Rethel Wales Grimes of Kinston was talking to a lady the other day at her Greenville children's store, and she asked him if it was one of his relatives she saw on the cover of the November issue of Olde Kinston Gazette along with some other World War I veterans from eastern North Carolina.
Rethel found a copy of the newspaper, and sure enough, there was a picture of his father - Pvt. Earl Grimes of Mount Olive.
His father entered military service after graduating from Buies Creek Academy (today Campbell University) and entering a career as a bookkeeper at a hardware store in Faison, N.C.
The elder Grimes was a member of the 40th (Old Hickory) Division from Tennessee which was assigned to the British Army in France during the war. Enlisted October 10, 1917, Grimes was assigned to Company A of the 113th Machine Gun Brigade January 31, 1919. By the time he was discharged and returned home April 8 that year, he had been shipped England, back to France and then to Germany.
Rethel grew up in the Smith's Chapel area of Mount Olive on the edge of the Sampson County line. Every Autumn for a number of years, one of his dad's old war buddies would come visit to go quail hunting.
The visitor had a cork leg, and every time he came to visit, he would take off the cork leg and toss it into a corner. While Rethel and his brother Carroll played horsie with the cork leg, the men would sit around and recount fascinating tales about their experiences in France during the war.
The most exciting story was about the storming of the Hindenburg Line.
They were both in the heat of battle at San Quentin Canal. Pvt. Grimes was a machine gunner, and his buddy, who was from Tennessee, carried ammunition and water for the water-cooled Vickers machine gun. They had both been assigned to the British Army.
Artillery fire was intense, and everyone ran for cover. The two-man American machine gun crew dove into a bunker.
Looking up, Pvt. Grimes and his buddy saw they were surrounded by Germans who had also dived into the bunker for shelter from the chaos. The Germans threw their hands up in surrender, but Pvt. Grimes and his buddy were not interested in capturing anybody. After the shelling ended, everybody "went their own way."
Pvt. Grimes had made it all the way into the bunker, but his buddy caught a barrage of bullets in the leg. The wound was severe, and the badly mangled leg had to be amputated later. Pvt. Grimes caught quite a bit of shrapnel, which he carried with him to his grave in 1969 at the age of 79.
"I remember years later, you could still feel the shrapnel in his face," Rethel recalled. "He was gassed during the battle and had pneumonia several times later in life."
The Americans recuperated in a hospital for three months in a little French town near the Belgium border called Rethel.
"Today, it's pretty good size, but then it was a small place," said Rethel Grimes. "He said it was hilly there, a beautiful place. He decided that, regardless of whether he had a girl or boy, he would name his first child after that beautiful place."
Civilian Earl Grimes returned to the Smith's Chapel farm with a Purple Heart and married a local girl, Mary Elizabeth "Bessie" Jenette. On June 12, 1923, the couple named their first boy Rethel Wales (after another place Earl had been stationed during the war) Grimes.
"We had a post card he mailed to her (Bessie) from a hospital in England," said Rethel, who is now age 75. The Grimes family has letters Earl sent to Bessie from England in which he described the parades and celebration of Armistice Day.
Rethel said that, after the war, his father expected to be shipped home, but was routed back to France, then Germany before finally coming home and starting a family.
Rethel's brother Carroll was born three years after him. Another brother, who died as a baby, was born in 1940.
"My brother still lives at the old home place in Sampson County," said Rethel. "He served in World War II in the Pacific. I remember Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). I was at my grandfather's house, and he had a radio. I heard the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor. My brother wanted to go into the service, and I stayed home and helped run the farm."
Rethel married June Byrd, who grew up in an area between Mount Olive and Calypso with her twin sister Jean. They had two children.
The family moved to Kinston in 1966. Their son Douglas lives in Zimbabwe, and their daughter Jane Leigh Feather lives in Carey. Both are graduates of Kinston High School. Three grandchildren also live in Zimbabwe.