This week we are happy to name Lawrence Pankratz as the 101st inductee in Marshfield’s


 This week we are happy to name Lawrence Pankratz as the 101st inductee in Marshfield’s 150: Heroes and Leaders, Past and Present register. Lawrence “Bud” Pankratz was nominated by his daughter, Mary Tollefson. 

 

Dad, your story begins and ends each day in my heart. How I wish I could see the sparkle in your eyes and hear you speak of your day’s happenings again. 


To the readers of this article, I will offer facts and tributes about my Dad, Lawrence Pankratz, but my heart is telling me to write this from deep within myself. Dad is now lost to this world here but in return heaven gained a good man of character as well as the character of a good soldier, husband, father and grandfather. 


My father was reunited with my mother, Olive, and my brother, Jim, when he died March 4, 2020. He was never a person to celebrate a specific date, as he would say, “A day is another day, a date goes by.” For my family, there is no celebration of loss, but I can share some of the gains in my time with my father. 


Dad had an impressive record of service during World War II, and later a 75 year record of service with the American Legion Post 54. The world and I were blessed that he shared many stories of his military service. Yes, there were times when he was silent, but through my persistence and love of history, he shared his journey. I was not going to let him have a war within himself, nor was I going to lose a history that truly needed to be preserved. With the help of Shirley Mook, Don Schnitzler, PBS, and those special comrades at Post 54 American Legion in Marshfield, we have his recorded story. 


Dad left Marshfield with the Red Arrow Division, Company C for training in Louisiana and then was sent to the WWII Pacific Theatre Campaign and the Philippine jungles. He left his family and wife to be, Olive Goldbach, a strong lady with the words, “I want to come back.”  His determination to come back became stronger each day of the five years in a war zone. 


Dad fought in the Battle of Buna and others. He was hit by a sniper’s bullet, which he told me, spun him right around a tree. The bullet gave him a first class trip to Australia on General McArthur’s plane for medical care and recovery. It was just by chance that McArthur was visiting the battlefields when dad was shot, but he was proud to have ridden in this plane. After what probably wasn’t a long enough recovery, Uncle Sam said you need to go back to your platoon. Physically healed, returning to the front lines still had to be frightening, but he knew he was needed there.


In July 1945, he got his ticket back home and to a waiting Olive. They married on April 24, 1946 starting a legacy of four children, eight grandchildren and nineteen great-grandchildren. Sadly, Mom died on January 11, 2011.


After their marriage, Dad started with a small 60-acre farm with 20 cows, two horses, and an old Ford tractor. Today the farm is a third generation-owned family farm, known as Pankratz Farms, milking 300 cows, with an army of machinery and many times more acreage.


My father took great pride in the American red, white and blue flag. As a child, I could fold a flag before a washcloth or towel -- and do so perfectly as he guided. The honor guard was Dad’s mission for over 70 years. I asked him one day why his heart turned to this priority in life. His response was given very strictly, “Every soldier deserves to be honored in life but in death the honor is even more important. I can only give these soldiers a salute, but they gave all of us a future when death came.”   This is a strong lesson in respect from a man who had a hidden courage. 


I realize this may be a somewhat different Marshfield’s 150: Heroes and Leaders nomination article, but the truth is I miss my father and mother, and to me it is important to share these memories and remember the good and warmth this world needs any time of year. My parents gave me that lesson.


Lawrence Pankratz was one of the 123 members of National Guard Unit, Company C, 128th Infantry, 32nd Division which left Marshfield for Camp Beauregard, Louisiana on October 21, 1940. Nineteen of his Company C comrades gave their lives in the service of their country during World War II. Lawrence was the last surviving member of that unit until his passing in 2020 at the age of 100 years old.


On Veterans Day, as the nation honors military veterans — both living and dead — it is appropriate for the Marshfield community to remember the heroic service given by its men and women who have served in the Armed Forces of the United States.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WARNING! PHOTO BELOW ARE NOT MET FOR THE WEAK HEART.

Image
WARNING! PHOTO BELOW ARE NOT MET FOR THE WEAK HEART. Please note: The following subject matter is of immense importance, but could be difficult to read. There is a Frank Discussion Of Rape And Other Atrocities Committed During War. After entering a large museum in one of the world’s most ancient cities and the former capital of the Chinese empire, Nanking—or Nanjing as it’s known today—my 18-year-old daughter Sophia and I walked over a glass walkway that allowed us to look down 10 feet of earth and observe an ancient footpath. Lights highlighted the ground under the glass while the room we were in was dark.  To our right hung numerous photographs on a black wall showing Japanese soldiers slaughtering Chinese citizens in December 1937 revealed by individual lights, the types one sees on art museum paintings. Dead babies, severed heads, piles of bodies on Yangtze River banks, and helpless prisoners of war were all documented there by photographs taken by the perpetrators themselves, Impe
Read more

During World War II, millions of people were sent to concentration camps, including women. Women in

Image
During World War II, millions of people were sent to concentration camps, including women.  Women in concentration camps were subjected to brutal treatment and often faced more severe conditions than their male counterparts. The conditions in the camps were inhumane, and women were often subjected to forced labor, starvation, and medical experiments. Women were treated differently in concentration camps than men. They were often separated from their families, forced to perform hard labor, and subjected to sexual abuse. Women who were pregnant were also subjected to harsh conditions and medical experimentation. Many women were killed, either as part of the genocide or because they were deemed too weak to continue working. One of the most notorious concentration camps where women were held was Auschwitz-Birkenau. There, women were subjected to forced labor, starvation, and medical experimentation. Many were killed in gas chambers or through other forms of execution. The camp was designed
Read more

At the Gates of Hell: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, April 1945

Image
At the Gates of Hell: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, April 1945 Compared to the appalling number of men, women and children killed at the Nazi extermination camps places like Sobibor, Chelmno, Treblinka and others where, cumulatively, millions perished the death toll at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northwest Germany was (a horrible thing to say!) relatively small. More than a million people were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau alone; at Belsen, by most estimates, fewer than 100,000 died from starvation and disease (typhus, for example), as well as outright slaughter But in the spring of 1945, photographs and eyewitness accounts from the liberation of camps like Bergen-Belsen afforded the disbelieving world outside of Europe its first glimpse into the abyss of Nazi depravity. All these years later, after countless reports, books, oral histories and documentary films have constructed a terrifyingly clear picture of the Third Reich’s vast machinery of murder, it’s difficult to g
Read more

Senseless, how will a man castrate himself knowing the pains involved.

Image
Senseless, how will a man castrate himself knowing the pains involved. Driven to extremes by the expectations loaded on them, some men turned to self-castration. Stories such as these show how self-castration made literal the feelings of emasculation which men suffered when they were unable to maintain control in their romantic relationships, whether from poverty, impotence, or because of a domineering partner. Self-castration was particularly strongly associated with men’s fear of being cuckolded and of raising children who were not their own. One 18th-century surgeon told his readers of a gory case in which a man ‘on a suspicion of his wife’s incontinency, and thereby to discover the truth’ decided to geld himself in an upstairs chamber. He was discovered when the blood from the wound ran through the floor and was noticed by the residents of the room below, but luckily was ‘rescued from the most imminent danger’ by the surgeon’s timely arrival. Stories like these were so notorious
Read more

Impalement in the history: Worst way to die

Image
Impalement in the history: Worst way to die The verb “Khazak” in Arabic means penetrating or stabbing, It is the source of the word “Khauzakah” – Impalement, which refers to an inhuman sadistic practice based on the use of a wooden stick with a pointed tip that is pushed through a human body, often through the anus or vagina, then they lift the stick up in the air and hold it to the ground vertically, and the victim rises with it as if he is sitting over it, and the tip of the stick begins to dive into his body more and more by gravity, until it penetrates the viscera and comes out again across the shoulder or mouth. The speed of death varies according to the experience of the executioner. The more the tip of the stick is pointed, the more greased it is, the faster it passes through the body, and the sooner death occurs. The medieval executioners had creative ways and methods to increase agony. Perhaps they used a thick stick and made its head flat, so as to not penetrate the body q
Read more

My Shocking Experience With Patient In A Hospital

Image
My Shocking Experience With Patient In A Hospital I once cared for a middle-aged patient who presented to emergency with a dildo-related very embarrassing situation. He purchased the toy for one of his sexcapades. Curiosity hit. And he shoved the damn thing in his pooper, high-high up! “Me first” attitude didn’t do him much good. Funny feelings subsided fairly quickly and the horror struck when he couldn’t get it out. His drainage was jammed, the toy was slipping further up and after about 24 hours of wishfully waiting for it to naturally pass, it hurt bad enough to seek medical help. The official party line, that he vehemently iterated, was I just fell onto it, how else do you think it got up there! Needless to say, emergency surgery was necessary and he landed in the ICU with sepsis related post-op complications. It took him loooong before being able to use the toilet normally! ** NOT the patient’s X-ray, but it looked similar** Though I have seen some really absurd stuff in the ER,
Read more

The teenage girls who flirted with Nazis before luring them into woods and shooting them

Image
The teenage girls who flirted with Nazis before luring them into woods and shooting them Red lipstick and shiny eye shadow were unlikely but important weapons deployed by members of the Dutch resistance when taking on Nazi soldiers. Freddie and Truus Oversteegen, two sisters, and their best friend Hannie Schaft would put on their best clothes and fastidiously apply their make-up before going into bars to seek out unsuspecting targets. The young girls, who were active in the Dutch resistance during the Second World War, would then strike up conversations with Nazi soldiers or Dutch collaborators. They would giggle and bat their eyelashes as they cajoled them into disclosing classified information. Then they would lure them into the woods on the pretext of a “romantic walk” – and shoot them dead. Freddie and Truus survived the war but Hannie, who is far more famous than the Oversteegen sisters, was caught and executed by the Nazis just three weeks before the war came to an end. The
Read more

Documents reveal horrors mistreated New Zealand war prisoners endured

Image
This is horrific, removing of breast and other documentation reveal horrors mistreated New Zealand war prisoners endured Documents that have been declassified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have revealed the sordid actions of enemy soldiers committing war crimes during World War II. Among the letters detailing poor treatment is an account from one Norma Smallfield, who said she was living with her husband in British North Borneo in May 1942 when they were captured and detained. "With 48 other women and children I was interned in the convent at Jesselton," Smallfield said. "We were stationed at the convent for about four months. We were [then] transferred to Kuching Internment camp in Sarawak. We travelled to Kuching for five days by ship. "Conditions on the ship were very crowded, no sleeping accommodation was provided other than the deck, half of which was used by the Japanese soldiers." Smallfield, who was 48 when she was captured by the J
Read more

Alternative Service: Conscientious Objectors and Civilian Public Service in World War II

Image
Alternative Service: Conscientious Objectors and Civilian Public Service in World War II During World War II, a new program gave young men who refused to wear a uniform other ways to serve their country. “ smokejumpers ,” these men were trained to parachute into remote areas to fight fires. Smokejumping had proved to be a practical, effective tool against forest fires in locations without road access as early as 1935. By 1943, the program was growing, but suffered from manpower shortages due to the demands of the war. Conscientious objectors began to inquire about joining the program, and 70 were trained that year to become smokejumpers. By the next year more than 100 COs were part of smokejumping teams in the west. Unlike most COs in the Civilian Public Service who worked unpaid, smokejumpers earned a meager five-dollar a month salary. In the off season, they performed forest maintenance, similar work to other COs. Despite their willingness to perform vital, and at times, life-enda
Read more

The grim history of capital punishment in Kent

Image
The grim history of capital punishment in Kent On April 8, 1930, a piece of paper was pinned to a door outside Maidstone prison - a seemingly innocuous act, but a momentous one in that it put a full stop to centuries of legally sanctioned death on behalf of the state in Kent. The piece of paper announced that Sidney Harry Fox had been hanged - and gave Fox the dubious honour of being the last man to swing for his crimes in the county. Almost exactly a year pr eviously he'd ok convinced his 63-year-old mother Rosaline to make a will in his favour, then insured her life before strangling her on the date the policy expired – October 23, 1929 – in a hotel room in Margate. Fox might have got away with the killing - a doctor having initially deduced that Rosaline died from suffocation and shock caused by a fire in her hotel room. But suspicions over the death led to her body being exhumed. A forensic examination ruled she had been strangled to death. And so Fox's fate was seal
Read more