Superviviente de la II Guerra Mundial

VETERAN RECALLS BATTLE OF THE BULGE AND ALLEGED APPARITIONS OF VIRGIN MARY


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A Connecticut man who miraculously lived through the Battle of the Bulge and other close calls during World War Two attributes his survival to the Rosary and says that he has seen the Blessed Mother several times since returning from the war -- most recently two years ago, when Mary allegedly asked him to pray for the Church.

The former soldier is John J. Kolenberg of Stamford, who credits daily recitation of the Rosary for getting him through the bloodiest battle of the war, one that lasted from December 16, 1944 to January 25, 1945 and cost 19,000 Americans their lives, including all but a dozen or so from the estimated 200 in his tank company, which was part of the vaunted Third Armored Spearhead Division.

Kolenberg -- who was raised by Christian Brothers in an orphanage -- came into the battle as a replacement the previous October and entered through Normandy. Although he often gave his rosaries away at Christmas time, that year he decided to keep it and had it with him that fateful Christmas Eve, Christmas, and the following day -- when three different tanks were shot from under him.

"Our division suffered the most casualties," says Kolenberg, who had made a promise to study for the priesthood. "I was in the middle of battle all the time, one of the first tanks into Cologne -- which was totally devastated. But through it all I never suffered a scratch. I was praying the Rosary all the time."

That a heavenly hand was guiding his way was apparent in the "coincidences" that saved his life, including the time he was the second of 15 tanks sent into a small German town called Laglaise. His tank ran out of gas while the one ahead of him entered town and was gunned down, with all inside killed.

At another point Kolenberg was supposed to be the first in a line of several tanks, but a mistake placed him in the fifth and again the first one was destroyed and the soldiers all casualties.

Indeed, there were 81,000 American casualties in all during the historic battle, including 23,000 who were captured -- the gruesome nature of the battle evident in the photos of other soldiers [see left]. Fulfilling his promise, Kolenberg entered a seminary in Conyers, Georgia, after the war, and there recorded a strange experience. The year was 1953. The day was July 16, feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

"I was in college and I decided I had made so many promises to be a priest during the war that I joined the Trappists," he says. "I was praying the Rosary in the garden and there was this tree the size of an apple tree and there I saw a sphere of light, a little bigger than a basketball, like the moon, and I had the impression that someone was staring at me."

The former soldier, now 78, is not sure who or what that was. He walked around the tree and saw that it was white and gray. Finally he headed back to the monastery but as he turned back for a last look he saw a figure staring at him. He couldn't quite make it out, and it scared him. "All I could see was one eye, it was like one eye, and I didn't know what to make of it," says Kolenberg.

He still doesn't. Was that the Blessed Mother, or some kind of other manifestation? We'll leave that to your own discernment, as also the rest of Kolenberg's story. Decades later, the area around the monastery would lend itself to many other such claims. But this was at the monastery itself, which Kolenberg left a year later -- eventually getting married in 1957 and raising six children. He also became a teacher in an exclusive private school in Greenwich.

Twenty years after the first unusual phenomenon, in 1973, on the eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Kolenberg says that he saw the Virgin Mary on the way to picking up his family for Mass. It was in an area of Stamford known as Shippan Point and it started when he spotted two lights rising from nearby water -- Long Island Sound -- as he waited at a red light.

"When the light changed and I had to start going again it looked like the Virgin Mary," maintains the veteran, who ironically was ready to take his family to Mass at Our Lady of the Sea. "She came within ten feet of me, white and blue rays from her hands."

Kolenberg consulted a priest in a confessional booth about it but didn't see anything again for two decades -- in fact, once again, twenty years from the previous event. This time it was 1993 and he says he saw her in his own home, weeping as he recounts an event he still finds awesome.

"It was May 5 and she was all dressed in blue," says Kolenberg. "She was absolutely beautiful, maybe 5'7" and there five or six minutes. I couldn't understand why she was there. She never spoke, and all I could say was 'Mary!' I knelt down and said a Hail Mary and when I got up she was gone."

The event was lucid enough that Kolenberg went to see then-Bishop Walter Curtis about it, and the bishop advised him to to "pray very hard and ask God for a sign." That "sign" may have come in 2002, when the Blessed Mother returned again -- more than ten years before he expected her, in accordance with the previous 20-year time frame -- and this time materialized, allegedly, as Our Lady of Sorrows. This time she also spoke.

"She was very sad and just said, 'I want you to pray for the Church,'" claims Kolenberg, his voice breaking with emotion. "She spoke of a number of things -- about how so few were going to Confession, how many people were not in a state of grace when they received Communion, and she talked about Mass, how people were not attentive. It all had to do with the Church. She was very sad. I never saw her like that before."

It was at the height of the priest-abuse scandal and she was dressed in "white gray."

A lay Carmelite for forty years, Kolenberg reads the breviary and prays incessantly, often for the Church. He says that if he lives long enough, he expects another apparition in 2013 -- and hopes to have a million Rosary beads to present her. On average he prays the Rosary for five hours each day, which adds up to a thousand or so Hail Marys. "I want that to be my gift," he says.