Memories of dead haunt veteran

The State

COLUMBIA --- Fifty-two bodies -- German or American, Fritz Gray couldn't tell -- lay frozen in a minefield.

They were there for five weeks in the winter of 1944 as Mr. Gray shivered in a foxhole in the shattered Hertgen Forest, on the German- Belgian border, during the Battle of the Bulge. The sight has haunted him for 64 years.

"I see those dead people in front of my gun every day," said Mr. Gray, 83. "They were lined up like football players in the snow."

Mr. Gray, a teenage draftee from Gadsden, S.C., was ill-prepared for the sight and has undergone therapy ever since. Even now, he attends monthly meetings for World War II veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

He has never spoken publicly about his experiences.

"Until the past few years, he didn't talk about it at all," said his wife of 60 years, Pearl. Mr. Gray said the images are getting worse and, perhaps, a public airing will help exorcise them.

He is one of 100 veterans who will be on the inaugural Honor Flight to the nation's capital Nov. 15 to visit the National World War II Memorial.

Frederick D. "Fritz" Gray, the son of a Gadsden farm family, was a reluctant warrior. He was drafted in March 1943, when the U.S. lowered the draft age to 18 from 21.

"They said, 'I want you!' " Mr. Gray said in his home close to the Dorn Veterans Hospital, where he worked for 38 years.

He didn't particularly want to go to war. In fact, he had never spent the night away from his parents until he was inducted in March 1943 at Fort Jackson.

In April 1944, Mr. Gray sailed to England on the Queen Elizabeth, a luxury liner that had been converted into a troopship. At D-Day plus 44 -- July 20 -- he crossed the English Channel and landed on Omaha Beach in France. His unit spent the next two weeks in the hedgerows.

That action marked the beginning of 10 months of continuous fighting. At one time or another, the battalion supported every Allied army on the Western Front.

In December 1944, Mr. Gray found himself manning a captured German artillery piece in the cauldron of the Ardennes.

"Our shelling. The German shelling. It looked worse than when (Hurricane) Hugo hit," he said.

The 18 guns -- captured 105 mm artillery pieces -- had been pre-positioned by someone. Mr. Gray and his buddy Oscar "Bennie" Groves would just load the German shells and pull the lanyard, praying the ammunition hadn't been sabotaged. One member of their unit had been killed when a sabotaged shell exploded.

Mr. Gray said he didn't know what killed the men in the minefield.

For weeks, the two men would sleep huddled together for warmth in the snow-covered foxhole, within 50 feet of the 52 bodies.

"It was so cold," Mr. Gray said. "At least, there was no odor."

Finally, a unit entered the field to remove the dead. But one man stepped on a mine and was severely injured as Mr. Gray watched.

When the war ended May 7, 1945, "we mixed all the (liquor) we had together and had a party," he said. "And when I got to New York, I kissed the ground."