Pankop recounts combat experience at Battle of the Bulge
By Danielle Smith, The Paper-Wabash, IN – June 1, 2011
Gerald Pankop, 85, is one of the lucky men that returned home after spending time in combat at the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium during World War II. After being injured by a mortar, he was honored with the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for his bravery and sacrifice. Pankop voluntarily enlisted at 18 years old in 1944. “They rushed me through training and sent me over to the Battle of the Bulge,” Pankop said. “They needed men because they were losing so many.” Pankop entered the First Army, 99th Division, 393rd Infantry, as a buck private and came out as a private first class. He explained that part of the reason he moved through the ranks so quickly is because they were losing soldiers at such an alarming rate.
“There are 2,000 men in a regiment, we lost about half of our men,” he said. Pankop credits his survival to his short stature. He was offered an opportunity to make sergeant, but that would have required him to move to the front of the platoon. Surprisingly, the officer allowed him to decline the offer, which earned him the right to stay in his safer position in the back. “I was short so I was always in the back, sergeants are up front in danger,” he explained. Short men were placed in the rear of the platoon because they tend to walk more slowly. “That’s probably what saved my life is being in the back all the time.”
During his time in Belgium, Pankop only received three hot meals, two of which were boxed meals. The third was on Christmas Eve. An officer sent Pankop and other men to a church where they were served a full Christmas dinner, complete with steak and mashed potatoes. Following the meal, Pankop complimented the cook. “I said ‘That’s the best meal I’ve had for I don’t know how long’, and the cook said ‘Oh, you like horse meat, huh?,” Pankop recounted. A disbelieving Pankop looked behind the church where he was greeted with the sight of the heads, skin and bones of the horses they had just consumed.
Pankop also recalled seeing a steam-powered truck traveling up a hill in Belgium. The truck had wooden wheels and a boiler in the back to contain the fire that powered it. Pankop and his companions watched as the driver exited the truck and threw more wood on the fire to allow the truck to continue up the hill. “I said ‘Man, we don’t have anything like that back home,” he recalled.
During Pankop’s time in Belgium, they slept in snowdrifts and never had an opportunity to change their clothes. He was there in December during intense combat. He recalled an instance where he and some comrades were standing nearby while some , searched a recently captured German bunker in the ground. “There were seven or eight of us standing outside leaning on our rifles and the Germans threw a big mortar shell in there and it knocked all of us on the ground. I had two phosphorous grenades and it knocked the bottom off of one of them. Phosphorous burns you something terrible, you can’t hardly stop it. I was laying there and I hurt so bad I couldn’t even throw it away and I kept hollering for someone to come get it. Finally one guy did come over and grab it and throw it as hard as he could,” he recounted. “After things quieted down a little bit the medics came up and they only took two us and left the rest of them lay.”
After 30 days in combat, Pankop returned home. “There’s a Henri- Chapelle Cemetery in Belgium that has 9,000 of our troops that got a Purple Heart but didn’t get to come home. I don’t know why but I think of that so often. I guess I just got a little blessing along the way and I got to come home and get married and raise four children,” he said. Much of Pankop’s war memorabilia is on display in the Northfield Jr./Sr. High School’s library.