Into Germany

Written by: Kelly Durham

The graduation day forecast for Clemson was for mild weather with a high only in the mid-seventies, just right for the planned ceremony in the campus’s Outdoor Theater.  The commencement speaker, in a sign of the times, was Major General Robert Eichelberger, the commander of the 77^th Infantry Division at Fort Jackson.  Eichelberger would go on to command the 8^th Army during General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific campaigns. He was one of three general officers scheduled to receive honorary degrees for distinguished service in military science and tactics on that Monday morning, May 25, 1942.  Among the cadets lining up for their bachelors’ degrees was Heyward Hunter Fellers of Prosperity.

Fellers, who grew up on a Newberry County farm, majored in agronomy.  He was selected for membership in Alpha Zeta, the national honor fraternity for agriculture, which he served as scribe his senior year.  Fellers also served as president of Kappa Alpha Sigma, Clemson’s student chapter of the American Society of Agronomy.  He was a member of the Sears Scholarship Club and completed ROTC training camp at Clemson during the summer of 1941.  Like General Eichelberger, Fellers would soon be heading overseas as an officer of the United States Army. Unlike the general, who’s fighting would be with the 8^th Army against the Japanese, Fellers would carry the war into Germany as an officer with the 8^th Infantry Division.

One month after graduation, Second Lieutenant Fellers reported for duty at Camp Wolters, Texas, the largest infantry replacement training center in the country.  After a stint at Fort Meade, Maryland, Fellers shipped overseas in August 1944.

Upon his arrival in France, Fellers was assigned to K Company of the 13^th Infantry Regiment, a part of the 8^th Infantry Division.  The division had already liberated the port city of Brest and now turned its efforts toward closing on the French-German border.  The 8^th cleared Brittainy’s Crozon Peninsula in September and drove across France to Luxembourg, moving into the Hürtgen Forest in late November.  The division continued to battle its way toward the east, clearing Hürtgen in late November and pushing on to the Roer River.  The Roer was finally crossed on February 23, 1945 and the division reached the Rhine two weeks later, occupying positions overlooking Cologne.  In early March, the 8^th advanced into the Rhineland and fought its way into the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland.

Even though Germany was clearly beaten, Hitler refused to surrender, calling on his troops and German civilians to make even greater sacrifices to save the Third Reich.  While attacking Hitler’s holdouts in the Ruhr pocket, Fellers was killed by a German sniper on April 4.  He was  temporarily buried at Ittenbach, Germany and was later moved to the US military cemetery at Margraten, Holland.  After the war, Feller’s remains were returned to Prosperity where, in December 1948, he was buried in the Zion United Methodist Church cemetery.

First Lieutenant Fellers was awarded the Purple Heart.  He was survived by his parents and brother.

For more information about First Lieutenant Heyward Hunter Fellers see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/heyward-hunter-fellers/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

‘This Was a Man’

Written by: Kelly Durham

Richard Worrell Kapp, Jr., “Dickie” to his friends, was impressing people long before he arrived on the Clemson College campus.  Kapp was from Orangeburg, where his friend Carolyn Stone Lewis remembered, he “excelled at EVERYTHING he did.”  “Everything” included Boy Scouts, academics, work, and sports.

Daniel Brailsford was a friend and coworker during summer breaks from school.  “Dickie and I toughened up by working construction. We installed roofing and insulation for a home builder the first summer and, the summer before our senior year, we worked for Daniel Construction which was building a tool plant, Utica Drop Forge, outside of Orangeburg. That summer we drove lay-out stakes, hauled block and lumber around the site, and wired together mats of rebar across the bottoms of huge square pits dug out of the clay. At the end of every day, Dickie would come back to the car covered with sweat and grime, but still smiling impishly. Dickie liked hard work. He took pride in whatever he did.”

Dickie’s work ethic helped him build an impressive record at Orangeburg High School.  A two-way starter on the football team, Dickie was a powerful linebacker who, according to Brailsford, “hit like a piston.”  One of the team’s captains, he was described by the Times-Democrat newspaper as “a sixty-minute man when the going gets tough.”  Dickie’s achievements were not restricted to sports.  He was a strong student, a member of the student council, and served as president of the Key Club, a profile which earned him Orangeburg High School’s coveted Bill Davis Trophy, awarded annually to the person who best displays the qualities of scholarship, athletic ability, and sportsmanship.

Dickie exhibited the same discipline and leadership traits at Clemson, where he enrolled as a member of the Class of 1966.  A history major, Kapp was a member of the Numeral Society, Phi Kappa Phi national scholarship society, and Phi Eta Sigma national honor fraternity.  He was a member of the Young Republicans and served on student government’s high court.

Fraternity brother Steve Hixson described Kapp as “the most focused, mature, sincere, and all-around nicest person I had ever met,” adding that Dickie was a role model for putting studies first.  At Clemson, as he had in high school, Dickie achieved an enviable record.  He applied and was accepted to law school, but there was something else he felt called to do first.  Dickie volunteered for the Marine Corps, according to his cousin Lloyd Kapp, because “he felt he was duty bound to serve his country.” Fraternity brother Dave Merry agreed.  “He believed in what he was doing and what the country was doing and was looking forward to leading a marine platoon even though he was fully aware of the life expectancy of such a position.”

Kapp graduated from Clemson on December 17, 1966. He reported to Quantico, Virginia for Marine Corps Officer Basic Training School, Class 6-67 which convened on June 1, 1967.  Also in the class was Kapp’s Clemson classmate, Stephen Hilton.  Both young alumni graduated as Second Lieutenants on November 1, 1967.  Their Quantico class sent more lieutenants off to battle and suffered more combat casualties than any Basic School class since the Korean War.  Sadly, both Kapp and Hilton would be included in this tragic tally.

After completing his basic training, Second Lieutenant Kapp was sent to Camp Schwab, Okinawa in December 1967.  He arrived in Vietnam in January 1968 and was assigned as platoon leader of 2nd Platoon, M Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. His unit was assigned the mission of engaging and destroying elements of the North Vietnamese Army which had been interdicting traffic along the Qua Viet River in northern South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were seeking to disrupt a vital supply link between the sea and the Marine Corps’ Dong Ha combat base in preparation for their upcoming surprise Tet Offensive.

The largest village in 3^rd Battalion’s area of operations was Mai Xai Tsi, the site of two major battles, one on the last day of January and the other on the first day of March.  John Potts was a squad leader in Kapp’s platoon.  “On March 1, 1968, Lt Kapp led his platoon of thirty-five marines into battle in the North Vietnamese Army occupied village of Mai Xai Tsi, along the Qua Viet River about 10 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone. The entire 3rd Battalion was involved in the attack and met heavy resistance. Causalities were heavy and continued to mount throughout the day. Despite the loss of his platoon right guide, two squad leaders, his radioman, and about a dozen other men, Lt Kapp continued the attack deep into the village. In the late afternoon, Lt Kapp was reorganizing the remaining members of his platoon when an unobserved NVA soldier rushed from behind a structure and fired a burst from his AK-47 automatic rifle.  Tragically, Lt Kapp and his platoon sergeant were killed instantly, but his last spoken words served as a warning to the other members of the platoon, preventing additional casualties.”  Potts remembered his platoon leader as “quietly confident,” someone whose “lack of fear in the face of extreme personal danger distinguished him as a leader and served as an example to all who served with him.” Potts recalled that Lieutenant Kapp “treated his men with respect, and related his trust in those of us who had been in-country for some time and encouraged us to help the newer guys…  We were all willing to follow him into battle.”

After his death, the Numeral Society at Clemson, now SAE fraternity, named its pledge award in Dickie’s honor.  Orangeburg High School created a scholarship in his memory which is awarded each year to a deserving senior.  The school’s principal, Eugene Smith eulogized Kapp in the Orangeburg newspaper.  “All teachers in the public schools,” he began, “have the privilege of knowing truly worthy, open-faced, clear-thinking young men.”  He described Dickie Kapp as “quietly sincere… modest but confident,” someone who “earned respect and love by becoming what many of us wish to become – a clean-cut, solid thinking, a willing and responsible giver of his talents and strength.”  Smith concluded by quoting Shakespeare. “His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a Man.’”

Richard Worrell Kapp, Jr. was awarded the Purple Heart, Combat Action Medal, Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Unit Commendation, National Defense Service Medal; Vietnam Service Medal; Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm, Individual Award for Valor; National Order of Vietnam Medal, 5th Class; Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation with Palm; and Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal.

Kapp was survived by his mother, stepfather, sister, and brother.  He is buried in Orangeburg’s Sunnyside Cemetery.

For more information about Second Lieutenant Richard Worrell Kapp, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/richard-worrell-kapp-jr/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

Takeoff

Written by: Kelly Durham

The missions flown by the heavy bombers of the 8^th Air Force were fraught with dangers.  Mechanical failures and equipment malfunctions were always a hazard at the high altitudes at which missions were flown.  The Germans were an even greater threat with swift, swarming fighter planes and deadly antiaircraft artillery.  But sometimes, the most dangerous part of the mission was simply getting off the ground.

John Calhoun Hubbard, Jr. of Bennettsville enrolled at Clemson College as a member of the Class of 1939.  After his freshman year on campus, Hubbard left school and took over the Nehi Bottling Plant in his hometown.  Over the following years, Hubbard joined the Junior Chamber of Commerce and the Woodmen of the World.  He was a member of the Methodist Church and was building a reputation as one of Bennettsville’s outstanding young businessmen.  Hubbard was also interested in flying.  In his free time, he took flying lessons with a local instructor.

Just two months after Pearl Harbor, Hubbard entered the Army as a private.  He qualified for and completed officer candidate school and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.  With his flying experience, he applied for and was accepted into flight training at Maxwell Field in Alabama.  He graduated to advanced flight training at George Field, Illinois where he earned his pilot’s wings.  From there he was ordered to Arkansas where he served as a flight instructor for several months.  He was then sent to Texas, Ohio, Nebraska, and Louisiana for additional training.

Hubbard was soon ordered back to Nebraska where he received additional training in combat flying in preparation for deployment to Europe.  In December 1944, Hubbard arrived in England as a pilot assigned to the 388^th Bomb Squadron, an 8^th Air Force unit stationed at Snetterton Heath in the southeastern part of the country.

The 388^th, like the rest of the 8^th Air Force, was fighting an aerial war not only against the Germans but also against what Masters of the Air author Donald Miller calls “one of the most capricious weather systems in the world.”  Fog and clouds often extended from ground level up to 20,000 feet or more.  Low clouds meant that pilots had to fly blind—using only their flight instruments—to navigate to a clear altitude and join their assigned formations.

By the time Second Lieutenant Hubbard began flying combat missions, the 8^th was regularly launching operations composed of hundreds of heavy bombers.  With nearly a hundred 8^th and 9^th Air Force bases concentrated in southeastern England, and with bombers taking off every thirty seconds from the area’s many runways, the takeoff and climb into formation could be as dangerous as the flight across the English Channel and over German-occupied Europe.

On January 29, 1945, the 8^th Air Force launched 1,158 bombers toward industrial targets in Germany.  In addition, 700 fighters were dispatched to escort the bombers.  This vast armada filled the airspace above East Anglia.  That morning, Hubbard was the copilot of a 388^th B-17 piloted by Second Lieutenant Alex Philipovich. As their aircraft climbed into the murky sky, it collided with another B-17 from its sister squadron the 337^th.  Both aircraft were destroyed and their crews killed. On that day, the 8^th recorded seventeen non-combat accidents, including eight takeoff accidents.  Mercifully, not all of them were fatal.

John Calhoun Hubbard, Jr. was survived by his parents, his wife, and their daughter.  After the war, his remains were returned to Bennettsville and interred in McCall Cemetery.

For more information on Second Lieutenant John Calhoun Hubbard, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/john-calhoun-hubbard-jr/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

See also Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany by Donald L. Miller.

Namesake

Written by: Kelly Durham

Like his namesake, the legendary Swamp Fox of Revolutionary War fame, Francis Marion Zeigler of Denmark seemed destined for renown as a warrior.  As a cadet, Zeigler was quickly recognized as a leader, being elected vice president of both his freshman and sophomore classes.  He also served as vice president of the YMCA, and as secretary and treasurer of the Clemson chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.  In Clemson’s cadet regiment, Zeigler advanced through the ranks each year, starting out as a private, promoted to corporal as a sophomore, sergeant major as a junior, and cadet captain as a senior.

Zeigler was also a fine athlete.  He was a member of the football team where he played fullback “as very few men have played it,” Taps reported.  “Zeigler is an earnest worker at all times; he plunges the line, tackles hard, and is always a fighter.”  In addition to football, Zeigler was a member of the Tiger track team which he served as captain.  In 1921, he set the Clemson record for 880 yards at 2 minutes, 3 and 3/5 seconds.  He contributed to the school’s mile relay record as well, 3 minutes, 34 and 3/5 seconds.  His athletic prowess earned him membership in the Block “C” Club which he served as president.

Zeigler’s classmates observed his “individuality, sincerity, and fineness of purpose” and elected him as president of the Class of 1923, an august group that included a future governor and US senator as well as a world famous journalist and author.  Taps wrote that Zeigler had “been recognized as a leader among us, and has tackled every problem set before him in his quiet honest way.”

In 1927, Zeigler joined the Army and displayed the same level of commitment to military service that he had shown at Clemson.  Zeigler was attracted to the field of aviation and earned his pilot’s wings.  Over a career that included assignments in the Philippines and China, Zeigler accumulated 2,900 flying hours, making him one of the Army’s more experienced flyers.  While stationed at the Army Air Depot in Fairfield, Ohio, Zeigler was tasked with planning and organizing the new Warner Robbins Army Air Depot in Georgia.  In the fall of 1942, with the United States embroiled in a global war, the forty-year-old colonel was assigned as executive officer at the new air base.

On Wednesday, December 2, 1942, Zeigler was the pilot of an Army A-20 Havoc medium bomber on a transition training flight.  His copilot was Arvil Copeland, the assistant general manager of the depot’s aircraft repair shop.  At approximately 1550 hours, Zeigler took off  to the west.  Upon reaching an altitude of twenty to thirty feet, the aircraft leveled off and then nosed down into a flat dive, striking a road about 150 feet from the end of the runway.  The impact sheared off the landing gear and the faring of the right engine’s nacelle.  The A-20 bounced into the air and appeared to continue straight ahead while climbing to about 200 feet.  Zeigler attempted to make a wide turn to the left to return to the field, but witnesses reported that the airplane was flying in an “extremely tail low position and gradually losing altitude.”  Faced with a deteriorating situation, Zeigler elected to land in a small field about two miles southwest of the runway.  The plane hit the ground on its belly, the force of the impact flipping it onto its back and causing “total damage.”  Both Zeigler and Copeland were seriously injured.  Copeland died four days later on Sunday, December 6.  Zeigler passed away the following Wednesday, December 9.

Colonel Francis Marion Zeigler was survived by his mother, his wife, the former Mildred Van Ausdel, a son, a step-daughter, four brothers, and four sisters.  He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

For more information on Francis Marion Zeigler see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/francis-marion-zeigler/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

Storm Clouds

Written by: Kelly Durham

When Robert Earle Agnew arrived on the Clemson campus in 1937, the storm clouds of war were gathering.  In China tensions with Japan erupted into full scale war that summer.  In Europe, the German invasion of Poland in the fall of Agnew’s senior year precipitated yet another continental crisis.  By the time of his graduation with the Class of 1940, France was effectively out of the war and the British were retreating to their home island.  Agnew was one American who understood that those storm clouds in Asia and Europe were likely to continue to spread until they eventually reached the United States.

Agnew came to Clemson from Donalds, the small Abbeville County community of less than three hundred souls.  At Clemson, he studied mechanical engineering and was a member of the track team, the Greenwood Club, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.  During his senior year, Agnew participated in the Civilian Pilot Training Program [CPTP], a government sponsored flight training program attempting to increase the number of civilian pilots as a potential pool from which to draw military fliers if needed.  Agnew was the first of the Clemson participants to solo.  He also completed ROTC training at Camp McClellan, Alabama preparing Agnew for a commission in the Army.

Following graduation, Agnew reported for Army basic training.  Given his CPTP experience, Agnew was accepted into Army Air Force flight training and sent to Randolph Field at San Antonio, Texas.  His training continued at Kelly Field, also in San Antonio, where he earned his pilot’s wings in March 1941.  In a sign of the times, the new pilot was assigned as a flight instructor and ordered to Moffett Field outside of San Jose, California.  Agnew was delighted with his assignment, writing to his parents, “If I should die in a plane crash, I will die happy; everything will be all right.”

Of course, Agnew wasn’t the only observer of the gathering storm.  In Washington, officials of the Roosevelt administration were scrambling to catch up with Germany’s fearsome Luftwaffe, then regarded as the most powerful air force in the world.  On October 23, 1941, Secretary of War Henry Stimson announced plans to double the nation’s fleet of first-line combat aircraft.  Noting that the increase in strength was needed to meet the “growing requirements” for adequate defense of the Western Hemisphere, Stimson explained that the Army Air Force would extend its growth plans from fifty-four combat groups to eighty-four. In the process, the number of pilots trained annually would increase from 12,000 to 30,000.

Those pilots would advance through three phases of flight training.  After primary flight training in simple aircraft, phase two pilots moved into more complex trainers like the BT-13 Vultee.  It was equipped with a more powerful engine, was faster and heavier than the primary aircraft, and required student pilots to manage more in-flight tasks, such as the use of flaps and a controllable-pitch propeller.

On the morning of November 3, 1941, Agnew and crew member Dan Fisk departed Stockton, California  in a BT-13 Vultee bound for their home field at Moffett.   The airplane never arrived.  Army investigators hypothesized that Agnew was descending through or attempting to fly below storm clouds when his aircraft crashed into the side of  a hill at an altitude of only 1,900 feet.  Both Agnew and Fisk were killed.

Agnew would not be the last Army pilot to perish before reaching a combat zone.  Training accidents would continue to plague the Army Air Force as it raced to meet the demands of an increasingly fragile peace and then outright war.

Robert Earle Agnew was survived by his parents and was buried in the Turkey Creek Baptist Church cemetery in Ware Shoals.

For more information on Second Lieutenant Robert Earle Agnew see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/robert-earle-agnew/

For more information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

From Civic Leader to Service Member

Written by: Kelly Durham

John Paterson Hetrick made his way to the Foothills of South Carolina from his hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to study civil engineering.  He entered Clemson College in the last years of the Roaring ‘20s and would graduate in the early years of the Great Depression as a member of the Class of 1932.

Hetrick was active in campus life demonstrating military proficiency and academic prowess.  He was a member of the Society of Civil Engineers and the Glee Club, which he served first as business manager and then as president.  He marched with the Drum and Bugle Corps and was a member of both the Sabre Club and the First Sergeants’ Club.  He attended ROTC summer training at Camp McClellan, Alabama between his junior and senior years and was selected to serve as the Regimental Staff intelligence officer as a senior.

After graduation, Hetrick married Marjorie Shealy of Anderson.  The couple made their home in Easley where Hetrick worked with the Rogers-Hetrick Lumber Company and served as a deacon in the First Baptist Church.  Considered one of the community’s business and civic leaders, Hetrick and his wife raised two children, a son and a daughter.

Following the United States’ entry into World War II, Hetrick was called to active duty and ordered to Camp Davis, North Carolina.  Camp Davis had been constructed in late 1940 as the country began its belated mobilization for the conflict many feared was approaching.  Located near Holly Ridge in the coastal southeastern part of the state, it was a 45,000 acre antiaircraft artillery training facility which eventually grew to include two paved runways.  Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, used the runways to tow aerial targets aloft for Army antiaircraft gunners to perfect their marksmanship.

In mid-autumn of 1943, Hetrick was admitted to the post hospital for treatment of symptoms diagnosed as a cold.  On October 2, during his brief hospital stay, Hetrick died from an acute heart attack. He died two days short of his thirty-sixth birthday,

First Lieutenant Hetrick was survived by his wife and children, his parents, and two sisters.  He was buried at Springbrook Cemetery in Anderson.

For additional information on First Lieutenant John Paterson Hetrick see:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/john-patterson-hetrick/

For more information on Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

Tank Commander

Written by: Kelly Durham

In September 1944, Allied forces in France were attacking across a broad front, slowly pushing stubborn German defenders back across France toward the Rhine River and the German border.  Second Lieutenant Henry Tutt Hahn was a tank commander in the 7th Armored Division of General George Patton’s Third Army as it battled to cross the Moselle River, the last major water barrier before reaching the Rhine. 

 Hahn came to Clemson as a textile engineering major from Greenwood.  He was a member of the Greenwood County Club, which he served as president his senior year, and also Phi Psi, the national honor fraternity for textile engineers.  Hahn graduated from Clemson in May 1943.  His was the last class allowed to complete its collegiate course before being called to active duty to help meet the military’s wartime manpower needs. 

 In August, Hahn reported for active duty, training as an armor officer at Fort Knox, Kentucky.  Following his training, he served as an instructor at the post before being transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia and assigned to the 31st Tank Battalion, part of the 7th Armored Division. 

 Hahn’s division reached France in mid-August 1944, coming ashore across Omaha and Utah beaches.  The division was quickly committed to the battle, driving on the city of Chartres on August 18. From Chartres, the division advanced to liberate Dreux and then Melun, where it crossed the Seine River on August 24. The division continued its advance to places well-remembered from the First World War, Château-Thierry and Verdun, liberating these storied towns on August 31.  After a brief halt for maintenance and refueling, the 7th Armored resumed its offensive on September 6, crossing the Moselle River near Dornot.  Coordinated fire from German fortified positions around Metz forced the division to withdraw.  It moved slightly south of the city and assisted the 5th Infantry Division in expanding a bridgehead across the river east of Arnaville.  Second Lieutenant Hahn was killed in action on September 14 within half a mile of the bridgehead. 

Hahn was survived by his mother, whom he had visited on Mothers’ Day before shipping overseas. He was also survived by three brothers, one of who was serving on Guam.  Following the war, Hahn’s remains were returned to the United States and he was laid to rest in Aiken’s Bethany Cemetery. 

 For more information about Henry Tutt Hahn see:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/henry-tutt-hahn-tut/  

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/  

Presidential Mission

Written by: Kelly Durham

Shortly before a scheduled mission to the western United States, Air Force Captain Kevin N. Earnest and his wife Carol dropped by Summerville to visit his college roommate Robbie Albertson, his wife Pam, and their one-year-old son Brett.  Kevin presented little Brett with a stuffed bear, which was quickly christened “Boo.”  That seemed appropriate as Kevin’s Air Force call sign was “Boo-Boo.”  That was the last visit the two families would share.

For his summer vacation in 1996, President Bill Clinton traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  From there, the president was scheduled to fly to New York for a fiftieth birthday party.  Whenever the president travels, his Secret Service detail, their equipment, and security vehicles go along.  Moving the Secret Service’s vehicles from one destination to the next is the mission of the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command.  Kevin N. Earnest, Clemson Class of 1988, was the pilot of an Air Mobility Command C-130 aircraft supporting the presidential trip.

Earnest was a mechanical engineering major from Kingsport, Tennessee.  An Eagle Scout, he had served as student body president of his high school and had earned his pilot’s certificate while still a student there.  At Clemson, Earnest continued his record of achievement.  He was an Air Force ROTC cadet earning the commission of a second lieutenant.  He served as president of the Student Alumni Council and was selected for membership in Tiger Brotherhood, Blue Key, and Mortar Board.

By the summer of 1996, Captain Earnest was assigned to Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas.  On Saturday, August 17, Earnest and his crew of seven other Air Force personnel, were dispatched to Jackson Hole Airport to load one of the presidential security vehicles into their C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and deliver it to New York City, the president’s next scheduled stop. Jackson Hole’s is the only airport located wholly inside a national park.  It rests on a plateau near the base of the spectacular Tetons mountain range, the peaks of which rise to heights of more than 13,700 feet.

Earnest’s aircraft took off at about 10:45 pm.  Approximately three minutes into the flight, fifteen miles southeast of the airport, the C-130 slammed into the side of Sheep Mountain, 1,000 feet below the peak’s 11,300-foot summit.  The airplane exploded in a fireball seen twenty miles away at Teton Village resort community.  Earnest, his crew mates, and a Secret Service agent were killed.  Searchers were able to reach the crash site only on foot or by horseback.  The force of the impact and resulting explosion demolished the large airplane.  The Air Force would subsequently attribute the accident to the crew’s failure “to monitor the aircraft’s position and flight path relative to high terrain surrounding the Jackson Hole Airport.”

In the fall of 1997, three of Kevin Earnest’s friends established the Captain Kevin N. Earnest Leadership Award to be presented annually to a rising Clemson Air Force ROTC senior cadet who demonstrates outstanding leadership in the program and within other student organizations.

Captain Earnest and the other victims of the crash are memorialized on a plaque near Sheep Mountain, Wyoming.  Brett Albertson, earned a civil engineering degree from The Citadel in 2017 and a master’s degree from Clemson in 2022.  Now an Air Force captain himself, this summer Brett trekked to the crash site to remember and honor the sacrifice of his family’s friend.  And Boo, the stuffed bear, though showing his age, continues to reside with Brett’s mother Pam.

For more information about Kevin N. Earnest see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/kevin-n-earnest/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

En Route

Written by: Kelly Durham

Major Bill Worthy’s orders carried him to Bangkok, Thailand en route to his new duty station, the Royal Thai Air Force Base at Takhli.  Worthy was on his way to join the 42^nd Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron which supported Air Force missions into North Vietnam from ostensibly safer Thai territory.  While he awaited transportation up-country to Takhli, Worthy was quartered at the Chao Phya Hotel in the heart of bustling Bangkok.

William Edward Worthy graduated from Chester High School in 1951 and enrolled in Clemson College that fall as a textile manufacturing major.  As a freshman, he was a member of the best drilled platoon in the Cadet Corps’ best drilled company.  An honors student, he was a member of Phi Psi, the textile honorary society, and attended Air Force ROTC summer training at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas.  Colonel Martin Alewine Jr., a member of the Class of 1954 and Worthy’s cadet company at Clemson, recalled that “Bill took his duties in the Cadet Corps seriously and was always sharply dressed in uniform, consistent in his leadership, and insisted that all cadets – including 3^rd semester juniors – shape up and do the platoon and company proud.”

Worthy graduated and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force on June 5, 1955.  He reported for active duty and was sent to Harlingen Air Force Base, Texas to train as a bomber/navigator on the B-52 Stratofortress.  Operational assignments as a B-52 navigator followed in Oklahoma and Ohio.  Worthy then earned an MBA degree from the University of Oklahoma before shipping out to Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii for a tour of duty as navigator on a C-124 cargo aircraft.  He was awarded the Air Medal for meritorious achievement while serving with the 50^th Military Airlift Squadron and displaying outstanding airmanship and courage under extremely hazardous conditions.

Major Worthy’s next assignment brought him back to South Carolina for transition training on the EB-66, an electronic warfare aircraft designed to detect and jam enemy air defense radar.  Once this training was completed, Worthy headed west, traveling through Hawaii and Guam to Clark Air Force Base, the Philippines, where he attended Jungle Survival School.  From the Philippines, Worthy flew to Bangkok and checked into the Chao Phya Hotel.  He was scheduled to depart for Takhli on Saturday, June 11, 1970.  On Friday evening, June 10, Major Worthy, wearing his Air Force uniform and accompanied by another service member, left the Chao Phya to walk to dinner at a nearby restaurant.  While crossing the street, a hit-and-run driver struck Worthy.  Suffering from internal and external injuries, Worthy was taken to the 5^th Army Field Hospital in Bangkok.  He never regained consciousness and died on July 16, 1970.

Worthy was survived by his wife, Laura Jean Rash Worthy and their three-year-old daughter Kristy.  In addition to the Air Medal, he was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal with One Oak Leaf Cluster, Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with One Oak Leaf Cluster, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Air Force Longevity Service Award with Two Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Award.  He is buried in the Florence National Cemetery.

For more information on Major William Edward Worthy see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/william-edward-worthy/

For additional information on Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

“Defining Moment”

Written by: Kelly Durham

David Aiken Crawford, Jr. was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. David A. Crawford, Sr. of Winnsboro. In 1941, he graduated from Mount Zion Institute and matriculated at Clemson College. As a cadet, he was assigned to Company G, 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment of the Cadet Brigade. His experience as a cadet would give him a leg up on the other young men he would soon encounter. At the end of the 1943 academic year with America’s military mobilization reaching high gear, most of Clemson’s cadets received their marching orders for Army basic training. David Crawford headed first to Fort McClellan, Alabama and then continued his training at Fort Meade, Maryland.

In January 1944, Crawford joined the hundreds of thousands of young Americans heading to Great Britain to join the buildup for the eventual invasion of France. Crawford was assigned to Company I, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division. He could not have known it at the time, but his regiment was destined to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day.

From his arrival in England into the spring, Crawford and his comrades trained nearly continuously. Training advanced from individual and small unit tactics to operations in larger formations and included practice in loading aboard landing craft and making assault landings. Toward the end of May, the 116th, like other regiments participating in the initial landings, was sent to assembly areas in the south of England.

The 116th was part of the great armada of warships of every size and purpose that sailed from ports stretched across England’s south coast, from Sheerness at the mouth of the Thames River in the east to Helford in the west. As the invasion fleet headed into the English Channel on June 5, 1944, the men in the ships were headed toward what General Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander, called “the Great Crusade.”

David Crawford’s Company I was scheduled to hit Omaha Beach in D-Day’s second wave at 0720 hours, fifty minutes after the first troops stepped on to the sand. Crawford and his fellow soldiers were fed an early breakfast of Spam sandwiches and coffee and then ordered to their landing craft. At about 0430, they began boarding the boats, loaded down with personal gear and all the ammunition they could carry.

Once the boats were fully loaded, they pushed away from the transport ships and began to circle nearby, gathering all the boats into formation before heading out on the two hour, ten mile run into the landing beaches. As the second wave approached Omaha, roughly on schedule, they couldn’t know that elements of the first wave, also from the 116th Infantry Regiment, had received a hellish greeting. Company A, the first to land, had incurred ninety-six percent casualties, including all of its officers and sergeants. And no wonder: the invading troops were confronted by German defenses which “included minefields, barbed wire, antitank ditches, and interlocking bands of automatic fire” all concentrated at the exits from the beach which the Americans were attempting to capture.

An LCVP approaches Normandy on June 6, 1944 National World War II Museum

Crawford’s Company I arrived on a beach littered with dead and wounded soldiers, equipment, supplies, and vehicles, many of which had already been knocked out of action. Although the company’s seven LCVP landed on time, they hit the sand approximately one thousand yards to the left of Dog Red, their assigned sector of the beach in front of the village of Les Moulins. The company landed instead on Easy Green–but there was nothing easy about it. After the punishing ride in from the transports in the wallowing, wave-bucking, flat-prow landing craft, most of the men were already exhausted from seasickness, the heavy weight of weapons, ammunition, and equipment, and the cacophonous racket of friendly and enemy shells streaking overhead—and landing all too close. Not to mention fear.

Despite the violent inferno, despite the slaughter on the beach and the confusion and helplessness of battle, Company I attacked and by noon on that agonizing day had fought its way off the beach and onto the plateau above. By midday, Company I had moved inland one half mile along the road leading toward St. Laurent.

By the end of D-Day, the Allies had gained a foothold in France, one they would continue to expand over the weeks to come. But the Germans were not finished. They continued to resist and to counterattack. On June 7, Private First Class David Crawford was killed in action. He was laid to rest in the American Military Cemetery at Colleville on the picturesque bluff overlooking Omaha Beach. After the war, Crawford’s remains were returned to Winnsboro and buried at the Bethel ARP Church.

Historian Stephen Ambrose called D-Day the “defining moment of the 20th Century.” Omaha Beach, in the center of the invasion frontage, was a narrowly-won victory. Nothing went according to plan and in the end, Ambrose wrote, “It all came down to a bunch of eighteen-to-twenty-eight year olds… when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned, they fought. They were soldiers of democracy. They were the men of D-Day, and to them we owe our freedom.”

For more information about Private First Class David Aiken Crawford, Jr. see:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/david-aiken-crawford-jr/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

See also D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, by Stephen Ambrose, Touchstone Books, 1994.

The Critical Moment

Written by: Kelly Durham

William Hunter Carson of Orangeburg was a member of the Class of 1942, the first cohort to graduate from Clemson College after America’s entry into World War II. A textile engineering major, Carson was recognized as an honors student and was inducted into Phi Psi, the national textile honor society. He was also a member of the Tri-County Club which he served as secretary his junior year and president as a senior. In the Cadet Brigade, Carson was a member of B Company, 1st Battalion of the 2nd Regiment and was a member of the Freshman Platoon composed of the best drilled members of his class.

Despite never advancing beyond the rank of cadet corporal, Carson’s military college experience and educational achievement prepared him for active duty. He volunteered for the Army Air Force and qualified for pilot training.

By the spring of 1944, Carson was a multiengine aircraft pilot assigned to Boca Raton Army Airfield in Florida. The base was the headquarters for Army Air Force training on the developing technology of radar. In addition to classroom training in theory and application, personnel learned to maintain radar equipment and, most importantly, how to operate it in flight. With the technology assuming an increasingly important role for the Army Air Force, training operations were conducted virtually around the clock.

On the morning of May 12, 1944, First Lieutenant Carson was assigned as the pilot of an RB-34 twin engine aircraft for a radar training mission. The RB-34 was a radar-equipped version of the Lockheed Ventura medium bomber. In addition to Carson at the controls of the aircraft, eight other crew members and trainees were aboard.

During his pilot training, Carson learned of the four basic forces acting on an airplane in flight, including thrust, the force that moves an aircraft forward. In a simple single engine airplane, thrust is provided by the propeller mounted on the nose of the airframe and centered along its longitudinal axis. In the case of the RB-34, thrust was provided by its propellers, one on each wing.

As Carson completed his pre-flight checks and taxied onto runway 9, he was about to encounter a most difficult condition at the most critical moment of his flight. As Carson’s aircraft lifted from the runway and climbed to an altitude of thirty to forty feet, the left engine lost power. Within a fraction of a second, the aircraft’s thrust shifted from straight ahead to asymmetric. All of a sudden, the existing power and thrust provided by the right engine and propeller overwhelmed the lack of thrust from the left. The aircraft yawed violently to the left, its left wing dropping and colliding with the ground. The bomber cartwheeled into the ground, breaking the fuselage in two and separating both engines from the wings. The aircraft then burst into flames.

The official accident report concluded, “The crash was due to the loss of power of the left engine shortly after the take-off at the critical time when a successful single engine operation would be extremely difficult.”

William Hunter Carson was survived by his parents, a sister, and two brothers, one then in the Army, the other serving in the Navy. He was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Orangeburg.

For more information about First Lieutenant William Hunter Carson see:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/william-hunter-carson/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

Leader Among Leaders

Written by: Kelly Durham

Thomas Archie Scott was a flyer even before he entered the military.  At Clemson, Scott was a member of the Flying Cadets, learning to fly  a biplane in the peaceful skies over the campus.  Before long, Scott would be piloting larger, more deadly aircraft in decidedly unfriendly skies.

Tom Scott graduated from Honea Path’s Ellen Woodside High School and enrolled at Clemson in 1938.  A vocational agricultural education major, he was a member of the Future Farmers of America and the Newman Club, the association of Catholic cadets.  He also participated in ROTC Camp, held on the Clemson campus in the summer of 1941.

Following his 1942 graduation, Tom took his piloting skills to the Army Air Force.  He earned his pilot’s wings at Valdosta, Georgia in March 1943.   Tom joined the 721^st Bomb Squadron at Alamogordo, New Mexico where he was assigned to a combat crew.  In December, Tom, now the pilot of a B-24 heavy bomber, headed overseas.

Tom Scott, standing far right, with the crew of Paper Doll.

The 721^st was a squadron of the 15^th Air Force flying combat missions from Manduria Airfield on the heel of the Italian boot.  The 721^st  bombed strategic targets in northern Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Balkans.  The squadron began combat operations in January 1944 and Tom quickly emerged as a reliable combat leader.  Squadron commander Major Howard Davis recalled that  “On numerous occasions, I had assigned [Tom] to lead combat units of 21 bombers over the most difficult targets that were assigned by the Fifteenth Air Force for us to bomb.  Never once did he falter.  His congeniality was an inspiration to every man that served with him.”

By mid-April 1944, Tom, the pilot of a B-24 nicknamed Paper Doll, had completed thirty combat missions and had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf clusters.  On April 12, Paper Doll was part of a nine ship formation sent to bomb the aircraft assembly plant at Wiener Neustadt, Austria.  Mechanical issues forced the aircraft to abort the mission and Tom landed for repairs at Foggia, about one hundred sixty miles northwest of Manduria.  Paper Doll underwent repairs while Tom and his crew returned to Manduria.  After several days, Tom’s squadron was notified that the repairs had been completed.  On April 18, a crew from Manduria flew Tom, his copilot, navigator, and flight engineer to Foggia to pick up Paper Doll.  According to this crew, Tom made a normal takeoff in Paper Doll and headed out on course for Manduria.  The ferry crew took off and returned to the airfield, but when they arrived, they noted that Paper Doll had not returned.  Late that evening, the squadron learned that Paper Doll had crashed. All four aboard were killed.

Major Davis, the squadron commander, personally investigated the cause of the crash.  He viewed the wreckage of Paper Doll and interviewed an Italian who witnessed the crash.  One of the B-24’s four propellers had stopped turning and the “other three were windmilling as if they were getting no gas. I have checked back on every detail and I have been unable to find the slightest clue which might have caused the four engines to quit,” Davis wrote to Tom’s parents.  “I am sure that something happened which was beyond the control of  Tom.”  Davis added, “ I valued Tom’s flying experience above any man in the Squadron.  He had come back from several missions that I am sure that it was only through his skill and judgment that he was able to return.”

“He was not only a man among men, but a leader among leaders,” Major Davis continued.  “His loss is not only a personal loss to you and to me and this Squadron, but it is a serious loss to Democracy and all it stands for…”

First Lieutenant Thomas Archie Scott was buried in an American Military Cemetery in Italy.  He was survived by his parents, two brothers, and three sisters.  After the war, his remains were returned to the United States and laid to rest in the Columbia Baptist Church Cemetery.

For more information about Thomas Archie Scott see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/thomas-archie-scott/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

First Night

Written by: Kelly Durham

At the end of the 1942-43 academic year, David Lawrence Alexander, Jr. and the rest of his Class of 1944 bade farewell to the Clemson campus.  They were headed off to war, a war from which many would never return.

Alexander arrived at Clemson in 1940.  A mechanical engineering major from Aiken, he was assigned to Company B, 1^st Battalion, 1^st Regiment of the Cadet Brigade.  When the spring semester ended in 1943, Alexander and most of the rest of Clemson’s cadets were ordered to report for Army basic training.  With his experience as a Clemson cadet, Alexander did well enough in basic to qualify for Officers’ Candidate School.

While Alexander continued his Stateside training, America’s fortunes were improving.  In the Pacific, Marine and Army forces were winning grueling battles in New Guinea and at Guadalcanal.  In Europe, Sicily was conquered and Italy invaded.  Then came the invasion of France on D-Day.  The change in the momentum of the war came with a steep price tag.  In a seventy-five day campaign in Normandy, the Allies suffered nearly 210,000 casualties including almost 40,000 dead.  Casualty rates were highest, as one would expect, among the frontline infantrymen.  In Normandy, some divisions experienced casualty rates as high as 100% among enlisted soldiers and 150% among junior officers, the lieutenants and captains leading platoons and companies.  According to historian Stephen Ambrose, one regiment of the 90^th Infantry Division lost platoon leaders at a rate of 48%–per week.

With Germany far from defeated, the need for replacements, particularly among the infantry, was acute.  To meet the increasing manpower need, the Army shipped individual replacements to existing divisions and deployed fresh divisions that had been organized and trained in the United States.  Second Lieutenant David Alexander was assigned to the 71^st Infantry Division which was among the last US infantry divisions committed to combat in Europe.  It arrived at Le Havre, France in early February 1945.  After in-theater training, the 71^st moved east in March and relieved the 100^th Infantry Division at Ratzwiller in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France.  The mission of the 71^st was to continue to push the Germans out of France, across the Rhine River, and into Germany.

On March 13, 1945, Second Lieutenant Alexander was killed in action during his first night in combat near Bitche, about six miles west of the German border.

David Lawrence Alexander, Jr. was awarded the Purple Heart and was survived by his parents.  He is buried at the Epinal American Military Cemetery in France.

For more information on Second Lieutenant David Lawrence Alexander, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/david-lawrence-alexander-jr/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

“…Never Was a Night so Black…”

Written by: Kelly Durham

He is little known today, but at his death in early 1943, Benjamin Franklin Robertson, Jr. was arguably Clemson’s most famous son.  A hometown boy, Robertson grew up in Calhoun, the tiny community just north of the railroad tracks that run through what is now more commonly known as Clemson.  His father and namesake, a member of Clemson’s first graduating class in 1896, worked on campus in the office of the state chemist.   Ben’s mother died on Christmas Eve 1910, perhaps from a diabetic reaction from sampling the numerous holiday cakes and pies she was preparing.  Ben’s grieving father sent his son to live with the boy’s uncle in Liberty.  When Robertson senior remarried in 1913, Ben and his sister Mary returned to the family’s home on Hotel Hill, overlooking the campus.

When time came for Ben to continue his education at the collegiate level, it seemed only natural that he would follow in his father’s footsteps and enroll in Clemson.  Though Ben was gifted with a facility for words and literature, Clemson was an agricultural school without any liberal arts degree programs.  Ben selected horticulture as his major.

According to his 1923 classmates, Ben Robertson “loved to gossip.”  Even so, read his senior profile in Taps, “to know him is to like him,” a circumstance due in part to his reputation for integrity—and also perhaps because Ben knew how to have a good time.  He was the founding pianist of the Jungaleers, Clemson’s dance band.  “When it comes to jazzing a piano, Ben paws a mean pedal,” Taps proclaimed.  Of course, Ben may have had some influence over his profile: he served as the yearbook’s editor-in-chief as a senior.   He was also the associate editor of the Chronicle, the campus literary magazine.  In addition to being a man of letters, Ben was a member of the Pickens County Club and the Dancing Club.  He sang in the Glee Club and put his musical prowess into practice as a member of the campus orchestra.

After graduation, Robertson headed west, to the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism.  After a year at Missouri, Ben returned to South Carolina.  In order to gain experience and accumulate funds to return to school, he took a job with Charleston’s News and Courier where his writing , according to biographer Jodie Peeler, reflected a “personal, folksy story-telling style.”   Ben returned to Missouri in 1925 and completed his degree in journalism in 1926.  Ben must have been stricken with wanderlust, or perhaps a profound curiosity about the world, for he followed his graduation with a stint in Honolulu on the staff of the Star-Bulletin.  In 1927, he headed west again–further west–to Adelaide, Australia.  From 1929 to 1934, he reported for the New York Herald Tribune, after which he took a job with the Associated Press.  He bounced over to the United Press in 1935, but two years later was back with the AP.  In 1938, Robertson published his first novel, Traveler’s Rest, based on his ancestors’ experiences in South Carolina.

In 1940, following the outbreak of war in Europe, Robertson went to London to cover the story for the anti-fascist New York newspaper PM.  There he came to know the most famous American correspondent of the day, Edward R. Murrow, who reported from London for CBS Radio and who would later describe Ben as his “best friend.”  With Murrow, Ben would venture out of London to Shakespeare Cliff overlooking the English Channel at Dover. There they witnessed the dogfights between British and German aircraft that characterized the Battle of Britain.  His observations would inform his second book, I Saw England, published in 1941.  Robertson wrote:

I lost my sense of personal fear because I saw that what happened to me did not matter.  We counted as individuals only as we took our place in the procession of history.  It was not we who counted, it was what we stood for.  And I knew for what I was standing – I was for freedom.  It was as simple as that.  …  I understood Valley Forge and Gettysburg at Dover, and I found it lifted a tremendous weight off your spirit to find yourself willing to give up your life, if you have to – I discovered Saint Matthew’s meaning about losing a life to find it.  I don’t see now why I should ever again be afraid.

When Ben’s friend Ernie Pyle, the famous Scripps-Howard columnist, arrived to cover the Blitz, Ben showed him how to navigate wartime London.  “I feel like a mental child beside them,” Pyle wrote of his correspondent colleagues.  “Yet I discovered that almost without exception they are friendly and helpful.  And I discovered that among them almost nobody stands higher than my one old friend in London, Ben Robertson of PM.”

Reporting for PM and the Chicago Sun, Robertson circled the globe often flying as a passenger on Pan American Airways’ famous Clipper flying boats and covering stories in the Pacific, Asia, and North Africa.  He navigated the fine line between propaganda and advocacy journalism, certain that the United States should support Great Britain in its battle against Nazi Germany.

Robertson’s best-known—and last book—was published in 1942.  “By the grace of God, my kinfolks and I are Carolinians…” opens Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory.  The book was widely-praised for the charm, warmth, and beauty of Robertson’s descriptions of his family and an energetic, self-confident South.  Though noted for his writing about family and his ability to befriend the low-born as well as the noble, Ben never married.  He did maintain a relationship with a woman friend, Jeanne Gadsden, who typed and edited his books and with whom he shared the foster parenting of a boy Ben brought home from the devastation of London’s Blitz.  The boy, Leslie Phillips, would eventually become an American citizen and make a career in the US Air Force.

In January 1943, Ben joined first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and former Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie on a speaking tour to promote a campaign for Russian relief.  Then, having accepted a job as head of the New York Herald Tribune’s London bureau, Robertson was on the move again.

On the morning of February 21, Robertson boarded the Yankee Clipper, one of Pan American’s flying boats, at the Marine Air Terminal at New York’s Municipal Airport.  Technically under the control of the Army, the Clippers though still crewed and piloted by Pan Am employees, were reserved for official government travel.  Ben had waited for several days for his turn to board the big aircraft for its flight to Europe.  Bound for Lisbon in neutral Portugal, Ben’s flight stopped first in Bermuda and then in the Azores before completing its journey on Lisbon’s Tagus River.  The Clipper was a luxurious aircraft which had inaugurated trans-Atlantic passenger service.  It was noted for aerial elegance, from its dining room to its sleeping berths.  Settling into his seat, Ben looked across the narrow aisle to discover that his neighbor was Jane Froman, the prominent singer and a friend of Ben’s from their days together at the University of Missouri.  Froman was bound for Europe with a USO troupe scheduled to perform for American military personnel.

On February 22, after its seven-hour leg from Horta in the Azores, the Clipper descended toward Lisbon and approached the landing area on the Tagus River as a thunderstorm swept into the area.  Although there was little wind or rain at the moment, lightning was reported nearby.  Port officials noted that the Clipper, under the command of experienced captain R. O. D. Sullivan, was in radio contact as it neared its landing and that the flight was proceeding normally.  Suddenly, as the aircraft turned left, its wing struck the water, flipping the Clipper and slamming it into the river at one hundred thirty miles per hour.  Fifteen aboard, including Captain Sullivan and Jane Froman, survived the crash.  Ben Robertson and twenty-three others were killed.

Robertson’s body was recovered about three weeks later some thirty miles downstream.  It was returned by ship to the United States and then to Clemson where a funeral service was held on April 17.  He was laid to rest in the  family plot at Westview Cemetery in Liberty.  College officials added Robertson to the Clemson Scroll of Honor by virtue of his status as an accredited war correspondent.

The SS Ben Robertson, a Liberty ship, was launched from Savannah, Georgia in January 1944 and served both the Normandy landings and operations in the Pacific.  It is a fitting honor to a man who traveled on and over the seas, but perhaps the most poignant tribute was paid by his friend Murrow.  On one of his broadcasts to America, Murrow described Robertson as “the least hard-boiled newspaperman I have ever known.  He didn’t need to be, for his roots were deep in the red soil of Carolina, and he had a faith that is denied to many of us.”   Murrow’s deep, familiar voice crackled over the airwaves, “There never was a night so black Ben couldn’t see the stars.”

For more information on Benjamin Franklin Robertson, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/benjamin-franklin-robertson/

For additional information on Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

See also Jodie Peeler’s excellent biography, Ben Robertson: South Carolina Journalist and Author, University of South Carolina Press, 2019.

Rainbow Warrior

Written by: Kelly Durham

Like the other members of his Class of 1944, Henry Milton Laye, Jr., a mechanical engineering major from Seneca, had his collegiate career interrupted by orders from the War Department.  All junior cadets and underclassmen were sent to basic training.  Those like Henry Laye, who demonstrated military aptitude, were subsequently ordered to officers’ candidate schools to become the junior leaders of the still expanding Army.  Henry Laye would soon be assigned to one of the Army’s storied divisions, the 42^nd Infantry.

In 1917, an Army major named Douglas MacArthur suggested the creation of a new division composed of National Guard units from several states.  The resulting organization, MacArthur explained, would “stretch over the whole country like a rainbow.”  The new division, the 42^nd Infantry, became known as the “Rainbow Division.”  When the 42^nd was reactivated for service in World War II, Army officials honored its legacy by filling its ranks with men from all forty-eight states.  Henry Laye was one of the South Carolinians assigned to the Rainbow Division’s 232^nd Infantry Regiment.

The division trained for its eventual combat deployment at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma.  The division arrived at Marseille, France on December 8-9, 1944 and was under the command of General Alexander Patch’s 7^th Army.  On Christmas Eve, the division relieved the 36^th Infantry Division, entering combat in the vicinity of Strasbourg, the French city resting on the west bank of the Rhine River directly across from Germany. Most of the action at that moment was farther north, where what would become known as the Battle of the Bulge was raging.  Before long, the desperate Germans, formerly masters of Europe but now reeling from the Anglo-American offensive in the west and the Soviet onslaught from the east, would attempt yet another counter-offensive, Operation Northwind.

By early January, Laye’s 232^nd Infantry Regiment was stretched to the limit, defending a front thirty-three miles long.  On January 5, as French troops were moving into the line to relieve the cold, weary Americans in Strasbourg, the Germans attacked.  Enemy infantry and armor, ferried across the Rhine, overwhelmed the thinly held American lines resulting in the capture of more than eleven hundred American soldiers.  Aggressive counterattacks and assistance from the neighboring 314^th Infantry Regiment eventually repulsed the German attack.

Ten days later, the elements of the 232^nd Regiment, including Laye’s platoon from K Company, were occupying French towns on the west bank of the Rhine River when Germans from the 7^th Parachute Division attacked.  In three days of attacks and counterattacks in the cold, snowy villages and woodlands along the river, the Germans were driven off, but the regiment took many casualties, including Laye.

Second Lieutenant Laye was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.  He was buried in the Ardennes American Military Cemetery in Belgium.

For more information about Henry Milton Laye, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/henry-milton-laye-jr/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

Patton’s Reply

Written by: Kelly Durham

It had seemed as if the Germans were on their last legs, as if they might be defeated and the war in Europe ended by Christmas of 1944.  But the Allied offensive in Northern France was slowed by its very success; the more ground the Anglo-American forces gained, the longer their supply lines stretched and the more difficult it became to feed, fuel, and equip the advance.  First Lieutenant Archibald Carlisle Dudley of Mullins was an infantry platoon leader in the van of the Allied assault.

Dudley was a vocational agricultural education major in Clemson’s Class of 1941.  As a cadet, he participated in the campus chapter of Future Farmers of America and in the Dillon County Club.  He marched with the Pershing Rifles drill team and attended ROTC summer training at Fort McClellan, Alabama where he qualified as a Marksman on the firing range.  Dudley, who “was possessed of a sterling character and a wonderful personality,” married Ruby Allen of Walhalla and they had a daughter, Jeanne.

Dudley shipped overseas in October 1944.  He was assigned to Company C of the 357^th Infantry Regiment, 90^th Infantry Division.  The 90^th was one of the divisions of General George Patton’s Third Army, which by the late autumn of 1944 had pushed the Germans back to their own territory.

The 357^th was pulled out of the line and enjoyed a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving while in northern France.  Soon thereafter, the regiment moved by truck to Colmen, just west of the French-German border.  On Sunday November 26, the regiment attacked Furweiler, a small German town just east of the border.  During the attack, the 357^th came under fire from artillery emplacements on the Siegfried Line—the West Wall—a string of heavy defensive fortifications constructed on the east bank of the Saar River and designed to prevent the invasion of Germany from the west.  It was apparent that the regiment would have to clear German forces from the area west of the river and then cross the Saar and assault the Siegfried Line itself.

The 357^th launched its assault crossing of the Saar River in the early hours of Wednesday, December 6.  During this action, First Lieutenant Dudley was reported missing in action.  Dudley’s family, despite appeals to the Red Cross, could obtain no further information about its loved one.

When the war in Europe ended, General Patton was ordered back to the United States for leave with his family and also for public appearances to rally a war-weary public to continue to support the unfinished fight in the Pacific.  Desperate for information about her missing brother, Nancy Dudley wrote to General Patton.  In late August, Miss Dudley received a personal reply from the general.

According to General Patton, First Lieutenant Dudley and his platoon set out in boats to cross the Saar River at 0410 hours on December 6.  Conditions were difficult at best, with the river swollen by seasonal rains and the temperatures very cold.  Upon reaching the east bank of the Saar near Pachten, Germany at approximately 0425, Dudley was struck in the left shoulder and chest by enemy small arms fire.  A medic administered first aid, but the fire from enemy pillboxes was so intense and the battle so “vicious” that Dudley could not be evacuated. According to Patton, at 0630 the area in which Dudley remained came under “a violent enemy artillery barrage.”  Patton reported that the area was held until December 22, but that for the entire period it was under German small arms as well as indirect fire.  As a result, Dudley “was among those many brave soldiers who were buried at night without lights or opportunity to read identification tags.”  Patton went on to assure Miss Dudley that “there was always a chaplain to speak the last words.”  He concluded his letter by congratulating her “on having a brother who did his duty even unto death.”

First Lieutenant Archibald Carlisle Dudley was awarded the Purple Heart.  He was survived by his wife Ruby, his daughter Jeanne, his mother, and three sisters.  His body was recovered and buried at the Lorraine American Military Cemetery in France and is memorialized at Miller’s United Methodist Church Cemetery in Mullins.

For more information about Archibald Carlisle Dudley see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/archibald-carlisle-dudley/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

Lone Ranger

Written by: Kelly Durham

They called themselves the “Long Rangers” because of the vast distances so many of their missions covered.  Flying over the trackless Pacific Ocean, the missions of the 370^th Bomb Group lasted as long as seventeen hours.  Terrifying minutes of action dodging enemy anti-aircraft fire and fighter planes were sandwiched between tedious hours spent droning to and from the target area.  Corporal Earl Pinckney Furman, Jr. was a crew member aboard a 370^th Group B-24 heavy bomber.

Furman came to Clemson in 1938 from his hometown of Allendale.  A general studies major, he was assigned to E Company, 2^nd Battalion, 1^st Regiment of the Cadet Brigade.  Furman remained at Clemson for two years before transferring to Wofford College.  He left Wofford in March 1943 and volunteered for the Army Air Force.

By this point in the war, Army training facilities were hitting their stride, taking in young men and turning out the trained soldiers and air crewmen needed to prosecute a global war.  Furman was ordered to San Antonio, Texas and then to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for aerial radio operator training.  Following aerial gunnery training at Yuma, Arizona, Furman was awarded aircrew wings.  He shipped out to the Pacific Theater in September 1944 and was assigned to the Long Rangers.

Furman joined the crew of “Tillie,” a B-24D heavy bomber which he served as radio operator and waist gunner.   Furman’s unit, the 372^nd Bomb Squadron, was operating from Noemfoor, a small island off the northern coast of New Guinea.  On November 4, Furman was seriously injured in an aircraft accident that resulted in the scrapping of “Tillie.”  Furman’s injuries were significant enough to land him in the hospital, where he died three days later.

Furman was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.  After the war, his remains were returned to Allendale where he was buried in the Swallow Savannah Cemetery.  He was survived by his parents and sister.

For additional information about Earl Pinckney Furman, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/earl-pinckney-furman-jr/

For more information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

The Longest Battle

Written by: Kelly Durham

In the autumn of 1944, after its rapid sweep across France, the American Army reached the German frontier.  Confronted with the well-prepared and long-established fortifications of the Siegfried Line or Westwall, Germany’s answer to France’s Maginot Line, the Army began what would become its longest battle of World War II, the Huertgen Forest campaign.  The 112^th Infantry Regiment was among the units committed to the Huertgen battle and Frank Shirer DuBose was one of its officers.

Frank DuBose grew up in Camden, graduating from high school there before enrolling at Clemson College as a member of the Class of 1942.  He attended Clemson for three years, majoring in vocational agriculture education.  He was a member of Chi Kappa Chi, the social organization composed of cadets from Kershaw County, serving as the group’s secretary-treasurer.  He was also a member of the campus chapter of Future Farmers of America.

Men of the 28th Infantry Division march through Paris on August 29, 1944.

After DuBose left Clemson, he took a job teaching at Varnville High School.  Called to active duty in September 1942, DuBose was ordered to Fort Benning, Georgia where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry.  He was assigned to the 112^th Infantry Regiment, part of the 28^th Infantry Division.  In April 1943, Frank married the former Betty Rentz of Varnville.  In October, the 28^th Infantry Division shipped out, landing in the south of Wales where it continued to train for the coming invasion of Europe.

On July 22, 1944, the 28^th Infantry Division landed in Normandy and was quickly committed to Operation Cobra, the American effort to breakout of its beachhead.  The division pushed east through the difficult bocage country and a little more than a month later participated in the liberation of Paris.  The 28^th was one of the American divisions selected to parade down the Champs-Élysées on August 29.  Despite the joy of the Parisiennes, for the Americans the fighting was far from over.

After a short rest to receive replacements and new equipment, the division moved forward again, heading toward Germany’s Westwall.  Elements of the division crossed the Our River from Luxembourg becoming the first Allied unit to enter Germany.  Reaching the mutually supporting fortifications of the Westwall brought the 28^th’s advance to a halt.  Over the next three months, according to the 28^th’s history, “the division accomplished little” in what developed into the Army’s longest continuous battle of the war.  Fighting in harsh weather in the heavily-forested region against a foe that was firing from hardened positions—and which in addition was now battling to defend its homeland—DuBose’s regiment suffered heavy casualties, at one point reduced to only three hundred men.

On November 2, DuBose went forward to scout German positions and target them for US artillery units.  He was accompanied by his radioman, Anthony Grasso, a nineteen-year-old private from Massachusetts.  During their reconnaissance mission, Grasso remained at DuBose’s side carrying the 40-pound radio that enabled the lieutenant to relay the coordinates of the enemy’s positions to the American guns.

Seventy-six years later, Grasso recalled DuBose’s final moments in an interview with The Boston Globe.

As the pair moved through an open field, DuBose believed he saw enemy soldiers in the woods ahead.

“The last words I heard from him were, ‘I need to call in. Give me the phone,’” Grasso said. “He was picking up the phone and ‘Boom!’ I went flying in the air, the blood spilling out of my neck. The next thing I know, I woke up two weeks later in a hospital in Paris.”

DuBose had turned to Grasso’s back, reaching for the phone when the blast threw the lieutenant 30 feet in the air. But at the instant of explosion, he had provided enough of a buffer to protect Grasso, who still carries shrapnel in his head and neck.

Frank Shirer DuBose was awarded the Purple Heart.  He was survived by his wife, his mother, and two sisters.  In 1949, his remains were returned to Camden.

Over Memorial Day weekend in 2021, Grasso, at age 96, visited DuBose’s grave in the Quaker Cemetery in Camden—two wartime comrades reunited in spirit.

For more information about Frank Shirer DuBose see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/frank-shirer-dubose/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

See also the May 29, 2021 The Boston Globe article by Brian MacQuarrie.

The Deadlier Opponent

Written by: Kelly Durham

Claude Rothell, Jr. came to Clemson College from Saluda County as a member of the Class of 1943.  His class was the last cohort to complete its academic career until after the war.  Following commencement, Claude and his classmates headed directly to active duty, many of them funneling into officers’ candidate schools.  Most of the other boys on campus were sent to basic training, their school days suspended for the duration.

Claude made the most of his four years as a cadet, engaging in academic, social, and athletic pursuits.  An animal husbandry major, Claude served as executive officer of  Company G, 1^st Battalion, 1^st Regiment of Clemson’s Cadet Brigade.  He was a member of Alpha Chi Psi, a social organization, and the Saluda-Lexington Club.  He served as the vice president of the Animal Husbandry Club and was a member of the Block “C” Club.

Claude was a four-year member of the Tiger football team, spanning the transition from head coach Jess Neely to head coach Frank Howard.  Claude’s senior campaign achieved mixed results as the Tigers finished with a 3-6-1 record.  Claude, at 176 pounds, played in the backfield on both offense and defense.  The Tigers’ first contest of the 1942 season inaugurated the campus’s new Memorial Stadium with a 6-4 win over Presbyterian College.  The Tigers triumphed against South Carolina, 18-6, in the annual Big Thursday game, which was the Tigers’ 200^th all-time victory.  The Tigers closed their home season with a 12-7 win over Furman.  In a sign of the times, Clemson also took the field against a team from Jacksonville Naval Air Station, losing 24-6.  At the end of the season, Rothell and his teammates must have turned their thoughts toward the deadlier opponents that awaited overseas.

After graduation, Rothell was ordered to Fort Benning, Georgia to attend officer candidate school.  He completed his training in December and was soon assigned to the 48^th Infantry Battalion of the 7^th Armored Division.  In April 1944, Rothell shipped overseas.

On August 13-14, the 7^th Armored Division landed in Normandy and was assigned to General George Patton’s Third Army.  The division battled its way into France, attacking German forces defending the city of Chartres and then proceeding to liberate Dreux.  On August 24, the division liberated Melun, south of Paris, where it crossed the Seine River.  With the German resistance weakening, the division raced ahead liberating the storied Great War battlefields of  Château-Thierry and then Verdun on August 31.

The 7^th Armored halted for rest, maintenance, and refueling at the beginning of September, but was soon back on the offensive.  In France, one river led to another and on September 6, the division crossed the Moselle near Metz. Enemy fortifications and unfavorable terrain made the crossing untenable.  In mid-September, the 7^th Armored joined with the 5^th Infantry Division to expand a new bridgehead over the Moselle farther to the south near Arnaville.

Second Lieutenant Rothell was killed in action in France on September 14, 1944.  Ironically, he fell on the same day as his Clemson classmate Henry Hahn, who was assigned to one of the 7^th Armored Division’s tank battalions.

Claude Rothell, Jr. was survived by his parents, his wife Margaret, and two brothers, one of whom was in the Navy’s V-12 officer training program.  He was awarded the Purple Heart and buried at the Lorraine American Military Cemetery.

For more information about Claude Rothell, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/claude-rothell-jr/

For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/