Veterans Day 2015 coverage
Col. Ruff Gray, 91 recalls bis World War II missions
Harry Perry watched small black clouds of smoke popping in the air below him as he and his bomber crew flew toward the German city of Meresburg, engines thrumming in the frigid, mid-morning skies.
Seventy years later and a world away in his Katy-area apartment, he still remembers the bursts of shrapnel sprouting across the sky as anti-aircraft gunners fired again and again at his B-17 Flying Fortress and the rest of the planes in the squadron behind him.
“Are we really going to fly into that?” he thought. They were.
Moments later, his crew entered the shrapnel-riddled area, then soared over Meresburg, dropping their six bombs and peeling back toward their base in Mendlesham, England.
Halfway around the world, another American aviator was also taking to the sky.
Ruffin “Ruff” Gray was in “The Bad Penny,” his unarmed P-38 Lightning, on a 1,500-mile round-trip flight across Borneo and Malaysia on reconnaissance missions before and after bomber flights.
On the day the nation fetes its
veterans once again, Gray and Perry are members of a quickly-dwindling fraternity. Sixteen million Americans served in the conflict, and more than a million were killed or wounded. Nearly 75 years later, fewer than 850,000 veterans remain. For the two vets, the lessons and memories of their service focus on the men they served with, the friends who braved danger alongside them.
Gray made dozens of flights during the year he was stationed in Southeast Asia and then served again in the Korean War. He spent 13 months making more than 130 flights above northwestern North Korea in the notorious “MiG Alley” and where he commanded a squadron of reconnaissance pilots.
“Those were the greatest bunch of guys I’ve ever known,” said Gray, who spent two more decades serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces and its later incarnation, the U.S. Air Force, where he rose to the rank of colonel and finished his service as commander of Ellington Air Force Base.
Remembering the fallen
Several years ago, at a reunion of those pilots, a squadmate beckoned Gray over. The man was terminally ill, but he had flown halfway across the country anyway because he wanted to say goodbye.
“That really gets you in the cigarettes,” said Gray, thumping his chest.
The trim 91-year-old — who still fits into his service uniform — still thinks about one his former tentmates, John R. Graf. The pilot, from Oak Park, Ill., took his plane one day in late February 1945 but never returned home.
Days turned into weeks into years, and eventually, Graf was declared killed-in-action.
Gray still thinks about the young man and about what happened to him. He wonders whether Graf’s engines malfunctioned, if he was shot down, if his parachute failed to open, if he was captured.
“What was it like, those last 30 seconds?” wondered Gray, with a slight shake of his head.
‘We were all together’
Like Gray, Perry and his “pirates” came under frequent fire during their European bombing runs.
On that October mission to Meresburg in 1944, he watched shrapnel knock one engine offline, then another, but the plane managed to withstand the enemy fire.
A companion bomber was not as lucky: from a cockpit window, Perry watched its tail get blown off, then saw the plane roll onto its side and slide into a spin from which it never recovered. That plane was one of 40 bombers destroyed on that run.
He and his crew escaped that run — and 29 others — unscathed, backed by a strong sense of mission and a supportive nation.
“We were all together. Our country was together. ... You wonder, when they send our men in today. ... I don’t know if our men have the full backing and support they need,” said Perry, an affable 93-year-old with a wide smile and a penchant for suspenders. His office is adorned with paintings and sculptures of B-17 bombers and a photo of his crew, “Perry’s Pirates,” as they called themselves.
“We had a job to do and we did it,” said Perry. “I’m glad we were able to do it and survive.”
After 30 missions, they returned stateside. Perry and married his sweetheart two weeks later. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and spent more than 20 years researching and developing missiles for the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command, and serving in the Air Force reserves, rising to the rank of major.
Eternal thanks
He and his wife, Willie, recently celebrated their 70th anniversary, after a lifetime in Alabama and North Carolina, raising a son, three grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Two years ago, they moved to west Harris County to be nearer to family and live in the same complex as Gray and his wife.
The two men sometimes share meals and think of the past, of friends dead and gone, of loss and friendship and the battle buddies who helped them endure.
Sometimes, Perry imagines what he might say to his old comrades.
“They were a real good group of young men,” he said. “I would thank them doing such a good job and being such a great crew.”
“We had a job to do and we did it. I’m glad we were able to do it and survive.” Harry Perry, World War II veteran