Sgt. Ross F. Grey carried a satchel cost although a minefield whereas below heavy Japanese hearth. The explosive weighed 24 kilos and left no room for a rifle. He went in unarmed anyway.
Behind him, three Marines supplied cowl. Forward, a fortified Japanese bunker anchored one finish of a community of gun emplacements that had stopped his platoon chilly on Feb. 21, 1945, two days into the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps historical past. Grey had already mapped a route by means of the sector on foot, below hearth, with out triggering a single mine. Now he was going again in to complete what he had began.
He destroyed the primary place. Then he went again for one more cost to repeat the method.
What adopted grew to become some of the extraordinary particular person actions of the Pacific Battle, incomes Grey the Medal of Honor. Six days after that, an enemy artillery shell took his life.
The Deacon
Ross Franklin Grey was born Aug. 1, 1920, in Marvel Valley, a small unincorporated group in Bibb County, Alabama, to Benjamin Franklin Grey, a carpenter, and Carrie Clyde Wooden Grey. He was one in all eight youngsters within the household who survived to maturity, rising up in a family formed by religion, bodily work and the quiet lifetime of rural Alabama.
He spent three years at Centerville Excessive College earlier than leaving in 1939 to work alongside his father full time. Grey had already been doing part-time carpentry for 3 years earlier than that. He performed soccer and basketball at Centerville, spent his free time looking and fishing Bibb County land, and stored a Bible shut sufficient to learn each night time earlier than mattress.
Grey had studied for the ministry earlier than the warfare and carried that non secular seriousness into uniform. It was the muse of how he operated, and his fellow Marines understood that. Inside weeks of serving alongside him, they’d given him a nickname.
They known as him “The Deacon.”
The identify got here from real regard for a person who stepped in to steer prayer when the chaplain was unavailable and whose private conduct set him aside from the remainder of the platoon.
Shortly earlier than his demise on Iwo Jima, a warfare correspondent requested Grey how the nickname had come about.
“I assume they name me Deacon as a result of I do their praying when the Chaplain’s not round,” he stated.
Grey walked into the Marine Corps Reserve recruiting station in Birmingham on July 22, 1942. Parris Island got here first, then further coaching at New River, North Carolina.
By September 1942 he had joined the twenty third Marines throughout the 4th Marine Division, and the next April he was promoted to non-public top quality and moved to Firm A, 1st Battalion, twenty fifth Marines. That unit could be his house by means of 4 amphibious assaults.
The Entrance Traces of the Pacific Battle
Due to his commerce background and private convictions, Grey initially served in non-combat engineering roles after becoming a member of the division. He continued holding casual providers for his fellow Marines, studying his Bible nightly, and dealing the roles the Corps assigned him.
The 4th Marine Division shipped abroad in January 1944. The primary cease was the Marshall Islands, the place the division fought by means of Roi-Namur in late January and early February, absorbing heavy casualties. Grey was promoted to corporal in March.
Three months later got here Saipan, and the dimensions of the preventing was even worse. The division sustained roughly 6,000 casualties there, together with roughly 1,000 lifeless. Grey’s closest pal was amongst these killed.
He didn’t return to his carpenter duties after that. In line with the Nationwide WWII Museum, Grey picked up a Browning Automated Rifle and moved to the entrance strains.
After Saipan, the division assaulted Tinian in late July 1944. Grey was promoted to sergeant in August and despatched to the 4th Marine Division Mine and Booby Lure College. The coaching was intensive. In line with Marine Corps data, The curriculum coated the complete vary of mine warfare from find out how to assemble a area, find out how to transfer by means of one safely, find out how to discover and disarm particular person gadgets by day and by night time, and find out how to reduce a clear lane by means of an energetic area below fight situations.
His instructors rated him able to educating each a kind of expertise to different Marines. No teacher billets have been accessible, so he stayed with the rifle firm.
His efficiency had earned him a advice for employees sergeant, however the grade had no open billets in his unit and the promotion by no means got here by means of. The battalion then loaded aboard the troopship USS Napa, working drills at sea within the weeks earlier than the most expensive assault the 4th Marine Division would ever face.
Kuribayashi’s Defenses on Iwo Jima
Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi had remodeled Iwo Jima into one thing the American navy had not absolutely anticipated. Starting in March 1944, his garrison carved 18 kilometers of tunnels by means of the volcanic rock and related a whole lot of bunkers, pillboxes, and artillery positions by means of an underground community.
The defensive positions have been designed to soak up bombardment and stay practical. When one preventing place fell silent, one other may cowl it. The plan was to not cease the Marines on the seashore however to bleed them repeatedly as they moved inland.
The 4th Marine Division hit the correct flank of the assault on Feb. 19, 1945, pushing northeast by means of terrain that bottlenecked each method and allowed entrenched defenders to focus hearth on slender corridors of advance.
Shortly after the touchdown, Grey’s lieutenant and a number of other members of his platoon have been killed. With nobody left to steer the unit, Grey stepped into the function of appearing platoon sergeant and took command.
The division’s sector northeast of Airfield No. 1 grew to become some of the punishing stretches of your entire battle. The bottom was studded with camouflaged positions and laced with mines that engineers and squaddies alike struggled to find and clear.
On Feb. 21, two days into the combat, Grey’s platoon was urgent towards excessive floor in that sector when a concentrated Japanese grenade barrage stopped the advance utterly. Grey moved his males again out of vary and went ahead alone on foot to grasp what they have been up towards.
Twelve Journeys Via a Minefield
What Grey discovered from his reconnaissance was worse than he anticipated. A big minefield coated your entire entrance of the platoon’s line of advance. Behind it, a row of bolstered Japanese emplacements sat related by coated communication trenches, every bunker positioned to help the subsequent. Clearing one with out the others would accomplish nothing. The entire complicated needed to be destroyed.
Nonetheless below enemy hearth, Grey labored his method by means of the minefield and traced a navigable path to the mouth of the closest fortification. He returned to the corporate commander and reported what he had discovered. He then volunteered to assault the community himself.
Three fellow Marines would lay down masking hearth from the platoon place. Grey would deal with the demolitions. He and the three volunteers made a visit to the battalion ammunition level and carried again 12 satchel fees, which they staged in a coated place close to the platoon line.
Earlier than Grey stepped again into the sector, he turned towards the boys watching and stated, “Pray for me.”
He picked up the primary cost and went in with no rifle.
Grey reached the primary emplacement and compelled the doorway shut with the cost. Earlier than he may pull again, a machine gun opened from a second opening reduce into the similar place. He crossed by means of the sector, grabbed one other satchel, and got here again by means of the identical path to hit the second aperture. Solely then was the primary bunker destroyed.
He repeated that course of throughout the remaining fortifications, each a separate crossing, each accomplished below hearth.
The Marine Corps Medal of Honor quotation describes him as approaching, attacking, and withdrawing below “blanketing hearth” on each single cross. He drew machine-gun bursts and grenade barrages all through the assault, and he coated every stretch of floor unarmed, carrying solely the demolitions he used towards the fortifications.
At one level, a Japanese grenade went off so near him that it knocked his helmet off his head.
When the final cost went off, six emplacements had been destroyed, greater than 25 Japanese troops have been lifeless, and a big amount of ordnance and ammunition had been taken out of the combat. What Grey had achieved solely grew to become clear when his platoon moved ahead.
Each cross by means of the minefield had adopted the identical cautious route, and thru these 12 crossings, Grey had successfully disarmed the sector himself, making a lane his Marines may comply with with out triggering any mines.
His quotation states explicitly that he had “utterly disarmed a big minefield” along with destroying the garrison. Each issues had been completed on foot, unarmed, whereas below heavy enemy hearth.
Grey efficiently knocked out a complete Japanese fortification and helped his Marines transfer by means of a minefield single-handedly with out being wounded.
Killed in Motion
The person that the platoon known as “The Deacon” by no means made it house to Marvel Valley.
Sgt. Ross F. Grey was fatally wounded by an enemy artillery shell on Feb. 27, 1945, six days after the assault that will earn him the Medal of Honor. Grey was 24 years previous. The preventing on Iwo Jima wouldn’t finish for one more month. The division he had served with since 1942 wouldn’t depart the island till late March.
His physique was buried within the 4th Marine Division Cemetery on Iwo Jima.
Grey’s mom, Carrie, didn’t survive to see the medal offered. Relations instructed the Andalusia Star-News that she died of grief after studying of her son’s demise. The loss encompassed multiple family.
Between Grey’s mom and her two sisters, the three girls had watched 13 sons ship out to combat within the warfare.
On April 16, 1946, on the Centerville Excessive College soccer area in Alabama, Rear Adm. Aaron S. Merrill of the Eighth Naval District formally offered the posthumous Medal of Honor to Grey’s father in a ceremony attended by Gov. Chauncey Sparks. President Harry S. Truman approved the ornament. Grey is the one recipient of the Medal of Honor from Bibb County.
His stays have been later returned from Iwo Jima and reinterred at Ada Chapel Bible Methodist Church Cemetery in West Blocton, Alabama.
Ross Grey’s Legacy
Iwo Jima produced 27 Medals of Honor for Marines and sailors, greater than another single American navy operation in historical past. Grey is a kind of recipients.
The U.S. Navy commissioned the USS Grey (FF-1054) in 1970, a Knox-class frigate constructed for anti-submarine warfare within the Pacific. It served for 21 years earlier than decommissioning in 1991. Its motto was “Search, Interact, Destroy.”
Grey’s Medal of Honor and unique quotation now reside with the Cahaba Lily Basis in West Blocton, donated by Roger Kinard, a retired veterans service officer who labored with the Grey household through the years. His identify additionally seems on the Bibb County Board of Schooling’s Wall of Fame, positioned there in 2019.
What he did northeast of Airfield No. 1 on Feb. 21 immediately opened the road of advance for his firm at a second when the Marines had no different path ahead. The community of fortifications he destroyed single-handedly had stopped your entire unit chilly. When it was gone, the Marines moved ahead to complete taking the island.
In a marketing campaign outlined by a number of the most intense small-unit fight within the historical past of the Corps, Grey’s one-man assault stands as one in all its most tactically decisive particular person actions. Much more spectacular, he destroyed your entire Japanese fortification whereas sprinting by means of a minefield with no rifle.
