Leslie Pfenning of Forest Dale had completed one year at Brandon High School when he dropped out. He turned 16 halfway through his sophomore year, in January 1938, and left school to go to work. He was working at the Newton & Thompson Manufacturing Company factory in Forest Dale when he joined the army in 1940, as the United States began mobilizing for war.

He enlisted with his friends Elmer LaRock, Harold Reed and James Parker, all of Forest Dale, and Harold Booth of Rutland Town. The Forest Dale group were close in age and had known each other for most, if not all, of their lives. Booth worked with Pfenning and Reed at Newton & Thompson. LaRock and Parker played on the same Forest Dale softball team.

At Fort Devens in Massachusetts, they were all assigned to the 2nd Battalion of the 26th Infantry Regiment. The friends remained close and came home on leave together. LaRock’s parents threw a party for them and some other young Brandon soldiers when they were back in town in June 1941, shortly before they were assigned to Puerto Rico for training.

Pfenning did well in the army. In June 1942, his parents received notice that he had been promoted to corporal while at Fort Benning, Georgia. In September they received a letter from him sent from England, where the 26th was preparing to fight. On Nov. 8, they landed in North Africa. Shortly afterward they were in combat. They fought through the Tunisian Campaign, which ended in May 1943. Somewhere along the way Pfenning was promoted to sergeant.

Next came the invasion of Sicily. The 26th landed there on July 10, 1943, under terrible conditions, and was in heavy combat from the start. They had trouble even getting off the beach. The Germans launched a massive counterattack the next day using tanks. Pfenning wrote to his parents on July 15, stating he was “all right.”

He was fatally wounded the next day. He died four days after that, on July 20, either on board ship, or in North Africa. His parents received the telegram about his death from the War Department on July 21. He was the first young man from the Rutland area to die in the war. He was 21.

Elmer LaRock was wounded, too. He wrote to his parents from a North African hospital on August 10, saying he was recovering from a minor wound. What he did not say was how terrible the combat had been (he would later be awarded a Silver Star for his heroic actions on July 17). He wrote that he thought Pfenning was alive, too: “Of course you know Leslie has been wounded but as far as I know all the other boys from [Forest Dale] came through OK. Tell their parents for me.”

A high mass for the repose of Leslie Pfenning’s soul was held at St. Mary’s in Brandon on Aug. 23. Another requiem mass, held “at the request of Rutland friends and relatives,” was said at Christ the King Church in Rutland on Sept. 1. In October, the P.E. Welch clothing store in Brandon placed his picture in their window between two vases of white carnations. On Dec. 19, his mother received a bouquet of chrysanthemums at a Saint Mary’s mass said for all Brandon and Forest Dale service members.

A year later, just before Christmas 1944, his parents were forwarded a letter written by an army doctor, William Derouville, who was familiar with the Brandon area. Writing to his mother in Albany, Derouville described a visit to an American cemetery in Tunisia:

“We stopped at a little piece of U.S. soil … There were 600 graves in neat, carefully attended rows. The cemetery was really in a well chosen place. It was in a valley of rolling hills, part way up the side of one. There was a little brook below with big willows along it. The hillside was green from recent rain, and there were sheep and cattle grazing behind the burial ground. It made me homesick because it reminded me of the brook that runs along the road on the way from Orwell to Brandon. We went in, and I stopped at the first cross, and looked at the name. It was Leslie E. Pfenning, and he came from Brandon, Vermont.”

In June 1948, his parents had Leslie sent home. The body arrived in Brandon by train on June 3. On Sunday, June 6 there was one more mass held for him, this time a funeral. The Brandon American Legion post helped conduct a military burial at St. Mary’s Cemetery.

Besides his parents, Leslie Pfenning left behind three brothers. His baby brother, Art, missed him until his own death in 2018.

Kevin Thornton is a historian living in Brandon.