Two weeks ago, Alabama lost one of its most decorated WWII combat veterans. This is the story Raymond Huling of Fyffe, Alabama, as told by his grandson-in-law, Shane Trotman. He was laid to rest in an honorable ceremony staffed by Soldiers of the 59th Ordinance Brigade of Redstone Arsenal.
Raymond was born in Decatur, Alabama on October 24, 1922. On September 20, 1942, at the age of nineteen, he married Martha Lea Wilson, the “girl next door” better known as Pat. Together, they planned to move and pursue his dream of becoming a professional baseball player.
In December, after only two months of marriage, Raymond received his call to duty to the United States Army. He was dispatched to the European Theatre of Operations in August of 1943 as a Private in the legendary 36th Infantry Division. Raymond was part of the invasion of Salerno, Italy on September 3, 1943. Only three weeks after the initial invasion, he learned of the arrival of his first child. However, Raymond was not to see his daughter until she was more than two years old (and we complain about 12 month deployments?!).
Raymond was in Company G, 141st Regiment of the 36th ID. On December 10, after only a few months of active combat, Raymond was wounded for the first time by a German mortar shell while attacking the town on San Pietro, Italy. He was subsequently hospitalized for six weeks in Tunis, North Africa. The injury consisted of only flesh wounds to the leg and arm and as soon as he recovered, he returned to combat. Raymond fought battles through Sicily, Italy, on to the North Africa, and then was sent to participate in the invasion of Southern France; eventually helping to liberate Paris. As the war went on, Raymond was promoted from Private to Buck Sergeant, to Staff Sergeant, and then to Technical Sergeant (or Platoon Sergeant). After his promotion to TSgt, Raymond was captured by the Germans in an incident that can only be viewed as miraculous. The following is his firsthand account of the incident:
“I was with two scouts, out ahead of our advancing platoon, when we walked through a cut in the road, right into a German ambush. The Germans had the advantage of an elevated position, and they all had their rifles trained on the three of us. They captured us without firing a shot and took us to a nearby German camp to interrogate us. The two scouts, Joe Spera and Spephen Vass, were questioned first and Joe was soon persuaded to answer most of the Germans’ questions. When I refused to answer any of the questions other than name, rank, and serial number, the interrogating German officer asked me in perfect English ‘Do you #*#* Americans really think that you will win the war’? I answered ‘I don’t know if we will or not, but losing me won’t make much difference on way or another.’ This made him mad and he hit me in the face, knocking me down. Throughout the rest of the war, whenever we captured prisoners, I watched for that officer but never saw him again.
“I was starting to get desperate because I knew that, when the Germans had gotten all the information that they could, we would all three be sent to Germany to a prison camp. That night, I finally got the opportunity that I had been waiting for. The one armed guard that the officer had appointed to guard us decided to smoke one of the Chesterfield cigarettes that the Germans had taken from us. When he lit up, I hit him as hard as I could and knocked him out cold. Then I screamed for the other two to run and I ran all-out toward the edge of camp. The German officer ran outside, chasing me while spraying machine-gun bullets all around me! I could hear the bullets hitting around me as I made it over an embankment into the cover of some bushes. They filled the bushes with bullets but I didn’t get hit a single time. When I broke and ran, Spera and Vass just froze, and they remained prisoners. I made it back to my platoon before that night was over and found out that I had already been reported as missing in action. A few weeks later, Spera managed to escape and rejoin our platoon, but Vass was transferred to a German prison camp…we never heard from him again.”
Eventually, Raymond was wounded a second time by shrapnel. While Raymond was being patched up, he allowed a rifleman from his platoon to use his pass to go to town and get a break from the front lines. When the rifleman returned, he had purchased Raymond a 21-jewel GI Swiss wristwatch. Raymond returned to combat, and he let Spera, his friend with whom he had briefly been a POW, wear the wristwatch. As the war went on, Spera was fatally wounded in another battle. A German mortar hit close by, and a piece of shrapnel caught Spera in the throat, slicing his jugular vein. He was trying to tell Raymond something as he died but Raymond could not understand him. The watch stayed on Spera’s wrist; Raymond could not bear to get it back.
During the war, Raymond was part of two beach invasions: one in Italy and one in France. On the way to the southern France invasion, Raymond was assigned to the flagship leading a convoy of ships. The Secretary of the Navy, Forestall, was also on the flagship. During this voyage off the coast of Corsica, Italy, the convoy encountered a German submarine. A British destroyer, which was escorting the convoy, eliminated the submarine. Raymond could feel his ship shaking as the submarine was destroyed.
During the beach invasions, the Soldiers would leave their ship in CPT boats (18 Soldiers per boat), run as close to the beach as possible, drop the gate on the boat, and advance against enemy fire. This was often at the cost of heavy casualties, with some men not even making it to the beach. After a “hot landing” under heavy fire in Southern France, Raymond’s platoon secured their primary target, a set of German anti-aircraft guns located in a concrete bunker on a high bluff, and captured 11 German prisoners. During this incident, the commanding German officer surrendered first. Raymond tried to use what little German language skills that he had learned to warn the officer to tell his comrades to come out and surrender. The German officer then spoke English, attempting to convince the Americans that no other survivors were present. However, after Raymond threatened to throw hand grenades into the concrete bunkers, the German major called for the other German Soldiers to come out and surrender.
Raymond shared a tragedy with me that happened during that battle. As the Soldiers were approaching the concrete bunkers, Rifleman Walsh stepped on a land mine, blowing his leg completely off just above his boot. Raymond immediately jumped up to run through the mind field to Walsh, but Walsh levered his weapon and aimed it right at Raymond. He refused to let Raymond risk coming through the mine field to rescue him. Raymond hesitated, then went anyway; going slowly and carefully to keep from getting blown up himself. They got Walsh out of there, but Raymond never heard whether he survived or not.
Raymond was in active combat for twenty-two months. During this period, his longest battle was 126 days of continuous combat. He received his third and final injury from a German 120mm mortar. During a battle in France, he was pinned in a foxhole with two other Soldiers, and they could hear the mortars getting closer as the Germans were trying to zero in on them. The Germans finally hit their target. Raymond was rescued, still in his foxhole shot all to pieces with the other two men dead. His right leg was blown almost completely apart at his knee, his left leg had caught shrapnel in the thigh, his lungs were punctured, and much of the muscle was blown off from his left arm.
Raymond was carried away on a stretcher in a Jeep to a field hospital, and the moved to the 23rd General Hospital in France. At this time, his surviving comrades thought him to be dead. However, by the grace of God, he somehow survived and succeeded in his fight with doctors to keep his leg after gangrene had set in (his knee was removed and his leg sown back on a few inches shorter than his other one). Major Godfrey, an ex football coach and team physician for the Buffalo Bills, was the initial surgeon for Raymond in France. His prescription consisted of a shot of penicillin and a “shot” of whiskey every two hours. Raymond arrived back at Mitchell Field in New York in a full body cast.
Raymond is one of the most highly decorated veterans in Alabama, receiving most of the honors possible to him other than the Medal of Honor. In fact, a picture of him receiving the Silver Star remains at the state capital in Montgomery. As a result of his military experiences, Raymond was awarded:
• 3 Purple Hearts
• 4 Combat Stars
• One Silver Star
• One Bronze Star
• The Presidential Unit Situation Bar (outstanding battle in combat, awarded by President Harry Truman to the whole platoon)
• Efficiency Honor Fidelity Medal
• European/African/Middle Eastern Campaign Medals
• American Campaign Medal
While looking through papers and memorabilia from the war, his grandson was fascinated to find a document listing the events that lead to Raymond’s award of the Silver Star. The top of the document was headed “RESTRICTED”. The following is the account in the document of the events:
Under the provisions of Army Regulations 600-45, the following individual is awarded a Silver Star for gallantry in action.
Raymond L. Huling, [Service number], Staff Sergeant, Company G, 141st Infantry Regiment, for gallantry in action on 11 June 1944 in Italy. Moving forward in front of his platoon when its attack was stopped by heavy small arms fire, Sergeant Huling, a squad leader, led his men in a renewal of the assault. Encouraging them by his daring disregard of the enemy fire, he directed a furious onslaught against the hostile forces and drove them out of their position. Sergeant Huling personally accounted for two enemy snipers who had attempted to pick off his automatic rifle team. He skillfully deployed his fire power in the most strategic positions, and undertook to fill in a gap in the lines created by the withdrawal of other troops because of the severity of the fighting.
Entering the service from Bridgeport, Alabama.
In 1945, four months after his injury, Raymond was finally united with his wife and two-year-old daughter at Northington General Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Pat was always fond of telling this incident, and she even recorded it before she passed away:
“His daughter, Nancy Carolyn, was two years old before he ever got to see her. She came with me to finally get to see him at Northington General Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She looked at him and said ‘you’re not my daddy; my daddy is a Soldier boy.’ We like to have cracked up then as they both tried to stare each other down. She had carried a picture of him in uniform around so long that she didn’t know him in PJs.”
After several additional operations, Raymond was eventually transferred to Oliver General Hospital in Augusta, Georgia for a series of bone grafts on his right leg. It was there that his wife, Pat, gave birth to their second daughter, Ina Beatrice on November 20, 1946. On August 20, 1947, Raymond was finally well enough to be discharged to come home.
Raymond recovered from his war injuries to the extent that he could live a fairly normal life although his right leg had no knee and was shorter than the left one. He lived in Bridgeport, Alabama with his family. After being dismissed from the hospital, Raymond was notified by the Veterans Administration that he would only receive a temporary 40% disability pension until they received all of his records. Unable to get a job, Raymond started trapping for furs on the Tennessee River. About a week before Christmas 1947, Raymond had trapped 67 muskrats and 4 mink furs, which he sold to a local dealer for nearly three hundred dollars. This provided the girls with a good Christmas. On Labor Day, September 6, 1948, Raymond and Pat were blessed with their third daughter, Sharon Elizabeth. Finally, in March, 1949, Raymond received a letter saying that his records on file showed that he was considered disabled to a degree of 80%. In March 1950, Raymond went to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority, where he enjoyed a thirty-four year career until his eventual retirement.
Raymond told his grandson that a few years ago, he was attending a veterans’ reunion in Montgomery, Alabama when a gentleman approached him and asked his name. The man had been the platoon sergeant for the 3rd Platoon, Company G while Raymond had command of the 2nd Platoon. He then told Raymond, “I saw your name on the roster and had to see if it was really you. I didn’t think it could be…you are the walking dead. I was there when we pulled you out of the foxhole, and I saw you dying.” As Raymond shared this incident with me, he seemed to really grasp and appreciate the extent to which his survival had been miraculous.
Raymond then showed his grandson what was the most fascinating bit of memorabilia from WWII he had ever seen. After opening a chest containing guns, official papers, and articles from the war, Raymond showed him “the flag.” It was a large Nazi flag with a large gash cut through the middle, along with the autographs of the thirty-six members of his platoon written on the flag. Raymond explained, saying that, as his division was advancing through Italy they “had the Germans on the run.” As the Germans retreated from the town of Naples, Italy, one of his men went to the second story of a building and, using his bayonet through a window, removed the flag from the building, cutting it in the process. The Soldier gave the flag to Raymond and he decided to get all of the men to autograph it. Getting only one or two signatures at a time, it took Raymond about two months to get all of the autographs on the German flag. He then sent it home to the states. Raymond’s father-in-law was a postman, and during the rest of the war, various Post Offices took turns displaying the flag. Although more than sixty years had passed, Raymond would look at the names on the flag and say, “this was John Hickman; he was killed by a sniper. This was Henry; he was killed by a land min. This was Claude Splawn; he was killed y an artillery shell.” Raymond’s grandson realized then that the war would never really leave the veterans who gave so much to their country, but it will be a part of them as long as they live.
As Shane sat in a dim living room discussing the war with Raymond, he wondered how much of his time was spent at his home in Fyffe, Alabama, and how much is spent at another place; a place on distant shores where men are really men; living, fighting, laughing, crying, and dying together for the noble cause of freedom. He wondered if the sounds of tanks, machine guns, and that fateful artillery shell fill Raymond’s memories during times alone. Many of us will experience a time when we realize that our time and purpose on Earth is coming to a close. However, very few people will ever look back on the experiences that Raymond endured. He believes that Raymond found comfort in the knowledge that his courage and perseverance did not fail him when he needed it the most. He can also rest in the assurance that God surely protected and delivered him for a reason; Raymond’s purpose on Earth was not yet finished.
Raymond lived with his wife Pat in Fyffe, Alabama until 1997, when God called Pat home. He was an active member of Corinth Baptist church. On 9/11/2009, fittingly the anniversary of the date when our nation sacrificed so much, God called Raymond home. He will be loved and missed by many, and owed a debt of gratitude by all.
