Twenty-six years apart, almost to the day, two generations of the Edmiston family earned the Purple Heart for wounds suffered while fighting for their country.

While a father and son both receiving the award is rare enough, what makes the Edmistons’ story even more unusual is that the location where Gray and his son, Jim Edmiston, took their wounds was so close together: less than a two-hour drive separates the two battlefields.

“That’s the interesting part of the whole thing,” said Jim, 92. “My wound wasn’t that serious. They just dressed my wound and I never left my company.”

James Gray Edmiston, known as Gray, was a private in the U.S. Army in World War I.

A Spokane native, he enlisted at age 22 in March 1918. Gray was assigned to Company A in the 362nd Regiment in the 91st “Wild West” Division. He was stationed in the Argonne forest in France just in time for the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. In an effort to repel a German attack, Gray was sprayed with mustard gas and hit with two bullets in his right hip and ankle.

The Americans repulsed the Germans, who retreated to their trenches, leaving a badly wounded Gray in no-man’s land.

“They were overrun by the Germans. The Americans lost a large number of men,” Jim said. “He was out there with the dead for three days.”

He dug the bullet out of his ankle with his trench knife and crawled back to friendly territory, where he was patched up and sent to England, then home.

His mother had received a telegram that her son had been killed in action.

Armistice Day (now Veterans Day) came just weeks after his injury as one of the last Americans wounded in World War I.

Marla Edmiston, Jim’s daughter, recalls her grandfather’s health decades later.

“I remember as a little girl tugging on his hand so he would walk faster,” she said. “He always had some difficulty walking.”

His lungs, blistered by the chemical gas dropped on the battlefield, never operated at full capacity again.

Gray’s son, Jim, initially wanted to join the Army Air Corps as World War II wore on. The recruiter in Walla Walla, Wash., told him the Army didn’t need any more pilots, and he should join the infantry.

He quit his studies at Whitman University and became a heavy mortar crewman in Company M of the 101st Infantry Regiment.

He was shipped to Fort Lewis, Wash., 25 years almost to the day that his father was sent to the same fort.

After training stateside in Washington and taking classes in California, Jim departed New York Harbor aboard the captured French cruise ship Ile de France on Sept. 11, 1944.

He arrived in Normandy on Sept. 19 and spent the next few months fighting in France.

Jim was about to earn some much needed “R & R” in Paris when the Germans sent several armored columns at surprised American troops in the dense Ardennes forest.

The Battle of the Bulge might have succeeded in taking Antwerp, an important Belgian port, were it not for the “Battered Bastards of Bastogne” in the 101st Airborne Division.

Jim, a member of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army, was part of the relief effort for the surrounded paratroopers.

It was in Bastogne, on Jan. 6, under heavy shelling that he took shrapnel in his leg and earned his Purple Heart.

He was field-dressed by medics and became one of the walking wounded, but stayed with his mortar crew.

After beating back Hitler’s last gamble, the 26th “Yankee” Division, which Jim was accompanying, crossed the Rhine and cut a swath across Germany and ultimately into Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Central Europe had seen horrors during the war.

“When we crossed the Rhine River we got into the death camps,” Jim said. “Eisenhower made the residents of the nearby towns go through and clean up the camps.”

The concentration camps were so numerous, he said, that he can’t recall all the names.

When the army arrived in Czechoslovakia, it was informed the Russians were coming directly at them.

“We were moving so fast, our support couldn’t keep up and we had no way to identify ourselves,” Jim said. “The Russians were coming from the other direction and we had to be identified. So this little American flag was pinned to the first Jeep when we met with them and no one got hurt.”

Jim has that flag today in a small frame in his Helena Flats home. The Germans vastly preferred to surrender to the Americans.

“They had enough of the Russians and wanted us to take their surrender,” he said. “It was so formal, I remember watching it and it looked like a stage show.”

After Germany surrendered, Jim earned a Bronze Star as a soldier in the occupational army. Along with his unit citations, good conduct medals and Purple Heart, he came home with plenty of gratitude for his service.

He was sent back on a crowded troop ship in choppy waters.

“A lot of the guys were sick,” Jim said. “It was crowded. I think I threw up myself once or twice. I preferred the cruise ship.”

He arrived back in the U.S. just days before New Year’s Day 1946. Jim finished his schooling at Whitman University and joined his father, Gray, who was president of the Conrad Bank and later the Bank of Columbia Falls. The Edmistons were bankers for decades, and Jim met his future wife, Phillis, while she was a secretary at the bank.

Gray died in 1966, leaving behind Jim and a daughter, Norma Happ. Happ later became mayor of Kalispell.

Jim later became a “silent partner” in acquiring ownership of the Daily Inter Lake, and ran the Edmiston Land and Cattle Co. for years.

Nearly 70 years after taking his shrapnel and earning his rare position as the son of a father-and-son Purple Heart-winning duo, the war is far from his mind. He had a life, a career, and family to worry about back in the United States.

Even so, he still looks good in his Army cap.

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.