70 years late, man gets a Purple Heart

NEW EGYPT, N.J. - Maybe he should have gotten a medal for patience.

After waiting seven decades, World War II veteran Leonard Brotzky was honored Thursday with a Purple Heart for wounds he received during the Battle of the Bulge.

"After 70 years, I'm finally getting it," said Brotzky, 89, of Manchester Township, Ocean County, at a presentation ceremony at the district office of U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.). "I felt I earned it."

The medal should have been awarded in 1944 but was apparently overlooked because of a record-keeping foul-up. It was corrected through efforts begun by Smith more than a decade ago.

At Brotzky's side was his wife, Rose, who was also honored for her trailblazing service as a Marine radio operator in Hawaii during the war. She was presented by Smith with a flag that flew over the Capitol.

"I was waiting for this [the flag] when I passed on," said a smiling Rose Brotzky, 92, who met her husband after the war at a veterans' gathering. "It's just an honor to be here. I'm so proud of my husband."

During a brief ceremony, Smith praised the couple's contributions in and out of uniform.

"We honor today two extraordinary Americans - Lenny and Rose Brotzky - for their courageous service to our nation during World War II," he said. "The Brotzkys are the quintessential example of the 'greatest generation' - patriotic, generous, brave, and selfless.

"They not only saved America and the world from tyranny, but they built and sustained America and American values," he said.

Smith began trying to obtain the medal in 2003 but was asked by the Army to produce more evidence of the wounds. Records surfaced recently and Smith petitioned the National Personnel Record Center, which approved the medal and sent it to Smith on Oct. 2.

"The French honored him with the French Legion of Honor, but the U.S. government is a little bit later than the French," Smith said.

On Thursday, the congressman handed the Purple Heart to Brotzky.

"He definitely deserved it and should have had it long before," Rose Brotzky said.

Leonard Brotzky's division had been "part of the Allied forces that chased the Germans out of Italy and France, and back to Germany and ultimate defeat," said Smith, whose father fought in New Guinea during World War II.

"He was injured in the heat of battle and is fully deserving of this Purple Heart," he said. "I just wish it wasn't 70 years late."

A native of Orange, Brotzky enlisted in the Army in 1943 and underwent basic training at Fort Dix.

In the winter of 1944, he was serving in the 36th Division, 155th Field Artillery Unit, and riding in a Jeep during the Battle of the Bulge when enemy shells rained down around him.

Jumping from the vehicle, Brotzky was struck in a hand and arm by shrapnel, and treated at a field hospital. He also suffered frostbite on his feet because of the extreme cold during the battle.

"It was cold," he said. "We were fighting and doing the best we could."

Brotzky was honorably discharged in 1945 at Fort Monmouth. At the time, he didn't know Rose Katz of Bloomfield, Essex County.

She had signed up with the Marine Corps Women's Reserve in 1943, learned a new skill as a radio operator, and was sent to Hawaii.

"I was 20 when I enlisted," she said. "When we did have the time, we went to the beach . . . but I'd rather be at a Jersey Shore beach than Hawaii."

Rose Brotzky served at the Marine station at Ewa for eight months and returned to the continental United States in October 1945. She was honorably discharged as a staff sergeant.

"Tears fell from my eyes as we approached the Golden Gate Bridge," she wrote in her recollections of that time. "There was a boat escorting us with a band playing 'Sentimental Journey.' "

After the war, Rose Brotzky worked at the Bloomfield Independent Press and West Essex Tribune while Leonard Brotzky graduated from Cornell University with a premed degree and Rutgers University with a hospital administration degree. A pharmaceutical sales representative, he married Rose and they settled in Livingston, where they raised two children.

"These are two extraordinary Americans," Smith said. "This is the ultimate power couple, people who believed in America and did so much to save America."