Hometown: Gibbsville, WI
Branch: U.S. Army 
Unit: 179th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division
Military Honors: Purple Heart
Date of Sacrifice: September 11, 1943 - KIA in south-central Italy
Age: 24
Conflict: World War II, 1939-1945

The Preder family lived in Gibbsville, Wisconsin—a small unincorporated community located roughly halfway between Milwaukee and Green Bay, along the Onion River. Their home was across the street from Gibbsville’s general store, which served the surrounding community of Dutch immigrant dairy farmers. The family faithfully attended the Dutch Reformed Church within easy walking distance of their home.

Garret and Jennie (Dekker) Preder raised ten children: Gordon, Lloyd, Gerald, Warren, Betty Jane, twins Margaret and Marjorie, another set of twins Rolland (known as “Jack”) and Rollen, and Frederick. They also raised Gordon’s daughter, Jane, as their own child.

With many mouths to feed and many hands to do the work, the family supported itself with a scrap metal business—traveling to local auctions, separating the different metals and selling to scrap processors in the surrounding area.

As war was raging in Europe and the world waited for a reluctant United States to get directly involved, Gerald joined the United States Army on July 10, 1941, five months before the surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7.

After reporting to the Recruit Reception Center at Fort Sheridan in Illinois, Gerald Preder was assigned to the medical corps and sent to Fort Lee, Virginia for basic training. From there, he was moved to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Camp Pickett, Virginia, for additional training.

The attack at Pearl Harbor launched the U.S. fully into World War II. Congress passed a declaration of war against Imperial Japan, and three days later Nazi Germany and Italy—allied with Japan—declared war on the United States.

PFC Gerald Preder was assigned to the Army’s 179th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division and sent across the Atlantic in June of 1943. According to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Preder’s 179th “was sent to North Africa, from where it invaded Sicily the following month. In September 1943 it invaded Italy where it spent almost a year of bitter fighting in the mountains of central Italy and at the Anzio beachhead.”

During the time that he served in North Africa, Preder wrote home that he’d been transferred from the medical corps to the infantry and was seeing action in combat.

Preder’s 179th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division was a component of General Mark W. Clark’s Fifth Army—whose primary mission in September of 1943 was to invade the Italian peninsula. The Allied effort to attack the German Army positions in Italy would include the first American force to invade mainland Europe.

PFC Gerald H. Preder, age 24, was killed in action during the early days of the Italian Campaign.

There is some discrepancy about the exact date of his death. An Army telegram to the Preder family lists the date of Gerald’s death as September 13, 1943. At his final resting place among the Roman pines in Nettuno, Italy’s Sicily-Rome American Cemetery (Plot J, Row 5, Grave 53), Preder’s headstone shows the date of his death as September 11, 1943.

Five of the Preder boys would serve in World War II (1939-1945), and one during the Korean War (1950-1953). The family would suffer the losses of both Gerald and Jack in the struggle to free Europe from Nazi occupation.

Sources
Details and card photo submitted by Mrs. Jane (Preder) Ten Haken—PFC Preder’s niece
American Battlefield Monuments Commission: Gerald H. Preder
The Sheboygan Press, Nov. 12, 1943: County Man Added To List of Casualties
The Sheboygan Press, May 13, 1942: Oostburg News Events
National Archives, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home: 179th INFANTRY REGIMENT, 1943-1945
Warren P. Munsell: The story of a regiment, a history of the 179th Regimental Combat
The National WWII Museum: The Allied Campaign in Italy, 1943-45: A Timeline, Part One
Department of Defense, U.S. Army North: Baptism by Fire
Burial Site: Find a Grave