AUBURN, MI — Enjoying one or two bottles of Bud Light and monthly poker nights with family is what centenarian and World War II veteran Gene Karbowski credits for keeping him sharp as a tack.
Ahead of his milestone 100th birthday on Memorial Day, Monday, May 29, Karbowski said he renewed his driver’s license and has been enjoying events around town in Auburn and Midland.
Looking back on his life, he said he’s lucky to be alive after a turbulent tour in the Pacific Islands during World War II. Karbowski spoke with MLive/The Saginaw News, telling war stories even his children had not heard before.
Leading up to the war, he left his position with Defoe Shipbuilding Co. for testing at Fort Custer in Battle Creek and then Georgia’s Camp Stewart for six weeks of basic training.
He would go on to train as a paratrooper and take some college courses while enlisted, waiting for his eventual deployment.
While in college in Pasadena, California, Karbowski entered engineering school. As the war progressed, he would go on to be transferred to several other sites for artillery training and some additional paratrooper experience.
It was September of 1944 when he would finally be sent to the jungles of New Guinea.
Karbowski said at that point, Japanese soldiers were going from island to island, as the U.S. military was, in order to stake a strategic claim on the land.
“(They) were human just like we were,” Karbowski said.
Some of the space had already been secured by U.S. forces, so he and the rest of the 503rd regimental combat team he had joined would travel by boat to the northern Philippines, specifically the island of Mindoro.
There he and several others were treated in a field-tent hospital for jungle fever for roughly a week and treated with additional medication to prevent malaria brought by ever-present swarms of mosquitoes.
The time in Mindoro would last about four months before the most dangerous leg of his journey: Corregidor Island.
Corregidor, a smaller island in the Manilla Bay, north of Mindoro and east of the South China Sea spanning between Vietnam and the Philippines, was where Karbowski said he had his closest brush with death.
In February 1945, Karbowski and his regiment were dropped onto the Japanese-captured island.
He said during the drop to the island, during which only half of his team was expected to survive, his parachute led him to skid off a building, missing a jagged tin roof and landing in the brush.
“First thing I did when I landed, I got out of my harness and ran to catch up with the machine gun crew,” he recalled.
Armed with a knife, pistol, his .30-caliber rifle, as many grenades as he could carry and a Hershey bar or two, the first familiar face Karbowski saw was that of his sergeant.
The cave-filled island gave plenty of space for enemies to hide, so tensions were high during his 10-day stay.
“I spent that first night laying with my nose in the ground to stay low and stay alive,” Karbowski said.
He said he and a crew were shooting over a ledge on the tenth day of fighting, shooting at enemies near a building effectively the size of a pill box.
Karbowski’s daughter Liz LeMay said she had heard the stories of her father being saved at the last minute by what appeared to be divine intervention, but not to the detail he provided ahead of his birthday.
“He said it was really ugly but had never gone into real detail like that, LeMay said. “He didn’t spend his life telling war stories. He’s a very humble man.”
Another ammo dump had also been released but was blown up fairly close to his secondary location. Another soldier had swapped positions with him as that ammo dump was blown up, according to Karbowski.
The explosion caused rocks and debris to fly, killing the friend who had taken his place. Karbowski would later meet the man’s family to tell them of his heroism and how he saved his life.
When Karbowski returned home, he said he slowly returned to civilian life, rejoining his job at Defoe Shipbuilding, where he would meet his wife Patricia, née Chapman, before joining Dow Chemical a year later. Karbowski would stay with Dow for 39 years, traveling the world for business.
Milestone birthday
Karbowski celebrated his milestone birthday Sunday, May 21, at American Legion Post 0239 in Crump and plans to observe the Memorial Day holiday at home with family rather than participate in any parades.
With his 100th birthday coinciding with Memorial Day, LeMay said the day holds even more meaning for her father this year.
“Each year Memorial Day holiday rolls around, he counts his blessings,” LeMay said. “It weighs heavily on him. He’s considered himself so lucky because he managed to cheat fate so many times.”
At age 100, Karbowski said he continues to look forward to those family poker nights, often attended by most of the family, including his five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, two daughters, Liz and Annie, and two other veterans, his son Bob and son-in-law Ernie, both of whom were drafted into the Vietnam war.
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