NORTHBROOK, Ill. — France honored a 98-year-old World War II veteran Friday for helping liberate the country.

WGN News spoke with PFC. Emil Hirsch to learn more about his Chicago roots, his war story and what he did after that tumultuous period of time.

Like most people during the 1930s, Hirsch felt the effects of the Great Depression growing up on the South Side.

“People just had nothing,” Hirsch recalled. “It was a pretty tough time but President Roosevelt tried to do a lot of things to help. I was living at my grandparent’s house at the time.”

He didn’t come from just any Chicago family — Hirsch’s grandfather was Emil G. Hirsch, who is known for being a prominent rabbi for over 40 years (1880-1923) in Chicago.

He was known for not being afraid to speak up on social justice issues and was able to get one of the founders of Sears to build public schools in the segregated South for African American students.

Hirsch High School, located in Greater Grand Crossing, is named after Hirsch’s grandfather.

“He helped build 3,000 to 4,000 schools,” Hirsch said. “He also protested against child labor and sweatshops.”

Hirsch graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1939. In that neighborhood was when he first became aware of German atrocities against Jews, but he didn’t become know the brutality and the full scope until a few years later.

“The whole neighborhood was refugees from Hitler,” Hirsch said. “My uncle Sam took in one of the young men. I knew a lot of the refugees themselves.”

In 1943, Hirsch was drafted into the Army at the tender age of 18 while he was working for a streetcar company in the city.

He could have been an airman in the Army Air Corps due to high test scores, but his mother had an idea that the casualty rates would be higher (she was right).

“I said no, I promised my mother I wouldn’t go,” Hirsch said.

The young Hirsch was soon on a giant boat to Liverpool, England.

As citizen replacement soldiers, PFC. Hirsch didn’t go to traditional basic training — which he wasn’t sore about.

“I enjoyed learning on the fly,” Hirsch said. “They needed (the company) to be full-strength. So we learned how to do all the things in the division — working with mines, the 57 millimeter (anti-tank gun), the M1 (standard rifle). That’s how they brought you up to date.”

Hirsch was a member of the 95th Infantry Division and the 378th Infantry Regiment. Their primary goal was to combat the Nazi’s vicious Panzer tanks.

The first time his eyes saw the country of France, a somber reminder hit him instantly from just a couple months before.

“We landed at Omaha Beach,” Hirsch said. “As I got off all I could see was white crosses in the distance, thousands of them.”

After clearing mines around the area, the 95th and Hirsch became involved in the Red Ball Express. As thousands of troops were breaking out in Normandy and deeper into France, supplies obviously had to keep up.

The Red Ball Express was a truck convoy that was essential in the allies’ effort to advance. It wasn’t much longer that the 18-year-old from Chicago saw his first taste of combat.

“We relieved the 5th Infantry Division at the end of October, just before Metz — the Fifth Division dug a lot of fox holes,” he said.

It was in one of those fox holes that Hirsch directly saw the horrors of war. As part of an attack under Patton’s Third Army, he witnessed an artillery shell directly hit the fox hole his staff sergeant, Lou Kadwit, was in — killing him instantly.

“It was really the first time I experienced (death) in combat,” he said. “I looked up to him, everyone liked him and he taught us a lot of stuff.”

Hirsch was soon off to the battle that gave the 95th Infantry their nickname — “The Iron Men of Metz.”

Metz, with a current population of 117,000, lies near the German border in eastern France and had “huge” forts surrounding it. It was near France’s Maginot Line, which the Germans went around four years earlier during the invasion.

“Metz was a key city in a mountainous area,” Hirsch said. “It controlled the roadways and was responsible for feeding everyone. Metz was the key, you had to get passed Metz and that was the task.”

Hirsch and his comrades did just that.

His division then moved north to help the 101st Airborne — who were surrounded by the German Army in the Battle of the Bulge.

“I will never forget the overpowering stench of death there at the Battle of the Bulge,” Hirsch said at the ceremony Friday.

It was in Belgium that he got a first-hand account of the risks the resistance fighters took to save Jews, U.S. downed airmen and others.

“(A Dutch resistance leader) said ‘are you Juden?’ and asked me to come so I could bare witness to a German nurse being hid for the last three years,” Hirsch said. “I did go with them, went a mile outside of town — it was actually a Catholic missionary town. I met the nurse, who was a few years older than me, and the 40-year-old woman running the farm.”

Hirsch said the Nazis would kill the entire family if they found out what they were doing.

Hirsch and the rest of the 95th Infantry ended up in Germany after the Battle of the Bulge.

While in Germany, Hirsch saw another glimpse of the Nazi’s barbarianism.

“We liberated a Russian POW camp,” Hirsch said. “The Russian prisoners were all skeletons. I didn’t know about sending people into gas chambers, all of that was learned after the war.”

Hirsch is grateful for France honoring him and remembers the French people fondly.

“The French were intelligent and sweet people, wherever I went they were very cultured,” he said.

After initially going through during the Liberation of Paris in Aug. 1944, Hirsch returned in May 1945 the month after Nazi Germany surrendered.

“The very first place I went was the Eiffel Tower. In those days, the elevator didn’t work — I went all the way up the stairs to the top,” Hirsch said.

Hirsch said he transitioned fine back into civilian life in Chicago. His brother and Hirsch started Whitehall Printing Company — which helped publishers manufacture many different types of books. He even authored a book in 1979 called “Copyright It Yourself.”

He echoed similar sentiments to the French Friday as several people showed up to his assisted living center in Northbrook to honor him.

France’s Legion of Honor is the country’s highest distinction signed by President Macron.

“I realize it’s not what I singularly did,” Hirsch told WGN News. “But it wasn’t in vain.”

After describing all that he experienced and some great tales, Hirsch ended his speech with a prayer.

“I pray that someday our world will find the religion of humanity,” Hirsch said.