FRANCIS S. CURREY
Private First Class
Company K, 120th Infantry
30th Infantry Division
An orphan who had grown up in a foster home in upstate New York, Francis
Currey enlisted in the Army in the summer of 1943, one week after he
graduated from high school. Though he completed the Officer Candidate
School course, his superior officers decided he was “too immature” to
receive a commission.
After
another eight months of training with the 75th Infantry Division, Currey
headed for England in the spring of 1944 as an infantry replacement. As
a result of the public furor over the deaths of the five Sullivan
brothers aboard a U.S. Navy combat ship, President Roosevelt had issued
an executive order preventing American servicemen from going abroad
until they were nineteen. Currey had to wait until his birthday at the
end of June to ship out. He eventually landed at Omaha Beach, but it
wasn’t until several weeks after D-Day. He joined the 120th Infantry
(Regiment, 30th Infantry Division) in the Netherlands in September
1944.
In the winter of 1944, Private First Class Currey’s infantry squad was
fighting the Germans in the Belgian town of Malmédy to help contain the
German counteroffensive in the Battle of the Bulge. Before dawn on
December 21, Currey’s unit was defending a strong point when a sudden
German armored advance overran American antitank guns and caused a
general withdrawal. Currey and five other soldiers—the oldest was
twenty-one—were cut off and surrounded by several German tanks and a
large number of infantrymen. They began a daylong effort to survive.
The six GIs withdrew into an abandoned factory, where they found a
bazooka left behind by American troops. Currey knew how to operate one,
thanks to his time in Officer Candidate School, but this one had no
ammunition. From the window of the factory, he saw that an abandoned
half-track across the street contained rockets. Under intense enemy
fire, he ran to the half-track, loaded the bazooka, and fired at the
nearest tank. By what he would later call a miracle, the rocket hit the
exact spot where the turret joined the chassis and disabled the vehicle.
Moving to another position, Currey saw three Germans in the doorway of
an enemy-held house and shot all of them with his Browning Automatic
Rifle. He then picked up the bazooka again and advanced, alone, to
within fifty yards of the house. He fired a shot that collapsed one of
its walls, scattering the remaining German soldiers inside. From this
forward position, he saw five more GIs who had been cut off during the
American withdrawal and were now under fire from three nearby German
tanks. With antitank grenades he’d collected from the half-track, he
forced the crews to abandon the tanks. Next, finding a machine gun whose
crew had been killed, he opened fire on the retreating Germans, allowing
the five trapped Americans to escape.
At nightfall, as Currey and his squad, including two seriously wounded
men, tried to find their way back to the American lines, they came
across an abandoned Army jeep fitted out with stretcher mounts. They
loaded the wounded onto it, and Currey, perched on the jeep’s spare
wheel with a Browning in his hand, rode shotgun back to the American
lines.
Six months later, after the war in Europe had officially ended, Currey
wasn’t surprised when he learned he had been awarded the Medal of
Honor—the news had been leaked to a newspaper in his hometown, and a
friend had already sent him the clipping. Major General Leland Hobbs
made the presentation on July 27, 1945, at a division parade in France.
NBC Nightly News
November 24, 2007 - CAROLINAS FREEDOM FOUNDATION PAYS TRIBUTE
War veterans honored for bravery
Carolinas Freedom Foundation pays tribute
DAVID PERLMUTT
As Frank Currey likes to modestly tell it, his act of bravery took place "just one day out of nine months" of intense combat.
That day was Dec. 21, 1944. Currey was 18, a rifleman with the 30th Army Infantry Division.
His 3rd platoon had been sent to Malmedy, Belgium to defend a bridge, five days after Allied troops began repelling Hitler's final charge in the critical and bloody Battle of the Bulge.
German tanks advanced, and after fierce fighting, the Americans took cover in a factory.
That's where Currey found a bazooka -- and took off after the Germans. As his comrades laid down covering fire, he used the bazooka and anti-tank grenades to destroy four tanks and a house that held the enemy. He and a comrade then rescued five Americans who had been pinned down for hours by enemy tanks.
They loaded a jeep with the soldiers, two wounded, and took off through German lines.
"We never got challenged by the Germans," said Currey, now 82, of Bonneau, S.C., near Charleston. "It was dumb luck."
For his actions, Currey received the Medal of Honor. Today, he will be in Charlotte to receive the Carolinas Freedom Foundation's Freedom Award on behalf of the Medal of Honor Society at the foundation's US Airways Freedom Breakfast, held each year around Veterans Day.
In addition, two former members of the Tuskegee Airmen, retired Lt. Col. Spann Watson, an S.C. native, and Leroy Bowman of Sumter, S.C., will receive the group's Special Achievement Award on behalf of all Airmen -- America's first black military pilots.
Also being honored are Gordon Hunter, founder of "Golf Balls for Troops," and Eileen Schwartz, founder of "Flags Across America."
Currey was one of 464 Medal of Honor recipients during World War II. During that war and wars since, 60 percent have been awarded posthumously.
He was an orphan in Loch Sheldrake, N.Y.; he graduated from high school one week and enlisted in the Army the next. "I was worried the war would be over before I could get there," he said.
But by late June 1944, Pfc. Currey was a trained rifleman and shipped off to England, one of thousands of unassigned replacements after Allied troops stormed Normandy and began the liberation of Europe.
In September, he joined the 30th Division in Holland and ended up in the pivotal battle.
After his exploits that December, Currey and the others on the jeep were stopped at a checkpoint, and thought they'd been caught. But Americans stood guard. Since the jeep had come from behind German lines, the guards didn't believe the men were Americans. They took their guns, and detained them until their identities could be determined.
"Everyone was itchy; we could have been Germans in American uniforms," Currey said. "But we got it straightened out."
Then it was five months more of combat, ultimately to Berlin.
After the Germans surrendered in May 1945, Currey was ordered to division headquarters in Reims, France, to receive his Medal of Honor. "They knew they had a recipient on their hands, and wanted to keep their eyes on me," he said.
On Aug. 17, Maj. Gen. Leland Hobbs, 30th Division commander, awarded him the medal that represents extreme bravery above and beyond the call of duty.
Currey doesn't see it that way.
"It was just one day like any other day," Currey said of his rescue. "At the time, in combat, things like that don't sink in. All you're looking for is what does the next day hold here."
Now there are only 109 recipients alive in the Medal of Honor Society, he said. Thirty-four fought in World War II, 17 in Korea and 58 in Vietnam.
All the recipients in Iraq have been awarded posthumously.
"We don't want anymore members, because that would mean no more wars," Currey said of the Medal of Honor Society. "It would mean no one would have the opportunity to earn a Medal of Honor.
"We realize that some day we'll die out."
Freedom Breakfast
The Carolinas Freedom Foundation was formed in 1995 and has been holding its Freedom Breakfast each year since, followed by a wreath-laying ceremony. The breakfast begins at 7:30 a.m. at The Blake hotel near uptown; $50 tickets are available at the door. The wreath-laying ceremony begins at 11:45 a.m. at Polk Park at The Square uptown.
US Airways Salute to Veterans Parade
The parade is Saturday, starting at 11 a.m. at Pfeiffer and North Tryon streets. It will travel down Tryon, turn left at Third Street, ending at Marshall Park at McDowell Street. Frank Currey and Tuskegee Airmen Spann Watson and Leroy Bowman will serve as grand marshals.
Page last revised 11/24/2007