February 10, 2005

Stephen R. Gregg, 90, Dies; Received the Medal of Honor

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Stephen R. Gregg, who was awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II for

charging a German outpost in France while he was an Army sergeant, enabling the

rescue of seven American soldiers lying wounded on the battlefield, died on

Friday at his home in Bayonne, N.J. He was 90. His death was announced by his

son, Stephen Jr.

On Aug. 27, 1944, serving in the 143rd Infantry, 36th Infantry Division,

during the invasion of southern France, Sergeant Gregg was in combat at the town

of Montelimar in the Rhone Valley. As his platoon advanced toward a German

position on a hill, an onslaught of hand grenades felled seven G.I.'s, and

heavy enemy fire prevented medics from reaching them. "We were close by, and you could hear the men that were hit calling for medics," he told The New York Times in 2000. "I said, 'God! I've got to do something here.' I don't know what got into me, but I picked up this gun.

"I kept firing and firing. I was just thinking, 'I've got to get as many as

I can before they get me.' I never thought I'd come out of this thing alive,

to be frank with you. The Lord was with me."

Sergeant Gregg had picked up a machine gun, and with a medic following him,

he headed up the hill toward the Germans, firing from the hip in the face of

a hand-grenade barrage. His covering fire enabled the medic to remove the

wounded, according to the Medal of Honor citation.

After he used up his ammunition, he was confronted by four German soldiers,

who ordered him to surrender. Platoon members opened fire on the Germans, and

as they hit the ground, Sergeant Gregg escaped to an American machine-gun

position. He fired away once more, routing the Germans and enabling the

Americans to take the hill. The next day, when the Germans counterattacked with tanks, Sergeant Gregg directed a mortar barrage, and then he charged a mortar position the Germans had overrun, capturing it by hurling a hand grenade.

He continued in combat, received a commission as a second lieutenant and was

presented with the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor, by

Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, commander of the Seventh Army, on March 14, 1945.

Mr. Gregg, a native of the Bronx, grew up in Bayonne and was drafted in 1942

after working as a shipyard welder. Before participating in Operation Anvil,

the invasion of southern France, he took part in the Italian campaign and

fought at Altavilla and the Rapido River alongside one of America's most

celebrated combat heroes, Sgt. Charles E. Kelly, the Medal of Honor winner known as Commando Kelly.

Mr. Gregg also received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple

Heart. When he returned to Bayonne in May 1945, 50,000 people watched him ride in a procession to a hero's welcome at a city stadium.

He worked for 51 years for the Hudson County Sheriff's Department, retiring

as chief of court officers. A county park in Bayonne is named for him.

In addition to his son, Stephen Jr., of Warren, N.J., he is survived by a

daughter, Susan Gregg, of Little Falls, N.J.; a sister, Sophie King, of Orange

City, Fla.; and two grandsons. His wife, Irene, died in 2001.

Mr. Gregg once said that Medal of Honor winners did not consider themselves

heroic figures. As he told The Record of Hackensack, N.J., in 2000: "We are

just ordinary men who didn't go out to earn this. It was just the spirit of

the moment that came upon you to do things."

Click this

http://schoolweb.psdschools.org/preston/fnf2/ww2.htm

Art

Misha sent me this wonderful photo taken at the Normandy landings. He said,

This is one of most dramatic pictures about Normandy and my favorite.

It really gives you a great first person perspective from the landing craft. I can only imagine what was going through their heads. How scary!

Japanese uncover fate of POWs who died in camps

By Colin Joyce in Yokohama

(Filed: 25/02/2005)

Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, Japanese researchers have compiled a comprehensive database detailing the fate of the 3,526 Allied prisoners of war who died in Japan between 1941 and 1945.

Until now, the information was often incomplete or inaccurate, and efforts to uncover more have been hampered by the destruction of records by the Japanese at the end of the war.

But painstaking research by Japanese volunteers has yielded new details on where the men were held and forced to work and how they died. The database is now on the internet in English.

It enabled Richard Brooker to trace his grandfather, Gunner Wilson Thomas of the Royal Artillery, who served in Java and was held in Tanoura camp, south-western Japan. From north London, he was 32 when he died of beri beri in March 1944.

"The Japanese researchers are brilliant. I spent three years trying to find out about my grandfather with little success," said Mr Brooker, who lives in Warwick. "There is nowhere else in the world that has the information the Japanese researchers have published. I was in tears when I first found my grandfather's details on their website.

"We knew he had died a few days after his best friend in the camp, but only now have we been able to find who that friend was and go on to trace his family.

"My mother was just a toddler when my grandfather went off to war and this has helped her to fill the huge gap in knowledge about her father."

Mr Brooker will visit his grandfather's grave next month with his mother.

More than 30,000 Allied PoWs were made to work in appalling conditions in factories and mines at 130 sites across Japan. About one in 10 died from illness, their bodies weakened by malnutrition and beatings from guards. Some were survivors of the Burma railway. Many died en route to Japan on "hell ships", a journey that could take up to two months under constant threat of attack from Allied submarines and planes.

The database was created by the PoW Research Network Japan, a group of independent researchers who built on the records of the Commonwealth Graves Commission. A breakthrough came with the discovery in the National Diet Library in Tokyo of a forgotten microfiche, almost illegible in places, of records made by the post-war Allied occupation authorities, who had garnered details of the fate of PoWs by questioning camp survivors and former guards.

Yoshiko Tamura, one of the researchers, became interested in the PoWs after she moved near to the Yokohama Commonwealth War Cemetery outside Tokyo, which is where more than 1,000 British servicemen - including Gunner Thomas - are interred.

"I found the cemetery very beautiful. But there were graves of all these men who had died no older than I was then. I knew they must have had girlfriends and wives and I was so saddened I just had to find out what had happened to them," she said.

Taeko Sasamoto, who co-founded the research network, last year, published a book revealing details of the lives of PoWs - the first of its kind in Japanese.

The group helps to organise visits to Japan by former PoWs and relatives, guiding them to the places where the men worked, lived, died and are buried.

"Often relatives are shocked to find out how their loved ones died but there is also great relief that at last they know what happened," said Mrs Sasamoto.

The researchers say their work is also for the Japanese. "Japanese don't know about this tragic history but they should know," said Mrs Sasamoto. "There are people who hate Japan and the Japanese have a responsibility to know why that is.

Freedom is not FREE

Pictures

Pages 1 to 4 are pictures

Pages 5 and 6 are just names, waiting for pictures

Pages 7 has my picture 2nd Row Down, 3rd From the right

Pages 8 on up are pictures and names

http://schoolweb.psdschools.org/preston/fnf2/ww2.htm

Art