Journey of an Estonian Lad
Retired Awana European missionary Arne Ellermets’ amazing life story

By Barbara Deitrick

Editor’s note: Barbara now resides with her husband, Jim, in Colorado Springs, Colorado following their retirement as Awana missionaries to Western Europe in 2001.

The year was 1944. The German forces occupied Estonia. The journey began just one month prior to the Russian forces recapturing the country. A 12-year-old boy was fleeing his birthplace of Tallinn, Estonia, the capital city located 50 miles from Helsinki, Finland across the Gulf of Finland. His father was the director of a factory producing fine liqueurs. His mother was a teacher of home economics and later a full-time mom.

The boy’s name: Arne Ellermets. How did this young refugee boy become a retired U.S. Air Force pilot and instructor? Where did Arne meet his wife, Wilhelmina? How did they end up in Germany as Awana missionaries after military retirement? And what are they doing today?

What follows is a remarkable life story resulting from my interview with Arne Ellermets. My husband, Jim Deitrick, and I had the honor and privilege to be mentored by Arne and Wilhelmina. We were called to serve in Europe as Awana missionaries in 1996 following their retirement from the Western European field. The following story has been condensed to the best of my ability.

Now let’s go back to Tallinn, Estonia prior to 1944.

Arne Ellermets’ most memorable experiences go back to the difficult time in Estonia during World War II. Estonia was occupied by Russia in 1940. The German troops in 1941 were approaching Tallinn after capturing Lithuania and Latvia.

The Russian leadership had kept Arne’s father in his position because of his technical abilities in running a factory that produced alcoholic beverages, which were important to the Russian forces. His occupation eventually led to his survival.

The Russians arrested Arne’s father along with many other Estonians when the front drew closer. He was put on a ship headed for Leningrad, the first segment of a trip to the slave labor camps in Siberia.

God had other plans
The ship was attacked by a Finnish dive bomber and sunk before it got out of Estonian waters. His father was rescued by some friendly fishermen and was able to return home after the German forces occupied Estonia.

With the Russian troops closing in on Estonia in 1944, Arne, his mother and his younger brother Heiki were leaving the country traveling via an empty German cargo ship that had brought supplies to the German forces. Arne’s father was not able to flee with his family at that time. They landed in Gottenhafen, now known as Gdinia, Poland in August 1944. They were transported by train to a German refugee camp for resettlement, whatever that meant.

Arne’s mother managed to buy their way out of the camp with a bottle of fine liqueur. Since they had plenty of German money, they boarded a train and traveled to Auerbach in the state of Thuringia, “Germany’s green heart” region of Vogtland. This forest and mountain landscape area was near the Czech border. That had been their predetermined meeting place with Arne’s father, should he also be able to leave Estonia before it fell into the hands of the communist forces.

Reunion with his father
Fortunately Arne’s father was able to get on the last ship out of Tallinn to Germany just before the city fell. He had another close call when that ship was attacked by a torpedo bomber. The aircraft apparently made an attack approach that was too flat. The torpedo skipped off the water as it hit and went through the smoke stack of the ship and landed in the water on the other side without exploding.

Arne said, “A few months after Dad joined us, we had to continue our refugee travels to the southern part of Germany. We wanted to be sure to fall into the hands of the forces of a country different than the Russians.”

They were chased out of Lindau, the border area between Germany and Switzerland, because they were foreigners and as such were not permitted in the region. Arne recalled, “I remember sleeping on a top bunk in a temporary refugee shelter in Lindau. The bed had mattresses made out of sacks and stuffed with straw.”

Temporary housing with Allies
At the end of World War II, they were living in the small village of Ellegg in the Bavarian Alps. From their vantage point on a high hill, they could watch the city of Kempten, Germany as it was under air attack by Allied bombers. When the Allied forces reached their area, Arne’s father was placed under arrest. He was suspected as a German soldier who had discarded his uniform and was hiding out with a farm family. He went through a thorough questioning and was released after a day or two.

“The ‘liberating’ French soldiers from Morocco searched the farmhouse where we were living and stole my one pair of good shoes and a wristwatch that was hanging on a nail by my bed!” Arne said.

After a few weeks, the Allied forces collected all of the refugees into camps. They were housed in a school building in Kempten. There were 27 of them in a large classroom with double bunks. Arne recalled, “I don’t remember any problems or fights caused by the tight quarters. We were in this camp for about a month and then moved to Altenstadt to a German military facility where each family had a room of its own.”

They ate their meals in a military mess hall staffed by American military personnel. They had their own Estonian school at Altenstadt and later in Augsburg. Arne had his first lessons in English at Kempten and became quite proficient thanks to excellent language teachers.

New home in America
Arne’s family immigrated to the United States in March 1949. He still has vivid memories of that exciting moment of arrival in New York after a 14-day trip from Bremerhafen, Germany in a Liberty cargo ship.

“We arrived in the New York harbor one afternoon and the ship anchored between the Statue of Liberty and the Long Island shore,” he said. “I remember standing on the deck, as a 17-year-old young man, wondering what this new country would hold in store for me! It was a beautiful sight at night with the statue illuminated by bright lights and the cars driving along the parkway on the shore.”

Arne went to work landscaping with his father that spring and summer. He then returned to high school for his senior year and graduated in June 1950. Arne scored high grades on the New York State Regents Exams and was selected to the National Honor Society and received a full scholarship to Union College in Schenectady, New York.

Building a life of his own
While there in 1952, he met Wilhelmina Klersy. She was a first-year teacher at an elementary school. They fell in love and were married in August 1953. Arne and Wilhelmina have functioned as a team from that day forward.

While in college he became a member of the U.S. Air Force ROTC. After graduation he was ordered to the ROTC summer camp at Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus, Ohio. There he had the training and opportunity to fly in all kinds of aircraft.

In early February 1955, returning from the hospital alone after his wife had just delivered their first child, Arne Jr., he opened their mailbox and found a letter. It instructed him to report to Lackland AFB in Texas for pre-flight training beginning on April 15, 1955.

New experience and new excitement
Arne’s pilot training was followed up with an assignment to Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts. At that time he had no intention of staying in the Air Force beyond his three-year commitment. He became an instructor pilot in C-47 and C-45 aircraft considered ancient even in those days. After his military commitment, he reconsidered extending his tour in the Air Force rather than returning to a job he previously had with AT&T in White Plains, New York.

The Air Force was good to Arne and his family. He was stationed in Morocco, France, Langley Field AFB in Virginia, Vietnam, Frankfurt (Germany), at the Pentagon and for seven years at the end of their Air Force career at Ohio State University. He finished this phase of their lives as the commandant of the USAF ROTC in the Ohio Valley area working out of Columbus.

Serving in Vietnam
One of two most memorable tours for him in Vietnam was when Arne and his crew were in real danger on his last mission in a C-123. They had taken off from a jungle airstrip and were hit by a number of bullets from a Viet Cong on the ground firing an AK-47 rifle. The bullets entered the left engine fuel tank and left rear parachute door at six-inch intervals.

“If the gun had been aimed a few inches toward the center of the aircraft, we in the crew compartment would have been hurting,” Arne said. “Other than that I am also thankful that I was able to fly one of the missions returning U.S. prisoners of war from Hanoi at the end of the hostilities in Vietnam.”

Separated from family
Tours of duty in Vietnam and other locales sometimes meant being apart from his wife and kids for long stretches during a 30-year career that ended with his retirement as a colonel on August 31, 1984.

“The biggest difficulties were the necessary family separations,” Arne said. “There is no easy way to write about the time away from the family in Vietnam, in India and in Africa. We are thankful that the Lord kept our family safe and that we are back together serving Him. We have six children and 16 grandchildren.”

Enlisting in the Lord’s army
At the time of his retirement, Arne and Wilhelmina had been commissioned as Awana missionaries and received their training in the summer of 1983.

“As soon as we left the Air Force, we headed back to Europe as the first Awana missionaries for the entire continent,” Arne said. “That was a pretty ambitious undertaking. We found that there was more work to be done than we could ever do.”

Arne had come to know the Lord as his Savior more than 20 years earlier. In 1959 he was stationed in Sidi Slimane, Morocco. A chaplain preached a message on the fifth chapter of Romans. The message touched Arne’s heart, but he didn’t make a decision at that time.

In April 1963 as they were completing their military tour at Evreux, France, Arne and Wilhelmina decided to farm out their five children and take a trip all alone to Rome, Italy. Honoring a pact, which they made when they got married in 1953, to read one chapter a day from the Bible, they were reading again in Romans 5 while camping out on one of the seven hills around Rome.

“Romans 5:19 made it clear to me that just as through one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous,” Arne said. “The Lord opened my eyes to what He was saying, and I asked Him to save me.”

Still in ministry
The Lord provided Arne and Wilhelmina with a productive Awana ministry team that worked with them for 12 years in Europe. What have they been doing since leaving Germany and the Awana ministry in 1996? They continue to be a pastor and wife to approximately 40 Awana missionary couples in the Eastern U.S. The Lord has also allowed them to take two months out during each of the last three years to serve as missionary interim pastor and wife to English-language churches in Europe.

God saw a young immigrant boy fleeing his homeland of Estonia in 1944. He also prepared a Christian young lady teaching elementary school in America to be his wife. God had a plan when Arne surrendered his life to Him in Rome. He was preparing the way to call Arne and Wilhelmina to join Him in full-time ministry. What a wonderful ministry team He had in mind!

Barbara A. Deitrick is an apprentice for the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild.