WITEK, FRANK PETER (Dec. 10, 1921 -- Aug. 3, 1944)Congressional Mwdal of Honor. Like many Polish recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Frank Witek is too seldom written about, seen and heard. It means his generation, which Tom Brokaw called the greatest, is disappearing so fast, at a rate of 1,056 a day, that pretty soon someone will ask, "Witek who?"
What a genuine pity, PFC Frank P. Witek, who received the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for his bravery in battle during World War 11, isn't better known.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt told his story simply, but elegantly, in the official citation:
"For conspicuous gallantry and intrepedity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the lst Battalion, Ninth Marines, Third Marine Division, during the Battle of Finegayan at Guam, Marianas, on 3 August 1944. When his rifle platoon was halted by heavy surprise fire from well camouflaged enemy positions, Private First Class Witek daringly remained standing to fire a full magazine from his automatic rifle at point-blank range into a depression housing Japanese troops, killing eight of the enemy and enabling the greater part of his platoon to take cover.
"During his platoon's withdrawal for consolidation of lines, he remained to safeguard a severely wounded comrade, courageously returning the enemy's fire until the arrival of stretcher bearers and then covering the evacuation by sustained fire as he moved backward toward his own lines.
"With his platoon again pinned down by a hostile machine gun, Private First Class Witek, on his own initiative, moved forward boldly ahead of the reinforcing tanks and infantry, alternately throwing hand grenades and firing as he advanced to with five or ten yards of the enemy position, destroying the hostile machine gun emplacement and an additional eight Japanese before he himself was struck down by an enemy rifleman.
"His valiant and inspiring action effectively reduced the enemy's fire power, thereby enabling his platoon to attain its objective, and reflects the highest credit upon Private First Class Witek and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country."IN CHICAGO
Little is known of the Witek family. With 13,222 persons of the same name in 1990, it was the 254th most popular Polish surname in Poland.
When Frank Peter Witek was nine years old, the family moved from Derby, Connecticut, where he was born December 10, 1921, to Chicago, and unlike most Polish immigrants who sent their children to work as soon as possible, the Witeks decided that their boy would finish Crane Technical High School, which started out in Chicago with 28 students in 1911 and now has an enrollment of 1254, nearly half of whom graduate, and would then get a good paying job. Had the Japanese not bombed Pearl Harbor, no one knows what Frank Witek's future would have been with the Chicago Standard Transformer Company where he went to work. The transformers he worked on influenced the course of history.
BOUGAINVILLE
After the entrance of the United States in the war, Witek wore the patch of the Third Marine Division and quickly found himself in the South Pacific. He received his baptism of fire on the island of Bougainville. On November 1, 1943, the Marines landed at Empress Augusta Bay, some distance from the Japanese held airfields at either end of the island, and engaged in three battles to defeat the 40,000 Japanese troops, four times the number of American soldiers, sailors, and marines, on the island. The Marines also used dogs, including 24 Dobermans and German shepherds, to sniff out snipers in their path along jungle trails. The capture of Bougainville, one of the most resounding successes of the war in the Pacific, caused Marine casualties of 423 dead and 1,418 wounded.
GUAM
Guam, a 225-square mile island 1200 miles east of the Philippine Islands, was occupied for two and a half years by Japanese troops until July 21, 1944, when the Marines came back to liberate it. Despite support from aircraft, it cost the American forces 1214 lives to win back the island. The number of dead Japanese was 10,971. When Witek was killed on August 3, 1944, the American forces had five days left to snatch the island. They captured Mount Santa Rosa, to which Witek was going, on August 7. It was the highest elevation in Northern Guam.
Witek was buried first in a military cemetery on Guam and, four years later, the remains were taken to the Rock Island National Cemetery, Rock Island, Illinois.
Not so long ago, one of the former editors of Straz, Theodore L. Zawistowski, who now lives in Port Charlotte, Florida, recalled that All Saints cathedral in Chicago, under Bishop Francis Hodur of the Polish National Catholic Church, added a gold star to its red and white banner to mark Witek's death because he was a member of that parish.
TRIBUTES
The first tribute to the fallen war hero took place in Soldier's Field, Chicago, on May 20, 1945, in front of 50,000 persons, when General Alexander A. Vandergrift, Commandant of the Marine Corps, issued the nation's highest military award in his name. The mother of the lost hero, Mrs. Nora Witek, received it.
Frank Witek was the 28th Marine to receive the Medal of Honor during the Second World War.
Shortly afterwards, on 2 February 1946, Mrs. Witek traveled to Bath, Maine, to christen one of the Navy's fastest destroyers named in his honor. Over the next 20 years, the USS Witek(DD-848) was heavily engaged in experimental work and received little publicity. She earned the nickname, "The Galloping Ghost of the Long Island Coast," because she would slip out of the New London, Connecticut, naval base to carry on secret experiments off the New England coast.
On October 24, 1954, however, the British colony of Nassau, Bahamas, was exhilarated when 140 sailors from the destroyer saved the city from oblivion. For many hours the sailors on the Witek, who pulled out their fire hose, walkie-talkies, masks, fog applicators, pumps, and other equipment, joined the fire fighters of Nassau and saved the city from ruin. The Bahamians never forgot the name of the destroyer.
After the USS Witek was taken out of active service at Norfolk, Va., on 19 August 1968, the sailors who served on it kept in touch with one another and formed an association of the same name. Nearly all of them, or what remains, now have an e-mail box.
WITEK PARK
The memory of PFC Frank P. Witek was also important to the citizens of Derby, Connecticut, for the city on the Housatonic River, despite its fame as the birthplace of General William Hull and his nephew, Commodore Isaac Hull, and Colonel David Humphreys, Kosciuszko's friend, never had a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient until the native son of Polish immigrants was awarded the medal for bravery in the Second World War.
The war veterans of Derby, many of whom knew the Witek family when it lived there, urged their city officials to recognize the Polish American Medal of Honor recipient.
The city of Derby, then, named 144 acres of land and a reservoir on the east side of town, formerly part of a water works, the Frank P. Witek Memorial Park. No one knows how many persons have become familiar with the war hero since the park was opened on May 29, 1999.
Author: Edward Pinkowski (2011) [email protected]