Two of our Honor Roll fallen service members were killed one day apart in the Battle of Negros Island, the fourth-largest island in the Visayas Islands, Philippines. A third was killed just days later in a POW camp in Tokyo.

Robert W. Gash graduated from West Division High School in Milwaukee. In 1940 he was living with his mother, Rose, while he worked as a traveling salesman. He enlisted in the U.S. Army on September 25, 1941. He was assigned to the U.S. Army Air Corps 97th Bombardment Group, 341st Squadron, which was part of the effort to liberate the Philippines. PVC Gash was killed on May 22, 1945. His name was among Milwaukee’s Jewish service members honored on a plaque installed at Milwaukee’s Jewish Community Center in 1955.

Eugene Panfil was killed in the assault on Negros Island on May 23, 1945, less than a month after his 20th birthday and one day after Robert Gash’s death. Panfil attended Kosciusko Trade School and was working at Kranz Wire Works on Lincoln Avenue before he enlisted in September 1943.

Assigned to the 40th Infantry Division, nicknamed the Sunshine Division, and attached to the 185th Infantry Regiment, PFC Panfil arrived on Negros Island on March 29 as the assault on the Japanese in the region mounted. “On April 9, all three regiments of the 40th Infantry Division, attached to the 503rd Parachute Infantry, pushed east into the steep mountains of the island. Initially, the Japanese held their positions by using booby-trapped terrain and counter-attacks at night, but despite this and torrential rains, the 40th drove the enemy from the ravines and cliffs. As the 40th Infantry Division drove the enemy deeper into the mountains of Negros, the Japanese forces scattered in the jungle and were largely ineffective by August 1945,” according to the book “Little Minnesota in World War II.” PFC Panfil was most likely killed in the heavy battles as each side tried to lay claim to the hills on the island.