Scroll of Honor – Thomas Edward Davis, Jr.
Inside the Reich
Written by: Kelly Durham
By the spring of 1945, the Germans, pinched from both the east and the west, were facing certain defeat. Even with their 
homeland invaded, Hitler and his Nazi cronies were unwilling to face the reality of their dire circumstances. They refused to give up and so the fighting and the dying continued. Thomas Edward Davis, Jr. was one of the junior officers leading the Allied offensive inside Germany.
Davis was a member of Clemson’s Class of 1944. At the conclusion of his junior year, the architecture major from Newberry saw his collegiate career suspended when he, like most of the other cadets on campus, was ordered to active duty. The War Department’s need for manpower to fight a global war trumped the benefit of retaining able-bodied men in the relative safety of college campuses.
Davis trained at Fort Knox, Kentucky and earned his commission as a second lieutenant in August 1944. He was assigned to the 80th Tank Battalion of the 8th Armored Division, the “Thundering Herd.” The 80th departed its training base, Camp Polk, Louisiana, in October 1944 and headed to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey for embarkation. The battalion sailed from New York on November 7, its overseas destination unknown. Arriving in England on November 19, the battalion proceeded to Tidworth to draw its equipment and then moved into a staging area to await its transportation to France.
An M-4 Sherman Tank of the 80th Tank Battalion.
On January 6, 1945, the battalion sailed from Portland and arrived at LeHavre, France the following day. A long road march in cold, windy, snowy conditions eventually ended with the battalion’s arrival in Vilt, Holland. On February 19, the battalion relieved British tank units near Hingen and saw its first combat action. The battalion, still a part of the 8th Armored Division, was now under the command of the 9th Army and was acting as a holding force pending a planned offensive into the Roer Valley.
The 80th entered Germany on February 28 as the big offensive got underway. Throughout March, the 80th battled its way deeper into Germany, crossing the Rhine River on March 26. Against “very stiff” German resistance, the 80th reached Bork, Germany on April 1 and was then relieved by elements of the 95th Infantry Division. But the 80th’s rest was short lived.
On April 3, intelligence reports located two German Armies and at least one Panzer Division in the Ruhr pocket. The 8th Armored Division was ordered to attack from Lippstadt toward Hirschberg, about twenty miles to the south, to isolate and destroy the German forces.
Second Lieutenant Davis, commanding a platoon of five M-4 Sherman tanks, was attached to Task Force Walker for the attack. While approaching the town of Norddorf at 0750 hours, the task force encountered enemy tank fire. As it advanced, German tank fire was augmented by artillery, small arms, and anti-tank weapons. During this attack, Davis was killed.
Thomas Edward Davis, Jr. was survived by his parents and sister. He was awarded the Purple Heart and buried at the American Military Cemetery, Margraten, Netherlands.
For more information about Second Lieutenant Thomas Edward Davis, Jr. see:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/thomas-edward-davis-jr/
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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 71st 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 71st moved east in March and relieved the 100th Infantry Division at Ratzwiller in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France. The mission of the 71st was to continue to push the Germans out of France, across the Rhine River, and into Germany. 
Germany as the copilot of Pegasus Too, piloted by First Lieutenant L. Wilson. From 0600 to 0651 on March 23, 1944, thirty-one aircraft took off from the 388th’s base. Assembling into formation without difficulty, the aircraft turned to the east. According to the group’s mission report, the formation crossed the enemy coast ahead of schedule. This efficiency led to disaster. “Consequently,” the report continues, “no friendly fighter escort was met until the formation was near the IP,” the point from which its bomb run commenced. As a result, thirty-five to forty-five enemy fighters, mostly Focke-Wulf 190s, attacked the formation between 0955 and 1010 hours. “The attacks were vicious.” The German fighters attacked from above and to the left front of the bombers. Two of the bombers were shot down. Coleman’s aircraft, however, was attacked in a less conventional manner.
Second Lieutenant Charles Edward Coleman was awarded the Purple Heart. He was survived by his wife and his parents. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
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.”
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.
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.”
Moise was immediately assigned to a minesweeper serving in Japanese waters. After the war’s conclusion, as the Navy reduced its strength, Moise was put in command of the ship for its return voyage to Charleston Navy Base. Following an assignment in underwater research at Hampton, Virginia, Moise requested and was granted a transfer to the Navy’s aviation arm. On December 21, 1948, Moise married Betty Garris of Andrews.
routine armaments test. The Savage was a medium bomber designed to carry atomic bombs from the decks of Navy aircraft carriers. As such, it was at the time of its development the heaviest aircraft to operate from a carrier. It was powered by two wing-mounted piston engines plus a turbojet incorporated into the rear of the fuselage.
For more information about Lieutenant Moise McFaddin see:
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 42nd Infantry.
division arrived at Marseille, France on December 8-9, 1944 and was under the command of General Alexander Patch’s 7th Army. On Christmas Eve, the division relieved the 36th 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.
on the west bank of the Rhine River when Germans from the 7th 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.
member of Company C, 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment of the Corps of Cadets, but no picture identified as Edens is included in the annual. Edens was among that large group of Clemson cadets whose educations were interrupted by World War II. In Edens’s case, the interruption was voluntary. Following stints at Presbyterian College and then Clemson, Edens dropped out of school in October 1941, even before the United States was dragged into the war. Conflicting accounts of Edens’s history pop up at this point. Although his home was in Pumpkintown in Pickens County, one account shows Edens enlisting in Miami, Florida while another places his enlistment at Fort McPherson, Georgia. Regardless of the location, Edens volunteered for the Army Air Force and was accepted into the aviation cadet program.
Pumpkintown.
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.
vigilant witness to the sacrifice of American lives in World War II’s struggle against tyranny. More than 5,200 American service members are buried on the pristine acres of the Epinal American Cemetery, including Albert Powhatan King, Jr. of Ninety Six.
On Sunday, November 19, the 79th broke through to Sarrebourg, just 40 miles west of Strasbourg. Allied artillery overwhelmed German defenders, opening the road to Strasbourg. As the Germans withdrew, the 79th moved in. Four days later, as King’s Company C of the 313th Infantry Regiment enjoyed its Thanksgiving lunch, orders came to move into an area that the regiment believed was secure. The company moved out in a convoy with Captain King guiding the way in the lead jeep. As King stood to direct his company, a German sniper shot him through the forehead. King exclaimed, “Oh my God, men!”—and died. He was buried with full military honors the following day at Epinal.
Benning, Georgia. King’s Clemson story did not end with his death. His former Clemson roommate, James MacMillan, married his widow Bess after the war. King’s daughter Nancy was one of the first women accepted to Clemson, though the college’s lack of a nursing curriculum led her to enroll elsewhere. In all more than a dozen of King’s relatives subsequently attended Clemson.
Furman joined the crew of “Tillie,” a B-24D heavy bomber which he served as radio operator and waist gunner. Furman’s unit, the 372nd 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.