Emmett T. Lang, 86, of Westmont carries a lucky charm in his wallet and readily admits to being a superstitious man.

But who can blame him?

He survived a point-blank blast from a German tank during World War II, and decades later he lived to tell about being struck by lightning on a golf course.

In each instance, he was carrying a coin given to him as a good luck charm by a Dutch citizen before Lang faced some of the most fierce combat in the European Theater.

Lang has completed a manuscript reliving his exploits as an Army infantryman during World War II.

He holds two Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart with two clusters.

Lang’s book, “Always a Soldier, But Never G.I.” is filled with accounts from his personal diary, letters and photos he compiled during the war.

Before going into combat, Lang and nine of his buddies went to Holland.

“When the man who owned the house we were staying in found out we were going into combat, he took 10 of his dimes to a local church and had them blessed and gave each of us one,” Lang said. “Our medic wasn’t there at the time the man handed out the dimes, so he didn’t get one.”

Call it fate or bad luck, but the medic was the only one of the group who was killed in combat.

It was typical for soldiers not to befriend new men in their units because of the likelihood that they would be killed.

“If they made it through five or six days of combat, then we could start getting acquainted,” said Lang, who attained the rank of staff sergeant.

A new man, Bill Lambert from Tennessee, was assigned to Lang’s unit and he was the only one to befriend the greenhorn. It was a relationship that came back to haunt Lang.

The Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s final attempt to split Allied troops in Europe, began Dec. 16, 1944, and lasted until Jan. 25, 1945. Ironically, Lang, assigned to the 84th Infantry Division, Company H,

334 Infantry Regiment, was wounded on Jan. 25.

As he and his men advanced toward Biffee, Belgium, to plug a gap in the line, they ran into a German Tiger tank supported by infantry.

“It was me and 16 men with carbines and two machine guns,” Lang said. “All but one, Lambert, made it.”

Being new to the unit, Lambert didn’t understand an order to take cover beyond the rim of a hill and was wounded.

“He was screaming for a medic and we had none,” Lang said. “I finally went out to get him, placed my hands under his arms and began to pull him to safety.”

A shell from the tank hit and killed his buddy and blew Lang 25 feet in the air. He suffered four minor wounds and was sent to an aid station.

That is where Lang became most frightened about being killed.

“I was strapped down and couldn’t move when the Germans began shelling the aid station,” he said. “Everyone else ran for cover and I was laying there helpless.”

The shelling stopped and he was shipped to a hospital in Normandy. Six weeks later, he was back on the front line.

He made the most of his life after returning home from the war.

Lang earned a bachelor’s degree in administrative engineering from Lafayette College in 1949, did graduate work in mining at Penn State and West Virginia universities and received his master’s degree in industrial relations at St. Francis University, Loretto, in 1970.

He was involved for 36 years in the coal mining industry.

He was named president of Tunnelton Mining Company in 1968 and named president of the Central Pennsylvania Coal Producers Association and its affiliated Eastern Bituminous Coal Association in 1973.

He and his late wife, Eloise, had three sons and a daughter.

He has five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Lang was named the first president of Penn’s Woods Council Inc. of the Boy Scouts of America in 1970, where he served for three years. Prior to that he was president of the former Admiral Robert E. Peary Council for three years.

He was involved in Scouting for 73 years.

“Being a Boy Scout probably saved my life and my buddies’ lives in my platoon because being a Scout taught me to take care of myself during cold weather,” Lang said.

He was referring to his experience of surviving the Battle of the Bulge.

“Few people would believe how ill-prepared the American Army was to fight a winter campaign,” he said. “I huddled in a foxhole with only one blanket in temperatures as low as eight below zero and I still suffer the effects of partially frost-bitten feet from that time.”

In the early 1970s, he was among two foursomes playing golf on a course near Greensburg.

“We had just played six holes and I had four pars and two bogeys,” he said.

A thunderstorm came up and it was raining so hard that he tilted his umbrella to protect his group. As soon as Lang raised the umbrella, he got zapped when the lightning came from the ground up.

He was playing with two mine inspectors, one of whom declared him dead and attended to another member of the foursome.

“A doctor playing the foursome in front of us was summoned to help the other golfer who was bleeding from his hand,” Lang said.

The doctor eventually checked Lang and discovered a faint pulse. He was rushed to a nearby hospital but was told they didn’t know how to handle the emergency.

“They said they had people who were struck by lightning, but they never had a person that actually survived one,” Lang said.

Lang, who had an 18 handicap at the time, regained consciousness about two hours later in an ambulance and the doctor asked what he remembered.

“I had a heck of a round going until I got hit by lightning,” he said.

It wasn’t until 11 years ago at Lang’s 75th birthday party that his sister-in-law presented him with a bunch of letters.

They were the correspondence and photographs that Lang sent his parents while he was away at war.

Lang said his book is not a “blood and guts account of combat.”

“I could see this book being made into a funny movie,” he said. “I know it is a strange thing to say, but there are so many incidents of comic relief to break the tension of war.”

It took three years to compile the book.

“I am making sure all my information is copyrighted before seeking an agent or publisher,” he said.