Sgt. Francis S. Currey, a WWII Medal of Honor recipient, died Tuesday at age 94.
Currey was one of WWII’S last living recipients of award
Sgt. Francis S. Currey, one of the last living World War II Medal of Honor recipients, died Tuesday. He was 94.
Currey earned his medal for his actions on Dec. 21, 1944 near the Belgian city of Malmedy during the Battle of Bulge in which he repeatedly risked his life to stop a group of German tanks advancing on a bridge held by Americans. His actions saved the lives of multiple American soldiers.
His Medal of Honor citation noted that Currey’s knowledge of various weapons and willingness to face enemy fire alone was key in holding the bridge.
“Sgt. Currey was greatly responsible for inf licting heavy losses in men and material on the enemy, for rescuing five comrades … and for stemming an attack which threatened to f lank his battalion’s position,” the citation said.
Currey was born in Loch Sheldrake near Hurley ville, Sullivan County, in 1925 and was orphaned when he was 12. He enlisted when he was 17 after taking a test the Army offered to identify special candidates and went to basic training at Fort Benning, Ga.
When asked why he enlisted, Currey was blunt.
“To get the hell out of Hurley ville, New York,” he said in a videotaped interview with the Veterans History Project.
Currey said he would never forget three things about Fort Benning: the heat, the humidity and the song he marched to in training.
“There isn’t any water, there isn’t any grass. You can take the state of Georgia and shove it up your…” he recalled with smile in the interview.
After basic training Currey went to the Army’s Officer Candidate School but was told he was “too immature” to be an officer so Army officials sent him to Cornell University to study engineering. That plan soon fell apart as the U.S. forces ramped up their plans for the D-day invasion in June 1944.
“So, one night I’m in a dorm at Cornell University. Three nights later I’m in maneuvers with the 75th Infantry Division in Louisiana,” Currey recalled.
But Currey missed out on the invasion because he was so young when he enlisted. The Army waited until he turned 19, in June 1944, and he landed in Normandy weeks after D-day.
He was assigned as a replacement to the 30th Infantry Division in the Netherlands and saw his first combat in September. Currey told the interviewer that nothing in his two years of training had prepared him for live combat.
“The only thing that can prepare you is if you can survive the first few days,” he said. “And I was very fortunate that I did.”
The division fought in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany before pushing south back to Belgium in December 1944. There, Currey, still a private, made his mark on the war.
The Battle of the Bulge was Nazi Germany’s last major offensive on the Western Front, an attempt to turn the tide of the war and break through the Allied lines.
The company commander left Currey and a squad of about a dozen other soldiers to hold a key bridge near Malmedy. The soldiers were told they might face sporadic infantry probes from the Germans but no tanks were expected to be able to move through the rough terrain.
At around 4 a.m. on Dec. 21, Currey was in a foxhole at the edge of the bridge when the first German tank rolled up.
“We were not prepared for it because we were told it wouldn’t happen,” he recalled.
Currey said he remembers a German tank commander staring down at him from atop the tank as the first one crossed the bridge. Currey opened fire with his Browning automatic rif le as more tanks appeared.
After a while, the platoon took cover in a nearby paper mill that had previously served as an American field hospital. They exchanged fire with the tanks and the supporting German troops, firing out of a window before running to another, Currey said.
At some point, Currey took out a tank with a bazooka, landing a round between the turret and the chassis, rendering the tank inoperable. He had crossed the street to secure rockets, facing fire from German tanks and infantry troops.
When asked why he had abandoned his cover in the paper mill to fire at a tank, Currey said it was because he had to.
“I had had the training. I was very fortunate in that … there was a vacuum there and I stepped into it,” he said.
Later he saw three Germans in a doorway of a nearby home and shot them, killing or wounding all three. He moved in by himself, planning on destroying the house with rockets. As he moved, he saw five Americans soldiers who had been pinned down, unable to get past the German fire.
Currey found some antitank grenades and attacked three tanks on his own.
Currey noted that while the Army gave him credit for “taking out” the tanks, the reality wasn’t quite that.
“An anti-tank grenade was supposed to knock out a tank,” he told the Veterans History Project. “Believe me it will not knock out a tank. All it does is hit the tank, make a helluva lot of a noise, a lot of f lame, a lot of smoke but it scares the hell out of the crew, and they abandoned the tanks.”
Currey moved to a machine gun whose crew had been killed and provided covering fire while the Americans retreated to safety.
Shortly after that the surviving Germans withdrew as well.
Currey’s day wasn’t over though. The battle had gone on all day and the depleted American squad had several wounded with them. They decided to head back to the rear but weren’t sure where they were going, Currey said.
“No one ever asks how we got out of there that night. I think that was the best part of the story,” he said.
The two wounded were loaded on stretchers and Currey sat on the back of a Jeep, holding his Browning rif le as they drove through Belgian back roads in the dark, looking for other Americans.
“Here we are, six young men, the oldest 21 years old. Two wounded and don’t know where the hell we are,” he said. “We go over the bridge, past this burning German tank. Run in to an American road block. We stop, they let us by … we went from echelon to echelon, no one believes us.”
Currey’s exploits eventually made it back home. He was interviewed by a reporter in the field and his story was published in the
New York Daily News. He found out from the story that he had been recommended for the Medal of Honor.
Currey was awarded the medal in the field on July 27, 1945 in Reims, France. He also received the Silver Star, three Purple Hearts and the Belgian Order of Leopold. He eventually rotated back to the United States. After the war he became a counselor at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Albany, where he worked for 30 years. In 1998 he served as a model for the G.I. Joe action figure Medal of Honor series.
When asked what the medal meant to him and to his country, Currey paused.
To him, it represented the work of the men he served with. For his country, he hoped it represented loyalty.
“There’s no way possible that one person can do it without a lot of back up,” he said. “I hope that my country can be as proud of me as I am of my country.”
Currey is survived by his wife of 70 years, Wilma Eileen French Currey, three children, seven grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren, according to his obituary.
Calling hours will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday at Babcock Funeral Home in Ravena, where a funeral service with full military honors will take place at 10:30 a.m. Saturday.