By Heather Graves
Correspondent
GREEN BAY – “The one thing I took away from it, and I told this to my kids, nothing opens your eyes more than facing death. You go through that and you become an altogether different person.”
It’s passages like this from Korean War Marine veteran Bill Koch that fill the pages of John Maino’s fourth book “Fifty Strong: Four Decades of US Veterans and Families Share Their Combat and Post-War Experiences.”
The in-their-own-words depictions from local veterans about their service during World War II (WWII), the Korean War and the Vietnam War, give readers a true look at real-life war experiences most civilians couldn’t fathom.
Maino said writing books about veterans was never something he planned.
“I remember back in 1997, I think, the first time we did a Veteran’s Day breakfast out at the Duck Creek VFW,” he said. “Afterward, I just sat around with some WWII veterans and they kind of opened up with some of their stories. I remember thinking to myself, I read a lot of books on history and on WWII and these guys’ stories are every bit as compelling as what I read about. And that is when I first got the idea about it and I asked them, ‘Did you ever document this, write this down?’ And they were like, ‘Nah, no, no one ever really wanted to know anything about it.’ And I thought, well I do and I think some readers might.”
As they say – the rest was history.
“It literally started with one person, and he gave me another name and that person gave me a name,” Maino said. “There was nothing totally organized. It was literally, just one man after the other.”
War stories are generally not something most veterans openly talk about. Oftentimes, they bury painful memories.
“Early on with some of the WWII veterans, their spouses were concerned because they really tried to bury it and they were concerned that talking about it would rekindle old wounds,” Maino said. “But it turned out they kind of enjoyed the acclaim that they never, ever sought… The WWII and the Korean War vets received zero help from government agencies when they came back. These poor guys had post-traumatic stress as bad as anybody and they simply had to fight those demons by themselves.”
“Fifty Strong,” and Maino’s previous veterans books – “Frontlines,” “ETO: European Theater of Operations” and “The Pacific” – gave veterans the opportunity to finally share their stories.
“The reason they were opening up after all these years, they said, was because, you know, they are getting on in their later years and they wanted future generations to know what war was really like,” he said. “That it isn’t like the movies, and it isn’t glamorous. They told me this several times. They want young people to be able to read what they went through so they really understood what guys go through in war.”
Maino said one of the main things he wanted to achieve with the book is to emphasize the local connection.
“People might have a neighbor… or the guy that is taking too much time in the grocery line,” he said. “They look at that person now, they are wonderful elderly gentlemen, but they don’t know how (heroic) they were when they were 19, 20, 21 years old, and what they did. I really wanted to bring that out. These guys went and fought serious wars for our country. I also wanted to show it at a local level. They are not all from California, or New York or Texas. It’s your neighbors that did this.”
“Fifty Strong” is available wherever books are sold.
“We all said the same thing, we wouldn’t do it again if you paid us a million dollars, but it was worth a million dollars to go through that experience with those guys,” – reads a passage from Eugene “Jack” Kraszwski, World War II Army veteran and Pulaski native.
Though better known for his three decades in sports radio and television, Maino has always had a deep admiration for veterans.
“I guess I’m more well-known for being in sports and stuff like that, which I know I am a sports nut,” he said. “But I was also a big-time history nut. I also had three brothers all in the army when I was growing up.”
Maino said both were big drivers in his advocacy work with veterans.
“Combining my love of history and their service – you know, seeing them all serve their country for three-year hitches, voluntarily – that really had a big impact on me,” he said.
His advocacy work didn’t stop with the books.
Between 2006-11, Maino was embedded as a reporter with the 127th Infantry at Camp Navistar, Kuwait, and with the 432nd Civil Affairs Battalion at both Camp Liberty in Baghdad, Iraq, and Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar in Afghanistan.
It’s veterans from these wars that Maino will feature in his next book, which is already in the works.
“I really feel like I owe it to them to tell their story,” he said.
No timeline is set for release.
“I always (have a timeline for completion), and I always fail because every time I think I’m done, somebody calls me and says ‘Hey Maino, do you know about so and so?’” Maino said. “So I gotta include him. That’s what happens every single time. I hate to miss any good stories.”
Maino said this next book will focus some on the spouses.
“I think that is a real, untold story,” he said. “The support, and in some cases, the trauma that the spouses dealt with for a lot of years. How heroic, in some ways, they were in trying to help their guys when they weren’t getting help anywhere else.”
He said the book will also include more women.
“One of the things I want to focus on even more is females, their story hasn’t been told,” he said.