Note: Dead Eyes transcripts have been generated with automated software and may contain errors. We advise you to listen to episode audio before quoting in print.
Dead Eyes, Episode 20 - “The Big Zielinski”
Connor Ratliff When I was sent the full script for my episode of Band of Brothers, back in the year 2000, the title page said "Part Five: Crossroads by Erik Jendresen, based on the book by Stephen E. Ambrose, current revisions by Tom Hanks."
[Medium arpeggiated clarinet piece starts]
I was familiar with who Ambrose was and, of course, Hanks, but Erik Jendresen was a mystery to me.
Erik Jendresen Technically I was Lead Writer and Supervising Producer. Yeah. I came on in the earliest, earliest days, when it was literally just me and Tom, to create the Bible for the series, to figure it out. It turned into like, a 275 page Bible.
Connor Ratliff When I first reached out to Erik, my assumption was that I would never hear back because, to me, he existed on that plane of Band of Brothers production that's been, so far, unattainable. But he got back to me right away, and when we started talking, he was so disarming that it immediately put me at ease.
[Music piece ends]
Erik Jendresen Stephen Ambrose's book had inspired a lot of the members of Easy Company to re-remember things and to dig into their journals and letters. And they sent them all to Winters. He was sort of the nexus for everybody, for the company, in his home in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And so I went to Hershey and established what would grow into an extraordinary friendship and relationship with... with Major Winters.
I would end up delivering the eulogy at his memorial service.
[Clarinet piece begins again, now with percussion]
It was an amazing and really profound relationship. And it was over the course of about four to six months that I just immersed myself in the story of Easy Company, pouring through it, working with Winters on a daily basis.
Connor Ratliff You can probably tell that Erik is a passionate guy. Now, I've talked to a lot of actors on this podcast but even the most articulate ones are not quite the same as talking to a writer like Erik.
[Music shifts to more ominous synth drone]
Erik Jendresen I've always had this notion that the thing that really makes the sunsets off of Santa Monica so spectacular—everybody says it's smog, but it's not. I think it's fear. I think it's fear that gathers off the coast, over Los Angeles or over Hollywood, every day, and drifts out over the coast and then explodes with the sunset. It's the strangest business, uh, that anybody could ever invent. And... its fuel is sort of fear. So yeah, you can invest your heart and soul into a multitude of amazing projects. And for a multitude of reasons, they just sort of wither and disappear.
It's an opportunity to test your strength of character. And the reason that it stunned you so much is because you were doing it for the right reasons. Frequently, the people who are termed creatives in this business—you know, writers, actors, directors—are almost always doing what they do for the right reasons because they're idealists. And that's incredibly important. That's a precious thing.
Connor Ratliff I remember staring at the cover page of my Band of Brothers script and marveling that Tom Hanks was going to direct my episode. And then looking at Erik's name and wondering, Who was this guy? Would he be on set? Would I get to meet him? The answer to that last one was no, by the way, Erik was in California during Band of Brothers filming and never traveled to England.
But one thing I could not have anticipated was that someday, decades later, he would have a similar curiosity about me.
Erik Jendresen But see, this is why I think that one of the greatest things is the rejection for Zielinski, because without that, you wouldn't have created this podcast. And this podcast has more to do with what you're talking about now, and is more universal than most people would think if they just looked at the description, because you're able to delve in to some real truths about this incredibly bizarre business that we're all in.
Connor Ratliff Real truths. The premise of this entire podcast is the pursuit of one real truth. Why I was fired from the role of Private Zielinski. And in all my conversations about him, I've only talked about that soldier as a character, or plot device: a way to convey the discomfort of Dick Winters, played by Damian Lewis, suddenly being behind a desk while his men are putting themselves in the line of fire. On the pages of my original script, Private Zielinski was only ever referred to by his rank and last name. But on IMDB, the character is listed as "John S. Zielinski, Jr,” which is an odd detail to just emerge from seemingly nowhere.
Erik Jendresen Oh yeah. It was a real guy. Everybody was, there's not a single invented character, you know, in the series.
Connor Ratliff That's what I assumed. Yeah.
Erik Jendresen Actually Zielinski didn't appear in the Bible. My, my version of the episode five in the Bible.
[Theme music starts]
It was when I was writing the script and talking to Winters that Zielinski came up and he was fondly remembering Zielinski, and that was a whole new—that was a revelation to me. So I had to put Zielinksi in, because his description of Zielinski was... fantastic.
I'll, I'll come back to that because... I suspect that there could be a way to solve your entire problem here.
Connor Ratliff ...Really?
Erik Jendresen Oh, yeah.
Connor Ratliff Wow.
Erik Jendresen It's possible. It's just possible.
Voice of God This is Dead Eyes, a podcast about one actor's quest to find out why Tom Hanks fired him from a small role in the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.
Connor Ratliff My name is Connor Ratliff. I'm an actor and comedian. Twenty years ago, I was fired by Tom Hanks. The reason, I was told at the time, is that he saw my audition tape and thought that I had dead eyes.
Erik Jendresen Now I must say, also: knowing Tom, I cannot for the life of me, imagine him ever saying that. That's not a Hanksian thing to say. That just does not ring "Tom" to me.
Connor Ratliff And that's the short version.
[Theme music concludes]
Erik Jendresen Zielinski originally appeared in the script in a very, very simple scene. It was just a two-hander with, with Zielinski and Winters. And I was just looking through... [voice fades]
Connor Ratliff Erik talked me through his recollection of how this Zielinski scene changed from its original version, which you heard me read all the way back in Episode Two. Those revisions were specifically requested by Tom Hanks.
It is amazing to hear the level of detail that went into creating such a small functional role as Zielinski.
[Syncopated Marching Bass and Drum starts]
Erik Jendresen And to, to give you a sense of the, the verisimilitude of this thing, I mean, we decided early on that we had such an embarrassment of riches in this story, you know, the story of one company that goes from training, to D-Day, to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. I mean, holy smokes. And Tom and I decided very specifically, I remember the phone call, we have to set the bar so high on this project. Because you know, in production that the bar is going to fall. It's never going to be as perfect as you want it to be. But if we've made it an impossibly high, if it fell, it would still be okay.
So when I was doing the Bible and doing the research for this thing, I decided, what the hell? I mean, let's, let's just go full bore. Paratroopers, as a whole, can't stand exaggeration. If somebody says there was three feet of snow at Bastogne, they'll say, "No there wasn't. It was like eighteen inches." They can't stand that stuff. And I decided to take it to an extreme and make sure that if there was any detail that it was, it was accurate. I, I—All I had to do was call Winters up and say, "What, what did Nixon like to eat? Like, when, you know, back at the CP?"
"Oh. Bacon sandwiches."
Ron Livingston as Lewis Nixon And a bacon sandwich. What, and you want something? Bacon sandwich!
Erik Jendresen Perfect. [Claps] It's going to be bacon sandwiches. It was all very, very specific... Which brings me to a thing that I used to do with Winters. I would often ask him, "What's the one thing that stands out when you think of Liebgott—when you think of Moose—when—what's the one thing that immediately pops into your mind about them?"
And I asked him about Zielinski. Because he said Zielinski was kind of a dopey guy—not dopey "stupid." He was kind of a dopey looking guy.
Connor Ratliff Right.
Erik Jendresen Goofy looking, I guess. But he said the one thing that stood out were his eyes.
[Fluttering, sharp flute piece starts]
His eyes were so alive and young and full of promise and innocent, and they just... it's like they sparkled.
Connor Ratliff Oh my god...
Erik Jendresen And I said, "Really?" And I said, so—I mean, I got to ask you, what would you think if I told you that... on that fateful day, I got a call from Tom in London saying, "What was it that you told me about Zielinski?"
And I said, "Well, it's his eyes."
"Oh, right, right, right. I remember that. Okay. Thanks."
Connor Ratliff Wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. This is interesting.
Erik Jendresen Kind of puts a whole new spin on it. Doesn't it?
Connor Ratliff This is such a relief to me to know that this was part of the conversation.
[Music shifts to dark, plodding percussion]
Erik Jendresen Well... but the problem is it wasn't. I just, I just wanted to suggest that as a possibility. It never happened.
Connor Ratliff [Deep sigh]
Erik Jendresen But, um,
Connor Ratliff Erik...
Erik Jendresen I thought, I thought it would be kind of interesting to just sort of explore the possibility—
Connor Ratliff Erik, you—
Erik Jendresen —that the one thing about Zielinski were his eyes.
Connor Ratliff Erik, I can't believe you, you punk'd me on my own podcast. This is devastating to me Erik!
Erik Jendresen I'm sorry, buddy. I'm sorry, pal.
Connor Ratliff All right, so if you're still reeling from that, I get it. And I'm sorry. But honestly, I felt like it was important for you, the listener, to experience it the same way I did. And if you're feeling anywhere close to how I felt, you're probably now asking, "Okay, wait. So what is the real truth here?" Which is totally valid.
It took many, many minutes of backtracking, and I don't know if it was just me being naive or if Erik was just really good at apologizing, but we set the record straight. The only things he made up were Zielinski's bright eyes and the phone call from Hanks, everything else, the extensive research with Winters, Nixon's bacon sandwiches, even Zielinski being a real goofy guy, all of that was true. Erik's goal wasn't to cause chaos, it was to illustrate something.
[Music fades]
Erik Jendresen If that were true, it would sort of puncture the whole podcast.
Connor Ratliff It—[sighs]
Erik Jendresen You know, it would just, it would sort of be the end of it all. And I don't want the podcast to end. I think you have too much too much left to explore.
Connor Ratliff Erik—
Erik Jendresen But it would be a delightful thing if it were true.
Connor Ratliff This is... honestly, if any other guest than you had done that to me, I'd be furious.
Erik Jendresen Laughs
[Pulsating saxophone piece starts]
Connor Ratliff I believed the lie because I wanted to. But nothing in my search so far has indicated that the answer is going to be something as simple as Tom Hanks calling to clarify the physical traits of a character with two lines.
Connor Ratliff Oh! Because I really thought this—you were handing me the Rosetta stone. I thought you were...
Erik Jendresen I know.
Connor Ratliff ...giving me the key to this.
Erik Jendresen I know. I couldn't resist though. But I do remember specifically that Tom did love the character of Zielinski.
Connor Ratliff You know by now, this is all an effort to understand why Tom Hanks felt I wasn't right to play Zielinski. And part of answering that question is considering whether there's always been some fundamental aspect of the character that I wasn't quite right for: the way he talked, moved. I mean, if Erik actually knew that his eyes were brighter than mine, I'd take it.
And Erik's knowledge of the major players in Band of Brothers is expansive, but a character like Zielinski, who went mainly unnoticed on the show, wasn't someone that he had a ton of info on. His research was limited to how Winters described him, not who he really was as a person.
Erik Jendresen But it would be easy enough to find out. I could do, I could do some work on that, if you like.
Connor Ratliff I—that would be, that would be so great. Because I would love to know.
Erik Jendresen I think we should find out.
Connor Ratliff I would love to. Anything that you could find out would be amazing to me.
Connor Ratliff A few weeks later, Erik called me back.
[Music fades]
Erik Jendresen Hi, Connor.
Connor Ratliff Hi, Erik.
Erik Jendresen Uh, I dug into my notes and didn't find an awful lot, but some further research proved very fruitful.
I contacted a friend of mine, who's a... sort of a historian of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne, of which Easy Company, uh, was, a, a company—in the 2nd Battalion—and he was able to find some data.
He served in the 2nd Battalion, Headquarters Company, uh, in a light machine gun platoon. He made the Normandy and the Holland jumps. He was awarded his... [voice fades]
Connor Ratliff There weren't too many details, just a list of facts, derived from service records and an obituary: date of birth, his army serial number, rank, a list of awards, and his date of death in 1992. According to Erik, he spent his post-war life around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he started a family, had children and grandchildren.
It gave me a better picture of who Zielinski was on paper, but not a whole lot as to who he was as a person. I think I'd hope Erik would come back with more: specific anecdotes from Major Winters about his goofy orderly; physical description; anything more personal than public records.
But the truth was that Band of Brothers didn't need extensive research on Zielinski. His existence and a vague recollection of who he was was really all that was needed.
Erik Jendresen But there's also a lot of clues here in the internet age of, all the names of his, of his children, and it would be certainly possible, I'm sure, to pretty quickly run down somebody probably still in Pittsburgh, somewhere in Pennsylvania, who was directly related to him.
[Groovy clarinet and percussion piece starts]
Connor Ratliff Okay. Some legwork. That's not too much to ask of a podcast. I mean, we've spent over a year at this point, chasing high profile actors, casting directors, agents, Tom Hanks. Tracking down civilians to talk about their parents or grandparents shouldn't be hard, should it? In the internet, age?
But after a couple of months of trying, it became apparent—slowly apparent—that it would be that hard. Luckily, I do have producers to help me with this kind of thing. And one of them, Mike Comite, jumped into this pursuit sort of obsessively.
Connor Ratliff Hi, Mike.
Mike Comite Hi.
Connor Ratliff Now, I know how everything in this pans out in the end, but I'm a little fuzzy on everything that happened on the way there. So, I guess let's just start with what happened when you started looking at everything that Erik gave us.
Mike Comite Well, like Erik suggested the obituary was enough for us to track down the descendants of John Zielinski pretty much right where he said they'd be. Our co-producer Harry Nelson, who you know, he dug up phone numbers, and some of them were disconnected. Some of them just didn't lead anywhere at all. Like, we tried Facebook messages, they all went unread or ignored for a very long time. And the final thing we were going to try was calling the grandson of Zielinski at his job. And like, just as we are about, we were like, "Alright, tomorrow, we're doing this," I actually got a Facebook message from him. He actually responded.
Connor Ratliff Right. And this is the point where things started to shift a little, right?
Mike Comite Yeah. I, I had asked in my original message to him, if he was the grandson of a World War II veteran named John Zielinski. He confirmed in his response that he was, and I gave him some of the details that Erik provided, and the next day he got back to me, and he was just kinda like—
[Groovy, mysterious clarinet piece starts]
"This is very nice, but like, I think you probably have the wrong Zielinski, because my grandfather was actually stationed in Burma building and maintaining airstrips during World War II.”
Connor Ratliff That's Burma, India.
Mike Comite That's like, the Pacific part of World War II.
Connor Ratliff [laughs]
Mike Comite Very far removed from what took place in Band of Brothers.
Connor Ratliff The grandson of the Burma Zielinski confirmed that most of the details Erik had provided us were accurate: date of birth, date of death, even his service number, a unique identifier given to each soldier when they enlist. That matched too. Everything lined up, except for any record of this, Zielinski serving in Europe at any point during the war. He even sent photos: a headshot of John Zielinski and one of a war plane with the words "Burma Buzzards" written on the side of it.
Connor Ratliff So while you were, uh, finding all this out and relaying it to me, I was relaying it back to Erik.
Mike Comite Yes. [Laughing] And then you sent me one of the most anxiety-inducing texts that I've ever received.
Connor Ratliff Yeah. I have the text here. This is on Thursday, November 19th, 2020. "Erik wants you to give him a call." Uh, period. [Laughs]
Mike Comite You put a period, it's going to change the tone of your text. Like, seriously?
Connor Ratliff You texted back to me in all caps, "AH! WHY? AM IN TROUBLE?"
And I said, "No, you are the historian, now." That's a Captain Phillips joke.
Mike Comite I definitely did not understand that joke. [Laughs]
Connor Ratliff Yeah. [Laughs] And then I clarified that he, all he had said was, "Ask Mike to call me, please." So then you called him.
Mike Comite I did. Fearfully.
Connor Ratliff And what did he say?
Mike Comite He was sort of shocked.
Erik Jendresen So he was in the Pacific Theater. But he didn't say that the serial number matched, did he?
Mike Comite He did. He said serial number is correct.
Erik Jendresen Wow.
Mike Comite Yeah.
Erik Jendresen Okay. So hold on a second... [Audio fades]
Mike Comite But then it sort of turned into trying to conform the new information that I'd presented him into the narrative that we've already been weaving.
Erik Jendresen That means that Zielinski went on after the war to serve in the Pacific... which is bizarre. I mean, this guy's turning into... G.I. Joe. How hardcore is this guy? No, no. We got to get to the bottom of this... [fades]
Connor Ratliff Is it likely that someone would have finished fighting in Europe and then continued to go on and keep fighting the war in the Pacific?
Mike Comite I mean, I'm no historian. There might've been someone who did that? I just can't imagine that somebody would finish—
Connor Ratliff They would want to go home. They would want to go home when they're—yeah.
Mike Comite But even beyond that, there's the picture.
Connor Ratliff Okay. Yes. The photograph. This was very exciting when we got this.
Mike Comite Yeah. So with all the information that Erik sent us came this photo. It's a really, really famous picture of a bunch of the real life Band of Brothers at the Berghof, which was Hitler's home in Germany that the Allies took in 1945.
Erik Jendresen It's often said that that's a picture of Easy Company in Berchtesgaden. It's not, it's a picture of a 2nd Battalion Headquarters Company. There happened to be some old members of Easy Company in it.
Connor Ratliff The reason that Erik sent us this photo is not just because it's a very cool photo, but because it is relevant to our podcast.
Mike Comite Right. Yeah. He identified the 12 men in the photo, and those identifications actually were given to him by Major Dick Winters himself during that research period that he talked about earlier. Like, it's actually handwritten onto a copy of that photo that he gave to Erik.
Erik Jendresen That is, in fact, Zielinski, for sure and certain, in that picture, that guy that we identified.
Mike Comite Yeah, he looks like he's on the smaller side, dark hair. His uniform is like, a little too big for him. He actually kind of reminds me of Adam Sims in Band of Brothers.
Connor Ratliff That's the actor who got the part of Zielinski after I was fired.
Mike Comite Yeah, I...I didn't want to bring that part up.
Connor Ratliff Eh, that's fine. Uh, so in your opinion, does, uh, the guy in the photograph, standing on the left, does he look like the Burma Zielinski?
Mike Comite I don't think so. I mean, it doesn't really look like him. They have different shaped faces, and different haircuts as, as well as you can tell. Because like, the, the Burma Zielinski is like, a portrait, a full-on like, smiling portrait, very close up like, headshot type thing.
Connor Ratliff Mhm.
Mike Comite And the photo of Zielinski at the the Berghof is really just like, it's a far away picture.
Connor Ratliff Yeah.
Mike Comite But even like, beyond the physical appearance of these guys, like, the grandson of the Burma Zielinski, he has records of all of his grandfather's commendations, including the Asiatic Pacific Theater Ribbon, the World War II Victory Medal but there's no mention of any European events or anything like that in there.
Connor Ratliff Yeah, it strikes me as... That would be a deeply unusual secret to keep from your family.
Mike Comite Yeah. It's like, taking Hitler's home for the Allied forces seems like something you'd want people to know about, or like, it's, it's high bragging rights, you know?
Connor Ratliff Yeah, you would, you would lead with that. You wouldn't lead with, "I built airstrips in Burma."
Mike Comite Right, exactly. [Laughs]
Connor Ratliff Right. So, where does that leave us at this point? Are we back to square one?
Mike Comite I spent a lot of time on the phone with Erik, going over the possibilities. And at one point he actually revealed something that kind of complicated things.
Erik Jendresen In 506th 2nd Battalion Headquarters Company—
[Peculiar clarinet piece]
—there's also—his name is Sigmund... Zaleski. [Laughs]
Connor Ratliff A Zielinski and a Zaleski. In the same unit. If we were going to explore every possibility for who Zielinski in Band of Brothers was supposed to represent, we had to ask if it was possible that maybe Dick Winters had gotten his men confused.
Erik Jendresen Winters was such an exquisite stickler to detail, you know, and the idea that he could have confused Zielinski with Zaleski is really unlikely. [Laughs]
Connor Ratliff Not only had Winters written the names of Zielinski on Erik's photo of the Americans at the Berghof, they'd had more than one conversation about his orderly. If there was a mistake made when writing Band of Brothers, it wasn't corrected before Winters's passing in 2011.
So in the midst of searching for the real Zielinski, we started a search for the real Zaleski, just to be sure that this wasn't some kind of a mix-up.
Mike confirmed Erik's info by reaching out to the 101st Airborne Division Association, which confirmed that Sigmund F. Zaleski had served in Dick Winters's unit, and also provided his service number, which we used to locate Zaleski's military registration card.
Mike Comite And then from that, you get a whole bunch of information, his home address, his birthday, his height, his weight, basically like, everything that was able to help us trace him to South Bend, Indiana. And for us, what made us say, "Okay, this is our guy," was one specific article from a South Bend newspaper, The South Bend Tribune on April 23rd, 1953. And it specifically mentions a Sigmund F. Zaleski, who was a World War II veteran, wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. And it has his commendations listed there.
Connor Ratliff Battle of the Bulge, a big World War II battle that involved the Band of Brothers.
Mike Comite That's right. Yeah. So that kind of pins him.
Connor Ratliff So this was a commemorative article on Zaleski about his service.
[Eerie plucked string piece starts]
Mike Comite I, honestly, I wish it was. Um, it was, it was an article on his sentencing when he pled guilty to second degree burglary.
Connor Ratliff The judge in the article, the one who sentenced Zaleski was quoted saying, "You have a pugnacious attitude and your splendid war record may be due to that. But in civilian life, you must control yourself."
Based on the other news articles we found on this specific Sigmund F. Zaleski, he had a hard time doing so. He was arrested a few times for a string of burglaries, one at a Disabled American Veterans Hall, and, on three separate occasions, crashed tractor trailers he was driving for work, in one instance destroying a family home and injuring its residents. Zaleski clearly had hardships coming back from war, that much is clear. But could he have been Winters's orderly?
With the so-called Zielinski identified in the famous Berghof photo, one way to tell would be through photographic evidence.
Connor Ratliff Did you find a picture of him?
Mike Comite There were a couple in the papers, but they were kind of like the quality you'd expect to find in a newspaper scan from the 1950s.
Connor Ratliff Could you tell from any of them, did he look like the person that Erik identified as Zielinski in the photo?
Mike Comite A little bit? Um, the hair and the face sorta looks similar, but there's not enough detail in the photos to really say. The biggest tell is Zaleski's registration card, which lists him is five-foot-eleven when he enlisted. But the second man from the left, who is said to be Zielinski, he looks a lot shorter than five foot eleven.
Connor Ratliff So we think that's not Zaleski in the photo.
Mike Comite It's not looking like it, no.
Connor Ratliff So is it Zielinski in the photo?
Mike Comite And this is actually where things started getting strange for me.
Connor Ratliff This is—[laughs] so nothing up to this point counts as strange.
Mike Comite I—some of it, I guess, but this is where it got stranger.
Connor Ratliff Okay. I actually think I know this next part, because at this point, I started getting a flurry of text messages from you, starting with an image of an eagle, a golden eagle, and two big red dice connected by like, an arch. You sent me this picture and said, "Does that symbol mean anything to you?"
And I texted back, "No, what is it?"
And you replied, "I'm down the rabbit hole." So... what was happening at that point?
[Pulsing flute and saxophone piece startsw]
Mike Comite I promise you I'll get to it, but first we have to take a break. I've never, I've never had to do this before.
Connor Ratliff The throw to break?
Mike Comite Yeah. It's it's weird. Cause we're still on the Zoom call and...
Connor Ratliff Well, you just sit here and don't say anything and I will do the ads. Is that ok?
Mike Comite That, that, that would make me feel more comfortable, I think.
Connor Ratliff Should we look into each other's eyes while I do these ads, is that weird?
Mike Comite That would make me more uncomfortable, actually.
Connor Ratliff Dead Eyes will be right back after these messages.
[Music fades]
Connor Ratliff Okay, so I'm still here with Mike Comite, one producer of this podcast. Uh, just to recap, Erik's Burma Zielinski—not the Band of Brothers Zielinski. Sigmund F. Zaleski, uh, was sort of rough around the edges post-war, possibly mistaken for Zielinski, but not likely, because he doesn't appear to be the person ID'd by Major Winters.
Mike Comite That is what we have so far. Yeah.
[Rattling, newslike string and marimba piece starts]
Connor Ratliff And then you sent me all those text messages while presumably something was developing.
Mike Comite I'm really sorry about sending all those.
Connor Ratliff So when Mike reached out to the 101st Airborne Division Association about Zaleski, he also got confirmation that a John S. Zielinski was part of the same unit depicted in Band of Brothers. And he received an obituary from 1980, which listed no living relatives. Mike did find an archived website for the 506th Infantry, which hadn't been updated in almost a decade.
Mike Comite So, John Zielinski appears on a bunch of other pages from this site listing deceased members of the 506th, and on a page listing the email addresses of members of the 506th.
Connor Ratliff John Zielinski had an email address, even though he died in 1980...
Mike Comite So this website has email addresses for veterans, uh, but also for next of kin.
Connor Ratliff So a family member was listed for Zielinski.
Mike Comite Yeah. A person by the name of Mark Sauer, who is listed as the nephew of John Zielinski.
Connor Ratliff And you emailed him.
Mike Comite Immediately, but it looked like a company email address. Knowing how people come and go from jobs and like sometimes lose access to work emails, my hopes were not high. I email the person and I ask him if he's the nephew of a veteran named John Zielinski, and I figure it'll probably be like, a few days before I hear anything back, so then—
Connor Ratliff Okay, so, wait. This is where your texts to me pick back up. Uh, you texted me, "I'm now cold messaging, every reasonably aged person on Facebook with the same name as the nephew."
Mike Comite I did spend an hour cold messaging all those Mark Sauers on Facebook.
Connor Ratliff [Laughing] And were any of them, the right guy?
Mike Comite Like, even, even up until today, like, only two or three have responded. And they had no idea what I was talking about. So just 30 or 40 people just being bombarded.
Connor Ratliff Mhm.
Mike Comite I went back to my email after doing all that and saw that Mark Sauer had written me back.
Connor Ratliff Yeah. Well what did he say?
Mike Comite It was really just a short, simple reply. He said, "Sergeant John Zielinski was my Uncle Johnny, yes. Died March 14th, 1980 in Chicago, Illinois."
Connor Ratliff And what did you say back?
Mike Comite So I send him the photo Erik sent us.
Connor Ratliff The 12 soldiers at the Berghof with Zielinski.
Mike Comite Right. And [laughs] this is where I messed up. I specifically asked him if he could identify his Uncle as the second man from the left, standing.
Connor Ratliff Okay. [Laughing] So, so this is like, this is like, if it was a police lineup, you know, you pointing and saying, "That's the guy," before you bring in the person like—
Mike Comite "Can you please point to the criminal second from the left." Yes.
Connor Ratliff Right. So, this is not, not really like, if we're trying to get an unbiased response, uh, you've now told him which person that you're looking to identify.
Mike Comite Yeah, I'm not good at this.
Connor Ratliff So, so if it turns out that this guy is not who he says he is, he is now—just immediately knows which person to ID. So, does, does he identify Zielinski?
Mike Comite He does not.
[Clarinet piece starts]
His, his email reply says, "Crouching in profile on the extreme left, with a cigarette in his hand. Hair slicked back, just as I remember him."
Connor Ratliff Okay. And that is not the person who Winters labeled as Zielinski in Erik's photo.
Mike Comite It's not. He like, he completely disregarded my leading question—extremely leading question.
Connor Ratliff Right.
Mike Comite And he just points this other guy.
Connor Ratliff So this is strange.
Mike Comite Yeah. Yeah.
Connor Ratliff So there is, there's this crouching guy in the photo. So then what?
[Music fades]
Mike Comite Besides you, the only real person I have to talk about this with is Erik. So I call him and his immediate thought is—
Erik Jendresen "I think this guy is fucking with you."
Mike Comite —which I have to admit that I was also starting to think.
Connor Ratliff Yeah, you actually, you texted me that as well, where you were like, "I think this guy might be fucking with me."
Mike Comite Yeah. I, I just, I'm—I have to be skeptical on this stuff a lot, even though I want to believe. Like, Erik starts to point out all the reasons why the Crouching Guy cannot possibly be Zielinski—
[Groovy, mysterious marimba and clarinet piece starts]
—and the biggest and most definitive reason is that Crouching Guy has already been positively ID'd as this guy, John Van Kooijk, who was not an American soldier.
Connor Ratliff John Van Kooijk was a member of the Dutch resistance, a movement in Holland opposed to the Nazi regime during World War II. He fought alongside the Band of Brothers and is actually a character with lines in episode four of the miniseries.
Ron Livingston as Lewis Nixon Mr. Van Kooijk here is with the Dutch resistance.
Hugo Metsers as John Van Kooijk We've been waiting and hoping for this day. Anything we can do to help you, we will do. Anything.
Damian Lewis as Dick Winters We'd be happy to have your help.
Connor Ratliff In Erik's copy of the Berghof photo, Dick Winters ID'd Van Kooijk as the Crouching Guy. And on top of that, Erik also mentioned that Van Kooijk's daughter herself had done the same. The very few other wartime photos we can dig up of him, do bear a resemblance to the Crouching Guy. But there is one detail that suggests it's Van Koojk.
Erik Jendresen The number one thing is look at his pants. They're not, they're not bloused. He doesn't have his trousers bloused into his jump boots. He's not even wearing jump boots.
Connor Ratliff Okay. This is something that I was not at all familiar with. "Blousing trousers." Can you explain what this is, or what it means?
Mike Comite I, similarly, am unfamiliar with this concept. Um, but Erik explained it to me. Uh, the, the basics of it is that paratroopers would tuck their jump trousers into their really tall jump boots.
Erik Jendresen The paratroopers were the only unit in World War II who were allowed to blouse their trousers. It was against regulations for anybody else to do it. Of course, the reason they did it is because there was jumping out of planes. Right? So your trousers didn't—the wind didn't go up your pants.
It was taken so seriously, there were multiple incidents of, uh, enlisted men getting into fights with officers of other units. Some, like, corporal punched out a captain of another unit while on leave in Paris because all the other units wanted to blouse their trousers, too. And whenever a paratrooper found somebody from a unit that wasn't a paratrooper unit with their trousers bloused, they kicked the shit out of him. I mean, it was serious. [Laughs]
Connor Ratliff Okay. So, crouching Guy is not Zielinski.
Mike Comite This is another instance where it is unclear. And that's because there are other ID'd Americans in the photo who do not have bloused trousers, like, notably, Captain Lloyd J. Cox. He's second from the right in the photo.
Connor Ratliff So the trousers are not—the trousers, we can't count on them as a definitive yes or no. There are exceptions.
Mike Comite It looks like there's just 12 guys all in different states of relaxation. There are bottles of wine on the table, they're smoking. I just, I don't think it's a sure sign.
So Erik tells me some questions to ask. Then I go and push back a little bit on the nephew, in a nice way, uh, about like, the trousers and John Van Kooijk being previously ID'd as the guy crouching. And the response I get back from him is like, a little bit more firm. Like, he, I think he senses I'm pushing back a little bit.
[Creeping plucked string piece]
And he goes, 'I knew him personally, and can absolutely confirm my uncle John Zielinski is the crouching man." Uh, he provides a couple more details about his uncle, but what really grabs my attention was the photo he attached, which is just a photo of a gun.
Connor Ratliff And to be clear, this was not, he was not threatening you. This was not like him sending you an intimidating message.
Mike Comite No, it's not that, um, it's, it's a photo of a gun in a display briefcase with like, nice red velvet inside, and a little card insert that says "In loving memory of John S. Zielinski, plus like, a bunch of other text that I can't really read because of the resolution of the picture.
Connor Ratliff Mm.
Mike Comite And I'm, I'm still in a little bit of disbelief at that point. So I spend the evening with the picture. I run it through some photo forensic software, reverse image search, and it comes up clean. It is most definitely a unique photograph.
Connor Ratliff But that doesn't necessarily mean that the gun is real, though. I mean, anyone could print out that card and take a picture of it.
Mike Comite Right. That's a possibility that I process and I go to bed with that thought, thinking I'm going to wake up the next morning and get back to work on talking to the nephew. But when I get up the next morning, I already have a bunch of emails from him. With a bunch of documents, including John S. Zielinski's honorable discharge papers, his commendations are listed in it that confirm a Purple Heart and a European Theater Ribbon. And a customs declaration form for one pistol. That customs declaration form is authorized and signed for by commanding officer, and it's dated November 1945.
Connor Ratliff Okay. That all seems real.
Mike Comite Yeah.
Connor Ratliff That would be, that would be a lot of effort to go to to prank a podcast that they had never heard of a few minutes earlier.
Mike Comite Along with those forms, Mark sent me a dozen or so pictures of John Zielinski himself.
[Soft, sweet, pulsing string and piano piece starts]
And... it's the first time me or you or any of us is looking into the eyes of this person, John Zielinski.
Connor Ratliff And what does he look like?
Mike Comite He's got a stocky build and kind of a large head. Hair slicked back in like, every photo that was sent to me, which matches the crouching man in the Berghof photos. And in every picture, he's looking straight at the camera with the same smirk or grin. And, I'm going to say this right now, and I promise you that I'm not just saying this, you know, just because it's a funny podcast or whatever, it is something that I truly do believe. Uh, in the younger photos of Zielinski, he sort of resembles you. Just a little bit, like—
Connor Ratliff [Laughs]
Mike Comite And that's where you come back in. That's that's, that's everything.
Connor Ratliff Wow. Uh, thank you, Mike, for all of this.
Mike Comite Truly my pleasure. Also, my burden as your producer.
Connor Ratliff At this point, it felt like we had to have found the right guy.
[Drum marching piece starts]
This Zielinski was directly linked to the Band of Brothers unit, and his family had the paperwork to back it up. The one thing still missing was the connection to Major Winters.
Mike Kukulski I was—it's very surprising to find somebody showing an interest in, in John. I mean, you know, he's just, he's listed one other guy of many that served over there and did a lot of did a lot of things, but, uh, yeah. Interesting.
Connor Ratliff Mike Kukulski is one of the nephews of John S. Zielinski. He and his brother Ed spent time around him in their childhood growing up around Chicago.
Ed Kukulski And it's recording. Okay. Alrighty. Good.
Connor Ratliff Uh, hi, Ed. So, uh, basically we talked to your cousin Mark...
Connor Ratliff Our first point of contact, Mark Sauer, was another Zielinski nephew, and the first person to positively identify him in the Berghof photo.
Mark Sauer Absolutely, unequivocally, that's the gentleman on the extreme left, crouching in profile with a cigarette in his hand. That's John Stanley Zielinski, my uncle.
[Drum piece concludes]
Connor Ratliff The Crouching Guy. Previously identified as the Dutch national Van Kooijk.
Connor Ratliff And you knew him personally? You, you had a relationship with him?
Mark Sauer Yes, I did.
[Slow piano, clarinet and string piece starts]
He lived in Chicago, Illinois. We visited, uh, usually every Christmas. So, growing up in the '60s as a young teen, uh, I did know him very well.
This photograph on—at Berchtesgaden. He's 20-years-old. I knew him 20 years after that, and he looked the same except for a little bit of gray.
Ed Kukulski Yeah. The physique and profile of the guy standing doesn't match John, at all, the way I remember him.
Mike Kukulski He's the crouching guy. I have no doubt in my mind, that's him crouching. And the hair is similar to things I would have seen him do his hair like that, slicked back like that...
Ed Kukulski ...Like with Brylcreem or something. And that's how I remember him. He always had this little crooked shit-eating grin on his face and had a cigarette in his right hand.
Mike Kukulski Lucky Strikes was what they issued in the C-rations back in the day. And he was Lucky Strikes guy until he, until he started having heart trouble from smoking. [Laughse]
Ed Kukulski He always seem happy and smiling and all that, um, and he also seemed like he was generally, he cared about people.
[Music fades]
Connor Ratliff What do you remember about his sense of humor?
Ed Kukulski I can't remember things specifically, other than that, no, he seemed to always be laughing or being in a jovial mood.
Mark Sauer And he was sort of like a comedian. I mean, I can't remember specific jokes or anything, but he was always lighthearted and very extroverted.
Connor Ratliff Do you remember what your, what your uncle's eyes were like?
Mark Sauer He was blue-eyed, and always kind of animated.
[Upbeat and cool swing piece starts]
Mike Kukulski I wouldn't say they were dead eyes. I would say, "bright eyes," actually. So there you go!
Connor Ratliff [Laughs]
Mike Kukulski Tom Hanks had it, had it on you!
Mark Sauer This was a repetitive joke, whenever you asked him, you know, "How many combat jumps did you make?"
He said, "I jumped one time and that was in training. All the other times I got thrown out by the Jump Sergeant."
The reason he became a paratrooper was, as he was sitting there with the recruiter, somebody walked by in a very fancy uniform, different from all the others. He, you know, a fancy-colored kerchief, you know, different colored piping.
Mike Kukulski He liked the way they look. He liked their uniform. [Laughs] Yeah.
Mark Sauer The recruiter said, "That's a paratrooper."
And John had no idea what that was, but he said, "I want to be one of those, that uniform looks awesome!"
[Music fades]
Connor Ratliff What did he do for a living when he came back from the war?
Mark Sauer Kind of weird, a little morbid, I guess.
Ed Kukulski He grew up in a funeral home, and, uh, they owned a funeral home in Chicago. Zielinski Funeral Home. He stayed in that field, let's say, because he was delivering caskets. [Laughs]
Mark Sauer He would drive an 18-wheeler and deliver coffins to funeral homes all over the United States, he was a traveling truck driver, and that was the only thing he dealt with was caskets. And he did that for like, 30 years, until he retired. That was his only job after he got out. Kind of odd.
Connor Ratliff Did, uh, did he and Bernice have any children?
Mark Sauer No, they never did. I don't know what the reason behind, I mean, I think they wanted them. Maybe physically it wasn't possible, or something, or it just didn't work out that, that wasn't that uncommon back in those days, that—there were issues that they couldn't deal with, but no, they never had any children.
Ed Kukulski They always hosted a lot of parties at their house with a lot of their friends, as well. They were outgoing, went places, did things, you know, and had parties.
Mike Kukulski He could drink. I think all those guys used to drink. I used to see that in our family, all these guys were all veterans. You know, they didn't talk about PTSD in those days. They all used alcohol as a way to deal with all that. And it was the way they all did it together.
He was a happy kind of drinker though. So, you know, he wasn't like a belligerent guy when he, when he had too much.
All my uncles, I had uncles in Iwo Jima, and on boats and air—army Air Corps and all that. And, uh, none of them, none of them talked about what they really experienced. I think they didn't want kids to hear it. They didn't want the wives and the women to hear it.
Mark Sauer I didn't know him super well, and I really, really, really regret not asking a lot more searching questions about his wartime experience when I had the opportunity, but I was a kid and I didn't know any better. It's a shame.
Ed Kukulski You had to coax them to start talking about it. Unfortunately, I think by the time we figured all that out, uh, John had passed away.
Connor Ratliff John Zielinski died in 1980, over a decade before Stephen E. Ambrose's Band of Brothers was published, and 20 years before the HBO series depicted him and his fellow soldiers on television.
Mike Kukulski If he had lasted another year or two, when I got out of the academy, I think he'd have been very interested in talking to me about something that I would now understand and relate to.
Ed Kukulski I do recall at his funeral, there was a great outpouring of other service members.
Connor Ratliff The nephews had varying degrees of familiarity with the mini-series.
Mike Kukulski Do they mention them by name as Zielinski?
Connor Ratliff They specifically say Private Zielinski.
Mike Kukulski Hmm. Wow. I don't, you know, I, I have to go look at that episode, because I don't recall that.
Ed Kukulski I've heard, you know, there. There's the one scene where they call out John's name, Private Zielinski or something of that nature, they, they call for him. And he—this guy shows up, you know, and then, and they're in some sort of, um, room, you know, and I don't know what they're planning or talking got about.
[Guitar walts begins]
Connor Ratliff So far, nothing you've said is incorrect. That's the scene.
Connor Ratliff The nephews did get one war story about their Uncle Johnny. It told the origin of the German pistol that Mark had shown us earlier. The weapon, along with the story of how it fell into Privates Zielinski's hands had been passed down by his widow, Bernice. As related by Mark, the engraved firearm was liberated towards the end of the war. When the Allied forces took Hitler's compounds in Berchtesgaden, Germany.
Mark Sauer He was with a group of six or seven men from the 101st HQ company, and Colonel Winters and Captain Nixon were with them, and they were in charge, and there was like half a dozen of them and they were sweeping through the halls and the rooms and everything, just finding out what was there, kind of getting the lay of the land after they'd taken it.
And they came to one little room off of a hall, and in this room was a dead German general who had committed suicide. He'd laid on the bunk and shot himself in the head two days before as the place was about to fall. Johnny noticed that he'd killed himself with a Luger, and that is like, the sinequanon of war booty. Everybody wanted a Luger, and he'd never gotten one. So he wasn't gonna speak up then, because, obviously, the officers had right of, uh, you know, priority on that, but he just made a note of it.
And then they continued the sweep and everything. And as they left, you know, that part of the building, after a little time, he excused himself from the group, raced back to the room, and the Luger was gone. Somebody else had gotten there just before him, and he was bitterly disappointed.
And then just on the off chance, he started looking around the room and he looked under the bunk and back against the wall, pushed against the wall, underneath the bunk was a wooden presentation case inside of which was a beautifully engraved, uh, Belgian, uh, high-power, 9 millimeter pistol, exquisitely engraved. It was obviously a presentation piece.
And when he was coming back on the troop ship, after demobilization, he was showing off his pistol to some other, you know, troops on the ship, and a captain, unaffiliated with the 101st, saw the booty and basically said, "Well, I think I should confiscate that until we get to the bottom of this."
And he knew that if he gave it to the officer, he'd never see it again. So basically he took the pistol in the box and he held it over the railing of the ship, and he said, "I will drop it into the Atlantic Ocean before I'm going to let you steal it from me." And the officer got frustrated and walked away. So I came that close to not getting this souvenir for my uncle.
Connor Ratliff The one thing we'd been searching for was the John Zielinski that Dick Winters had reminisced about to Erik when the two were researching for the HBO series at his chicken farm in Hershey, Pennsylvania, because that's the guy who Erik put in his script.
[Music ends]
Connor Ratliff And the thing we're trying to confirm is whether or not your uncle would have ever been Winters's orderly, whether he ever would have been in that kind of position.
Mike Kukulski Hmm. I... I'd have no idea, at all. I know his, uh, records showed him as a light machine gunner. But that just might've been the last position he held. I don't, I don't really know.
Mark Sauer I know that he kind of worshiped Dick Winters and he just thought very, very highly of him. But whether they... he was actually his orderly? I actually don't know. I never, he never said anything like that. He never really talked about it except to say what a fine officer he was and what a great guy he was to work with.
Mike Kukulski We were pretty young, uh, probably 11, 12, 13-years-old, somewhere in there. I can't remember the exact date. That was on the way to the reunion in Philadelphia.
Ed Kukulski And on the way over there he kept talking about we're going to go to a chicken farm.
[Soft, building piano piece begins]
That's all he said. No, he didn't, he didn't call it anything else. Just, it was this chicken farm, a friend of his, you know, had this chicken farm.
Mike Kukulski For us, as city kids, uh, going to the farm, that's pretty much what our experience was. We were looking at the chicken pens. We went swimming in the pond and horseback riding and things like that.
Ed Kukulski We got a tour of the chicken coop, and the one memory I had was just how god-awful the smell was.
Mike Kukulski The wives went off and did wife stuff, and the kids went out and did kid stuff. And then, uh, John and Winters went back and probably reminisced about whatever they were talking about.
Ed Kukulski The one most vivid memory I have, though, was the, uh, being in his, uh, screen room of his house, uh, that afternoon. And there was a rain that came through, and I just remember my aunt and Uncle John, Dick Winters and his wife, were all sitting in there. And it was just... mundane chatter. If they did talk about the war or any of that stuff, it was not in front of my brother and I.
John definitely knew Dick, and Dick knew John. How deep that relationship was, I don't know. It—perhaps it was pretty good, if he let him into, uh, you know, his house there and let us, you know, have fun on the farm.
Connor Ratliff So at that point, as far as you knew, this was just his old friend who owned a chicken farm.
Ed Kukulski Right. That's all we knew. You know, just one acquaintance.
Mike Kukulski When I talked to them afterwards, I said, "Well, who is this guy?" You know, "Why'd we stop off here?"
And he says it was somebody that he had served in the war with. And, uh, that he was a big hero. And I think he was trying to keep it simple for kids. He said, "He was a big hero who killed a lot of Germans."
For us, at that age, that was all we needed to know. We were impressed by that. And, um, we kind of knew not to ask any more questions, I guess, about that kind of thing.
[Music ends]
Connor Ratliff Do you recall at what point you later on realized that Dick Winters was the chicken farm guy?
Ed Kukulski Yeah, when Band of Brothers came out.
Mike Kukulski Toward the end of the series, they were showing all the original people and interviewing them. And when Dick Winters came on, I immediately recognized him. I said, "I know who that is. I've—he's the guy that we saw in Pennsylvania."
I read Band of Brothers, as well. And, uh, he talks about on D-day when they did the, uh, attack on the gun emplacement, I think there were about 13 guys taken over about 50—or about 50 Germans was who they were opposed against. And he was surprised that I think it went as well as it did, and that they had as few people wounded, as few casualties as they did.
He said, "If I get through this, I'm going to go back to Pennsylvania and get a little farm in Pennsylvania. And that's where, that's what I'm going to do."
[Slow repeating acoustic guitar phrase starts]
So that's, that's—he says that in the book, in Band of Brothers and that's, I remember noticing that, "Hey, I recognize that guy. And that's exactly what he did." He went to Hershey, Pennsylvania, and got—he eventually got on a farm and that's what he, that's what he ended up doing.
Connor Ratliff One thing that was passed down among their uncle's affects was a faded computer print out of the Berghof photo. At the top of it, someone had written, "BOY-THOSE-WERE-THE-GOOD-OLD-DAYS."
Ed Kukulski And that, as far as I know, is his handwriting, as far as I know. And then on the back, he wrote down, uh, the names of 11 of the 12. He didn't list himself. And I think Colonel Winters's name got clipped off the top, but there's, there's like, 10 other names there, which I think—they're not—they're in rank order. They're not in order of the photograph. So I can't hitch them up, apparently, but he listed the, the, everybody that was in that photograph except himself.
Connor Ratliff So, what can we say about the crouching guy in the photo? The nephews all say it's their uncle, but they confirmed to us that he never pointed at it and said, "Hey, this is me."
There are 12 soldiers in the picture. And 11 names written on the back, which could mean the crouching guy is John, and he didn't write down his own name.
Or, it could be van Kooijk, whose name John could have left off because he didn't know the Dutch national by name or rank. That would also explain why the crouching guy was ID'd as van Kooijk by both his own daughter and Dick Winters.
Another wrinkle: in the 2006 book Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters you can see a copy of this photo with the crouching guy labeled as “Zielinski.” Van Kooijk is not mentioned at all here. Oh, and also: there’s a typo in the caption where they misspell his name with an “L” instead of a “Z”—Lielinski.
And as much as we'd like to definitively solve the mystery of the crouching guy, our goal was to find the John Zielinski who was depicted in Band of Brothers. And we did.
It was the goofy, bright-eyed, Private First Class who held his commanding officer in such high regard that he took his nephews to visit a chicken farm in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where the two veterans and their families sat on a screened-in porch while a storm passed, shooting the breeze about things that had nothing to do with the war in which they'd fought.
[Music ends]
Erik Jendresen That's pretty definitive, guys.
Connor Ratliff Yeah. And they all said the same thing, which was...[fades]
Connor Ratliff After everything, I took what I learned back to Erik to tell the truth, the real truth, of the character he put into his script 20 years ago. It was the nephews' recollection of the chicken farm that convinced Erik we'd found the right person.
Erik Jendresen That's really charming.
Connor Ratliff Yeah.
Erik Jendresen Oh, that, that creates such a picture for me because I spent so many hours at that chicken farm with Winters, and I can just imagine, I could just see Zielinski coming with, with, with these kids rambling around with the swans in the, in the pond and the, and the big chicken barn. It's, it's a fantastic image.
Connor Ratliff It's also beautiful to think about the mundane conversation, how hard earned that is.
Erik Jendresen What an expression of peace time it is to sit and talk about nothing.
[Rapid, building string ostinati begins]
They weren't rehashing glory days. They weren't going through talking about trauma. They weren't talking about loss... because this, this is what they earned: to be able to come home safely and to care for their families and to sit around and talk about nothing.
Connor Ratliff And it's also funny to me that much like the original casting, uh, experience of Zielinski, the hunt for the actual Zielinski has mirrored that, in that, there's—sometimes you get the wrong guy at first—
Erik Jendresen [Laughs]
Connor Ratliff —and then you gotta, you gotta, you gotta do a correction, you know?
Erik Jendresen "The wrong guy."
Connor Ratliff There is a good chance that if I hadn't been fired from Band of Brothers, if I had filmed that scene he wrote, I probably never would've had a conversation with Erik—about anything. We likely never would have crossed paths. And then we wouldn't have learned any of this.
Erik Jendresen So it's all about, you know, I think, what are the stories we choose to tell? What are the stories that are most illustrative of, of a larger picture of, of, of a larger experience? Because, you know, the stories will never end. There's, there's an infinite number of them.
The fact is, the last story about men and women at war, about soldiering, the last story of, of, of war will never, ever be told.
[Music fades]
And, you know, luckily we all got onto the story of these particular men, of which Zielinski was one.
Connor Ratliff Yeah. I—for a second there, I, I took two different meanings to that idea of the story of the last war will never be told. And there's the one version of it, which is because there will always be a next battle, and the other one was I thought you were just saying like, "No, the last war will kill everybody and there'll be no one left to tell the story.
[Playful piano piece starts]
Erik Jendresen No. That's, that's not at all what I meant.
Connor Ratliff Right. Right, no, that was what I thought at first, I thought, That's, that's grim.
Erik Jendresen You totally misinterpreted what I was saying. You went to such a dark place, and it's—
Connor Ratliff I went—I—it's my job. I've got to go to the dark places.
Erik Jendresen Seriously. Well, you know—comedian.
Connor Ratliff Yeah.
Erik Jendresen What do you want?
Connor Ratliff [Laughs]
Connor Ratliff When Erik pranked me, I bought it. Completely. Likewise, when we got info about the Burma Zielinski my first reaction was, "This is the guy. We got him." Even when that started to seem less and less logical, there was still the instinct to want to make it make sense; to believe the answers that seem definitive.
The more we dug into this, the answer that seemed the truest wasn't the first thing we found, or the craziest: that he might not have been as Zielinski at all it was the simplest that the John S. Zielinski who was a member of the 101st Airborne, brought home the German gun, delivered coffins and took his nephews to visit the chicken farm was the one we were searching for. That's the guy that Dick Winters remembered fondly, and prompted Erik to write him into the script, where he would ultimately be sent to go get coffee and a bacon sandwich.
Erik Jendresen Although, I gotta say, I'm seeing a connection between funeral home business, delivering coffins, and dead eyes. I think that there's—
Connor Ratliff And here's the thing. This is interesting, now—What would you—now, what would you think, what would you think if I told you that one of the things, because I was trying to get them to remember what, what he looked like, you know, when the—what their memory of what he looked like was, and... they actually said that he had kind of a cold, hard stare that he, they didn't, they said that—
Erik Jendresen [Laughs]
Connor Ratliff Uh, he was someone who had this sort of far away look in his eye, and often they said it was sort of like a dead eyed gaze. What do you think of that?
Erik Jendresen I, it's, it's a mic drop. I mean, come on.
[Soft, in-the-pocket rock piece starts]
Connor Ratliff Yeah. And, and Erik, the problem with, uh, with what I just told you though, is that it wasn't true. Uh, they said that he had bright eyes. I wanted to—
Erik Jendresen See what you just did? See what you just did?!
Connor Ratliff I wanted to suggest, as a possibility, you know? Uh, it's not true, but I thought it'd be kind of interesting just to see your reaction. Uh...[laughs]
Erik Jendresen Okay! All right. We're even.
Connor Ratliff We're even.
Erik Jendresen But now, I mean, but somebody's got to win this, so...you know...
Connor Ratliff You'll see in the pictures, he's a pretty bright eyed looking guy.
Erik Jendresen [Laughing] He's a bright-eyed fellow. Oh, look at him!
Connor Ratliff Yeah. He's a bright-eyed fellow.
Erik Jendresen He is a bright-eyed fellow. Yeah. And he, he ties a mean Windsor knot, too. Oh, here we go. Wow. John S. Zielinski, ladies and gentlemen, the bright eyed man. Just, just, as I told you. Look at him. This is wonderful.
Connor Ratliff I started this podcast, hoping that I would eventually get to talk to Tom Hanks, and that maybe he could help me fill in the blanks in a little part of my own life story. There were people, from the beginning, who told me that this was not possible, but I didn't want to believe them. I still don't. And I'm certainly going to keep trying to make it happen. But I'm more aware than ever that we are all inclined to believe what we want to believe.
For the time being, at the very least, there is some satisfaction in knowing the truth about the person I was cast as two decades ago; who he was in real life, as a real human being, who did heroic things and mattered to the people in his life. And, of course, the one lesson I should have already known before I got into any of this: You never get the right Private Zielinski on your first try.
Adam Sims John Stanley Zielinski was born on January 1st, 1925 in Chicago, Illinois, one of five children. He enlisted in the military on April 29th, 1943. The first time he ever rode on an airplane was also the first time he was instructed to jump out of said airplane. He was wounded in Holland on September 30th, 1944, and continued his service in Europe until the end of the war, and was honorably discharged on December 18th, 1945.
[Music fades to soft-strings, slowly crescendoing]
He married his wife, Bernice, on September 27th, 1957. The friendship John fostered with Major Dick Winters lasted long after the war ended. He died on March 14th, 1980 at the age of 55.
According to those that knew him, he had lively, bright eyes.
[Strings crescendo into Aimee Mann’s “Dear John”]
Connor Ratliff Dead Eyes is a production of Headgum Studios. It was created by me, Connor Ratliff. It's written by me, and it's mostly me that you hear talking, including now. The show is produced and edited by Harry Nelson and Mike Comite, with additional research assistance from Jacob Tender and consulting from Bari Finkel.
Special thanks to my guests, Erik Jendresen, Mark Sauer, Mike and Ed Kukulski, and Adam Sims. Also, thanks to Aimee Mann for letting us use this song that's playing in the background. It's called "Dear John." It can be found on her 2005 album The Forgotten Arm.
If you like Dead Eyes, please do all the things that podcasts tell you to do. Subscribe, rate, review, follow us on Twitter @deadeyespodcast, and talk about us nicely on social media. If you want to reach out the email is deadeyespodcast@gmail.com
Please tell your friends about this show. Especially if you are friends with Tom Hanks, whose first World War II movie was not 1998's Saving Private Ryan, but 1986's Every Time We Say Goodbye. It's a romance, a serious drama about an American pilot enlisted in the British Royal Air Force, who is recovering from an injury in Jerusalem against the backdrop of the second world war.
And I have to admit, I have never seen it. But I used to stare at the cover of the VHS box at my local Movies To Go video rental store when I was a kid. At that point, I only knew Tom Hanks from comedies like Dragnet and Splash and The Money Pit. For a variety of reasons, I was never in the right mood to rent Every Time We Say Goodbye. Maybe I will be soon. But for now, I will say goodbye to you until next season. Thanks for listening. Stay safe. Get vaccinated as soon as you can. Wear a mask.
[“Dear John” ends]