THE SUNDAY ENTERPRISE
MAY 16, 1982
After 38 years, a hero finally gets
his medal
 BY
JOHN W. BENSON
Enterprise Staff
In the early morning darkness of Dec.
26, 1944, a large force of German soldiers attacked a small garrison of
American troops holding the tiny mountain village of Sommocolonia,
Italy, high in the Upper Apennines in the north central part of the
country.
The fighting was fierce, and by
daylight the 400 Germans, outnumbering the Americans 6 to 1, had the
village surrounded and were moving in fast.
First
Lt. John R. Fox, 26, of
Cincinnati, Ohio, and a handful of his men watched in alarm from their
post on the second floor of an old house as the Germans swarmed up the
streets, lobbing grenades everywhere.
Fox,
a forward observer with the 366th Infantry Regiment, an all-black unit
out of Fort Devens reactivated for World War II, was directing American
artillery fire into the area to slow the enemy advance, and he knew the
village was all but lost.
As the Germans closed in, Fox
spoke calmly by telephone to the Fire Direction Center, ordering up
artillery missions from the distant guns.
'That last round was just where I
wanted it,, the young lieutenant reported. "Bring it in 60 yards
more."
The receiving operator thought Fox
was mistaken - the order would train the full fire of up to 75 heavy
caliber artillery guns directly on Fox's
position.
Fox
confirmed the order: "There's more of them than there is of
us."
Seconds later the bombardment began.
And within minutes, hundreds of shells had hit the target. each one
powerful enough to blast the house and its occupants into oblivion.
There was no chance that Fox
and his men would survive.
The fighting continued from door to
door for the next several hours as the few Americans left tried
valiantly to stop the onslaught, but by mid-afternoon the village had
fallen.
That night the Americans counted their
casualties: Forty-three of 60 men in the garrison were dead. The other
17 had managed a miraculous escape, slipping out of the village from
undetected hiding places in the darkness.
Sommocolonia was retaken four days
later, and in the rubble the bodies of Fox
and his men were found among the bodies of the enemy. The dead had been
killed in the shelling that Fox
had brought down.
For that act of heroism, Fox
was certain to be awarded a medal for valor, a Silver Star at least.
But it didn't happen. Not for almost
38 years.
But that grievous oversight due
officially to reasons the Army says it could not determine but more
likely a result of bureacratic bungling or racism, a military fact of
life then, was finally rectified in March of this year when the Army
approved for Fox the Distinguished
Service Cross, the nation's second highest medal for valor in
combat, outranked only by the Congressional
Medal of Honor.
Lt.
Fox honored for heroic acts
Saturday, the hero's widow, Arlene Fox
of Brockton, was presented the medal, accompanied by the couple's
daughter, Sandra Chase of Houston, and Fox's
sister, Jane Pope of Cincinnati, in ceremonies at Fort Devens, as part
of Armed Forces Day, attended by some 20,000, including a reunion of
members of the 366th Veterans' Association.
Among the spectators on the platform
was Hondon B. Hargrove
of Lansing, Mich., a college friend and Army buddy of Fox,
who while researching a book on the largely black 92nd Infantry,
discovered the Army's blunder and compiled the evidence - an effort
begun in 1947 - that finally led to the decoration.
Major Gen. James F. Hamlet, a member
of Fox's company and
his replacement as forward observer, made the presentation on behalf of
the Secretary of the Army.
As he presented the medal, Hamlet said
he would depart from protocol, which dictates handing the medal over to
the widow. Instead, Hamlet pinned the medal onto the lapel of Mrs.
Fox's white suit.
"I knew Lt.
Fox would have wanted it that way," he said.
The citation accompanying the medal
read:
"Lieutenant
Fox's gallant and courageous actions, at the supreme sacrifice of
his own life, greatly assisted in delaying the enemy advance until other
infantry and artillery could reorganize to repel the attack.
"His extraordinarily valorous
actions were in keeping with the most cherished tradition of military
service and reflect the utmost credit on him, his unit and the U.S.
Army."
In an interview several days before
the award ceremony, Mrs.
Fox spoke about her husband's death.
"I try to set it aside, but it's
still there," she said, sitting with a reporter at the kitchen
table in her immaculate home on East Street.
Retired in 1980 after 28 years as a
nurse at the Brockton VA Hospital, Mrs.
Fox, who has not remarried, looks far younger than her age of 63,
far younger than a woman who's been a widow for so much of a lifetime.
Despite the passage of almost 38
years, It's clear the memories are still painful.
She felt, she says, when she heard of
the honor earlier this year, that "it was too little too
late."
"We didn't need a medal,"
she says speaking for the couple's daughter, Sandra, 40, an anesthetist
at Methodist Hospital in Houston, married and the mother of two
children. "We knew what he did."
A decoration now, or at the proper
time, is no compensation for the young officer's sacrifice, the widow
says, but even so, it "means a great deal."
Mrs.
Fox, who grew up on the city's
East Side, says she met John when they were students at Wilberforce
University in Ohio, an all-black college. He studied biology and
science. She took nursing.
They married and moved to Fort Devens
In Ayer, and like every young couple, they had special plans, she says
with a sad smile. Her voice trailed off, the sentence unfinished.
When Lt.
Fox was killed, Sandra was then two years old, and Mrs.
Fox returned to Brockton. While she worked, her parents cared for
Sandra, and kept alive the memory of the young lieutenant for the child.
There were the father's long letters from overseas, read again and again
to the tot, who has saved them from childhood and still cherishes them,
her mother says.
Mrs.
Fox recalls that she worked night
and day to keep body and soul together, but somehow managed to send
Sandra through nursing school at Mass. General, and to Bridgewater State
for a degree in French and to courses at Harvard and Boston University.
Grandson Morgan, eight in June, is
bursting with pride about the grandfather he knows only by story, Mrs.
Fox says, and he's been excited for weeks about the award ceremony.
Mrs.
Fox would prefer to stay out of
the limelight, now, but she says she hopes the matter will be kept in
perspective.
The issue Is her husband's deed - and
not its effect on her own life she points out.
"The emphasis should be with him
- and let that be the end of it," she says firmly.
Asked for a photograph of her husband,
Mrs. Fox Is able
to fetch one from another room In a moment.
The picture, an old painted color
photograph, shows a trim and handsome young man, with the look women
would go for, a pencil-line mustache making him seem a bit raffish, even
dressed in an Army uniform.
She says he was a typical leader.
"He would not ask anyone to do something he would not do himself.
He was outgoing and well-liked.
"He was really a military person.
The Army was his life."
Hargrove,
who met Mrs. Fox
for the first time at the ceremonies Saturday, recalled the years of
work to get the medal.
The 65-year-old Lansing, Mich., man,
recently retired from 28 years on the Michigan Parole Board, said he
learned by accident that the Army had overlooked Fox's
heroism.
In 1947, while doing research to
'write a book on the 92nd Infantry Division, which' was known as the
"Buffalo Division," Hargrove
saw that Fox had not
been cited for his action.
Hargrove,
who knew Fox from
Wilberforce University, and in Italy where their units were together,
was shocked by the discovery. After all, Fox's
act of bravery was well-known by his colleagues and "'ill-reported
in the national press.
He decided then and there to rectify
the Army's error.
It would not be easy. He would have to
produce solid documentation, long after the event. Such documentation
can take years, and Hargrove
had his own life to lead, a family to raise and a career to pursue. But
he persisted, sending out hundreds of questionnaires to the men in the
Buffalo Division.
"I tell you," he said
"It got to be a crusade."
Eventually, Hargrove,
a captain and commander of an artillery battery In World War II, did
come up with several eyewitness who confirmed Fox's
sacrifice. But one major problem remained. There was no official record
that Fox had been
recommended by a superior officer within two years of the action, which
Is required by Army regulations if a medal 35 to be awarded. If that, is
done, then a belated decoration is still possible. If not, the chances
are rare.
All Hargrove
had to go on in that regard was a story in the Jan.1946 issue of the
Field Artillery Journal, by Col. E.
A. Raymond, which mentioned that Fox
had in fact been put in for a commendation, by some unnamed 6fficer.
But Hargrove
was unable to track Raymond down, try as he might over the years. He
hoped Raymond would know the identity of the officer who, had made the
recommendation he had quoted from.
Unfortunately, both the regimental and
division commanders, through whom the recommendation would pass on the
way up the chain of authority, were dead, so the quest seemed at a dead
end.
However, In 1979 Hargrove
discovered that Maj. Gen. Hamlet, who had taken Fox's
place as the forward observer, was assigned to the Inspector General's
office. Hamlet might have the right connections to lend an effective
hand. With all the documentation he could muster, Hargrove
sent his package off to Hamlet in May 1980.
The Army investigated, assigning Maj.
Robert Rousch, of the Awards and Decorations Branch. Rousch was able to
locate Raymond, who was retired, and who could not recall who had made
the recommendation, although he confirmed that it had in fact existed.
The Army was unable to determine that
the recommendation had been made within the two-year limit, but there
was strong evidence it had been done, and In March of this year,
approved the posthumous award of the Distinguished
Service Cross, saying they could find no explanation for the
mistake.
"It's a marvelous feeling," Hargrove
said.
|
