GEORGE RADEKA

Born: Joliet, Illinois, 1918.
H&W: 5’9” 158 lbs. (175 cm / 72 kg)
S/N: 36364873
Enlisted: August 18th, 1942. [Drafted].
Unit: Demolition Platoon (AKA, “Filthy 13”), Regimental Headquarters Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.
Nickname: Googoo.
Resting place: Plot E, Row 14, Grave 43, Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

The Radekas in Joliet

George Radeka’s father, Bozo or “Robert” Radeka, was born in Yugoslavia in the late 1800s. At the turn of the century he immigrated to America, making his way to Joliet, Illinois, where he found a job as a laborer at US Steel’s Joliet Iron Works.
George’s mother Milka, or “Mildred” was born in Yugoslavia in 1879. She also immigrated to the United States at the beginning of the century. She married Bozo when she was 30, and only began having children at the age of 38. The Radekas had three children: Anne, born 1917, George, born 1918, and Rose, born in 1920. Mr. and Mrs. Radeka spoke Serbian with their children.

Mr. Radeka worked hard, saved his money and bought a two story house at 512 North Scott Street in Joliet, right in the heart of the Serbian community, three doors down from St. George’s Serbian Orthodox church. The Radeka house sat on a small triangular slice of land, situated between the train tracks and the Des Plaines River. 512 North Scott Street was close to everything the family needed to be happy. As a result, like many urban laborer families of the Depression, the Radekas did not need a car. Mr. Radeka only had to walk a few blocks north to get to his job at the factory, and George and his sisters only had to walk a few blocks south to get to school. George’s father added a small outbuilding behind his house, which he rented to Iron Works’ factory workers to help supplement his income. He also constructed a chicken coop to supply the family with fresh eggs and chickens. He was a hard working real man from the old country, who had a stern face and large bushy eastern European style moustache. Hard work has its rewards. Every week Mr. Radeka would walk to the local liquor store, buy two quarts of beer and bring them home to share with his wife.

The Radekas were a very close, loving family. George loved his mother and his two beautiful sisters. George was a good-natured boy and his swarthy eastern European looks, cleft chin and broad smile made him very handsome. George’s mother doted on him and loved him dearly.

Milka Radeka was a traditional Serbian woman who did not venture too far from the house, and never learned to speak English fluently. Her home was her world and in it she had everything she needed. She loved to prepare large Serbian traditional meals for her family. As a result, the aroma of foreign spices often warmed the Radeka house, and reminded Milka of home country. She prepared sarmas, potica, chicken noodle soup, and she even made her own cottage cheese out on the back porch. Her husband would occasionally barbeque an entire lamb in a pit dug out in the yard. On Saturdays she liked to cook a treat for her family; one of George’s favorites was polenta and sweet buttermilk.

All the young Radekas pitched in to help the family make ends meet. After George graduated from Joliet Township High in 1937, he took a job as a dough maker at the Tenderoni macaroni factory just two blocks north from his house. He worked there with his older sister Anne, who was a product packer. Their younger sister Rose worked as a filter maker at another nearby factory.

Drafted

In early August 1942, George received his “Order to Report for Induction” from the United States government. The letter instructed him to report for service in the US Army, in Chicago on Tuesday, August 18th.

The day before George arrived in Chicago ready to begin his new life in the service of his country, a fellow graduate of Joliet Township High School, Frank J. Perconte (class of 1935) had gone into the city to volunteer.

Frank Perconte grew up at 548 South Chicago Street, about a mile and a half south of George’s home. After seeing an advertisement for the paratroops at a movie theater, and feeling his conscription was imminent, Frank volunteered so he could choose his branch of the service, an option that was impossible for draftees. When asked why he chose the paratroops, Frank said it was “for the extra fifty dollars a month” hazardous duty pay the paratroopers received. Shortly after receiving his assignment to the Field Artillery, George too decided to try his hand with the paratroopers, and requested a transfer to the airborne. This is how George and Frank, the two boys from Joliet Township High School, would both end up serving in the 506th PIR of the 101st Airborne Division: Frank in E Company, and George in the Demolition platoon that would go on to earn the nickname, "The Filthy 13."

"The Filthy 13"

Jake McNiece, the Filthy 13’s ringleader, had this to say about George:

“Googoo (George) was a pretty nice guy. I received him (into the Filthy 13) because he could not get along with the other two sergeants. He was kind of dumb in a way but he was pretty smart in combat comprehension. He never gave anyone any trouble. Anything we would try on the officers in the barracks, why he was right in with it. He did not flinch an inch. He was a good man and I enjoyed having him.”

Photos from the book The Filthy Thirteen, From the Dustbowl to Hitler's Eagle's Nest: The 101st Airborne's Most Legendary Squad of Combat Paratroopers. Authors Richard Killblane & Jake McNiece.(http://www.amazon.ca/The-Filthy-Thirteen-Airbornes-Paratroopers/dp/1932033467)

On September 5th, 1943, the entire 506th PIR boarded the Samaria in New York, and sailed for England to prepare for the European invasion. George, who had spent the first 24 years of his life nestled in the safety of his small Serbian neighborhood, rarely venturing farther afield than the 40 miles it took to visit Chicago, was now destined for a small town in England, 4,000 miles from his family home on North Scott Street in Joliet.
George becomes “Googoo”

Most members of the Filthy 13 had a nickname. George earned his this way, as described by Jake McNiece:

“He picked up the name ‘Googoo’ on a field problem one night in England. We could not see very far at night because of the fog, so we kept close contact with one another. We were going out through a pasture when Googoo tripped and fell down into a fresh cow paddy. After he got up he led the rest of the column off at an angle. Later, he explained, ‘If you’d have found that googoo like I did, ain’t no telling which way you would have went.’”

D-Day

On the evening of June 5th, 1944, George and the other members of his platoon were filmed and photographed by the American Signal Corps while they were suiting up. Jake McNiece had the idea of shaving their heads into Mohawk haircuts and painting their faces “Indian style,” with surplus black and white paint used for the invasion stripes painted on all Allied airplanes. It wasn’t long before the film footage and photographs of these young men reached home in the form of news reels and articles in popular magazines. Sensationalism and misinformation created the myth that the men of George’s Demolition platoon were a band of American Indians or expendable prisoners sent off on a suicide mission. The simple truth was that they were hard-trained, tough paratroopers, ready and eager to do their job as killers.

George was a member of “chalk” or “stick” 21. His plane took off around 11p.m. from Exeter airfield. Once aloft, George’s plane slowly circled the field, while the other planes in the group took off to form a cohesive airborne convoy. The flight over the channel was calm until 1 a.m., when chalk 21’s plane reached the Channel Islands. There, the German anti-aircraft batteries opened fire with their 20mm guns. The pilot switched on the red light, indicating it was time for the paratroopers to hoist themselves up from their seats and hook their parachutes to the static line. In order to avoid the German “ack-ack” radar, chalk 21’s pilot then took evasive action, increasing airspeed and dropping altitude to below 400 feet. At this point the men were still 50 miles from their drop zone.

As George and his fellow paratroopers conducted their final equipment check, their plane crossed the remaining stretch of channel between the Channel Islands and then reached the coastline. This is where the anti-aircraft fire became fierce. The men watched as thousands of colorful bullets spewed skyward, throwing off sparks as they struck the planes flying just off their wingtips. The chilling metallic chatter of bullets striking their own aircraft sounded like gravel pelting them from all angles.
The plane jumped, dipped, swerved and shook. It was everything the men could do to keep their balance. The entire stick stood together as one man now, leg-to-leg and heel-to-toe. All George could do was brace himself against the men that pressed into his chest and back, his eyes glued to the red light at the door, tense and ready to spring forward the moment the light turned green.

At approximately 1:10 a.m. the pilot switched on the green light and the jumpmaster gave the order to jump. In lockstep fashion the men shuffled forward. Halfway through the great push to the door a chunk of flak penetrated the floor and struck trooper James Green’s reserve chute, ripping it wide open. Green’s parachute blew free from its pack and billowed open inside the plane. The whipping wind jerked the chute toward the door, barring the second half of the stick from their exit. For about a minute the men struggled to free the chute from their path. This delay meant that the two halves of the Filthy 13 would be separated by a gap of roughly two miles once they reached the ground.

Whether George jumped before Green’s chute was hit or after is unknown. One thing is certain: he did throw himself into the great void, out into a night sky set alight with exploding transport planes, panning search lights, and myriad phosphorescent streaks of tracer bullets arcing skyward toward the thousands of Americans parachuting into Normandy.

The men of the Filthy 13 missed their assigned drop zone. Furthermore, because of the plane’s excessive speed and the problem posed by Green’s reserve chute, the men were scattered for about six miles, landing in the area between Sainte Mère Eglise and Sainte Côme du Mont.

According to Jack Womer of the Filthy 13, George seems to have landed in a swamp in the same vicinity as the swamp where he landed—right at the edge of the Douve river. These swamps were created by Rommel’s flooding of the low lying terrain, in anticipation of the Allied invasion. Many paratroopers who landed in the flooded areas drowned before they could free themselves from their parachute harnesses and the 100 pounds of gear that anchored them at the bottom of the pitch black, murderous cold water.

The fact that George landed in the swamp might indicate that he was in the second half of the stick along with Jack Womer, Joe Oleskiewicz and John Hale. A week after D-Day, Jack Womer heard that both Hale and Radeka had been killed in action not far from the swamp where they had landed. Womer decided to return to the area to search for George’s body. His goal was to secure George’s dog tag and indicate his whereabouts to the burial crews from the graves registration service. After checking several corpses of dead paratroopers in the small woods at the edge of the swamp, he began to search an adjacent wheat field. There, he found George, the victim of a German MG42 machine gun that had been located in a nearby house. George must have extricated himself from the swamp, exited the woods and entered into the field without any cover. He was an easy target. The German machine gunner simply fired on him and ended his life.
Jack McNiece had jumped in the first half of the stick, landing about two miles from Ste. Mère Eglise. He recounted that he’d heard from another soldier that “George had been killed while taking his third machine gun nest.” This story, which is far more heroic in nature than Womer’s, is the one that was widely published in the newspapers back home in the USA.

At the end of June a Western Union telegram arrived at 512 North Scott Street in Joliet, Illinois.

THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR SON PRIVATE GEORGE RADEKA WAS KILLED IN ACTION IN FRANCE NINE JUNE LETTER FOLLOWS. THE ADJUTANT GENERAL.

Though Mrs. Radeka did not read English, she didn’t need to have the telegram translated. Her only son George was gone forever. She would remain heartbroken for the rest of her life. Adding to her heartache, some years later, when it would have been possible to repatriate George’s remains so he could rest in the family plot in the Woodlawn Memorial Park cemetery in Joliet, his family could not afford to pay for it.
70 years after George was killed in Normandy, the Serbian neighborhood along North Scott Street no longer exists. The Radeka family home at 512 North Scott Street still stands, but it has long since been abandoned. The house across the street is now a homeless shelter. St. George’s Serbian Orthodox Church is currently occupied by the New Testament Fellowship Church and is in disrepair. Joliet Iron and Steel works, once America’s second largest steel mill, began to fail in the Depression. For seven decades the factory buildings decayed and crumbled until nothing was left but a few unrecognizable ruins. In 1998 the government purchased the land where in Bozo Radeka’s time, 4,000 people worked 12 hours a day at a wage of $9 a week, to produce the nation’s iron. It is now a 52 acre historic site and preserve, with bicycle and walking trails.

George Radeka of the Filthy 13 rests in Plot E, Row 14, Grave 43 in the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

Thank you, George, for your sacrifice.