212773 Capt. Albert Z. Szczepkowski United States Army from:Sarasota, FL Albert Szczepkowski was born in Torun, Poland and moved to America when he was 9. He joined the Army in 1943 and took classes at the University of Alabama while in boot camp nearby. Overseas he was wounded three times, twice by rifle fire and once by mortar shrapnel, was held as a prisoner of war. He told his son that one time he was he was lying in a trench in a field in France, his buddies were in retreat, but they had placed him there, hoping they could return to save him. But the soldier crossed over and kept going. In the house-to-house combat he and his buddies had once been captured. But the Germans had retreated, leaving the Americans behind.
By the time he was discharged in 1945, his son said, he was a captain who had declined a promotion in order to return to his college studies.
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