Henry H. Pennock

Former paratrooper still standing tall, with stories to tell.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, Pennington Post Editor

A lot of war veterans might tell you they “leapt” into battle, or just kind of “fell into” their military careers, but such statements take on literal meanings when coming from Henry Pennock, a Levittown-based WWII hero who experienced first-hand many tumultuous events that shaped our nation’s military history. Pennock became a paratrooper, a skydiving soldier who sails into combat zones from above. He has the scars and long-term effects to prove just how much action he saw, and though he’s not doing very much leaping these days, Pennock values all that he is and all that he’s come from.

“I enlisted in the paratroopers while I was in boot camp,” Pennock says. “The jump pay earned me an extra $50 a month, and all the girls liked the paratroopers, so it was a good gig.”

Pennock had originally wanted to join the Air Force. Born in Altoona and raised with sisters Betty and Suzanne by parents Henry Sr. and Lillian, Pennock, now 85, attended Altoona High School, where seniors were graduating early each month after January 1943 to meet the military’s high demand for soldiers. Pennock’s flawed eyesight rendered him ineligible for the Air Force, so he enlisted with the Army that March. His boot camp was based at Alabama’s Fort McClellan.

His paratrooper enlistment led him to Fort Benning in Georgia, where he commenced six weeks of jump school training. The rigorous, daredevil program tested soldiers’ psyches as much as their athleticism, consisting of tethered practice leaps off the top of telephone poles and base-jump drills off of 350-foot towers.

“My class started out with 8,000 guys,” Pennock says, “and only about 2,000 got their boots. Some of these guys were really physically fit, but they just couldn’t handle it mentally. If you could imagine jumping off the side of a building, that’s what it was like. The object was to toughen you up for the future.”

And that future came soon enough. Pennock – who says the humiliation that befell those who quit inspired him to keep focused and complete training – logged four true “day jumps” and one “night jump” before diving into a week of combat training, then boarded a French luxury-liner-turned-troop-carrier that would take him to Liverpool, England.

There, Pennock was assigned to the 101st Division, the military’s premiere paratrooper outfit that’s since been instrumental in battles in Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. From Liverpool, Pennock and his company moved on to Bastogne, Belgium, where, he says, they weren’t present for two days before they were surrounded by seven German Panzer divisions. The Siege of Bastone had begun. In their attempt to split the allied forces and enter Brussells, German troops bombed Bastogne, leaving nothing, Pennock says, but the basements of houses. The town was a war zone, and the soldiers, who’d moved to the outskirts to escape the bombing, re-converged to battle the ground troops.

Fighting amidst the rubble, and in the bitter cold, Pennock struggled on in Bastogne for 30 days before he and his fellow surviving division members were liberated by Gen. George Patton and his canon-wielding cavalry. This was the battle that would leave Pennock with serious shrapnel wounds and near-frostbitten feet. It was where he’d get by on oatmeal and turkey dinners generously dropped in canisters from airplanes overhead. It was where, on Christmas Eve, Americans and Germans would temporarily drop their weapons and join each other in the singing of carols, the very scene that’s etched itself into history books and been shared with multiple generations.

“When you think about George Washington, and how his men suffered on Christmas Eve, it was a lot like that,” Pennock says.

After recuperating in a Belgian hospital, Pennock traveled to Berchtesgaden, Germany – specifically its Kehlstein peak – where American soldiers had taken control of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest hideaway. It was 1945. Pennock offers anecdotes about vast German estates where hundreds of Americans guarded thousands of possessions collected by the Nazis, and swanky restaurants that, having once served the Fuhrer himself, were now catering to U.S. troops.

Pennock began training as one of the paratroopers who would enter Japan, but the subsequent dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima nixed the mission. It was just about time for Pennock to return to the States, where he’d land in January 1946 after 25 days of travel. He’d have one last big jump with the 17th Airborne Division, then spend a brief time studying topography at Penn State Altoona. In Kenosha, Wis., he worked with Simmons mattress company and met his first wife, Winnie. They had two daughters, Sonya and Cynthia.

Returning to Altoona, he worked for the Altoona News until, around 1952, he got a job with Seaboard Finance Company – a job that would lead to a 35-year career. Pennock retired in 1985 as a managing supervisor, giving him more time to do as he pleased while based at his home in Levittown. It’s where he still lives today, with his second wife, Elaine, whom he met in 1960 and with whom he’ll soon be celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary. Pennock and Elaine have two children, Diane and Henry, and Pennock has a total of 13 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

During his time as a paratrooper, Pennock endured an injury whose effects haven’t been fully apparent until recently. His left ankle, he says, has become devoid of cartilage, making walking on uneven terrain rather difficult. But he says he’s not ready for any motorized scooters yet, nor does he have any trouble keeping balance. He stands tall, in more ways than one.

“I’ve taken a lot of pride and discipline away from my military service,” he says. “You realize you’re a small cog in a big wheel, but it’s all those small cogs that keep our country free.”

Norman Schnitzer

Korean War-era veteran now leads Jewish war vets.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

Korean War-era veteran Norman Schnitzer, a national committee member for the Jewish War Veterans of the United States and a former state commander, has fought many battles on behalf of the veteran, but none on the field of combat.

He was among the lucky ones who served during the “Forgotten War,” but was never called to duty in the combat zone.

“But I believe I helped in my own way,” said the Bensalem Township resident, who served stateside for 10 years in the U.S. Air Force Dental Service from 1951 to 1961.

Schnitzer grew up in South Philadelphia during World War II and was the son of a World War I veteran. His father, Max, served as a combat engineer, responsible for building bridges and trenches in France.

“He was also very lucky,” said Schnitzer. “He caught the flu and his CO told him to go see the doctor. But he said, ‘We’re working on this bridge.’ The CO says to him, ‘That’s an order. I want you to go to the doctor.’ While at the doctor, the bridge was hit and his crew was killed.”

After the war, his father worked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, laying down the teak decks on some of the country’s most known battleships, including the New Jersey, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

“Whenever I visit the New Jersey, I kneel down and touch the deck,” said Schnitzer.

Schnitzer, who was 13 when World War II broke out, graduated from South Philadelphia High School. Following graduation, he took a job as a dental technician. He met his future wife, Harriet, in 1948, and the two were married in 1950.

With the Korean conflict raging between the Republic of Korea, supported by the United Nations, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, supported by China, Schnitzer made the decision to enlist in the U.S. Air Force in 1951.

“It was either that or get drafted,” he said. “I was able to go wherever I wanted to be and I was able to continue my career in the Air Force.”

Schnitzer took full advantage of the opportunity, attending several schools and receiving additional dental training. He served with the Air Force in Texas, Alaska, Ohio and at the MaGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey before returning to civilian life.

“Our job was to make sure our guys were in top shape,” said Schnitzer, who was assigned to the dental laboratory. “I made dentures and partials. I even made some simple orthodontic appliances.”

In one case, while serving in Alaska, he was responsible for rebuilding the dentures of a patient who was in a motor vehicle accident and had fractured his upper and lower jaws.

“They handed me a handful of pieces,” he said. “It took me five hours to put it together.” For his work, he received a promotion.

The year and a half he spent in Alaska were the most memorable. While stationed at an Air Force hospital near the capital city of Anchorage, an early morning fire broke out at the facility.

“We set our plan in motion and we evacuated over 250 patients. We didn’t lose one patient. We lost a nurse from smoke inhalation,” said Schnitzer. “We all got a letter of commendation from the Surgeon General of the Air Force,” he said.

Afterwards, the men had the job of cleaning up the damage, which was confined to the officer’s club and the nurse’s quarters. “I was swinging a mop. I was a sergeant, but I was swinging a mop just like everyone else. Someone walked by and I splashed water all over his shoes. I looked up and I saw three stars. It was the Surgeon General of the Air Force. And he said to me, ‘Just carry on sergeant.’ I apologized, but he said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”

A volcano also erupted while he was stationed there. “We were covered with six inches of dust and it was hard to get rid of,” he said.

Schnitzer took full advantage of his time in the Air Force, using it to perfect his dental technician skills.

“It wasn’t like World War II where dentistry was sloppy,” he said. “We did some pretty fine work and I was proud of that.”

Following his discharge, Schnitzer worked as a dental technician in the Philadelphia area, making removable full and partial dentures for dentists. Health conditions sidelined his work two years ago and he made the decision to retire.

Today, when he’s not spending time with his 10 grandchildren and a grandchild-in-law, he’s working to make life better for the Jewish War Veterans, both locally and across the nation.
For all the combat he missed during the Korean War, he’s made up for it by waging a battle of a different type in the halls of political power.

Schnitzer has become a strong advocate and lobbyist for the local veteran, serving numerous times as commander of the Fegelson-Young Post 697 of the Jewish War Veterans, as state commander of the JWV and currently as a national executive committee member, which he said is kind of like being in Congress. He also serves on the board of directors and is a life member of the National Museum of American Jewish Military History in Washington, D.C.

“Part of our function as Jewish War Veterans, or any veterans organization, is to help veterans,” said Schnitzer, when asked why he is so passionate about his work on behalf of veterans.

“It’s a constant battle,” said Schnitzer, of his efforts on behalf of the veteran. “When it comes time for the V.A. budget, we have to beg. We don’t have mandated funds. In other words, we’re part of the budget that the V.A. gets every year. And we have to beg.”

The biggest need right now, he said, is the physical and mental care and placement of the men and women returning from combat.

His other passion is the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, which he said is unlike other museums of its kind.

“We don’t exhibit weapons. We tell stories about people,” he said. “Did you know there were 15 Jewish veterans who were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor? Two are still alive,” he said. “That’s what we tell about in the museum.”

Leonard Feinberg, Part 2

POW recalls his experience during World War II (PART TWO OF TWO)

By Rebecca Schnitzer, Correspondent


When the Battle of the Bulge occurred, Leonard Feinberg found himself in Marvie, a little town outside of Bastogne, Germany.

“We replaced the guys in the 103rd Airborne, who were holding that town,” Feinberg said.

As Feinberg’s regiment started going forward, they came under fire from behind.

“All I know is, they opened up on us and a couple of the guys got hit and there we were. How did we bypass them?” Feinberg still wonders. “So then we retreated forward and it was all woods after that and we just wandered around – this whole regiment.”

Feinberg ended up being the only medic left with his regiment.

The regiment began marching back in a long column with Feinberg in the middle for easy access to the wounded. As they started marching, a machine gun opened up and took down several men in the front of the column. Feinberg and some others jumped into a ditch to escape the bullets.

Feinberg looked around and saw a hill behind them with bushes at the top.

“The ground was all open behind us. I set the Olympic record for the uphill dash wearing galoshes in the snow!” Feinberg laughed.

He got to the top, waiting to see if anyone was coming and wondered where he could go. He started walking along the line of bushes and noticed two men walking up. He dove into the bushes and waited to hear what language the two men were speaking – were they American or German?

“I’m lying there in the bushes, in the snow and a mortar comes in right near me. That’s when I got hit in the thigh and that’s when I got the other hole in my helmet,” he said.

Feinberg saw an open space next to him with more woods. Thinking he could run out-of-sight from the Germans, he got up and started running.

“I get halfway across the open space and a guy yells out in German,” Feinberg remembered. “So I said to him, in my best German, ‘I have my hands up!’ and he opens up with his gun, so I yelled again. Finally, I remembered the German word for medic and yelled ‘I’m a medic!’ and he said, ‘Come here.’”

He joined a few other Americans who were captured.

“You know that expression that your whole insides fell down? That’s the only way I could describe it.”

After working briefly at a German hospital, Feinberg was moved to several different places including a POW camp in Gerolstein. They kept the POWs in an old factory and took the prisoners out on work duty. When word got around that Germans were ready to move some people out, Feinberg was itching to go, but another prisoner was not. They switched names and both went their separate ways.

“I wanted to try to get back to a place where the Red Cross would know I was there so my family could know what happened.”

After Gerolstein, they ended up in Flomersheim where they kept about 100 POWs in an old beer hall. A typical meal there was a piece of bread. Feinberg had gotten sick with an infected throat and as a medic, had his thermometer with him.

“I think it had something to do with my religious background, because they always came to me first, trying to get me to go to work,” he said.

After showing them several times that he had a fever, they took Feinberg’s thermometer away and made him go to work.

“It was the best thing they could have done, but they didn’t realize it,” Feinberg laughed.
“It was a night job where we were unloading boxcars in this little town nearby,” Feinberg explained. “And I discovered as we were taking these cardboard boxes out of the boxcars, that there was food in them.

“We were hungry and here I see cans of tuna, biscuits and I discovered that the boxes didn’t have a lot of tape and I could stick my hand in, take some out, stick them in my pockets and I thought, ‘this is great!’”

Feinberg shared his newfound treasure with the other POWs and pretty soon, people were lining up for work duty, eager to smuggle food back for each other.

They marched the POWs 60 kilometers, from Flomersheim, through Bonn and all the way to Cologne. Afterwards, they moved the POWs in boxcars.

Feinberg ended up in a real prison camp in Lindberg.

“There were hundreds of guys there. But finally, I got registered with the Red Cross.”

Representatives of the Red Cross from Switzerland were at the prison camp handing out packages to the prisoners containing toilet paper and other toiletries.

“The one thing was, they refused to register anyone as Jewish. Evidently, sometime before Christmas, which was quite awhile beforehand, there had been a bombing nearby and there were some unexploded bombs. The Germans came in and went through the list and picked out all the Jewish guys and made them a bomb disposal squad. After that, the Red Cross refused to register anyone as Jewish.”

As quickly as they were moved into the prison camp, they were moved out.

Feinberg recalled a day when American planes decided to bomb the railroad yard. They were locked in the boxcars, people panicking, praying they would not get hit.

“Fortunately, we were not one of the things that got hit! They hit just about everything but us.”
The prison guards took the POWs out and marched them to a railroad station. They put them back in boxcars and they rode to a wooded area in the middle of nowhere.

Someone came over and opened the boxcar that Feinberg was in and they came flying out of the boxcar as the planes began to bomb the tracks again. Feinberg and another prisoner ran out into a big field with their Red Cross packages.

“We ran out into the middle of the field and took the toilet paper. I made a big ‘P’ and he made a ‘W’ and we stood there and waved as the planes came in.”

Some other prisoners lined up in the field and also made a ‘PW’ with their bodies.

“There was a little newspaper article and the article said ‘Human PW saves train.’ But they didn’t mention my toilet paper!” Feinberg laughed.

At this point, the prison guards marched them to Braunfels, Germany.

“There was a big field that was surrounded by barbed wire and that’s where we were,” Feinberg explained.

Feinberg noticed that across the street was some houses and saw an alley between the houses. He told a couple other guys about it and they devised a plan.

They approached a guard and Feinberg told him they weren’t feeling well and wanted to see the town’s doctor.

Feinberg and a couple other men were allowed to go towards town. When they got there, the other men went into town while Feinberg ran down the alley.

“I didn’t want to go into the town. I stayed by myself and I was cold and miserable.”

There was a big hill next to the town and a big cave in the hill. Feinberg went into the cave but he wasn’t alone for long.

“All of a sudden, in come all these civilians. It turns out it was their air raid shelter!”

Feinberg noticed a young girl and her family in the cave with him. Knowing what he was, the girl would come over to him when nobody was looking and point out the people to stay away from.
The little girl, Gretel, told him that her father had been in a concentration camp for “being against the Nazis.” Feinberg knew he had made a friend. He told her he wanted to go to her house.

“It was only a matter of days and the town was taken by the Americans,” he said.

Feinberg had been a POW for three months.

Following his discharge from the army, Feinberg returned to Rutgers and completed his Bachelor of Science degree in June 1947. He then earned a Masters of Science in biochemistry at George Washington University and a Ph. D. in biochemistry at Penn State University. After graduation he spent four years in industrial research and 13 years in cardiology research. He worked at Philadelphia General Hospital and then became the vice president and director of a private clinical laboratory.

Feinberg tells his story with a smile and a quirky sense of humor. He says he wants to write a book about his experience.

“I was just at the right age where I was looking for adventure. This was the ultimate adventure.”

Leonard Feinberg, Part 1

Jewish War veteran shares story as WWII POW (PART ONE OF TWO)

By Rebecca Schnitzer, Correspondent


Leonard Feinberg Ph.D., a retired biochemist living in the Forsythia Gate section of Levittown, remembers his first thought when WWII started.

“I wanted to get into something. That’s the only way I can describe it. I wanted to go fight for my country.”

Feinberg, 87, is a member of Jewish War Veterans Post 697 and likes to speak about the time he spent overseas.

He was born in Longbranch, N.J. and graduated from Jefferson High School in Elizabeth, N.J. in 1941. He started college at Rutgers University in Sept. 1941.

“You can imagine trying to tell your parents, ‘Can I go enlist in the Army?’” Feinburg laughed, adding that his parents’ first reaction was, “No way!”

“But they did come around not too long after Pearl Harbor.”

Shortly after the start of his sophomore year at Rutgers, he enlisted in the Enlisted Reserve and went into the Army. When it was time to choose what basic training he went to, Feinberg told his friends, who also enlisted, that he wanted to go into the tanks.

“They said, ‘Nah, we’re all pre-meds. Let’s go into medical.’ So that’s how I ended up as a medic.”

Feinberg had 17 weeks of basic training followed by three months of surgical tech school, after which he was sent to a replacement depot and then to England to join the 134th Infantry Regiment in the 1st Battalion, which was made up of men from the Nebraska National Guard.

“We got to Normandy – not on D-Day,” Feinberg said. “Where we landed was a short walk from Omaha Beach.”

“We came in a couple weeks after D-Day. As the low man on the totem pole, with all my training, I became a litter-bearer. What we littler-bearers did was go right up to the front line, where anybody was wounded and carry them back to the aid station,” Feinberg remembered. “That was fun and games.”

Feinberg said that the Germans would usually avoid shooting medics. “However, that didn’t always fly.

“Our first objective was to liberate the town of Saint-Lô. That was an important town for us to take, because for them (the Germans), it was sort of a message center,” Feinberg recalled.
“In Normandy they had these hedgerows and these things were impenetrable. That’s what Normandy is famous for – their hedgerows. So I devised a way that we could carry a guy on a litter, cross over a hedgerow and hardly miss a beat!”

“I was such a good litter-bearer; I got the first promotion, to corporal!” Feinberg smiled. “And then I became an Aidman – a company aid medic.”

Feinberg’s battalion went on to liberate towns and cities in France all the way to the German border.

“It was so exciting and so great to liberate these cities and these people were so thankful,” he recalled. “That part – that was the fun part of the war.”

After they had taken a big city in France, they crossed over the German border.

“We had taken this little town and they had some hills, all of the sudden. And there was this big hill and the Germans were holding the hill.”

Feinberg’s commanding officer insisted that they take the hill, but it was late in the afternoon. “The officers were on their radios, telling him it was too late. We can’t go and take the hill. But nope, he insisted.”

Feinberg’s battalion came up the side of the hill and took control of part of it. They started having skirmishes with the Germans, who still ‘owned’ the other half of the hill.

“It was just mass confusion. It was dark by the time it got up there. And we didn’t have time to dig-in and get set.”

Feinberg noticed that his company commander was looking for Art, the company runner. The runner would take messages to headquarters when there was no other way to communicate. In the dark, Feinberg and his company commander came down the hill and saw Art. Just as they reached him, a mortar shell hit right behind the company commander, killing him.


“He took the whole blast of it, he was right behind me. I got hit in the back and head.”

Feinberg still has his helmet which boasts two holes made from mortar shells.

That’s when things started to get interesting for Feinberg.

(Continued Next Week)