WWII combat vet celebrates 100th birthday

Elmer “Tug” Graffam, who fought in World War II under Gen. George Patton, celebrated his 100th birthday last week with royal treatment from the Stephen W. Manchester Post 62 of the American Legion.

Post 62 Commander Roger Barr, 1st Vice Commander Dennis Marrotte and legionnaires recognized Graffam Feb. 27 with a drive-by parade past his Forest Street home, a house he built two houses from where he was born.

On Feb. 23, Barr and Marrotte presented Graffam with a giant, sheet giant cake decorated with the legion emblem and presented him with a book, “Last Shots for Patton’s Third Army” by Robert Fuller.

A Westbrook native, Graffam was born Feb. 24, 1921, and graduated from Westbrook High School in 1940.

He has been a member of Post 62 for 21 years.

SSgt. Graffam served as a cook and member of a gun crew with the 243rd Artillery Unit in Patton’s Third Army in France, Germany and central Europe. In the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg, Graffam survived the fierce fighting in Battle of the Bulge in snow and bitter cold. His unit, Graffam said Monday, didn’t have cold weather clothing, just what was issued.

In a news article published in 1945, Graffam  said he saw Patton several times.

“He kept in constant touch while we were on the move,” Graffam is quoted as saying, “and it was impossible to miss him.”

Graffam’s daughter, Christine Dileo, said her dad’s unit in 1944 had been sent to France to liberate the city of Rombas. The GI’s, she said, bonded with the citizens there. Her  father gifted three cans of C-ration peanut butter to a 9-year-girl whose family was starving.

In a homecoming from war, Graffam dropped in unannounced to see his mother in Westbrook just before Christmas in 1945.

“She almost fainted,” he recalled.

He first served with the National Guard in Westbrook and trained in the Post 62 headquarters on Dunn Street before being drafted, he said.

Graffam went by train to Mississippi for advanced training before shipping out aboard the Queen Elizabeth.

Graffam once won a raffle organized by soldiers and spent five days in a luxury hotel in Nice, France, on the Riviera. To return to his unit, he flagged down a mail truck.

After the war, Graffam married Elsie McCauley of Gorham in 1946. They met at Tom’s Restaurant in Westbrook. Over the years, he worked for food related companies, including partnering with his brother Linnie Graffam in a Gorham restaurant.

Today, he enjoys crossword puzzles, checkers and dominoes and reads the American Journal and The Forecaster every week.