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Rangers - Father, son serve with honor

     He was in the invasion of Africa, as a Ranger he scaled the cliffs at Normandy on D-Day, endured the danger and hardships of the Battle of the Bulge and later was injured in an airborne jump carried out to rescue prisoners of war in the Philippines, but Robert F. Hurley of Irondale sees no glory nor glamour in his World War II exploits. 

     Hurley makes it clear he joined the U.S. Army in 1937 out of economic necessity, that being to escape the grips of The Great Depression.  What lie ahead for him and millions of others was beyond his imagination. 

     It is clear that Hurley is reluctant to talk bout his wartime experiences. 

     "So many buddies got killed," Hurley said, looking down.   "Some I had been with about five years.   It is hard to look back."

       In fact, Hurley will not talk about his war experiences in detail.  It is clear they are etched indelibly in his mind, but he will speak only in general terms. 

     With the hardships and a physical injury that was near fatal, Hurley's greatest grief comes not from his own wartime encounters but the loss of his son, Sgt. Maj. Patrick R. Hurley, in Operation Desert Storm. 

     Like his father when he scaled the cliffs at Normandy, Patrick Hurley was an Airborne Ranger and when he was fatally injured in a helicopter crash he was a member of the Special Forces elite Delta Force.  He was on a rescue mission behind the lines, an operation so confidential that the government still has not released all of the details. 

    Robert Hurley and his wife, Mabel, as well as other family members, were honored guests last year when a lake at Fort Bragg, S.C. and a training hill at Fort Benning, Ga., were named in honor of Patrick Hurley. 

     The senior Hurley, once a Ranger in World War II, was again named an "honorary Ranger" by his son's unit and a more touching honor was bestowed when the names of Robert and Patrick Hurley were placed together on the "Ranger Walk of Fame" at Fort Benning. 

     Tears come to the eyes of both Mr. and Mrs. Hurley when they speak of their son.  Their home is filled with photographs and other momentos related to their hero son. 

     The Hurleys built the house they live in more than four decades ago, but sold it when they moved to Illinois.  After Patrick's death, they moved back to Missouri and were fortunate enough to be able to repurchase the home in which he and their other children had grown up. 

     The house sits on a hill overlooking Big River, and so fittingly in front a U.S. flag flies briskly in the wind. 

     Robert Hurley recalls the African campaign as the easiest part of the war.  There the troops his unit faced were mostly Italians who had lost the will to fight. 

     "They wanted to surrender," Hurley recalls, "but they had German officers and NCOs who would not let them give up." 

     It was the assigned task of the 2nd Ranger Battalion to take the big German guns atop the cliffs at Normandy, Hurley remembers.  They had to scale the cliffs and it was virtually a suicide mission for those Rangers. 

     "We lost 136 men," Hurley said with both sadness and anger in his voice.  "It was uncalled for." 

     Hurley explained his bitterness.  The artillery emplacements were there, but there were no big guns in them.   But the Germans defended the positions with great vigor, using machine guns to mow down the climbing Armericans. 

     The toll would have been much greater, Hurley said, except for the fact that he and some other Rangers saw what was happening and went to the flanks.   They managed to get around and take out the machine gun emplacements so that those still on the cliffs could reach the summit.

       What respect he had for the Rangers at that time was quickly  lost, Hurley admits,and he soon transferred  to the 30th Infantry Division that arrived in France on June 10, 1944. 

     While the memories of his days with the Rangers a half-century ago still leave him bitter, Hurley has a new respect and love for the Army. 

     "They are the greatest," both Hurley and his wife said, referring to the way they have been treated since the death of their son. 

     Patrick's nearly 19 years in the Army has obviously renewed the couple's admiration for the military.  He went into Iran when Americans were being held hostage, was in an advance force that went into Panama and was among the first in during the Persian War. 

     After Robert Hurley joined up with the 30th Infantry, it battled its way across France, Belgium and northern Germany.  He was in the Battle of St. Lo where he recalled they put out smoke to guide Allied bombers but the wind blew the smoke back over their position and it was the Americans who took the brunt of the bombing. 

     Hurley's memories of the Battle of the Bulge are also none too pleasant. 

     "It was bad because of the fog," he recalls. "The planes couldn't see us." 

     The weather kept Allied aircraft from dropping in supplies to their troops as well as prevented them from bombing the deadly Tiger tanks of the Germans.  "After the weather cleared up the planes got rid of the tanks." 

     Another memory he shared, though he will talk in little detail, ws that during the Battle of the Bulge "it was cold as the Dickens." 

    With the war over in Europe, Hurley got a break.  He got to spend about two weeks leave and then was off to the Pacific and the Philippine Islands. 

     Joining up the with the 11th Airborne, Hurley jumped into northern Luzon where the unit had a mission of rescuing American prisoners of war who had been part of the Bataan Death March.  It was in that jump that he was nearly killed. 

     "My chute split and I landed on my head and shoulders," Hurley said.  "I don't know how I got to the hospital.  I don't remember anything about it but I wound up in the hospital at Manila." 

     Hurley suffered a hemorrhage of the brain.  After 30 days hospitalized at Manila, he was transferred to a hospital in Battle Creek, Mich. 

     That was to be the end of Hurley's military career, one that had taken him through bitter conflict on two continents and in the South Pacific. 

 The DAILY JOURNAL, St. Francois County., Wednesday, April 26, 1995.

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