Captain Joseph F. Gray, retired U.S. Army officer, was chosen to be the Grand Marshal of the Memorial Day Parade May 28 in Damariscotta.
The parade will begin at 11 a.m. at The Lincoln County News office in Newcastle and travel along Mills Road to Main Street, Newcastle and Damariscotta.
Gray is a veteran of World War II and the Korean conflict. In 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, he was a freshman at the Pennsylvania State Forestry School. That holiday break, Gray worked as a substitute mail carrier in his hometown. As he delivered letters to families and sweethearts waiting to hear from their enlisted men off at war, the reality came home to the young man.
He returned to school and “joining-up” was reaching fever pitch among the students. Gray enlisted in June 1942. He never even spoke of it with his father, who was a veteran of World War I.
“When I signed up, I was promised that I’d be assigned to the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale in Colorado,” Gray said. “That was the first lesson I learned; never trust a recruiter.”
Gray reported for duty in August at Fort Meade in Maryland. Before he knew it, he was shipped off to Fort Bragg with his division to join a Field Artillery Battalion.
“Our assigned weapon was the .30 caliber Carbine M-1 and the 155 mm Howitzer,” said Gray, “We had the usual training, VD films, map reading, security and hikes, dreaded obstacle courses and lectures I can’t recall.”
Like many GI’s Gray was dating a girl back home. On his first pass home she kept pushing the young soldier to get married “right away.” He refused and soon after returning to Ft Bragg, he got his own “Dear Joe” letter.
“Best decision I ever made,” said Gray, who has been married to his wife Carolyn for 62 years.
The next step was shipping overseas, and Gray, a self-proclaimed “land-lubber,” spent his first days on the ship hanging over the rail, a decided shade of green, with his pals. The dash across the Atlantic to Africa was unescorted, and the troop ship was equipped with hanging bunks and an English crew.
“The largest body of water I had ever seen was looking out over Lake Erie,” Gray said. “Out in the middle of the Atlantic, I quickly realized what a large expanse of water separated our continents.”
What Gray recalls most of all is the harbor when they arrived in Casablanca, Morocco. “There were sunken ships and some still burning,” he said. “There was the smell of burning rubber, fuel oil, and smoke.”
Traveling by rail and convoy, the men pursued General Rommel across North Africa. Later, Gray participated in the invasion of Italy.
At one point, during the Battle for Monte Casino, when the battle appeared static, Gray hiked to the top of a rocky mountain in front of the US gun position. There he discovered several dead German soldiers left behind, with their shoes missing. As he came back down the mountain, he saw his first German jet-powered plane, flying so close that he could see the pilot’s face as he flew by.
“Our unit provided what we called ‘fire missions” and hurled tons of high explosive shells on Monte Cristo,” he said.
Finally, the chance came to get some dry clothes and a shower. About 20 minutes after Gray had left the shower, he was shocked to hear a load of bombs drop on the showers, a friendly fire mistake by the Army, which killed several dozen men with whom Gray served. Then Mount Vesuvius erupted one night, literally bouncing the men into the air, from the shock waves. Gray was no stranger to narrow escapes.
Rome fell, and the troops were sent on to Anzio where Gray spent hours digging his foxhole in the high bank through clay soil. He collected material from the nearby woods to hide his dugout.
Every night, “Anzio Annie,” a German railway gun would lob big shells into the American’s area; shells that weighed 400-500 pounds. One landed close to Gray’s dugout, but did not explode, leaving a crater two feet across. The ones that hit and exploded left holes 20-feet deep and 50-feet across.
Gray’s World War II experiences included at least one more time where he literally “dodged the bullet.” He was traveling with an American convoy near the German line in the Vosages Mountain at the time. Passing through a town with narrow roads. Gray looked up and saw a person in a second story window pointing a rifle directly at him.
He vividly recalled what happened next: “I shouted an alarm, and Phil Briggs, the chap sitting to my right, quickly fired several shots, just as the rifle in the window went off. The shooter fell backwards, but the bullets struck the wooden rail of the truck, inches of my right shoulder. Close, but a miss.”
When there were quiet moments, the forestry student came out in Gray, and he was fascinated to see the Scotch Pine, two feet in diameter and straight, rather than the crooked way the transplanted tree grows here in the States. On leave, he sought out a forester who was happy to show the young American the beech, pine and coppice forests in the forested barrier to Germany, even bringing Gray home to share dinner with his family.
The war continued, and the men moved quickly from supporting one unit to another. In the winter of 1944, in deep snow and bitter cold, Gray was standing guard duty when they encountered two suspicious men. The men knew the password, but when interrogated about baseball teams, they failed. So Gray and his companions captured, searched and escorted the German infiltrators to HQ.
After months of pushing slowly forward, always on alert and in battles along the way, Gray vividly recalls crossing the Rhein and entered Heidelberg. “The air was clear and waves of American bombers filled the skies,” he said, “Germany was being hit hard.”
They traveled through the Black Forest to Ulm on the Danube River, where he was when the news of Victory in Europe E-Day was announced.
With the fighting over, the Americans were quartered in homes, with good German beds, eggs, and all the beer they could drink, and they were near the Kraft cheese plant, which produced Guerre Cheese. They found flour and sugar and the cooking began for the war-weary battalion. Here Gray could hike the hills alone, and think about what was next.
Soldiers earned points that allowed them to go home. Some would go to the Pacific, but Gray, who had enough points, was assigned to a tank destroyer mission. Their job was to patrol searching out weapons.
On patrol, before the rest of the world knew the scope of what had truly happened to the people of Europe, Joe Gray entered Czechoslovakia, and the German concentration camps of Hodomin, and Lety, and later, Mauthausen camp in Austria.
“This was the Holocaust before it became known to the rest of the world,” he said. “There were men, only skin and bones, emaciated with vacant stares in ragged striped clothing. These were the now freed prisoners of Germany, and they seemed to not know where to go or what to do. United States aid was soon at hand for these poor souls.”
In Austria, Joe met a blonde girl named Lucy Anlaff, with whom he spent days walking the hills then returning her to the hall where she was being detained with the other women. Many years later, Gray learned that she had married and was farming in Virginia.
“The other GI’s chased women and drank beer,” Gray said. “I took advantage of the surrounding hills and hiked them daily, alone. I was astounded by the quiet after the noise of war. There were no fences, no ‘trespassing’ signs and just the buzz of the insects.”
Gray endured a bout with malaria and two weeks in the hospital before he received a promotion and a pass home. Leaving the military behind him, Gray went back to school and became a forester as he had planned, and met and married Carolyn.
Shortly after the birth of the Gray’s first son in 1950, the Korean conflict broke out. Gray was activated and served as part of the Army Reserve Engineer Battalion.
He left the Army after a distinguished career at the rank of Captain. Gray spent over 32 years as a Forester and Special Project Engineer for, which he credits to the now defunct G.I. Bill.
“The G.I. Bill was the best thing this country ever did for veterans,” Gray said. “I came home and went right to college. I couldn’t have done it without the G.I. Bill.”
Retired to Maine with wife Carolyn, Gray worked with Tanglewood as a Director, initiating the Elder Hostel Program there. He is now Tanglewood Director Emeritus. He was active with the Midcoast Audubon Society, which helps to maintain “The Joe Gray Nature Center” at Tanglewood, named in his honor.
Captain Gray will be leading the parade on Memorial Day, just a small thank you for his service to his country. Joe and Carolyn Gray live in Damariscotta.
