*IN MEMORIAM*

Rex Raney passed away April 7, 2018. You can read his obituary from the Grand Junction Sentinel here.

Use controls above or click here to open this Hometown Heroes podcast in a new window

94-year-old Rex Raney of Grand Junction, CO appears on episode #418 of Hometown Heroes, debuting May 7, 2016. A native of Fruita, CO, Raney served with the 45th Infantry Division, 157th Regiment during World War II, spending 511 days in combat, and earning the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, among other decorations.

Growing up on a farm, Rex became acquainted with hard work at an early age. Along with three brothers and four brothers, he learned how to plow, disc, hoe, cut hay, thresh grain, and feed hogs, among other things, as his family grew wheat, corn, alfalfa, sugar beets, and pinto beans during the Great Depression.

“You learned to grow most of what we ate, and we learned to make a lot of things,” you’ll hear Raney recall. “You learned to do your own entertainment.”

One of his ambitions was to go to college and become an electrical engineer. While in high school, he joined the National Guard, motivated by the “extra spending money” it would provide, and the opportunity to travel outside of western Colorado. On December 7th, 1941, he was with four fellow guardsmen in Mexico, enjoying a weekend pass.

“When we came back across the bridge, the guard told us we’d better get in uniform and get back to camp” Raney remembers of that border crossing. “Pearl Harbor had been bombed.”

You’ll hear some other colorful memories from that time period, and how his responsibilities changed as he moved from training posts in Oklahoma, Texas, and Massachusetts, eventually assigned as a sergeant in charge of communications. Rex’s older brother, Verne, had joined the Marine Corps the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked. As Rex prepared to head overseas, his perspective was colored by what had happened to Verne, who lay in a hospital in Los Angeles with 56 bullet holes from his waist down. “For some reason I wasn’t in a hurry,” you’ll hear Rex remark. More than two years later, when Rex finally returned from the war, Verne was still in the hospital, recovering from those injuries suffered on Guadalcanal. Leaving the U.S. in 1943, Raney’s first landing was in Oran in North Africa. From there, the 45th Infantry Division participated in the invasion of Sicily, which is where the gravity of the situation left Rex questioning whether he’d ever see America again.

“We’d had casualties before that, but that’s the first time we had any KIAs,” Raney explains of Day 5 on Sicily. “We got five that day, and it brought things home pretty fast.”

As sobering as the situation was on Sicily, the invasion of Salerno, Italy in September, 1943 was even worse. “That’s when you decided you better make the best of every chance you get,” Raney explains. “Because you’re not going back to the States.” You’ll hear the emotion in his voice as he remembers calling in white phosphorus shells on the enemy to avoid being killed or taken prisoner. By now a Sergeant Major, he normally wouldn’t have been on the front line, but by the time they left Salerno, “everyone but the cooks” had experienced front line combat.

“It was a different type of fear,” you’ll hear Raney describe. “I may be going down, but some of you are going with me.”

You’ll even hear how the young solder established a hypothetical score in his mind of how many enemy combatants he might disable before they ended his life, and you’ll hear his memories of some of the close calls he survived. One of those came when he sat up just in time in a foxhole as a shell from a P-38 providing American air support slammed into the spot where his head had been. “The Good Lord looks after you,” he says. Listen for his memories from the marathon battle of Anzio, where he once spent 29 straight days in the same foxhole, in addition to the story of how he earned his Purple Heart. On their from Anzio to nearby caves where an entire unit had been “wiped out,” enemy shells stopped their advance. That night, they were bombarded by “Anzio Annie,” the famed railroad gun emerging from a mountainside tunnel, as well as bombs, artillery, and 88mm anti-aircraft guns. As all of that fell on and around them, the man Rex was sharing his foxhole with told him that he’d been hit. When he turned to look, he saw that one of the soldiers lungs was protruding from his back. Raney pick the man up, and carried him over his shoulder back to the medics to try to save his life. When he went to leave, his friend Sgt. Whitlock stopped him.

“Rex, where you going?,” he recalls Whitlock asking. “You don’t know that you don’t have a seat on your pants, and you’ve got blood?”

In his desire to save a fellow soldier’s life, Raney wasn’t even aware that he himself had been struck by shrapnel. Watch the video below to see Rex point out where on his body his injuries were:

Listen to Hometown Heroes for Rex’s explanation of why he wasn’t evacuated, but instead stayed on the lines with his fellow troops. 15 years after World War II, he still had tiny fragments emerging from the skin on his left leg. You’ll also hear what Bill Mauldin’s cartoons meant to Rex, in addition to his memories of hearing “Axis Sally” on the radio. He shares memories about his time on the winter line in Italy, his view of Gen. Mark Clark, and his perspectives on the controversial handling of the Nazi-held abbey on Monte Cassino, where Rex survived another close call that altered his perspective on his future. You’ll hear how he made his way into the Vatican after Rome was liberated, and his memories from the relatively tame invasion of Southern France. By late April, 1945, he was in Germany, where the 45th Infantry Division helped liberate the concentration camp at Dachau. Rex arrived there about an hour after the first Americans to enter the facility.

“They were walking skin and bones,” Raney says of the survivors he encountered. “I’d hate to tell you how many people were dead or dying in stock cars and gondolas. Some of them were half-in and half-out of the train.”

Even after V-E Day, Raney wasn’t out of danger. He contracted Malaria and spent 11 days in a hospital in Marseilles before he could return home to the U.S. and an emotional reunion with his parents. The G.I. Bill enabled him to earn an accounting degree from the University of Denver, and after graduation, he moved to Delta, CO with a plan of teaching in the business department for one year. Instead, he fell in love with school secretary, and Rex and Betty will celebrate their 67th anniversary in July. Listen to Hometown Heroes for the twists of fate that brought them together, and if you’re ever in Grand Junction, CO, find Rex and thank him for his service to our country.
—Paul Loeffler