October 31, 2015

HOS JONSSONS I GÖTET -- LYSHOLMEN 1951
















Uncle Folke Jonsson Jr. (Ponkis) after WW2

Parachute collision

Gothenburg man's war experience - Folke Jonsson Jr American's corporal

(Swedish Newspaper article translated by Lena Sodergren)

 

"All my comrades in America voluntarily entered the war and I thought it was also my duty, it was my mother's fatherland," says Folke Jonsson J:r, who is on a week's leave. Ordinarily, he is stationed with the American forces in France. He hasn't been home in seven years, so the joy is great to have done so well. 
He traveled to America in 1939 to finish his schooling, but the war came in between. He signed up, immediately becoming an American citizen and, after training in the United States, came to Europe in 1942. Badges of distinction on his chest reveal that he participated in three major battles. The father, Consul General Folke Jonsson, wonders what his hopeful son really has been through.

Parachuting was my job, says the young man, and it generally went well. The last time we were going to jump, it all went crazy. There were 24 of us 12 in each door, and in the air my parachute got tangled up in another. Both mine and my companion's parachute folded and we fell together a couple of hundred feet, before the parachutes opened up. Then we bumped together once more before we reached the ground -- and that left me with back injuries and something wrong with one foot. Instead of being in the last fight in Germany, I had to be hospitalized. I was cheated on the finale itself, and it was apparently a hard job, because a lot of my comrades were left on the battlefields.

- The battle of the Ardennes is otherwise the hardest battle the young Gothenburg man has participated in. It lasted for 45 days at the front , without any rest. It involved surveillance and reconnaissance on a river. Many of the comrades suffered severe frostbites to their feet and hands. There were two enemies that time, the cold and the Germans.

"During his stay in England, before Mr. Jonsson came over to the continent, he had the opportunity to study the effects of the German rockets up close. He says that he was close to being hit. Many of his comrades were lost and he adds with a smile that he himself has been miraculously lucky. His first contact with the enemy was at Verdun and it was a very scary experience.

"We soon all understood," he says, "that it was a question of dying or killing." Now, however, we are all happy that the war is over. We, the young people, who signed up to go in the field, before schooling was completed, are invited by the US government to spend two years at Yale University. I'm thinking about going back to the U.S. and training to be a businessman. Then I'll see what happens.

Mr. Folke Jonsson is only 23 years old and has his life in front of him.

Folke Jonsson Jr. 
He participated as a paratrooper in the American invasion of Normandy during WW2.
He was in the Battle of the Bulge (The Ardennes offensive) and when he parachuted again later in the war, his parachute got entangled with someone else's and he sustained back and foot injuries when landing. He was cared for at a Red Cross Hospital in Paris where his mother Olga visited. 
He settled and married his wife Anne in Jacksonville Florida