Zbigniew Epler

Zbigniew, so that’s what his first name was. For all we knew, his first name was Captain.

Captain Epler, the rather stern faced officer in the 20th Medium during the early sixties. The man with the accent and the moniker of “Warsaw Willy”, because we didn’t know any better. Who named him this remains a mystery, suffice to say, this was what we referred to him as when out of his hearing. The name, given to him before he came into our young high school lives, passed on by some other young soldier that he had some influence on.

He is remembered as a uniformed gentleman, patiently teaching us some artillery stuff. A man who never seemed frustrated with us, as dumb as we may have seemed to be. The light in his eyes and the small smile on his face when the lesson finally sunk in remains in our minds to this day, almost fifty years later. Perhaps his mission in life was to gently knock some sense into our heads and when it happened; it was a victory to him.

He finally landed in London, England. We wondered what happened to him and some of the other officers and NCOs’ that had such an influence on our young lives. Their leadership during those few special years was perhaps overlooked at the time, but somehow guided us for the rest of our lives. Take a bunch of somewhat underprivileged kids, although we didn’t know what this meant at the time; give them your time and patience, sprinkle in a little discipline, add a heaping of leadership and what do you get? Some of us turned out pretty good, I think.

Memories linger of walking past him in the Prince of Wales Armory after Saturday Parade, several times, to salute him, just because it was cool. We now know that the salute was not to the three epaulettes on his shoulder, but to the man himself.