Clouds threatened rain Friday afternoon, but it didn’t stop friends, family, and Purple Heart veterans from honoring the 104th birthday of World War II veteran Jim Bollich of Lafayette.
With an American flag adorning both sides of his walker, Bollich showed an attentiveness and alertness to his surrounding that defied his advanced age.
He cracked jokes alongside Louisiana Speaker of the House Phillip DeVillier, who presented Bollich with an official expression of commendation, and stood up to salute the active-duty Marines and Purple Heart veterans that drove by his house as part of a car parade organized by the Acadiana chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.
The atmosphere was a stark contrast to the one he faced 83 years earlier. Bollich spent his 21st birthday inside a Japanese prison camp in Mukden, Manchuria. It’s also where he would spend his 22nd birthday. And his 23rd. It would be on the same day as his 24th birthday, Aug. 15, 1945, that Russian forces liberated the camp where he was held…