134th Infantry Regiment Website 35th Infantry Division Research Center "All Hell Can't Stop Us"

Pfc Leon Irgang

137th Infantry Regiment, HQ Company 3rd Battalion

Leon Irgang was born on March 18, 1924, the son of Sam and Ruth Irgang, in the Jewish section of the town of Wloclawek in Poland. When he was six years old, Irgang, traveled with his mother on what would be the first of three transatlantic voyages. They sailed from the Southampton Port of England in 1930, arriving in New York Harbor to join his father who had emigrated five years earlier. They settled in the Bronx, New York City, leaving behind beloved grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. In less than a decade, the town he left behind would be occupied by the Nazis, and the family he left behind would perish in the Holocaust.

Irgang was naturalized as a US citizen and inducted into the U.S. Army on January 27, 1943. Assigned to Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 137th Infantry Regiment, 35th Infantry Division. After a period of basic training, he took his second transatlantic crossing, arriving back on the shores of England. On July 9, 1944, he landed in France, on Omaha Beach, Normandy.

Thrust into fierce fighting around St. Lo. By August 1, 1944, he was awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge for active ground combat, and a week later, was promoted to Private First Class. Among his fellow infantrymen, he was known as "Lucky Lee" because he always seemed to make it through action on the front lines without a scratch.

His luck was put to the test on September 20, 1944, during the intense operations northeast of Nancy, France. The 35th Infantry Division After Action Report describes the day as one of the "bloodiest struggles the regiment had yet engaged in." Trapped in an open valley bordered by Highway 74, the 3rd Battalion was pinned down by lethal machine-gun and mortar fire from the high ground.

Wounded during the barrage, Irgang was evacuated to a military hospital in England. He spent months recovering with shrapnel still lodged in his left thigh. Bits of the shrapnel remained with him for the rest of his life because doctors considered it too dangerous to remove. He was awarded the Purple Heart on November 17, 1944.

Irgang returned to duty on February 9, 1945. He remained with the 137th through the final push into Germany and the end of hostilities in Europe. His third and final sailing across the Atlantic took place aboard the transport ship SS Cristobal, which carried him into Boston Harbor on August 31, 1945. Along with the Purple Heart, he also received the American Service Medal and the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal.

After returning to his home in the Bronx, Irgang used the G.I. Bill to become the first in his family to attend college, earning an accounting degree from Long Island University. He married a young woman who had written to him during the war, and together they built a life in the Philadelphia suburbs, raising three children in a home bought with a G.I. Bill backed mortgage.

Irgang rarely spoke about what happened during the war but would on occasion recount the experience of the "brotherhood of the foxhole", a bond he described as deeper than blood, formed in the heat of battle.

Irgang died on November 17, 1998, and was buried in the Shalom Memorial Park cemetery in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. Today, his service is kept alive by his children and grandchildren. They mark the anniversary of the day he was wounded, not as a day of tragedy, but as the day "Lucky Lee" survived, ensuring that his story and his role in the liberation of Europe is not forgotten.