Veteran recalls many duties and risks as combat engineer during World War II

Thomas Ondrey, The Plain DealerMichael Kucharson, 89, displays the medals earned and insignia he wore as a member of the 234th Engineer Combat Battalion that fought across Europe during World War II.

"There are no ordinary lives," said Ken Burns of those who served in a global cataclysm so momentous that the filmmaker simply entitled his 2007 documentary "The War."

Many who served in so many different ways during World War II are gone now.

Some took their stories with them.

But not this one.

If they needed a bridge, you built it -- in the dark, under enemy fire, whatever it took.

If they needed a minefield cleared, or planted, you grabbed a bayonet and shovel and started digging.

Tank coming? Heft that bazooka and hope for the best.

Such was the duty of Army combat engineers during World War II and a role that Michael Kucharson shouldered with some trepidation.

The 1941 graduate of West Tech High School had been running an engine lathe at the Ohio Crankshaft Co. until he was drafted in 1943. Given his mechanical aptitude, he was assigned to the Army's 234th Engineer Combat Battalion which landed in France shortly after the D-Day invasion of June 1944.

Kucharson, 89, of Parma Heights, recalled that he hoped for the best but prepared for the worst as he headed off to war. "I knew what was going to happen. That's why I didn't want to get married until I got back," he said.

He quickly discovered the multiple roles that engineers played as they paced the front-line troops into battle. "A lot of times if they needed us, we were infantry," he said. "We helped the tanks, the artillery, all that stuff."

Wherever they needed you, "that's where you went," he added.

Veteran recalls service as combat engineerMichael Kucharson, 89, of Parma Heights, remembers service as a combat engineer, doing everything from building bridges and clearing mines to tackling tanks with a bazooka during World War II.

Building bridges was a common task but sometimes the job had to be done at night, without lights, to avoid drawing the attention of German artillery. Other times they were targeted by enemy aircraft and snipers yet had to keep working, Kucharson said.

Their duties could range from the delicate probing of a bayonet in the ground as they lay on their stomachs, searching for land mines, to randomly tossing blocks of explosives in a river in an effort to bring German one-man submarines to the surface.

They paddled boats around Holland after the Germans flooded the countryside in an effort to stem the Allied advance. The Army engineers also planted their own land mines and booby traps to stymie enemy counterattacks.

Kucharson recalled that once, after they'd just finished sowing a minefield, a local farmer approached, walking a horse. The soldiers warned him about the danger, but he set off across the field.

"And not one thing happened," Kucharson recalled with a chuckle. "I thought for sure he was going to be blown up, but he made it. How, was a real mystery to me."

When food ran low the engineers improvised, liberating local chickens for soup or utilizing cattle killed in artillery barrages. "You did the best you could to survive," Kucharson said.

The same held true when his unit was pressed into combat during the Battle of the Bulge to halt a surprise German attack. "The cold was terrible. A lot of the guys had frozen feet," said Kucharson, who still copes with foot and leg problems related to that bygone battle against the elements.

During that time he also learned to shoot for the wheels and tracks of German tanks because bazooka shells would bounce off their heavy armor.

Artillery shrapnel was the thing he feared most. "Some of the guys, they bled to death. If they could've gotten medical attention, they wouldn't have died," Kucharson said. "But they got hit and just died right there. God, it was terrible."

Some engineers cracked under the strain and had to be sent to the rear, suffering from battle fatigue, he added. He remembered one guy, a former bricklayer, strong as an ox, who mentally crumbled like brittle cement under the strain of combat.

As for himself, Kucharson said, "You get shook up, but you do the best you can and stay brave. The good Lord kept me going, and I got to be pretty damn tough. We had a lot of good guys, too, and that helped a lot."

Yet even Kucharson couldn't keep from crying when the ship that brought him home, after the war, passed the Statue of Liberty.

"I was so glad to get back. I didn't think I was going to make it," he said, fighting back much the same tears of relief today.

He married the girl he'd met at the Aragon Ballroom before the war. He and Virginia (now deceased) raised three children while he returned to work at Ohio Crankshaft.

But he came back a changed man -- disenchanted with the waste and cost of war, though personally better for the experience.

Kucharson said he learned to "appreciate life better, and also to be more happy in life. Life's so short, you should do the best you can.

"That's much better."