By Jake Dziubla
Round Table online editor-in-chief

After waking up before dawn on a chilly English morning in 1945, second lieutenant bombardier David Jelinek of the United States Air Force made his way to the briefing of his last mission. His crew was silent, as usual, focusing on the plan-of-action for their mission over Germany. The men then made the walk from their briefing to their B24 bomber, the “Flying Fortress”. As the plane gradually ascended, German planes began eating away at the bomber, taking out one of its two engines.

With only a crude form of manual landing gear, no reliable form of radar and gliding on one engine, the plane retreated precariously back to England.

 As the crew prepared for an emergency landing on the southeast English coast, the frightened Jelinek began to feel nauseous, a symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; Jelinek never got airsick.

 The winners and losers of wars are, generally, determined by the amount of casualties each side has sustained; Jelinek, however, has declared himself a winner in his own respect. “A good war is one you come out of alive,” he said.

 Peering through his diary since he is not “totally dependent on his fading memory,” World War II veteran and Wisconsin native Jelinek spoke to Bill Mulldoon’s WWII history class on Dec. 9.

 Branching off a military family consisting of a brother, a brother-in-law, and cousin in the marines, Jelinek enlisted in the air force as a bombardier since piloting, in his opinion, was “too lonely” and the bombardier training was the shortest: 12 weeks. Jelinek’s brother, a marine in the Pacific, spent three Christmases in a row overseas.

 Jelinek flew his first mission on D-Day and his last in Jan. of 1945. When asked what his favorite mission was, Jelinek quickly replied, “The last one”.

 Students listened intently as the soft-spoken veteran spoke of fallen comrades and the horrors of the ground troops who, compared to air troops, lived a far more intense and grueling war-life.

 “The discomfort was small compared to ground troops,” said Jelinek.

 Specializing in the releasing of the bombs themselves, Jelinek himself had “mixed feelings” about bombing cities. Aside from the short training and camaraderie that being a bombardier offered, the position also appealed to his personality.

“I never considered myself a competitor,” Jelinek said.

 After taking a couple weeks to readjust following the ending of the war, Jelinek described the feelings amongst his fellow veterans as grateful and relieved.

 “We gathered in bars and mostly sat, smiling,” said Jelinek.

 Jelinek also discussed the current U.S. deployment of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Our country is making a mistake,” said Jelinek. “I have serious doubts about a volunteer army. It’s professional.”

 When Jelinek was in the military, the draft was still a vital piece of the puzzle that made up the armed forces. Jelinek feels that the draft is something that needs to be initiated once more.

 “[The volunteer system] makes it a lot harder to get out of war,” said Jelinek.

 Regardless of the situation that our country is in right now, the war that Jelinek endured has given him a unique, new perspective on life. If anything, the war has made him confident, at the least.

 “I can survive anything,” Jelinek said as he gathered up his pictures and artifacts from his flying days, smiling.