{"id":1008,"date":"2026-05-25T22:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T22:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2026-05-25T22:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T22:08:12","slug":"on-memorial-day-we-remember-an-army-medic-from-raleigh-killed-on-the-front-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=1008","title":{"rendered":"On Memorial Day, we remember an Army medic from Raleigh killed on the front lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.<\/p>\n

Read our AI Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n

On the last day of fighting, Capt. John Ray Jr. packed two bags full of bandages and lugged them out to the front line \u2014 an open trench full of filth and bloody soldiers.<\/p>\n

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As artillery shells burst overhead, Ray treated 300 wounded men, using up so many bandages that he pulled them off dead men. At one point, the Army medic even treated a German soldier, giving him a sip from his canteen.<\/p>\n

This was September 29, 1918 \u2014 the bloodiest day of World War I for North Carolina soldiers trying to bust through the Hindenburg Line, a hellscape of barbed wire, trenches and guns.<\/p>\n

Back in Raleigh, Ray had his own doctor\u2019s office on Fayetteville Street. But he hungered for excitement, and in 1918 shipped out for France with the famed 30th Infantry, writing breathless letters home to his mother:<\/p>\n

\u201cYour old boy is surely in the thick of the real thing!\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Then near the end of the day, he caught a burst of shrapnel in his upper thigh, also losing a pair of fingers. Shrugging off his injury, Ray walked 5 miles to an ambulance, treating more wounded along the way.<\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t kill him. But \u201cgas gangrene,\u201d an infection common to soldiers wading through trench foulness, did.<\/p>\n

He was just 29.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Raleigh man who gave his life in the war was more widely known or more widely esteemed than was Captain Ray,\u201d wrote The N&O when his remains returned to Raleigh\u2019s Oakwood Cemetery<\/a> in 1921, three years later. \u201cHis service to the regiment was of the most distinguished order, and he was wounded in the very front line of the attack, where few medical units were ever found.\u201d<\/p>\n

A mile from downtown Raleigh, historic Oakwood Cemetery houses the remains of soldiers from every major war since the American Revolution, including Ray\u2019s.<\/p>\n

On Monday afternoon, the Oakwood Second Line<\/a> band will play Sousa marches and the National Anthem in the new veterans\u2019 section, close enough for Ray to hear.<\/p>\n

But Raleigh has reason to remember this brave medic beyond his slog through the Western Front. Back home, after the war, his mother, Finie Carter Ray, helped kick-start the city\u2019s tradition of tipping an annual hat to its fallen soldiers.<\/p>\n

She had, after all, a box full of his letters.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Dearest Little Mother,\u201d<\/i> he wrote a few months before his death. \u201cThis is a great game over here and I only wish I could have gotten into it sooner … This old boy is going to enjoy it all, regardless of how uncomfortable things may be.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Ray had studied medicine at Wake Forest College \u2014 then in Wake Forest, and not yet a university \u2014 where his fraternity brothers poked fun at him in the pages of The Howler, a yearbook.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe labored under the delusion that he was to be a pill roller,\u201d it read. \u201cAs he lacks the necessary animation to do anything superhuman, we will not waste ink and energy mapping out a course for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Ray did become a doctor, earning his medical degree at Cornell University, taking a job at New York\u2019s Bellevue Hospital.<\/p>\n

In Raleigh, he lived with his parents while seeing patients downtown, but he longed for adventure. So he joined the National Guard and joined troops chasing after Pancho Villa until the US declared war on Germany and sent the young doctor to France.<\/p>\n

After the war, his mother lobbied for three years to bring his body home from France. And as a Gold Star Mother, head of the American Legion auxiliary, she started a \u201cPoppy Day\u201d observance. Veterans, most of them at a hospital in Asheville, made the flowers out of paper in exchange for money to a disabled veterans relief fund.<\/p>\n

Even after her own son died, \u201cMother Ray\u201d went to visit these men.<\/p>\n

Three months ago, Oakwood\u2019s Executive Director Robin Simonton was getting ready to leave her cemetery office when a couple walked in while she was turning off the lights.<\/p>\n

The man turned to a picture on display in the corner and asked, \u201cWhy is a picture of Uncle Jack in your lobby?\u201d<\/p>\n

It is worth mentioning here that Oakwood\u2019s staff knows the life stories of most of the cemetery\u2019s residents, and they refer to them by first name, often in adoring tones. Ray is just one soul resting there who gets treated as a guest at a long, time-traveling dinner table.<\/p>\n

But through crazy happenstance, Simonton found herself greeting Ray\u2019s great-nephew Charles Henderson and his wife, who were in Raleigh for a quilt show and stopped in to find the old soldier\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n

She pulled out his file, and they shared stories.<\/p>\n

A week later, she received a photograph showing Ray\u2019s painted portrait, with the medic in his olive drab uniform with an arm draped over his knee.<\/p>\n

After a century, he still looked like an old boy out on a lark \u2014 one of thousands cut down while young, senselessly, but not yet forgotten.<\/p>\n

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Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh has a soldier buried from every major war since the American Revolution, and the history of these fighters is researched and shared<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-read-todays-edition"],"yoast_head":"\nOn Memorial Day, we remember an Army medic from Raleigh killed on the front lines - Durham Moving Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=1008\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On Memorial Day, we remember an Army medic from Raleigh killed on the front lines - 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