is about [Annotator's Note: death of those we love].