"That hurt me to watch her cry," Mr. Bolgla recalled. "It was a bad night."

The 17-year-old, the last of the four Bolgla brothers to join the armed forces during World War II, knew he had to go.

"I was patriotic. It was something I had to do," Mr. Bolgla said.

Fighting for America was something they all felt they had to do.

The Bolgla boys - Bennie, Abe, Mushie and Maxie - were born to Russian Jewish immigrants Bertha Rabionwitz and Joe Bolgla.

Their parents were young sweethearts living in Brest-litovsk, Belarus, when Joe Bolgla was drafted into the czar's army.

The couple wanted to come to America to escape their homeland's turmoil - the coming Bolshevik revolution. With 100 rubles that were given to him by his future wife, Joe Bolgla deserted and fled to America sometime between 1910 and 1912, Maxie Bolgla said.

The young couple married and settled in Augusta, where Mr. Bolgla opened a shoe repair store downtown.

Soon, they were welcoming children: four sons and a daughter. Too soon, the boys were gone.

The first to go

Bennie Bolgla, 86, the first of the brothers to go to war, was on the front line during the D-Day Invasion. CHRIS THELEN/STAFF

Bennie Bolgla was 26 and already running a leather supply shop when he was called up in 1941.

America's entry into the war was a few months away, and Mr. Bolgla was soon in the thick of it.

He ended up being trained as an officer.

"They decided I didn't need basic training, because I'd been in the ROTC at Richmond Academy," said the 86-year-old, who still runs his business, Augusta Leather Supply, on Jones Street.

He was assigned to the 29th Division, 116th Infantry, 2nd Battalion, which took him to the front line during the D-Day invasion.

He said he realized early on that as a member of the Army infantry his chances of survival were slim.

"I told my brothers to sign up before they were drafted," he said, so they would have an opportunity to choose a less risky duty. "Who wants to get shot at?"

Mr. Bolgla was sent to England, where the training included 25-mile hikes and simulated attacks.

"We were training to go fight and we knew we were going to land on a beach," he said.

Early on the morning of the invasion, he and his men climbed aboard a LCVP - landing craft vehicle personnel - and headed for Omaha Beach.

"The sergeant came up and grabbed the bars off my shoulders and threw them in the channel," Mr. Bolgla said. "He told me the Germans would shoot the officers first."

Forty men hit the beach with Mr. Bolgla.

"That night we slept in a pillbox. There were 12 of us," he said.

As the 12 began to fight their way into France, the surviving members of the unit found them.

About a month later, Mr. Bolgla and his men were shelled as they headed toward St.-Lo.

"And the mortar shell said hello to me," he said.

His entire left side was pierced by shards of shrapnel - ending his time on the front.

"I got a Purple Heart ... and they reclassified me," he said.

After he had healed, he was sent to a POW camp in France to help guard German soldiers - a relatively peaceful duty after the invasion.

Maxie Bolgla, the youngest of the four brothers, dropped out of high school to join the Navy in 1944. ANDREW DAVIS TUCKER/STAFF

When the war ended, he headed home to Augusta and his business.

Sixty years later, he said, the scenes of war are still vivid.

"We were scared, but nobody ran away," he said.

The second son

Abe Bolgla was 21 when his brother Bennie told him about an ordnance company being formed in California.

"I wanted to join. I used to go down every week to the post office and they tried to make me a paratrooper. I didn't want to be a paratrooper," he said with a laugh.

On the advice of his brother, Mr. Bolgla ended up in an ammunitions unit in California. The now 80-year-old still lives in California.

He served in North Africa and Italy, supplying ammo during some of the most fierce battles, including Anzio.

The shores of Italy were a long way from Augusta, where he had spent his days and nights hunting, camping and fishing along the banks of the Savannah River.

Abe Bolgla made it out of the war alive even though he was within a mile of the front in Italy.

He and his brothers never really talked about their days in service - even on the December night in 1945, when the four, all in uniform, went to dinner together.

"We went to this restaurant on the corner of Baker Street and Walton Way," he said. "They gave us a private room and we talked all night.

"But we didn't discuss it."

The youngest son

Maxie Bolgla can be found these days on Broad Street at Maxie's Shoe Store. At 75, he still runs the shop and he cares for cattle on his Columbia County farm.

He and his brother Mushie, who died 10 years ago, joined the Navy. Two years Maxie's senior, Mushie Bolgla was the third to leave home and spent harrowing days and nights as a gunner.

Maxie (clockwise from left), Mushie, Abe and Bennie Bolgla, brothers of Russian Jewish descent from Augusta, each served during World War II. SPECIAL

As soon as he was old enough to join, Maxie Bolgla dropped out of high school to join his brothers in defending the country.

It was 1944.

"I got my father, and I made him sign for me," he said. "I wasn't old enough to sign for myself."

The night he left, his mother sobbed as he walked from their Second Street home to the bus station.

After basic training, Mr. Bolgla ended up in the Pacific on a converted destroyer loaded with four of the LCVPs. His ship escorted others in the mine-filled ocean.

"It was exciting for us because we didn't know any better," he said.

He spent most of his time in the Philippines.

"That was the staging area," he said.

Out in the Pacific, fighting typhoons and the Japanese, Mr. Bolgla and his shipmates didn't know the war was coming to a close.

"We didn't know what an atomic bomb was," he said. "We heard on the radio that they had just dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Less than a month after the August 1945 bombings, World War II was over and the Bolgla brothers began coming home.

Maxie Bolgla returned to Augusta in 1946 and went back to high school. He went on to earn a degree at University of Georgia.

All the boys married; Mushie Bolgla was called during the Korean War to go back in the Navy as a radioman on airplanes.

Maxie, Bennie and Mushie Bolgla made homes in Augusta, while Abe married his California sweetheart, who died eight years ago.

They still don't like to talk about the war, but the three surviving brothers remember the commitment they shared to their country and their fellow soldiers.

"We were Jewish," Maxie Bolgla said. "I thought I owed something to this country."

Reach Amy Allyn Swann at (706) 823-3338 or amy.swann@augustachronicle.com