Medal of Honor Monday: Stephen R. Gregg

On this day in 1914, a future Medal of Honor recipient is born. Stephen Raymond Gregg is credited with saving the lives of seven of his fellow soldiers.  Better yet?  Even though he risked his life, he lived to tell the story.

Gregg had been a shipyard welder before joining the Army in February 1942, when he was 27 years old. Maybe you won’t be surprised to hear that he soon earned the affectionate nickname “The Old Man”?!

“The Old Man” would serve in both Italy and France, but his Medal action came near Montélimar, France, on August 27, 1944. He was then a Technical Sergeant serving with the 143rd Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division. 

His platoon had been advancing through southern France when it was ambushed by the Germans. Several of our men were killed and seven more were wounded. Medics kept trying to get to these injured soldiers, but each attempt was rebuffed with German fire.

The situation seemed impossible.

“We were close by,” Gregg later told The New York Times, “and you could hear the men that were hit calling for medics. I said, ‘God! I’ve got to do something here.’ I don't know what got into me, but I picked up this gun.”

Gregg took off towards the wounded, bringing the medic in behind him. The “Old Man” was firing from his hip, providing cover for that medic even as the Germans attempted to pound them with grenades.

“I kept firing and firing,” he concluded to the Times. “I was just thinking, ‘I’ve got to get as many as I can before they get me.’ I never thought I’d come out of this thing alive, to be frank with you. The Lord was with me.”

The medic was able to get the wounded out of there while Gregg distracted the Germans. Just as he was finishing, though, Gregg ran out of ammunition. He was soon confronted by four Germans who demanded his surrender.

“I don’t know why they never killed me,” he mused in an oral history, “cause I sure as hell would’ve killed them. I was trying to kill them. So they had me surrounded up there.  They were trying to find out where to take me.”

Perhaps you could say that Gregg saved himself in that moment?  His actions to defend the medic had so stunned the Germans that they were apparently gaping at the scene: They never noticed that other American soldiers had used the opportunity to move into a better position. Now at least one of those re-positioned Americans began firing on the four Germans, enabling Gregg to grab one of their guns and make an escape.

Upon returning to a safer American position, Gregg resumed firing at the Germans until they retreated for the evening.

Naturally, a strong German counterattack resumed the next morning. This time, the enemy had tanks. The tough clash that followed is notable for Gregg’s single-handed attack on an enemy position at a critical moment in the fight.

Gregg would later receive a Medal of Honor for his defense of the wounded soldiers, as well as his single-handed grenade attack on an enemy position the next day. He didn’t think he’d done much, though.

“Some people don’t know what a Medal of Honor recipient is; they think maybe it’s an outstanding man or something,” he said at a ceremony years later. “We’re just ordinary people, you know. But we’re very, very fortunate, that’s all, to have come back alive.”

Indeed, perhaps his Medal paled in comparison to what happened when he first returned home from war? His hometown of Bayonne, New Jersey, threw a parade for him, celebrating his heroism and safe return.

He met his wife and had a family because of that parade.

“So who was my father?” Stephen Gregg, Jr. said at his dad’s passing in 2005. “An ordinary man who did something stupendous.”

RIP, Sir.

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Primary Sources: 

• Medal of Honor citation (Stephen R. Gregg; WWII)

• Medal of Honor oral history (Stephen R. Gregg; WWII)

• New Statue Honors Army 2nd Lt. Stephen R. Gregg, One Of The Most Decorated Soldiers Of WWII (CBS; July 15, 2021)

• Obituary: Stephen R. Gregg Sr.

• Richard Goldstein, Stephen R. Gregg, 90, Dies; Received the Medal of Honor (N.Y. Times; Feb. 10, 2005)

• Russell Ben-Ali, Gregg, Other Medal of Honor Holders Saluted (Jersey Journal; May 29, 1999) (p. A4)

• Stephen R. Gregg, 90; Awarded Medal of Honor in World War II for Helping to Rescue 7 Soldiers (L.A. Times; Feb. 11, 2005)