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Legacies: D-Day defined the life of ‘Winnie’ Rosewag
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An occasional series about southern New Jersey residents who recently died, leaving lasting marks on their community, their neighborhood, their friends or families.
CAPE MAY - Since Wingrove "Winnie" Rosewag avoided death so many times before his 21st birthday, it was remarkable he died in a hospital bed, an old man who lived a full life.
But that he did so on June 6 - the 65th anniversary of the D-Day battle that defined much of his life - seems fitting to those who knew him.
Rosewag was a young, skinny kid in a uniform participating in some of the most epic moments of World War II: spotting explosive trip wires at the invasion of Normandy; being wounded at the Battle of the Bulge; following Gen. George S. Patton.
"I've always called him the luckiest guy I ever knew," said Bob Heinly, a retired professor and museum education coordinator for the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts.
His stories were those of a common soldier, said his daughter, Eileen Iaconangelo, of Lower Township.
"He did not like officers. He did not like Patton," she said.
Years ago, he did not speak about the war much, but he opened up as he got older, his son John Rosewag said.
After he moved to Cape May County 20 years ago, he began sharing his stories with local school children, history enthusiasts and groups at Cape May's World War II weekend. The affable Rosewag was a natural, Heinly said.
"I think the thing he enjoyed most about it was not that he was boasting or showing off, but people cared enough that they wanted to hear these stories and they cared enough about what had happened," he said.
"I think he and a lot of the vets are very much concerned that part of history is being forgotten and underplayed, not properly taught in our schools," he said. "By definition, they (World War II veterans) are all in their 80s. They soon won't be here any longer."
Rosewag enjoyed criticizing the inaccuracies in movies depicting World War II.
"He was great at saying, 'That's not how it happened. It wasn't that way at all. It was a lot tougher than you would think,'" John Rosewag said.
After the war, Rosewag loved his creature comforts.
He did not like to be cold. He kept a stash of Hershey bars in his house and told his daughter that Hershey bars got him through the war.
Rosewag was an Army scout during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, the assault that would liberate Europe from Nazi control.
He was handed a roll of toilet paper to mark the trip wires, told to concentrate, told to keep his head down.
His letters home to Maryland kept the details of war vague. He often asked about his brother's baby daughter.
He wrote about catching Germans asleep in the woods and of being cheered on by thankful Frenchmen who offered soldiers slugs of "rotgut" liquor. After the D-Day invasion, he went to a French church, and the priest did not have enough bread for Holy Communion.
In June 1944, he wrote home, "I have plenty of paper but just can't quite put down what I want to say. But this is one thing that I can say, that it really pays to pray, or at least I do a lot of it."
Wingrove took away more from the war than experiences and an affinity for chocolate and warmth.
"He was very much against guns. (Winnie's) oldest brother was a hunter, but my dad would never allow any guns in the house," John Rosewag said. "I'm sure being in the war had an effect on him."
After the war, he returned home to Maryland, where he met his wife, Mary, at the University of Maryland. He studied agriculture briefly, perhaps as a way to get used to being back home, family said.
After a youth spent cleaning dirty chicken coops on the family farm in Maryland, he never ate chicken, and he liked explaining why.
When he got back from the war, he didn't want to farm. But he wanted to work with his hands and he was mechanically inclined. He worked for Bell Atlantic, taking splinters out of his hands after a day at work as a lineman and later working as an engineer, family said.
He created a pulley system in the barn to hoist objects to the second floor, although his wife jokingly said it was much easier to carry them up the stairs.
He also listened to Baltimore Orioles games on a scratchy radio in the barn.
At his grandchildren's Little League games, all the parents knew Rosewag's voice. When his grandson threw a fastball, Winnie would say, "I can feel the breeze."
E-mail Brian Ianieri:
Posted in Top_three, Legacies, Cape_may on Friday, July 3, 2009 8:00 pm Updated: 7:58 am.
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