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Veteran honored for once-secret role in WWII ‘Ghost Army’

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RALEIGH, N.C. — When World War II veteran George Dramis came home, he didn’t talk much about the war. If someone asked what he did there, he’d tell them the truth: He was a radio operator.

But there is much, much more to his story.

Dramis, 97, was one of the 1,100 soldiers in the U.S. Army’s 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. Referred to now as the Ghost Army, they formed in 1944 with a key job: deceive the German military as to the whereabouts of Army divisions. This was after the D-Day invasion at Normandy, as Allied forces fought to free Europe from the Nazis.

“We would come in at night,” Dramis told The News & Observer, explaining how the Ghost Army operated.

“[An Army division] would sneak away, quietly. We would come in and fake their radio transmissions. We had huge half-tracks with tremendous speakers on them that you could hear for 15 miles. They were recorded things of actual troop movements — tanks, trucks, guys swearing, yelling ‘Get over here!’” he said.

A half-track was an armored personnel carrier. Those speakers that carried sound for 15 miles weighed 500 pounds, Dramis said, and it sounded like a real division coming in. The Ghost Army used inflatable tanks, trucks and other equipment that would appear to be camouflaged, and soldiers even wore fake division patches.

Those 1,100 troops used visual and audio deception to appear to be 15,000 troops. And as Dramis told people after the war when his work was still classified, he was indeed a radio operator. He kept the secret until 1996, when the Ghost Army’s efforts were declassified.

There are just nine veterans of the Ghost Army still living. With a bill co-sponsored by North Carolina’s U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross and signed into law by President Joe Biden in February, those men will receive a Congressional Gold Medal. Ross, a Democrat, and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis’ staffer Trey Lewis were among those who attended a recent ceremony at the Waltonwood Lake Boone assisted living community in Raleigh.

One of Dramis’ modern counterparts was at the ceremony, too.

Army Col. Chris Stangle is commander of the 4th Psychological Operations Group, 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne), at Fort Bragg. Stangle told Dramis that Special Operations was built off of what the Ghost Army started. Stangle told The N&O that the work Dramis did has been built upon with techniques used by what is known as PSYOP today.

Like at other ceremonies of recent years honoring World War II veterans, speakers often call them heroes, including Dramis.

“They keep talking about this hero part all the time. Well, I’m not so sure about that hero stuff,” Dramis told those gathered.

“The 18-, 19-year-old, 20-year-old guys that” — Dramis paused and took a deep breath — “maybe lasted one minute or two minutes or three minutes, and they never made it. They never got to grow up and have a life … those guys are the heroes.”

After the war, Dramis was a factory worker and eventually president of an industrial supply company before he retired in 1990, according to the Ghost Army Legacy Project. He and his late wife had four children, and Dramis’ two living sons attended the ceremony, along with two of Dramis’ grandsons.

Saturday, July 23, 2022, was also proclaimed George Dramis Day by Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin.

Dramis’ son Jim Dramis, of Raleigh, wrote in The Charlotte Observer last year about the Ghost Army Legacy Project’s years-long push to get the bill passed so his father and others would be recognized with a Congressional Gold Medal. While the medal is still being minted, ceremonies for George Dramis and other Ghost Army veterans are already being held.

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US Air Force PJs honored for daring 2017 ocean rescue mission

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From the Revolutionary War Battles of Lexington and Concord to the Afghanistan battle of Takur Ghar, the National Guard often immortalizes its most significant missions in the form of oil paintings. Last month, the Guard unveiled the latest such painting, which depicts a 2017 mission where seven airmen with the New York Air National Guard jumped out of an airplane in the middle of the night over the middle of an ocean to rescue complete strangers suffering from severe burns. It was a complicated mission that the airmen pulled together in less than a day, but they pulled it off, even when things went sideways.

“The amount of complexity in that mission just can’t be overstated,” said Col. Jeffrey Cannet, the commander of the New York-based 106th Operations Group, who piloted the HC-130 search and rescue aircraft on the mission, in an Air National Guard press release. “The fact that these guys had to do that, all out there, alone and unafraid, getting it done, was just a testament to their skill and ability.”

The incident began early in the morning of April 24, 2017, when an explosion aboard the cargo ship Tamar badly injured two sailors and killed two more. The crew of the 625-foot vessel, which was in transit from Baltimore, Maryland to Gibraltar, at the western edge of the Mediterranean sea, contacted the Coast Guard, which then contacted the New York Air National Guard and its 106th Rescue Wing. With its HC-130 search and rescue planes and trained pararescuemen, the 106th was best prepared to respond to the emergency. Still, the Tamar was about 1,500 miles off the New York coast, and that distance was a stretch even for these airmen.

“1,500 miles out … was a bit out of reach for anybody else, and quite frankly I think everybody thought it was out of reach for us too,” Cannet said at the unveiling and award ceremony last month, where each airman received an Air Force Commendation Medal for heroism. But he and his men thought differently.

“No we got this, this is not an impossible mission,” he said. “We got the skills, the equipment, the training. We can pull this off.”

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The 106th could not formally be assigned to the Tamar rescue because it was a civil search and rescue mission, the wing wrote in a press release, but all the airmen involved volunteered for the flight anyway. Those airmen included combat rescue officers Lt. Col. Edward Boughal and Maj. Marty Viera; and pararescuemen Master Sgt. Jordan St. Clair; Senior Master Sgt. Erik Blom; Master Sgt. Jedediah Smith; and Staff Sgt. Michael Hartman.

Also called ‘PJs,’ Air Force pararescuemen are elite specialists in search and rescue and combat medicine who train to rescue downed pilots or special operators cut off behind enemy lines. Combat rescue officers are the commissioned leaders of PJs. But before these highly-trained airmen could rescue the sailors, they first had to do some shopping for medical and surgical supplies at local hospitals.

pararescue painting
New York Air National Guard Airmen who were part of the 2017 mission to save two crewmen on board the Motor Vessel Tamar pose with a painting commemorating the mission during an awards ceremony on June 4, 2022 at F.S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base in Westhampton Beach, New York (Staff Sgt. Kevin Donaldson/U.S. Air Force)

The mission got a little dicier shortly after takeoff, where a hydraulic failure aboard the HC-130 threatened to end the mission before it could fully begin. The flight engineer, Master Sgt Keith Weckerle, managed to mitigate the problem, which he might have been accustomed to due to the unit’s aging aircraft.

“The wing accomplishes its mission in both combat and peacetime with aging aircraft, some dating back to the ’60s,” the 106th Rescue Wing said in a 2017 video about the mission.

Luckily, the HC-130 made it over a thousand miles from the 106th’s base on Long Island all the way to the Tamar, which was pretty much right in the middle of the Atlantic by that time. But getting to the ship was only the first step in the complicated mission plan. Next, they had to drop equipment bundles and two inflatable Zodiac boats on target in the dead of night. Then they would parachute out of the aircraft, swim to the Zodiacs, get in, pick up the floating supplies, get to the Tamar and board it via rope ladder with 15-foot waves tossing them up and down. 

Jumping out of the aircraft would be its own challenge — the HC-130 was 1,400 feet above the dark waters, which is a comparatively low altitude to jump from. The low cloud ceiling and urgency to get to the dying sailors below made it worth the risk, the airmen decided, but it was still a risky operation. “Perilous” weather conditions and high seas also contributed to making the jump an “extraordinarily dangerous situation,” said Senior Master Sgt. Tom Pierce at the ceremony last month.

“I definitely found a moment to pray,” said Viera, one of the combat rescue officers, in a 2017 press release. “I (wondered), did I kiss my wife and son goodbye enough? I was like, God, if this is my time to go, I guess this is it. But please, I would really like to make an impact on these people’s lives.”

rescue mission
New York Air National Guard Combat Rescue Officers, pararescuemen and HC-130 aircrew members assigned to the 106th Rescue Wing plan for their rescue jump into the North Atlantic to aid injured crewmen on board the ship Tamar on April 24, 2017 as the plane flies eastward over the ocean. One sailor had been killed and three injured in a fire on the ship that morning. A second seaman died before the New York Airman could get to the ship. (U.S. Air Force)

Though each of the airmen wore flashing beacons and red and green chemical lights, the risk of a mid-air collision was very real.

“Collisions can be potentially fatal at that altitude,” said Boughal, the other combat rescue officer. “There were a couple of moments where I was thinking, ‘Where are my guys?’ because it was so dark.”

It was risky, but Smith, one of the PJs, was pumped.

“I distinctly remember on the ramp of the C-130 … and Jed’s eyes lit up after the green light illuminated that sent the first team into the inky blackness of the night,” said Boughal. “He turned to me with a big smile, fist-pumped me and yelled out ‘we’re doing this!’ I remember thinking ‘glad he’s on the team.’”

It was good Smith was pumped, because the going was about to get tough. The seven airmen made it onto the Tamar, but now they had to keep two severely injured men alive for three days as the ship made its way to the Azores, an archipelago about 870 miles off the coast of Portugal. There, Portuguese helicopters would pick up the sailors and ferry them to a hospital, but they had to live through the journey first.

“When we got there we found the crewmen badly burned on their face, arms, legs and hands,” said St. Clair, one of the PJs. “The initial report was that they were conscious, talking and were mobile. But we knew the end state. Their lives were absolutely at risk.”

The incredible story of a daring Air Force pararescue mission in the middle of the Atlantic
New York Air National Guard Airmen from the 103rd Rescue Squadron prepare to jump from an HC-130 search and rescue plane of the 102nd Rescue Squadron 1,300 miles east into the North Atlantic on April 24, 2017 as they go to the aid of two badly burned crewman on board the Slovenian-owned ship the Tamar. (U.S. Air Force)

One of the sailors, a Slovenian, said it was getting harder for him to breathe, so the airmen slid a tube down his throat to hook him up to a ventilator. The airmen then took 90-minute shifts watching over the patients while removing dead tissue, reducing pressure on the wounds, and making incisions on badly burned tissue to establish blood circulation., according to a press release. After a few hours, the airway of the second sailor, a Filipino, “became compromised but was too swollen to allow a tube to pass,” the press release said. Thinking fast, the pararescuemen performed a cricothyrotomy, where medical providers cut a slit through the patient’s throat through which they can pass a breathing tube.

“Now here’s this poor guy, pulse-ox crashing, literally taking his last agonal gasps, and up steps Jordan [St. Clair] to calmly and methodically find his airway, place the tube, and save this guy’s life like he was tying his shoelaces,” Boughal said at the ceremony. “Jordan has ice in his veins.”

Over three days, the airmen kept vigil over the patients and managed their fluids and pain levels. It helped that they could call Lt. Col. Stephen “Doc” Rush, the 106th Medical Group commander, for his insight. But keeping the patients alive was not the final challenge: the airmen also had to figure out how to lower the patients three stories to the ship’s deck so that they could be hoisted onto the Portuguese helicopter. They managed by rigging up a belay system using ropes, and then three of the airmen went with the patients aboard the helicopter to keep them alive on the way to the hospital. 

“What they ended up having to do on that ship that day was remarkable,” Cannet said, about the medical care his airmen provided.

The incredible story of a daring Air Force pararescue mission in the middle of the Atlantic
Air Force pararescuemen treat a patient aboard the Tamar during a rescue mission in April 2017. (Screenshot via YouTube/106th Rescue Wing)

Even after the helicopter departed, the danger was not over for the four airmen still on the Tamar, who had to get down onto a waiting tugboat in high seas. At one point the waves crushed the tug against the Tamar so hard that it cut the rope ladder the airmen were using in half. With the ladder gone, the airmen jumped into the tug one by one and made it out safely. The patients also survived and are alive today.

“Those two men are alive and enjoying life today because of our ability to provide a capability that very few organizations can,” said St. Clair at the award ceremony.

The idea of immortalizing that mission in a painting came from Chief Master Sgt. Brian Mosher, the 106th Operations Group superintendent, said Maj. Michael O’Hagan, the wing’s public affairs officer, in a press release. O’Hagan knew a painter named Todd L.W. Doney, a former illustrator who teaches art at County College of Morris, New Jersey. Doney charges up to $15,000 per canvas, but he “agreed to do the job for materials and time only.” 

The incredible story of a daring Air Force pararescue mission in the middle of the Atlantic
An airman from Esquadra 751, the Portuguese Air Force search and rescue organization, accompanies a litter carrying one of the injured Tamar crewman off the ship onto a hovering Merlin helicopter on April 27, in the North Atlantic after he and another badly burned sailor had been treated by members of the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing for the past three days. (Senior Master Sgt. Erik Blom/U.S. Air National Guard)

The artist drew from photographs of the mission and from the memories of the aircrew and pararescue team who were there that day. The airmen made sure the parachute cords were the right color, that there were the right number of cargo rollers on the HC-130 deck, and that the loadmaster’s uniform was the right pattern.

“I think what sticks out most in my mind, is you look at the ship, and you see the guys out there,” said 1st Lt. Jamie Bustamante, the loadmaster in the painting. “I do remember seeing all that.”

For his part, Doney said that what makes the painting special is the heroic deed it portrays.

“It wouldn‘t be a great painting unless those guys did what they did,” he said. “It was really awesome to honor these guys who jumped out in the middle of the night to save lives.”

The incredible story of a daring Air Force pararescue mission in the middle of the Atlantic
Members of the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing who worked together to save two badly burned sailors on board the 625-foot long bulk cargo carrier Tamar pose for a picture in front of their HC-130 search and rescue aircraft at Lajes Field in the Azores on April 28, 2017. (U.S. Air Force)
The incredible story of a daring Air Force pararescue mission in the middle of the Atlantic
This painting, by New Jersey Artist Todd L.W. Doney, commemorates a 2017 rescue mission in which Airmen assigned to the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing flew 1,200 miles out into the Atlantic to save the lives of two sailors on the Slovenian freighter Tamar. (Todd L.W. Doney)

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102-year-old WWII veteran from segregated mail unit honored

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Millions of letters and packages sent to U.S. troops had accumulated in warehouses in Europe by the time Allied troops were pushing toward the heart of Hitler’s Germany near the end of World War II. This wasn’t junk mail — it was the main link between home and the front in a time long before video chats, texting or even routine long-distance phone calls.

The job of clearing out the massive backlog in a military that was still segregated by race fell upon the largest all-Black, all-female group to serve in the war, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. On Tuesday, the oldest living member of the unit is being honored.

Romay Davis, 102, will be recognized for her service at an event at Montgomery City Hall. It follows President Joe Biden’s decision in March to sign a bill authorizing the Congressional Gold Medal for the unit, nicknamed the “Six Triple Eight.”

Davis, in an interview at her home Monday, said the unit was due the recognition, and she’s glad to participate on behalf of other members who’ve already passed away.

“I think it’s an exciting event, and it’s something for families to remember,” Davis said. “It isn’t mine, just mine. No. It’s everybody’s.”

The medals themselves won’t be ready for months, but leaders decided to go ahead with events for Davis and five other surviving members of the 6888th given their advanced age.

Following her five brothers, Davis enlisted in the Army in 1943. After the war the Virginia native married, had a 30-year career in the fashion industry in New York and retired to Alabama. She earned a martial arts black belt while in her late 70s and rejoined the workforce to work at a grocery store in Montgomery for more than two decades until she was 101.

While smaller groups of African American nurses served in Africa, Australia and England, none matched the size or might of the 6888th, according to a unit history compiled by the Pentagon.

Davis’ unit was part of the Women’s Army Corps created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943. With racial separation the practice of the time, the corps added African American units the following year at the urging of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune, according to the unit history.

More than 800 Black women formed the 6888th, which began sailing for England in February 1945. Once there, they were confronted not only by mountains of undelivered mail but by racism and sexism. They were denied entry into an American Red Cross club and hotels, according to the history, and a senior officer was threatened with being replaced by a white first lieutenant when some unit members missed an inspection.

“Over my dead body, Sir,” replied the unit commander, Maj. Charity Adams. She wasn’t replaced.

Working under the motto of “No Mail, Low Morale,” the women served 24/7 in shifts and developed a new tracking system that processed about 65,000 items each shift, allowing them to clear a six-month backlog of mail in just three months.

“We all had to be broken in, so to speak, to do what had to be done,” said Davis, who mainly worked as a motor pool driver. “The mail situation was in such horrid shape they didn’t think the girls could do it. But they proved a point.”

A month after the end of the war in Europe, in June 1945, the group sailed to France to begin working on additional piles of mail there. Receiving better treatment from the liberated French than they would have under racist Jim Crow regimes at home, members were feted during a victory parade in Rouen and invited into private homes for dinner, said Davis.

“I didn’t find any Europeans against us. They were glad to have us,” she said.

The 6888th previously was honored with a monument that was dedicated in 2018 at Buffalo Soldier Military Park at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. But immediately after the war, members returned home to a U.S. society that was still years away from the start of the modern civil rights movement with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955.

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas helped shepherd the bill to present the Congressional Gold Medal to the members of the unit.

“Though the odds were set against them, the women of the Six Triple Eight processed millions of letters and packages during their deployment in Europe, helping connect WWII soldiers with their loved ones back home, like my father and mother,” Moran said in a statement earlier this year.

Reeves is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity Team.

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