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War hero's monument neglected
By CAROL COMEGNO
Courier-Post Staff
Outnumbered
by the enemy and already seriously wounded, hometown soldier Francis X.
McGraw had a life choice to make.
He
could abandon his position and get medical aid or he could stay with his
machine gun at his foxhole and keep firing.
In
what would be his last stand of World War II, the Army private first
class chose to fight, repelling advancing Nazi troops in a German
forest, single-handedly silencing their machine guns while exposing
himself to fire and killing many until he was wounded again, this time
fatally. He died on that day -- November 19, 1944 -- but the heroics of the
26-year-old inspired his unit to victory at the start of the Allied
march to Cologne and the Rhine River.
For
McGraw's actions, President Truman awarded him the Medal of Honor -- the
nation's highest honor for military heroism.
On
Memorial Day, a monument to the local hero sits near his boyhood home in
Fairview at Merrimac and New Jersey roads. The site is obscured and on a
neglected, overgrown plot of city-owned ground behind a parking lot and
near city tennis courts. Railroad ties, intended for landscaping, are in
disarray after being moved by construction workers at an adjacent
housing redevelopment project.
"The
city should be taking care of the grounds," said Francis Pike of
Glassboro, president of the athletic club. The club moved to Gloucester
City after being forced out of its Collings Road clubhouse because of
redevelopment by the city and RPM Development.
He
said the city used to at least cut the grass.
"We
never had responsibility for the little park because it's on city ground
next to the tennis courts," said Pike, who acknowledged knowing
little about McGraw as a newer club member.
He
said the monument perhaps could be moved to a more visible location in
Fairview now that there is a new apartment building in front of it that
is part of the Fairview Village II redevelopment phase.
McGraw's
closest living relative, brother Thomas McGraw, laments the property's
condition.
"There's
not much I can do about it. I think Fairview is not what it used to be,
but it would be nice if someone could take care of it," McGraw, 85,
said.
Patrick
Keating, the city's public works director, and an assistant went to the
site late Friday and tended to some of the bushes after an inquiry by
the "Courier-Post."
He
agreed with others that moving the monument to another site would be
desirable. The monument was erected on Memorial Day 25 years ago by the
Independent Citizens Athletic Club of Fairview and the Fairview Village
Lions Club, which is now defunct.
"We
take care of other monuments, but I didn't even know this one
existed," Keating said.
City
workers will return next week to complete the cleanup.
McGraw
described his brother, a 1937 graduate of Camden Catholic High School
who worked at the Campbell Soup Co. factory before the war, as a
"genteel" man who never picked a fight but who could defend
himself.
"I
think about him a lot and go through his every agonizing moment of his
last day. I would not have been that brave," he said.
An
elementary school across town in East Camden was named for him -- the
Francis X. McGraw School at Fremont Avenue and Dudley Street. In Europe,
the U.S. Army headquarters in Munich -- McGraw Kaserne -- was also named
in his honor after World War II until it closed in 1990 due to U.S.
military downsizing.
At
least two portraits of McGraw hang in Camden -- one in the public school
and one in Malandra Hall in Fairview.
The
Medal of Honor citation signed by Truman said McGraw initially halted
the enemy advance at the Battle of Hurtgen Forest near Schevenhutte,
Germany. When the Germans brought up machine guns to counterattack him,
he lifted his machine gun atop a log, stood up in his foxhole and
destroyed both of their guns.
After
his own machine gun was hit and then splattered by mud from rocket
attacks, he remounted it and even cleaned it so he could continue using
it. He was severely wounded while making several trips across the
battlefield to retrieve more ammunition.
After
exhausting even that ammunition, he grabbed a carbine and shot several
more soldiers before being killed.
"The
extraordinary heroism and intrepidity displayed by Private McGraw
inspired his comrades to great efforts and was a major factor in
repulsing the enemy attack," the citation concludes.
He
also was awarded a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and other medals for
taking part in five major battles, including the D-Day invasion of
Normandy and invasions of North Africa and Sicily.
Joseph
DiFante of Haddon Township, a longtime Fairview resident and active
military veteran who is still a member of American Legion Post 71 in
Fairview, said the monument site looks a "mess" and proposed
the stone be moved so it would be more visible, perhaps to Yorkship
Square. |
