LITTLE ROCK — A Purple Heart ceremony held at the state Capitol on Friday took just one phone call to arrange, but the actual ceremony came only after 10 years of frustration with military bureaucracy and 20 years after the recipient had died.
William Corley, born in 1920 in the small town of Prattsville, about 16 miles from Malvern, enlisted in the Army 53 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Assigned to the 2nd Battalion, Company B, 60th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division as a machine gunner, Corley fought with Gen. George Patton, starting in French Morocco in Operation Torch, across North Africa, and into Tunisia.
In Tunisia, he was involved in one of the fiercest battles of the war, the Battle of Sedjenane Valley, for which his unit was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for “heroism in the face of the enemy.”
Active fighting in World War II ended for Corley on Aug. 12, 1943, in Sicily during Operation Husky, as Allied forces fought the German and Italian armies for control of the island, which was to serve as a staging area for the invasion of Italy. A mortar round killed his ammo bearer and gave Corley a severe concussion.
After several weeks in the hospital, Corley, the last surviving original member of the unit he left the U.S. with nine months previously, was reassigned to a Quartermaster Depot for the remainder of the war. He died Jan. 20, 1996, in Malvern at the age of 75.
About 10 years after his death, Corley’s son, Bill Corley of Benton, began trying to obtain his father’s military records, suspecting there was more to his father’s participation during the war than the family had previously believed.
“We heard he served with Patton, but thought he was in the Quartermaster Corps,” Bill Corley said. “But it didn’t add up because he had told us he was a machine gunner. Well, he wouldn’t have been a machine gunner in the Quartermaster Corps.”
Corley tried unsuccessfully for 10 years to obtain records regarding his father’s role in World War II, finally calling the office of U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, for help.
“French got them in a month. Four hundred pages,” Corley said. “They pretty much told the whole story.”
Corley said the problem was his father’s service in the noncombatant Quartermaster Corps, which dealt with supply.
“Those records cleared up the confusion because they didn’t see how he could have been wounded being in the Quartermaster Corps,” Corley said.
After that, it was a relatively simple matter to arrange the awarding of the Purple Heart.
“It’s a special time to be able to arrange a ceremony like this for the family,” Hill said after Friday’s ceremony. “I am so proud that my staff was able to obtain those records and to determine that William Corley should have been awarded the Purple Heart for bravery in World War II.”