Alex Jr. went through basic training, although I don’t know where, then was assigned to cook school. All the daughters cooked in the family, not the sons, so I doubt it was due to his cooking ability. I think that was just where the military stuck him.
We have a number of letters that Alex wrote to my mother during that time. Alex wrote that he didn’t think much of cook school, and wrote of his devotion to his girlfriend, Sylvia: Dear Sis,
I received your letter and was I glad to hear from you. As you probably know by now I’m going to cook’s school for eight weeks, so I’m going to make the best of it.
No, I don’t need anything and I don’t want anything for Easter. Thanks anyway. I’m not coming home for Easter because no one gets to go home during this time in school.
You should see the WACs [Women’s Army Corps] here at camp! There are about 150 of them. You should know that Sylvia really doesn’t know how much I love or should I say like her. I don’t even go no place because I keep thinking of her so much.
Well, I am out of time so I’ll have to say goodbye until I write again.
Your brother,
Alex
P.S. Send box candy if you want to.
In cook school he made some friends who told him about an elite unit called the paratroopers. He and two friends tried out. The two friends washed out, but Alex made it.
He wasn’t a Toccoa man. I think he took his paratrooper training at Fort Bragg, but I haven’t confirmed this.
The first picture of Easy Company I’ve seen with Alex is at Fort Bragg. He was one of the first replacements into the company. I have another picture of him and Skip Muck at Camp McCall. That’s the only picture I have of those two guys together. Everyone I talk to said they were very good friends.
Alex wrote often—short, cheery, breezy letters, saying he was doing well, asking about family members, wondering if she had sent box candy because he didn’t receive it, telling he had received her letters, promising to write again soon. One letter home, written in scrawled longhand, is dated March 30, 1943, and was probably written when Alex was at Camp McCall.
Dear Sis,
Well, I’m ok. Boy and do I like the army. . . . I might get shipped to some other camp. How do you like my writing? I’m in a hurry, so you’ll have to excuse it. Write more often. I’ll keep thinking of you.
So long,
Your brother
Junior
Regarding Skip Muck—the guys I talked to said he was the heart and soul of Easy Company. Everyone just loved him. I’ve asked Eileen O’Hara, his niece, why she thinks Alex and Skip might have become such good friends. They were both Catholic from large families, and had a lot in common that way. Skip was the mortar man and Alex was his assistant. Skip carried the gun sight and tube; Alex carried the base plate and bipod. I’m sure that base plate weighed thirty or forty pounds, so it wasn’t much fun to carry that around. But everyone I’ve talked to said that Alex was muscular enough and carried it no problem.
Airborne vets have told me that whenever they jumped and went out on a mission, many of the guys carried four mortar rounds in their packs. The first thing they did after jumping was give all their rounds to the mortar squad and then deploy. It was a 60 mm mortar they used, smaller, but basically the mortars were their only weapons other than machine guns that could really reach from a distance. From all indications, both Alex and Skip were very good mortar men.
We know that Alex sailed for England September 15, 1943, aboard the troop ship Samaria. Sometime before that, Alex came home for the last time on leave. My mom still talks about the big party they had for him at their house. Alex seemed sad, mainly because he was leaving his family, and the men knew they were going overseas. He seemed to really like the paratroopers and talked about how much he loved jumping out of airplanes. I don’t know if he ever actually landed in an airplane—I think he jumped out of every airplane he went up in. He never smoked before he went into the Army, but he was smoking at the party, my mom said, so he had developed that bad habit and they were all worried for him. Not about the smoking—they knew he was going in harm’s way.
He wrote home just after arriving in Aldbourne:Dear Sis,
Thanks for the candy you sent me. It sure is good. It’s the third package I got since I’m in England. Boy, you can send me another one, don’t hesitate.
Excuse my writing, I’m in a hurry tonight. Did you get my longest letter yet? Send me some air mail stamps if you get them. I hope to hear from you soon.
Your brother
Al
Like the other paratroopers, Alex Jr. simply did what he had to do. The men trained in England from September 1943 to June 1944. I talked to Frank Perconte, who stood next to my uncle in roll call because their names were close together. Frank said that one day they got a three-day pass. The big thing was to go up to Aberdeen, Scotland, and he and Alex went. Alex was helping a woman with her luggage, and Frank was trying to talk Alex into chatting her up. But Alex said, “Oh no, I can’t do that, she’s married.”
Alex wrote more short notes over the fall, winter, and spring saying it had been constantly raining and how much he hated the weather in England, asking his sister to send him some candy bars and T-shirts, size thirty-six, and a pair of work gloves, size nine, and saying how much he missed not seeing his family over Christmas. He often talked about food. On December 5, 1943, he wrote: Dear Sis,
Just a few lines to tell you I’m feeling alright. I got the package. Them cookies sure were good. If you have any time at all, send me some fudge. You know fudge. Oh, don’t forget to send me some peanuts too.
Is Clem married yet? Boy, I can’t wait till this darn thing is over with.
Your brother,
Al
Sometime when Alex was in England, his girlfriend back home in South Bend sent him a Dear John letter. The breakup didn’t seem to devastate him too badly, because he had another girlfriend in England pretty quickly afterward. It might have even been simultaneously, but knowing Junior, it was probably afterward. He was a pretty straight-arrow kind of guy. After the breakup, still in England, Alex wrote on April 10, 1944:Dear Sis,
Just to let you know that I’m feeling alright, etc.
. . . Did I tell you that I went out with a married girl? Boy was she ever nice, but it didn’t last long after she told me she was married, because, well, you know me.
I met this girl in Scotland. What a nice place Scotland is. They have everything there—nice girls, also nice dance halls, and did I ever dance a lot when I was up there. More than I ever did in my life. No fooling.
Well, I’ll have to close for now.
Your brother,
Alex
P.S. Don’t forget to send me something to eat—anything!
Easy Company vet Joe Lesniewski joined E Company in England. It wasn’t easy to come in as a replacement, and Joe said the first guy who ever talked to him was Alex. They got to be pretty good friends because they could both speak Polish. They hung around together with some other Polish-speaking guys, and Joe taught them all how to sing country and western songs.
Now, a lot of the details of what happened to Alex, from about D-day onward, we really don’t know. The only information we have is what Ambrose put in Band of Brothers.
We know that Alex jumped on D-day and landed in Normandy on the roof of a barn. He climbed down. That’s basically all we know of D-day. How he got back to his outfit, we don’t know. That story is lost.
One of the vets, Les Hashey, talked in the miniseries about how he joined the squad with Corporal Penkala. We never knew my uncle was a corporal, so the first thing I did when I met Les was ask about that. Les remembered him as a corporal, but he said it might have been an acting corporal. In the squad Alex and Skip were in, they were the only two from that squad who weren’t killed on D-day. So after D-day, they basically had to make up a new squad.
After D-day, June 6, 1944, the men fought in Normandy for about a month, then returned to Engl
and for a while. Alex wrote home after the fighting on July 22, 1944.
Dear Sis,
I guess I should say I’m sorry, but you know how it is when you’re busy, don’t you? I got one letter from you since D-Day and that was the other day. I didn’t get much of a chance to write while I was in France.
Hey, I’m still waiting for that big package of apples and some good fudge.
Boy, that girl in Kentucky sure is a sweet kid. She writes to me almost every other day.
Well I guess I’ll have to close now. Write soon.
Your brother,
Al
And once more, still in England, on August 20, 1944. The poignant line from that letter is:Boy, when all of us guys get home we’re really going to give one hell of a big party. I’m just waiting for that day.
A few years back, Joe Lesniewski showed me a pilot chute—the one that comes out first and pulls out the main chute—that Alex had signed after D-day. I was really happy to see that. Sometime later, Joe asked if I wanted to have the chute. I said, sure, I’d love to. So I’ve got that.
The men jumped into Holland for Operation Market-Garden in September 1944. Alex made that jump as well. I contacted a woman in Eindhoven through the Internet who said a soldier named Alex Penkala signed a ration book she had when she was a child. We have one letter after that, made just after the Holland jump, where Alex mentioned everything was okay. That’s the last letter home we have. As far as we know, Alex and Muck were the mortar squad all through Holland. Then came the Battle of the Bulge.
Bonded Forever
The way my uncle was killed in the miniseries was supposedly exactly how he died for real. It was January 10, 1945. The men were just outside of Foy, Belgium, in the Bois Jacques woods. They were being shelled heavily, and a shell landed directly in the foxhole where Skip Muck and Alex Penkala were, killing them both instantly. We’re not really sure what they were hit with. It was probably a 105, but it may have been an 88. I think most artillery barrages were 105s. So that’s probably what it was.
Alex was originally buried in France. He was exhumed and reburied in the American cemetery in Luxembourg, the same cemetery General Patton was buried in. There are five Easy Company KIA members buried there, including Skip Muck. We have two burial flags—it’s possible one flag came from each cemetery. Alex was one of the many first generation Americans who ended up being buried in Europe, families who emigrated to America from Europe, then their sons went back to Europe to fight.
I told Eileen O’Hara, Skip Muck’s niece, that our families were bonded together forever that one dark night in 1945. Recently we invited Eileen and her husband, Tom, to a Penkala family reunion. The Muck and Penkala families are close even today, more than sixty years later.
What’s the one thing I’d want people to know about my uncle? All the vets I’ve talked to say these things: He was a good soldier. He always did his job. You could always count on him. Alex Penkala Jr. saw what he had to do and did it. He made the supreme sacrifice. That’s how I’d want people to remember him.
26
ROBERT VAN KLINKEN
Interview with Gariann Wrenchy, great-niece With information from Cora Bingman, niece
As a little girl, Gariann Wrenchey had always wondered about the picture on her Grandma Susie’s bedside table. She knew she would never meet the dashing young man shown in the picture. He was gone. But Gariann always felt like she had a connection with her great-uncle, Robert Van Klinken. His sacrifice to his country was something the family had never forgotten.
When she was grown, Gariann began to ask questions. At first, no one wanted to talk. But her grandmother brought out from the closet a box with the young man’s personal effects. The box hadn’t been touched in fifty years, just a pile of photographs, news clippings, certificates, and documents with some other effects at the top. Gariann went to work.
Inside the box was an old wallet with a dollar bill inside that had been signed by a few buddies, a ring with the initial “R” on it, a few foreign coins with holes drilled through them, and an address for a veteran named Bill Wingett.
There was a patch torn from green military clothing. The patch showed a swastika surrounded with a red border with oak leaves above it. Gariann found it a bit creepy. It looked like the patch had been hacked with a bayonet from somebody’s clothes. The bayonet was also still in the box.
An original set of paratrooper jump wings was there, along with a note to Gariann’s grandmother. “Susie don’t lose these, you have to realize what I went through to earn them.”
Inside the wallet was a photograph of two young women eating an ice cream sundae and grinning. On the back of the picture was written, “Hello Cake Face.”
Then there were letters. Most were still in their envelopes with post-marks from Toccoa, South Carolina, and England. They were written in clean, strong handwriting, often in pencil, and many on military stationery, now yellowed and fading. Gariann read them all.
Robert Van Klinken wrote to two sets of people. The first bunch of letters was to his parents. The information was shorter, tidier, and less revealing. The second set was addressed to Susie (Robert’s sister and Gariann’s grandmother), Johnny (Susie’s husband and Robert’s best buddy), and their young son, Walt. In this second bunch of letters, Robert spoke more freely.
What follows is the story of Robert Van Klinken, as revealed by family members and Robert’s own letters.
Letters Home
Robert Van Klinken was born October 31, 1919, in Loomis, Washington, a city close to the Canadian border known for its mining. In the early 1920s, Robert and his family moved to Twisp, another small town in Washington State, where he grew up.
He was a country boy who loved to hunt and fish. Pictures show him dressed in overalls and standing next to chickens and old barns.
His parents had emigrated from the Netherlands and become tenant apple orchardists in the United States. They were very poor and never owned their own farm, but even during the Great Depression, they always had food. Robert’s sister Susie was known to be spoiled, even though the family was so poor. Her father taught her horse how to jump fences because he didn’t think his little girl should have to get off her horse and open gates. The kids didn’t fight and got along well. Susie looked up to Robert like he was her hero.
Robert graduated from high school in 1939. There’s a picture of him with his graduating class up on the wall in the old Twisp High School. Susie graduated the next year, 1940, and immediately married Johnny Klinkert, Bob’s good friend. There was another brother in the family, Gene, but he was much younger, and Robert never addressed any letters to him.
Robert became a diesel mechanic who sometimes worked in logging. He was a good natured young man who dated a lot and dreamed of getting married someday.
When war broke out, he was in his mid-twenties and initially thought he was too old to go to war. That he went into the Army in the first place only makes his story more poignant. Right before he joined, he had a job offer with a defense industry company in Alaska. It would have meant a fortune for him, and it would have also kept him out of the war. Robert wrote:Uncle Sam sure played a dirty trick on me when he put me in the army. I signed a contract with Deims Drake Company for 1 year to work as a mechanic in Kodiak Alaska at $450 a month. I bought a ticket for $87 on the steamship Yukon and $40 of clothes and was all ready to sail. Just about 15 hours before I was to leave, the Army called. If I’d got to Kodiak they would have given me a deferment as it was an air base for the Navy.
After being drafted, one of his first letters home was to Susie’s new husband, Johnny, with whom Robert often fished and hunted. The letter was postmarked August 19, 1942, and sent from the reception center at Fort Lewis, Washington.
John,
I’m in. Better stick to the navy yard. I’m getting a better break than I expected. Signed up for the parachute troops. Don’t write till you hear from me. Leaving here soon.
Bob
Robert made a prime candidate for the paratroopers. He was in good shape, certainly not afraid of shooting a rifle, and impressed with the fifty dollars a month extra pay.
A month later, September 28, 1942, Robert wrote again, this time from Camp Toccoa. Always the ladies’ man, Robert talked about eating a meal at his girlfriend’s house down in Georgia. He must have met her right away, because the men hadn’t been at the camp for very long.
Dear Susie, Johnny, and Walt,
What happened to the Plymouth? Did it start using oil? Sounds good to hear that Johnny got a scope on his rifle. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting a buck, you have two good guns. You should see the artillery we have here. Machine guns 30 cal. M1 Springfield Garand and carbines. I am training with an M1 now. It sure is a sweet pill squirter. I understand when we jump we will have the barrel strapped to one leg and the stalk to the other. Two fellows got killed jumping at Benning yesterday. They rolled up in their chutes when they hit the ground they were rolled up in the silk like a silkworm, so you see, jumping isn’t easy.
Toccoa has a reputation for making Supermen, and it’s not wrong. Everything is done on the double time around here. We take a run up a mountain about as steep as Twisp Pass two or three times a week along with the rest of our training. Every time I go up it gets easier. Boy I sure feel swell. Nothing to worry about, and got a swell bunch of fellows in our barracks. The last time I ran up the mountain I stood guard duty all night. I was up about 36 hours and kept up with the lieutenant, so you see I am getting in shape again.
A Company of Heroes Page 29