My parents were Johann P. and Anna Peters Penner. My father had come down with polio as a child and was left with a limp.

I remember a boat trip from Einlage, on Chortitza Island, north to Feodrovka on the right side of the Dnieper River. In the 1920s, a bridge was built there by the government. I spent four years in school in Nicholaifeld where we were taught first in the Russian language, then in Ukrainian. My teacher was a German by the name of Wegewitz.

I was drafted in February of 1944 at 16 years of age. They lined the fellows up and the tallest ones were chosen for the draft. I stood on my tiptoes so I'd be as tall as my friend Herman Schellenberg and, to our parent's dismay, we were both drafted. We were trained in Dresden, Germany which is now part of Poland. The Mennonite families lived in a monastery there and we became German citizens.

Then we moved to central Poland, to the city of Litzmanschaft. After we were trained, our unit was divided into two, one going to Russia and the other to Italy. I went to Italy from June until November. We needed to check bridges during the night. I remember that Henry Siemens' foot was badly damaged and I put the bones back in place. We found an old cannon which we called Rote Bertha (red Bertha) and used leftover ammunition to shoot at a mountain with it.

I worked with the Red Cross helping the injured and was hit on the upper arm by an explosive bullet. I needed to go back to Trieste, spent 10 days in the hospital there, then took a train to Vienna. As I got off the train, five kilometres from the Austrian border, the shooting started. Here I made friends with an Austrian fellow. I had a letter allowing me to go home to Poland for two weeks, plus one week for travelling time. I went to find my parents, stayed one week and returned to Italy by train. My parents cried when I left.

I was placed in a different unit when I returned and walked to Austria, near the Po River. They seldom blew up bridges when I was there in the latter part of 1944. I stayed until March of 1945. I was sent back to Munich, Germany on a truck with benches; they had a tarpaulin cover for rainy weather. Then a German fellow and I got off and went across the Weser River by boat and looked for work. We checked out the farm jobs. "Can you milk a cow?" the farmers asked us. We said yes. So we learned to milk cows twice daily on a farm.

At this time my sister Wally lived in Saxon; John was in the Navy and released on May 15 and went to Westfalia. We got together there on an estate and stayed until 1948, when we were able to emigrate to Canada. We got free train rides. In the meantime, my father had been sent back to Russia and had died there. Mom, Rudy, Annie and Wally were in Poland. Wally taught school in a village there. When they heard cannons, they went west and got on a train in Litzmanstadt, and went west to Westfallia, constantly on the move. We worked on a farm in the North Sea area of Stohlhamm am Deich in Germany.

When we got together on the estate we worked for food and rent. The boss supplied us with extra bread when we needed it. We stayed there for two years. In the meantime we corresponded with Jacob Hamm in Leamington, Ontario and Uncle Rudy Penner in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Wally and Henry, John, Rudy, Mom and I left for Canada where we settled in Leamington, Ontario. John, Annie, Rudy and I first lived at Point Pelee where we worked in the apple orchards. Then we took John Medlik's farm on shares in Olinda, Ontario.

Mary Wiebe and I were married in 1949 at the Point Pelee house by Reverend N. N. Driedger. We had a small reception there for our guests. Today Mary and I have four children, 12 grandchildren and three great grandchildren. I speak High German, Low German, English, and some Ukrainian and Russian.

AK 2008

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