(WBBM NEWSRADIO) – A U.S. Army veteran from Chicago’s Northwest Side is preparing to return to Europe next week to be honored for his role in an Allied operation during World War II.
American, Polish and Canadian troops cleared Nazis from part of the Netherlands and Belgium in 1944 during Operation Pheasant. Among U.S. participants was Frank Fabianski of the 104th Timberwolf Infantry Nightfighters; he was a cryptographer who sent and received messages.
“Secret codes -- things like that,” said Fabianski, 101, who today is a resident of Amazing Grace Living in the Norwood Park neighborhood.
Fabianski said he’ll take in as much as he can during his two-week trip and expects to see “a lot of happy people, a lot of activity, just like the 4th of July here for them.”
Fabianski will be traveling with his daughter, Paulette Stith, her husband and their daughter, who is a high school social studies teacher.
“When he left, I’m sure it was massive destruction. And from what I understand now, it’s a beautiful country. It’s rebuilt,” she said.
Stith’s father didn’t talk much about his World War II experiences when she was growing up, she said. But he began opening up more about a decade ago.
“He was interviewed for the Archives, the National Archives up in Waukegan. I heard a lot of stories that I’d never heard before. So, a lot of this he has internalized for the past 80 years.”
Fabianski expects more memories will return when he returns to the scene of Operation Pheasant. He’s realistic about that.
“It can’t all be good stories,” he said.
Paulette Stith says she once asked her father what he did once he returned from the Army and he replied that, the next day, he got on the bus and went back to work.
Stith’s husband, Ed, is happy to be joining his father-in-law on the trip.
“It’s very appropriate, I think, that they’re honoring my father-in-law,” the Mundelein resident said. “All those men and women deserve a lot of credit.”
Fabianski said he worked for more than 30 years as a warehouse manager for a food company after the war. He and his wife moved from their Northwest Side house into a condo for a number of years until she died in 2020.
After living with family for a number of months, Fabianski moved a couple of years ago to Amazing Grace.
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