A Company of Heroes (36 page)

Unfortunately, there was a fire at their mother’s house in 1948 and so much of their personal effects were destroyed, including most of Skip’s letters. But there’s one we’ve kept, written from Skip to his sister. It was postmarked on November 30, 1944, and sent from Mourmelon, France. The men were taking a brief respite there after fighting in Normandy and Holland. The men didn’t know it yet, but they were just about to be sent to Bastogne, Skip’s last battle. The letter reads, in part:

Tony Garcia was a new replacement in Skip’s mortar squad, and under Skip’s command. Tony told me that he went off base one weekend while in England to have a little fun, and Skip found out about it. Skip could have turned him in and gotten him tossed out of Easy Company, but instead, he just chewed him out and ended it there. Tony always thanked Skip for his flexibility, and never put Skip on the spot again.

Don Malarkey told me an incident that is in neither the book nor the movie. After the 120-mile march that Easy Company made from Toccoa to Atlanta, Malarkey’s legs were so bad he had to crawl, and began to head to the mess tent on all fours. When Skip saw Don he grabbed both mess kits and said, “No friend of mine crawls anywhere.” Skip went and filled both with food and came back to the tent to eat with him.

We have a clipping from the
Buffalo Evening News
that names Skip as part of a small force of 101st Airborne paratroopers who turned the tables on a larger group of German paratroopers. North of Nijmegena, four American paratroopers returned from patrol along the banks of the Neder Rhine and reported a large group of Germans at an important crossroads a short distance away. Dick Winters led a reconnaissance squad to within 250 yards of the German position, wiped out seven Germans trying to set up a gun emplacement, captured another worming his way through a drainage pipe, then charged the rest with their bayonets. Skip was awarded a Bronze Star for this battle.

That was the most detail we knew of Skip’s action in combat.

Skip’s death is shown in both the book and the movie. It’s so sad. This is the part that we didn’t know about until years later. Skip and Alex Penkala were in their foxhole during heavy shelling outside Foy on January 9, 1944. A shell hit their foxhole directly, killing them instantly. George Luz Sr. was out in the open when the shelling started, and Skip and Alex had yelled for him to jump into theirs. Fortunately, George had jumped in another hole. When the shelling finished, George ran to check on Skip and Alex. He found only some pieces of their bodies and part of a sleeping bag.
⁴¹

We have a copy of the Western Union telegram that arrived from Washington, DC, on January 26, 1945. It reads simply:

A letter dated January 12, 1945, which my mother wrote to Skip, was returned to sender, marked simply, “Deceased, Co E 506, Lt. Ronald Speirs.” We still have that letter. Unknowingly, Mom had written cheerily to her brother, “Hi, how are you? I haven’t heard from you in a couple weeks. I hope everything is okay with you . . . I hope you will be able to come home soon.”

Colonel Robert Sink wrote to Skip’s mother March 23, 1945. The letter was kindly worded, and mentioned Skip had been buried in a United States military cemetery in Belgium, but didn’t offer any details surrounding his death. I think Colonel Sink’s letter explains why our family was confused about the details of Skip’s death for so many years. Probably, Skip’s friends thought we had been informed. But for fifty-five years all we had was the telegram and Colonel Sink’s letter.

When Skip died, his sister refused to celebrate holidays for some time. The only thing she ever mentioned about the experience was that when she saw the men in uniform walking up to the house with a telegram, there was no doubt in her mind her brother was gone. Skip’s obituaries ran in the papers. After that, virtually nothing more was said. People simply found it too hard to talk about Skip.

All that changed in 1999 when our city’s Chamber of Commerce phoned and said a man was trying to locate the relatives of Warren Muck. It turned out it was Richard Speight Jr., who was scheduled to portray Skip in the miniseries. We had never heard of the book
Band of Brothers
, and didn’t know HBO was turning it into a movie. Richard had gone to great lengths to locate us. My mom had married in 1945 and had a different last name. Skip’s folks had both passed away. So finding our family was not an easy task.

Richard was in boot camp in England for the series, and he and I started what became a long, amazing e-mail correspondence. Richard directed us to the book at first, which filled in details about Skip’s death. Richard called my mom, letters flew back and forth across the Atlantic, and we developed an incredibly close relationship with him. Richard was able to get the story about Skip swimming the Niagara put into the script. My sister and I finally met him in Paris at the premiere. My folks met Richard at the Philly premiere. We’ve remained close to this day.

While
Band of Brothers
was in production, I wrote to our congressman John LaFalce to inquire about getting Skip’s Purple Heart replaced. My grandmother had put it away for safekeeping and, when she passed away, it was never found. Congressman LaFalce responded with not only replacing Skip’s Purple Heart, but also providing seven other medals Skip had received including Bronze Stars, Distinguished Unit Citations, and more. The congressman came to my mother’s house, along with media representatives, and presented the medals to her. It was really a thrill.

Faye Tanner, Skip’s sweetheart during the war, married about five years after the war ended. When the story about my mom receiving Skip’s medals aired on the local TV stations, she saw it. She was just up one morning and had the news on with the sound turned down, just puttering around the house, when she looked up and saw Skip’s face on the television screen, after all those years. She was so stunned. She came over to see Mom later that week and brought over some of Skip’s things that he had sent her from the war, his jump wings, and some photos. My Mom and this lovely lady got together again later that week to talk about the man they both loved very much. We stayed in contact with her from then on. She and Don Malarkey had corresponded after Bastogne, both devastated by Skip’s death. But, as they lived on opposite coasts, they had never met. She bravely decided to join me on a trip to Fort Campbell. Skip’s best friend and Skip’s fiancée met for the first time. Introducing them to each other was a moment I’ll never forget.

About two years ago I received an e-mail from a soldier who was serving with his family in Germany. They have a Boy Scout troop on base, and every year they visit different American military cemeteries to do cleaning work on the crosses. He wrote me to say that his son specifically asked to go find my uncle’s cross to clean it. He sent me a photo of his son cleaning Skip’s cross. I mailed the Boy Scout troop a flag signed by Bill Guarnere as a thank you gift. Those types of things just keep happening year after year.

Skip was a remarkable man and I’m so proud to call him my uncle. I asked Richard Speight how people can best remember Skip Muck. Here is his eloquent reply:

 

 

 

I’m not old enough to actually remember my uncle. The last time he was home, I was just three years old, and I don’t have any memories of the visit. But I grew up always knowing I had an uncle in WWII, and that his name was Alex Penkala, Jr. For a number of years, I thought he had been killed on D-day. I’m not quite sure why, because other family members knew he had been killed in Bastogne, although they didn’t know the specific circumstances surrounding the death. It wasn’t something people talked about much.

Then one day in the early 1990s, I got a phone call from my mother. My cousin Jimmy Lichatowich was in a bookstore and had picked up a copy of
Band of Brothers.
He called my mom and said, “Guess what, your brother’s in this book!” I went down to the bookstore and picked up four copies, one for me, one for my mom, and two for other relatives. Everyone in our family read the book cover to cover. This was the first time our family found out the specific circumstances surrounding his death. From then on we began to research his life in more earnest. We talked to everyone we could who knew him. When the miniseries aired a few years later, it turned into a big family project. Everybody came over and we all watched each episode together, listing out the different scenes where my uncle was featured. As we were watching, my mom said, “I’m so glad they got somebody who was Polish to play him.”

“Well, Mom,” I said, “Tim Matthews”—the actor who played Alex—“could very well be Polish, but actually he’s British.”

“Well, he sure looks Polish to me,” Mom said.

We went to the Easy Company reunion in Phoenix right after the miniseries. It was very well attended, and we talked to a lot of the vets there. We went to the next three reunions in a row.

When the Emmys came out, Merav Brooks from HBO invited family members to come to the celebration. HBO paid for our hotel rooms and meals. One of my cousins, Tim Penkala, and his wife live in San Diego, and he went to the Emmys to represent the family. They had a ball, and said everybody was so happy to meet them. His dad was Alex’s brother, who served in the Pacific as a tailgunner on a B-24. He got a Purple Heart and came back. In 2005 we went to Europe to dedicate a monument at Bastogne with our uncle’s name on it. Tim went along on that trip, too.

This is what we’ve found out about my uncle’s life.

To start at the beginning, my uncle’s parents, Mary and Alex Penkala Sr., emigrated to the US from Poland in 1907. They knew each other back in Poland, then came to the States—I don’t know if this was separately or together—and were married in 1908 in South Bend, Indiana. I found my grandfather’s name in the Ellis Island information, but have never found my grandmother’s. The problem is, no one is quite sure how she spelled her last name. It is either Mary Kinski or Mary Kencki, or perhaps spelled some other way, so that makes it more difficult. Basically they were just looking for a better life. In Eastern Europe they had been starving. They came to South Bend because there were people there whom they already knew.