CAMDEN, S.C. — It was a moment 76 years in the making, a graveside pilgrimage that reunited two World War II veterans of the horrific Battle of Hürtgen Forest on the German frontier, a tribute tinged with sorrow, searing memories, and gratitude without bounds.
In November 1944, Anthony Grasso was a 19-year-old private from Needham, Mass., when a German artillery shell exploded near his position. Grasso suffered serious head wounds in the battle, blood spurting from his neck. He survived, but his lieutenant, Frank DuBose, took the brunt of the explosion, shielding his radioman with his body.
DuBose was blown apart, dead at 23. Grasso is now 96, living a long life in Norwood enriched by the love of three daughters, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
And on Friday, the two were joined again for the first time in three-quarters of a century, when Grasso visited DuBose’s grave in this backcountry Southern town.
“You gave your life to save mine,” Grasso said through tears as he laid a white rose on DuBose’s headstone.
Frail and stooped, Grasso had insisted on traveling to the lush, tree-fringed cemetery where DuBose is buried, and to thank him, finally, for the precious chance to lead a long life because of his sacrifice.
Lifted from a wheelchair by a grandson and a friend, Grasso stood in front of the headstone, blessed himself, and began to weep. As he did, Grasso grasped the stone with two hands and leaned forward, his bowed head nearly touching the marker.
“I pay my respects for what we had together until that day,” Grasso said, his words slow and clear in the cemetery’s hush.
Grasso had also come to say goodbye this Memorial Day weekend, something that had been denied him on the battlefield. As more and more World War II veterans pass away, he knew it was his last chance.
“I hope we meet again in the future,” Grasso said. “God bless you, and thank you.”
Grasso had wanted to visit DuBose’s grave for decades, but did not know where he was buried. As his life went on, Grasso never forgot the soft-spoken graduate of Clemson University, a young officer whom he shadowed day and night as the 112th Regiment of the 28th Infantry Division fought its way to the heavily fortified Siegfried Line on the embattled edge of Germany.
“How can you forget? You slept with him; you did everything with him,” Grasso said in an interview before the trip. “I had always wanted to visit his grave. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here.”
Drafted while still a student at Needham High School, Grasso went off to war as an 18-year-old son of Italian immigrants. He had never been kissed or gone on a date.
When Grasso returned, he suffered from shell shock, what now is known as PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder. He became angry and bitter, but he managed to move past much of the trauma, raise a family, and drive trucks all over New England for Sealtest ice cream for 47 years.
“I would ask, ‘Why him? Why not the both of us?’ ” Grasso said.
Chuck Sturkey, a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, helped steady Grasso as he leaned toward the grave. Wounded three times and posted at beleaguered Khe Sanh, Sturkey said he knows well the pain of losing close comrades in battle.
“It’s with you all the time,” Sturkey said.
The Battle of Hürtgen Forest was a monthslong fight in rugged, sometimes impenetrable terrain where well-fortified Germans were determined to prevent an advance into their homeland. At least 33,000 American soldiers were killed or wounded in the protracted battle, and Allied strategy and tactics have long been criticized.
DuBose’s job on Nov. 2, 1944, was to scout German positions for US artillery units, which would bombard the area before the 112th Regiment advanced. During the reconnaissance, Grasso remained constantly at DuBose’s side, carrying a 40-pound radio pack on his back so the lieutenant could quickly relay coordinates of the enemy’s position.
As the pair moved through an open field, DuBose believed he saw enemy soldiers in the woods ahead.
“The last words I heard from him were, ‘I need to call in. Give me the phone,’ “ Grasso said. “He was picking up the phone and ‘Boom!’ I went flying in the air, the blood spilling out of my neck. The next thing I know, I woke up two weeks later in a hospital in Paris.”
DuBose had turned to Grasso’s back, reaching for the phone when the blast threw the lieutenant 30 feet in the air. But at the instant of explosion, he had provided enough of a buffer to protect Grasso, who still carries shrapnel in his head and neck.
Grasso never saw DuBose again. He never knew what had happened to the man with whom he had shared a 6-foot-deep foxhole night after night, shivering in the cold and darkness because any fires would draw enemy gunfire.
“After I got wounded, I said to myself, ‘He never made it,’” Grasso recalled at his ranch home in Norwood. “Who do you contact? You bury a guy, and that’s the end of it.”
The trail to DuBose was uncovered by Joseph Pereira, a former reporter and college journalism teacher who co-authored a book, “All Souls Day,” about the decades-long search for the remains of many US soldiers who died in Hürtgen Forest and seemed to have disappeared.
Grasso, who is featured in the book, told Pereira last fall that he wanted to visit DuBose’s grave. The search began, and Pereira discovered 63 cemetery plots for men named Frank DuBose in South Carolina.
A former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Pereira began calling each of the cemeteries.
In March, he finally connected Grasso’s lieutenant to Camden. DuBose is a common name in this part of South Carolina, about 30 miles from the capital of Columbia, but no living relatives could be found for the veteran, who was married without children.
On Friday, Pereira watched Grasso from the edge of about 100 people who attended the ceremony, a mix of Grasso family members and friends, local and state officials, and veterans groups.
“There was a wound in his soul. The wound that lingered up until this very weekend was the pain and the guilt of being a survivor,” Pereira said. “But I see the healing continuing to this day, this hour. I see this taking a huge burden off his shoulders.”
A GoFundMe effort led by a Quincy trio — Gayle Bellotti, Uncle Sam Rounseville, and his wife, Jean Kenney — helped raise $7,500 to bring Grasso, family members, and his caregiver, Jill Drummey Foley, to Camden.
They were greeted at the cemetery by Julian Burns, who is the Kershaw County chairman, and William Grimsley, state secretary for veterans’ affairs. Both are retired Army major generals, and both thanked Grasso for the sacrifice he made in war, and for the comradeship that lingers 76 years after the battle that scarred him for life.
“We talk all the time about why people who join the service stay in the service,” Grimsley said before the ceremony. “In the end, it’s about the people who serve with you.”
Grasso still feels that connection. It showed in the salute he gave DuBose, in his tears when he accepted a framed photograph of the lieutenant, and in his words before a lunch of barbecue pork and banana pudding at the local American Legion post.
Before a bugler played taps, Grasso stood in front of his wheelchair and spoke one last time to his lieutenant.
“God bless you, Frank,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com.
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