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140TH YEAR NO. 90, FORTY-EIGHT PAGESFRIDAY JUNE 5, 1998Since 1851RememberingD-DAYDemocrat photo by William A.ScaiesJAMES E. GRAY hit the beach at Normandy In June, and si* months later, top and bottom, was In Germany. Today, above, he Is retired in Pollock Pines.From mules to Normandy beaches?Local vet recalls WW II invasion :By MARK JOHNSON Staff writerpn 1948, James E.I-1 Gray was drafted and trained to lead Jtjpack mules* carrying artillery. Instead, a yearlater he found himself amidst the military tidal wave of the Normandy invasion as a foot soldier carrying ammunition.Gray, 88, sat in his Pollock Pines home Wednesday recalling the massive war operation thai commenced 54 years ago on Jime 6. “D-Day.; InvJunuary 1943 Gray was a 33Tyear-old manworking in the Goodrich tire plant in East Los Angeles. His wife Twyla Gray was two months pregnant.In February he was drafted into the’Army.Gray was sent to Fort Carson. Colo., where he spent the next year with the 6041h Held artillery battalion, lOih mountain division. Though a pack mule artillery unit might seem a Civil War relic, the 604lh*s unique aspect was exactly that -mules carried the equipment.“I don 't know where in England I was because they wouldn't tell us. I still don’t know. The)'just told us to get ready to go, and then we went. ”—Janies E. Gray, Pollock Pines resident and veteran of D-Day“At first they (mules) were in bad humor and so were wc. But once you're used to them, they're belter than horses. They stay calm.For training, the battalion of 100 mules and 200 men once hiked 170 miles through the Rockies in 10 days, with six mules carrying parts of one 75-millimeter howitzer gun. and shells on extra mules.“I had the lead mule, which carried the. frame of the gnn. The second muic carried the barrel.'1 Graysaid they could assemble or disassemble howitzers in just over a minute.When nut alongside a mule. Gray rode around Camp Carson in what Ripley's Believe It nr Not said was the world's largest bus, which carried 260 persons.But Gray was transferred from the mule pack unit to a unit that would end up storming France's coast in June 1944. He sailed to Scotland on April 7.Gray was in England on D-Day, June 6. when hundreds of thousands of allied forces landed in Normandy.I don’t know where in England I was because they wouldn't tell us. I still don't know. They just told us to get ready to go, and then we went.On June 14. “D plus 8. the 79lhcrossed the English Channel in an HO-ship convoy, “completely surrounded by destroyers us far as you could see, and landed on “Utah Beach.”“I don't think I was scared,” Gray 500 D-DAY, page A-6
Newspaper Details
Placerville Mountain Democrat
Placerville, California, US
Fri, Jun 05, 1998
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Carolyn R.
USA 22 Jun 2019
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