A last salute for their sergeant

Homeless vet dies; his Marines rally

RALEIGH -- John Wagner was watching the news when he learned that William "Bill" Fredere, a much-admired Marine staff sergeant he had served under in the Persian Gulf War, had been found dead in a ditch in Morrisville.

Wagner also learned that his old staff sergeant, whom he had seen working at Sam's Club in Cary six months before, was homeless.

"I was just completely shocked," said Wagner, 36. "He seemed to be doing well."

Wagner and other men in the Raleigh Reserve unit that had gone to the gulf later learned that Fredere, 59, had been living under a railroad bridge and showered at Peak Fitness on Maynard Road before going to work at the Sam's Club on Harrison Avenue. After hearing that there wasn't enough money to pay for his funeral, they decided to take care of the grizzled vet who took care of them during Desert Storm.

They helped Morrisville police find Fredere's next of kin, a first cousin in Raleigh, then started working with the Marine Corps and Brown-Wynne Funeral Home in Cary to put together a funeral service for Fredere, a Vietnam veteran who attained the rank of gunnery sergeant before he was discharged.

"We wanted to make sure he was taken care of with the dignity he deserved as a U.S. Marine and as a brother," Wagner said.

Brown-Wynne, in tribute to the homeless veteran, is doing a service free of charge at 2 p.m. today, complete with a bugler, a gun salute and a flag detail.

The men who served under Fredere are puzzled by his homelessness. They say he wasn't consumed by drugs and had been working at Sam's Club for four years. Fredere's body was discovered off N.C. 54 between Henrico Lane and Weston Parkway about 11:30 a.m. Sept. 16. Police concluded that he had fallen from his bicycle and broken his neck.

'An old-school Marine'

Fredere was awarded a Purple Heart for a head injury he received from a vehicle explosion in Vietnam. His Marine Reserve unit off Western Boulevard shipped out to the Persian Gulf in 1990.

Carl Barclay of Cary said he and Fredere grew close when he was a 17-year-old Marine reservist making the transition from boyhood to manhood, from peacetime to war. Barclay, still a Marine reservist and civil engineer with the state Department of Transportation, said he thinks several traumatic experiences might have left Fredere with serious mental problems.

"I have no idea how much trauma he endured in Vietnam, but there must have been some," Barclay said. "He always told us he was never married, but I found out after he died that he was married in the 1970s. I'm thinking he was in a marriage so bad he didn't even want to mention it."

Curtis White, then 18, was among the mostly young Marines in the unit who deployed without combat experience. White and others say Fredere's calm, tough-as-nails stance strengthened their resolve before they went overseas.

White, who now owns Westover Barber Shop on Hillsborough Street, feared the worst, especially when he heard the government was sending 50,000 body bags along. The American military was going up against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whose army had been fighting the Iranians for more than a decade and had an arsenal that reportedly included deadly gas.

The Marines, 33 in all, were afraid. Fredere was an old, crusty, salty devil dog they all looked up to.

"He had a growl. He was kind of what you think of when you think of an old-school Marine," White said. "He put us at ease. He told us, 'Our goal is to bring every last one of you back alive.' "

The Raleigh Marine Reserve unit landed in Jubayl, Saudi Arabia, on Christmas Eve 1990. When they all returned alive to the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point on May 23, 1991, Fredere had delivered on his promise.