By Tim Chicirda, BucksLocalNews.com


Joseph Haak, Sr., of Grundy Commons in Bristol Borough, had always remembered conditions of the dramatic, worldwide economic downturn in the late 1920s known as the Great Depression.
His widowed mother Catherine was affected by economic conditions that were beyond her control and she cleaned offices for a living; and often times, cleaned the homes of the doctors on Radcliffe Street.

Haak attended Bristol High School and Bristol Township High School in the Class of 1944. During his high school years, Joseph was a machine press operator in the Manhatten Soap Company, stamping the die to make “Sweetheart” soap, the streamlined pink oval bar with the filigree border.

He also worked at the Grundy Mills as a pinsetter, replacing the damaged pins in the combing machine, making $15 a week.

“Senator Grundy’s car broke down in front of our home and the chauffeur asked to use our phone and my mom let Senator Grundy come in to make a call and she made him a cup of tea,” Haak once shared. But, his career soon later took a turn into the military field.

At the end of his junior year, Joe enlisted in the Army Reserve and was drafted in August 1943.
His first stop was Fort Meade, MD. Here he was given his uniform and the new recruits received instruction to provide a mission ready workforce to maximize efficiency and effectiveness, but his travel had just begun.

He was sent to an Army training camp at Camp Gruber Military Reservation, Okla., which closed at the end of WWII and then reopened in 1977 for reserve and active unit training.

He trained with the “Rainbow 42nd Division” before going overseas and returning to Fort Mead.
Twice in this century, the Rainbow Division has signaled to millions of people the end of tyranny and oppression and the beginning of new hope for a better world. These companies were used to defend against and attack and counterattack powerful German forces along a furious battlefront.
At this point, Joseph was on his way to Camp Myles Standish, outside of Boston, Mass., then to a temporary Army base in Liverpool, England in June of 1944 on the Wakefield ship, that in civilian life was a pleasure cruiser, the “Manhattan,” converted to a Naval transport ship.

Haak recalled at this time, after singing the “Star Spangled Banner,” that he and the troops courteously remained at attention and remained saluting for the British National Anthem. England’s fields were “khakied,” jammed with American men, planes and weapons.
He invested well over two years of his life in the service and traveled to five countries, including England and the invasion area in Utah beach.

Joe also fought in Normandy and in Belgium.
Haak was hospitalized in France in the 40th General Hospital for a month and a half after an artillery shell pummeled through a house in which they were sheltered. It went into the ground and detonated.

He was shell-shocked after that ordeal long after his uniform was hung up in the back of the closet. Joe was one of the surviving 35 of the normal strength of 189 men. A soldier had gone limp and died in his arms and he had always had nightmares about this.

He was reclassified “unfit for further combat duty” and was briefed very strongly in March 1945 in the 726th Military Police Battalion. His job then was to look out for high-ranking German officials leaving to go to neutral Spain or Switzerland.

Pfc. Joe was on the small, 60-acre Mogmog Island when Germany surrendered.
“You never boasted, bragged or asked for adulation for your past,” said Haak. “You did the job you knew was right and quietly you cry at night.”

Now it was time for Joseph to go home. His entire battalion boarded on trains and moved to Marseilles, France and then boarded ship to pass the Straits of Gibraltar, cross the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean and traveled through the Panama Canal.

Upon returning home, Haak went out looking for work and secured a position in the Madsen Machine Company, with an apprenticeship to be a machinist under the G.I. Bill.

His next employment was at the Tangent Tool Company in Morrisville to learn to be a custom specifically designed tool maker, engineering extreme precision and high performance tools and he completed his on-the-job training and apprenticeship.

Joe returned to Bristol Borough and lived there for a few years until his recent death in February of 2010.

In an interview with BucksLocalNews, just a year before his death, Haak stated that “Bristol has always been a great town” and that after all that he had accomplished in life: “[Now] I do what I want to do.”

Well, whether he wanted to or not, growing up through the Great Depression and devoting years to our military, Joseph’s family can truly look back on his life and call it heroic.

“[I was] not a good dancer, two left feet,” Haak once said. “Just a good marcher as a soldier.”

****
Cate Murway contributed to this article.