Omaha Beach

Written by: Kelly Durham

His father, a Rock Hill businessman, enlisted in the Marines at age 40 and fought the Japanese at Guadalcanal, so it should come as no surprise that Ernest Hill Carroll, Jr. also enlisted in the service.  The younger Carroll entered the Army in December 1942.  Fittingly, he was assigned to a combat engineer outfit.

Sonny Carroll grew up in Rock Hill where his parents owned a bottling company and radio station.  In 1940, he graduated from Winthrop Training School where he was elected class president.  In the fall of 1941, with war clouds gathering, Carroll became the first of his family to go to college, enrolling at Clemson as a mechanical engineering major in the Class of 1945.  He remained at Clemson through the first semester of his sophomore year before following his father’s example and enlisting.

Sonny was ordered to Fort McClellan, Alabama for basic training and then to Fort Meade, Maryland for engineer training.  In January 1944, he shipped overseas as part of the continuing build-up of American and Allied forces in the United Kingdom.  Sonny joined

Company B, 121^st Engineer Combat Battalion.  Sonny’s battalion was attached to the 29^th Infantry Division, destined to land on Omaha Beach in D-Day’s first wave.

Sonny’s battalion prepared for the coming invasion with vigorous training.  The Army had created several amphibious training centers along the shores of coastal England and the engineer units practiced their missions alongside the infantry outfits they were designated to support.  Sonny’s battalion would support the 29^th Infantry Division’s 116^th Infantry Regiment.

Historian Stephen Ambrose wrote that “The combat engineers had the most complex job.”  Nearly one-quarter of the American troops going ashore on the morning of D-Day would be engineers. “Their tasks, more or less in order, were to: demolish beach obstacles, blow up mines on the beach, erect signs to guide incoming landing craft through cleared channels, set up panels to bring in the troops and equipment (the color of the panel told the ships offshore which supplies to send in), clear access roads from the beach, blow gaps in the antitank wall, establish supply dumps, and act as beachmasters (traffic cops).”  And by the way, the Germans would be a factor as well.

H-Hour, the time of the initial landing on Omaha Beach, was scheduled for 0630 hours, an hour after first light.  Sonny Carroll’s battalion was scheduled to arrive on the Dog White sector of the beach forty minutes later, by which time the Germans were on full alert.

Carroll’s landing was greeted with murderous mortar, artillery, and intersecting machine gun fire crisscrossing the beach.  No infantry units had preceded the engineers on their sector of the landing area.  Rough seas and shifting sands meant that some landing craft could not make it all the way onto the beach.  Heavily laden men were forced to jump over the sides of the boats, often into water that was over their heads, and struggle against the surf, the sand, and the withering enemy fire to get ashore.

Private Carroll was a mine detector.  As he stepped off the landing craft, he was plunged into cold, neck-deep water, his backpack soaking up water like a thirsty drunk.  With bullets zipping past his head, mortar shells erupting nearby, and weighed down by heavy gear, Carroll was pulled under and drowned.  Approximately fifty percent of the initial landing forces were casualties and seventy-five percent of their equipment was lost.

There were 2,200 casualties on Omaha Beach that day, but 40,000 men landed and by nightfall they clung to a tenuous beachhead they would never relinquish.  The landings were the first step in the liberation of France and sounded the death knell for Hitler’s Third Reich.

Private Ernest H. “Sonny” Carroll, Jr. was awarded the Purple Heart.  After the war, his remains were returned to Rock Hill and buried in the Laurelwood Cemetery.  In 2010, through a $1 million bequest, his parents established the Ernest Hill Carroll Jr. Endowed Scholarship Fund to provide assistance to worthy Clemson students.  It was a fitting gift to honor a selfless sacrifice.

 

Learn more about Sonny Carroll here.

For more information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor, click here.

The best of many excellent books on the Normandy landings is D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II by Stephen Ambrose, 1994.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mare Island

Written by: Kelly Durham

Wister Austin Martin, Jr. of Greenville was an engineering major who attended Clemson College for a single semester during the 1936-37 academic year. In 1938, he joined the Navy.

We know very little about Martin’s Clemson experience and his military service.  In 1944, with Allied forces on the offensive in the Pacific, Martin was assigned for duty at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

Mare Island was the first US Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean back in 1853.  Located 25 miles northeast of San Francisco at Vallejo, California, the shipyard rests on a peninsula separated from the mainland by the passage of the Napa River through the Mare Island Strait.  During World War II, Mare Island was the premier west coast submarine port and served as the controlling authority for shipbuilding and repair efforts in the San Francisco Bay area.

Naval vessels required frequent overhauls, particularly during sustained combat operations.  Enemy action, battle damage, hurricanes and storms, collisions, accidents and the normal wear and tear of time at sea would trigger a ship’s need for repair.  Ships in the Pacific Theater often returned to Mare Island for needed work.  In addition, rapid technological advances during the war, particularly with respect to radar and sonar systems, meant that ships often arrived at Mare Island for the installation of new antennae and related electronic equipment.

Mare Island’s workers, civilian and military, built and repaired hundreds of ships during the war.  The yard also hosted a High Frequency Direction Finding station, which tracked Japanese naval and merchant shipping.

Wister Austin Martin, Jr. drowned on May 1, 1944.  He was survived by his parents and buried at Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church in Anderson.

See Wister Austin Martin, Jr.’s information at:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/wister-austin-martin-jr/

Learn more about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor at:

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Mission

Written by: Kelly Durham

James Francis Crawford was a member of Clemson’s Class of 1944.  By the time the fourteen remaining members of the class graduated across the stage of the Outdoor Theater that May, Crawford had already made the ultimate sacrifice.

Crawford, from Columbia, was a mechanical engineering major who attended Clemson for two years.  Following America’s entry into the war, Crawford enlisted in the Army Air Force on March 31, 1942.

After basic and advanced training, Crawford was assigned to the 785^th Bomb Squadron of the 466^th Bomb Group as an aerial gunner.  The group was formed at Alamogordo Army Air Field, New Mexico on August 1, 1943.  It moved to Kearns Army Air Field, Utah and began training on the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber.  In late November, the group returned to Alamogordo, remaining there until February 1944 when it headed east to Topeka, Kansas.  Ground elements of the group departed New York aboard the Queen Mary at the end of the month.  The air echelon flew the southern ferry route to South America, across the Atlantic to Africa, and then north to England, arriving at Attlebridge in March.  The 466^th became part of the 8^th Air Force Bomber Command.

The 466^th commenced combat operations on March 22, participating in a daylight raid on Berlin, but Crawford’s crew, under the command of pilot First Lieutenant Prosper Pinto did not fly the mission.  The first mission for the Pinto crew was a March 27 raid on airfields in German-occupied France.  The 8^th Air Force was helping prepare the way for the coming invasion of France by attacking German Luftwaffe targets to secure air superiority for the Allies.  Seven hundred bombers were dispatched to hit eleven different airfields.  Crawford’s aircraft was one of forty-nine designated to attack the aerodrome at Biarritz, on the Bay of Biscay just north of France’s border with Spain.

No part of an 8^th Air Force combat mission was without risk.  The bombers were heavily loaded with sufficient fuel to reach their often distant targets, heavy machine guns with their ammunition, a crew of ten men, and up to eight thousand pounds of bombs.  The high mission payloads meant that the big bombers needed the entire runway to make it into the air.  Any malfunction of engines or other systems during the critical takeoff roll could result in disaster.  The danger didn’t end once the bomber clawed its way into the sky.  Hundreds, and often more than a thousand, bombers from airfields all over southeastern England would assemble into mission formations in crowded airspace, frequently in less than ideal weather.  Mid-air collisions were an everyday threat, especially during a climb to altitude in thick clouds—like those over England on the morning of March 27.

After taking off and ascending into the clouds, Crawford’s aircraft wandered off course.  It is possible that it collided with another B-24 and suffered material damage.  Army Air Force investigators believed that Lieutenant Pinto was searching for a place to land when his aircraft crashed near North Green Hoe at 1020 hours.  Another B-24 crashed a mile and a half away, though a mid-air collision could not be proved by the remaining evidence.

Sergeant Crawford and the other members of the Pinto crew were killed on their first mission before they reached enemy territory.  Their B-24 was one of seven lost or damaged beyond repair that day.  Twenty airmen were killed, one wounded, and thirty-one declared missing.

James Francis Crawford was awarded the Air Medal and the Purple Heart.  He was survived by his parents and brother.  After the war, Crawford’s remains were returned to Columbia where he was buried at Elmwood Memorial Gardens.

For more information on James Francis Crawford see;

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/james-frances-crawford/

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

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

Crew photo courtesy The American Air Museum in Britain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Deadliest Year

Written by: Kelly Durham

Stephen Andrew Shelley began his only year at Clemson in the late summer of 1966.  Shelley, from St. Augustine, Florida, finished that year but did not return the following summer.  Instead, in July of 1967, Shelley enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Shelley joined the Marines during the escalation of American  combat operations in Vietnam.  He arrived in Vietnam just after New Year’s in 1968 and was assigned to the 1^st Battalion of the 3^rd Marine Regiment.  The regiment, part of the 3^rd Marine Division, had been one of the first Marine units sent to Vietnam three years earlier.  By the time Shelley arrived, the 3^rd Marines were involved in Operation Osceola, an effort to destroy North Vietnamese forces in an area east and south of Quang Tri Combat Base.  Quang Tri province abutted  Vietnam’s Demilitarized Zone, the ineffective border with Communist North Vietnam.

Shelley joined his company on January 4.  During this period, the Marines in the vicinity of Quang Tri engaged in numerous skirmishes with North Vietnamese forces.  On January 10, Shelley who had been trained as a machine gunner, was part of a mission patrolling in an area five kilometers west of Quang Tri airfield.  Shelley’s unit came under enemy small arms fire and he was seriously wounded.

Shelley was evacuated from the battlefield and was eventually airlifted to Clark Air Force Base hospital in the Philippines.  He died from his wounds on February 25, 1968.  By the time of Shelley’s death, the North Vietnamese had launched the Tet Offensive which would lead to widespread carnage in Vietnam and in the United States a growing concern about the prospects of victory.

1968 was the deadliest year of the war for Americans with combat deaths reaching 16,899, including Private First Class Stephen Andrew Shelley.  Shelley was awarded the Purple Heart.  He was survived by his parents, two sisters, and two brothers.  His body was returned to St. Augustine where he was buried in the San Lorenzo Cemetery.

For more information on Stephen Andrew Shelley see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/stephen-andrew-shelley/

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Textbook Soldier

Written by: Kelly Durham

Jim Hickerson seemed predestined for a military career.  The Greensboro native attended prep school at Edwards Military Institute in Salemburg, North Carolina. He then enrolled at the all-military Clemson College as a member of the Class of 1949.

An arts and sciences major, Hickerson impressed his fellow cadets with the military bearing of a “textbook soldier.”  He was awarded the Simpson Medal as the best drilled cadet in his class.  His proficiency in drill earned him a spot on the Senior Platoon drill team and the Pershing Rifles, which he served as captain.  As a senior, he served as a cadet major and a battalion executive officer until a mid-year vacancy opened and he was promoted to regimental executive officer.  His achievements within the Cadet Regiment led to Hickerson’s selection as a Distinguished Military Student.  But Jim Hickerson’s talents were not confined to the military aspect of life on campus.  He also sang in the Glee Club and served on the YMCA Council. Hickerson was selected for inclusion in Who’s Who Among American Colleges and Universities. The esteem in which he was held by his classmates is reflected in his election to the Senior Council, which served as “the connecting link between student body and the administration.”

Hickerson graduated in June 1949 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Regular Army.  He attended the Basic Infantry Officer Course at Fort Benning, Georgia where he also qualified as an Army paratrooper, earning his jump wings.  After completing school, Hickerson was assigned to the 7^th Cavalry Regiment of the 1^st Cavalry Division then stationed in Japan as part of the occupation forces.

When North Korean forces invaded South Korea in June 1950, the 1^st Cavalry Division was one of the first American units sent to the peninsula.  Hickerson’s 7^th Cavalry Regiment landed at Pohang-dong, eighty miles north of Pusan, on July 22.  The 7^th was committed to combat on July 25, exactly thirty days after the North Korean invasion.

Over the next few days, the 7^th protected the main highway leading southeast from Seoul.  The regiment gradually fell back to defensive positions forming what would become the Pusan Perimeter, the United Nations toehold on the southeast corner of the Korean peninsula.

For fifty days, the 7^th held its section of the perimeter against heavy attacks from North Korean forces.  On August 9, Hickerson’s 1^st Battalion was ordered to attack enemy forces on Hill 268.  Supported by tanks and artillery, the battalion seized the hill, killing four hundred enemy soldiers. The battalion continued to push forward, seizing additional high ground until it was relieved and pulled off the line to serve as the 1^st Cavalry Division’s reserve.

In response to renewed heavy attacks by the enemy, the division withdrew to shorten its lines and occupy stronger defensive positions.  In desperate fighting near Taegu (Daegu), on September 10, Hickerson was wounded, earning the Purple Heart medal.

While he was out of action, General MacArthur, the commander of all United Nations forces in Korea, executed an amphibious landing at Incheon, on South Korea’s northwest coast.  A corresponding breakout from the Pusan Perimeter into which UN reinforcements had been flowing, lead to the encirclement of North Korean forces in the south.

By the time Hickerson returned to 1^st Battalion on October 23, the 7^th Cavalry was moving north.  UN Forces rolled through North Korea and reached its border with China in late October.  On October 25, Communist China intervened and began pushing UN troops back from its border.  The 7^th counterattacked, but on November 26, Chinese forces penetrated the regiment’s front line companies.  The sheer size of the Chinese attacks combined with bitter cold, forced UN troops to fall back. By the end of 1950, the Chinese had pushed UN forces back into South Korea.

On January 22, 1951, the 7^th Cavalry launched an attack on Chinese lines near Kyong-ni.  On Sunday, January 28, First Lieutenant Hickerson’s platoon was on the point of a battalion movement when a large enemy force suddenly opened fire from in front and on both flanks.  Hickerson, according to the citation for his Silver Star medal, “quickly deployed his machine gun and 57 mm recoilless rifle section into advantageous positions and returned fire.”  In the face of heavy enemy fire, Hickerson moved from “man to man to give encouragement and fire directions.”  After silencing the enemy to his front, Hickerson began to reposition the recoilless rifle.  “…he courageously moved among his weapons, fully exposed to the enemy, to give fire directions and advice.  While in the midst of this dauntless act, Lieutenant Hickerson was struck by hostile fire…”  Hickerson died from his wounds the following day.

The Korean War would drag on for two and a half more years, halted by an armistice in July 1953.  After all the fighting and destruction and three million deaths, the pre-war boundary between the two Koreas was restored.  More than thirty-three thousand Americans were killed in battle, including promising young leaders like James Gay Hickerson.  Jim Hickerson was awarded a second Purple Heart and the Silver Star.  He is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Greensboro.

For more information on First Lieutenant James Gay Hickerson see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/james-gay-hickerson/

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holding the Bulge

Written by: Kelly Durham

The weather was on the Germans’ side.  Time was not.  The Germans launched their great winter offensive through the rugged Ardennes region of southeast Belgium on December 16, 1944.  The attack caught the American defenders in the First Army sector off guard.  By December 21^st, the Germans had pushed a bulge into the Allied front reaching some fifty miles to the west.  The weather was overcast with low cloud cover and frequent snowstorms, perfect for grounding the overwhelming airpower of the Allies.  But the Germans were running out of time.  Every day they failed to reach their objectives along the Meuse River was another day for the Allied high command to assemble forces for a counterattack.  Among the American forces dispatched to blunt the German salient was the 84^th Infantry Division.  One of its company commanders was Olin Goode Dorn, Jr., Clemson College Class of 1942.

“Goot” Dorn was an agricultural engineering major from Sumter.  He was a member of Blue Key, the American Society of Agricultural Engineers, and chaired the floor committee of the Central Dance Association.  Dorn served as secretary-treasurer and then as vice president of Sigma Phi social fraternity and was also a member of the Sumter County Club.  As a senior, he was a first lieutenant in the Cadet Brigade.

Following graduation, Dorn reported to officers’ candidate school at Fort Benning, Georgia where he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Infantry Reserve on September 23, 1942.  He was posted to Fort McClellan, Alabama as an instructor and was advanced to first lieutenant in May of 1943.

Dorn was assigned to the 84^th Infantry Division, known as the “Railsplitters.”  Tradition held that the division, originally composed of men from Illinois, Wisconsin and Kentucky, traced its lineage to the Illinois militia company in which young Captain Abraham Lincoln served during the Black Hawk War of 1832.  The 84^th shipped overseas in September 1944.  After a period of organization, equipping, and training in England, the division landed at Omaha Beach at the beginning of November.

The 84^th entered combat on November 18 with an attack on the German city of Geilenkirchen as part of a larger offensive to reach the Roer River.  First Lieutenant Dorn led Company L of the 3^rd Battalion of the 335^th Infantry Regiment as it pushed forward to take the village of Beeck.  Dorn was promoted to captain on December 3 as the Allies prepared an operation to cross the Roer River.  Before they could act, the Germans launched their surprise offensive.

As Allied commanders realized the scope of the German attack, they also perceived the opportunity it presented to deal the enemy a crippling defeat.  General J. Lawton Collins’s VII Corps, including the 84^th,  was pulled off the front lines to the north of the German bulge and redirected to the southeast to assemble as a counterattacking force.  VII Corps would attack the German salient’s north flank while elements of General George Patton’s Third Army would attack it from the south, to encircle and trap the German attackers.

As VII Corps neared its designated assembly area, Collins feared that his forward elements might be pulled into the American defensive battle before they could organize for their counteroffensive.  To prevent this eventuality, he moved the 84^th forward to the Belgian town of Marche.  Here two regiments, the 334^th and 335^th, took up positions to guard the assembly area from the Germans who were still fighting toward the west.  In addition, the 335^th sent forward its 3^rd Battalion, including Dorn’s Company L, to establish a screening force in the vicinity of Rochefort, a smaller town eight miles to the southwest.

On December 23, the German Panzer Lehr Division, already running low on fuel for its tanks, attempted to break through American lines and capture Marche.  Dorn’s company held the enemy at Rochefort in what devolved into house-to-house fighting.  Dorn was killed in the action, but the German tanks were unable to break through to Marche.  The German offensive ran out of gas—literally.  December 23 marked its farthest advance.  On December 24, Christmas Eve, the weather began to clear and Allied air forces began to help the men on the ground turn the battle back in the Allies’ favor.

The Battle of the Bulge, as it became known, was the biggest—and bloodiest—battle of US forces in World War II.  More than 19,000 Americans were killed, including Captain Dorn, but the Germans were denied their objectives and spent their last reserves.  Henceforth, the Allies held the initiative as they steadily pushed the Germans back to the Siegfried Line defending Germany’s western border.

Captain Olin Goode Dorn, Jr. was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.  He was survived by his wife, Mary, and his parents.  Dorn was originally buried in the Henri Chappelle American Military Cemetery in Belgium and after the war was reinterred in the Sumter Cemetery.

For more information on Olin Goode Dorn, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/olin-goode-dorn-jr/

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

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

See also A Time For Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge by Charles B. MacDonald, 1985.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ball Turret

Of the crew positions on the B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber, the loneliest was the ball turret.  Set into the belly of the aircraft, the gunner in the ball was physically isolated from the rest of the crew.  While his view to the earth below was unobstructed and he could rotate a full 360 degrees, he was susceptible to the same hazards—sub-zero temperatures, enemy fighters, flak—as his crewmates plus he ran the risk of mechanical malfunctions that could trap him inside his turret.  For long hours, the gunner had to remain at his post, folded into such a cramped space that the ball turret was usually the domain of the smallest man on the crew. Once over enemy territory, the ball turret gunner had to remain on his guns to protect his aircraft—and his crewmates—against fighter attacks from below.  Albert Outz Kemp was the ball turret gunner aboard an 8^th Air Force B-17 and a member of Clemson’s Class of 1945.

Kemp was from Trenton in Edgefield County and came to Clemson in 1941 to study engineering.  He stayed on campus only his freshman year and entered the Army at Fort Jackson in March 1943.  After basic training at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, Kemp was assigned to aerial gunnery school.  Upon completion, he was promoted to sergeant and assigned to an operational unit for further training and familiarization.  Kemp joined the B-17G crew of pilot Second Lieutenant William Wilson.  The crew flew to England on October 17, 1944 and joined the 563^rd Bomb Squadron of the 388^th Bomb Group operating out of Knettishall in Suffolk, England.

On November 6, 1944, Kemp and the rest of the crew were alerted for their first combat mission.  After takeoff, the aircraft experienced engine trouble and Wilson aborted the mission, returning to Knettishall.  Three weeks later, on November 25, the Wilson crew got its second chance at its first mission.  Three hundred eighty-eight heavy bombers were dispatched to attack the Leuna synthetic oil plant at Merseburg, Germany.  By 0730, all of the group’s bombers were in the air where they assembled into a large attack formation with bombers from other groups and turned on the briefed course toward Germany.  As they approached enemy territory, Kemp climbed through the hatch into the four-foot diameter ball where he would spend the next few—and last—hours of his life.

The target area was covered by clouds, so Pathfinder aircraft equipped with air-to-ground radar led the bomb run.  From approximately 1130 to almost noon, the bomber formation streamed over the target and let loose its bombs on the synthetic oil plant.  Anti-aircraft fire was intense and accurate with 33 bombers receiving major damage and 104 suffering minor damage.  Second Lieutenant Wilson’s plane was among those hit the hardest.  Nursing a crippled aircraft and with all of the crew members wounded, Wilson tried to keep his bomber in the air long enough to cross Allied lines.  He didn’t quite make it.  The aircraft crash landed in a forest near Arenrath, about twenty miles east of the Luxembourg border.  Three of the nine crewmen aboard survived the landing and were taken prisoner by the Germans.  The other six, including Kemp, were buried in a local cemetery.  After the war, Kemp was removed to the Luxembourg American Cemetery.

For more information on Sergeant Albert Outz Kemp see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/albert-outz-kemp/

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

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

B-17G photo courtesy The American Air Museum in Britain

Planning for More Pilots

Written by: Kelly Durham

Billy James Estes of Winnsboro was a member of Clemson’s Class of 1945.   He majored in engineering and was assigned to Company L, 3^rd Battalion, 2^nd Regiment of the Cadet Brigade.  He left Clemson after his freshman year to prepare himself—and others—for the frightful challenges of World War II.

Estes must have recognized the developing importance of air power.  The Germans had employed revolutionary close air support tactics in their Blitzkrieg across France, then turned the Luftwaffe loose to bomb London and other English cities.  The Japanese had plunged America into war with their devastating aerial attack at Pearl Harbor.  These attacks accelerated the already dizzying expansion of the US Army Air Force—and somebody would need to train all of those new pilots.  Estes reckoned he might fill that role.

Unlike most of the other belligerents in the war, the United States had no separate air force.  The Navy, Marine Corps, and Army supported their own internal air arms.  In the late 1930s, the Roosevelt Administration recognized the need to increase the number of trained pilots available for military service.  In 1937, only 184 men graduated from advanced pilot training.  Faced with German and Japanese aggression in Europe and the Far East, plans were made to increase the number of graduates to 4,500 per year.  Yet the Air Corps, the Army Air Force’s predecessor, lacked the facilities to produce such high numbers of pilots.  As a result, the Air Corps contracted with civilian flying schools to train military pilots.  After France fell to Germany in the summer of 1940, the Air Corps again increased its target, this time to 7,000 pilots annually.  By the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Air Corps had engaged 45 flying schools all across the country.

In October 1943, Estes was training at the Southern Aviation school in Camden.  He was taking a “refresher course” and building up his flight hours in order to qualify as an instructor pilot.  On Wednesday, November 3, Estes, along with Bob Anderson a student at the school, were on a routine training flight when their aircraft crashed near Winnsboro’s Mount Zion Institute.  Both men suffered from multiple fractures and head injuries and were rushed to the post hospital at Fort Jackson. Anderson was reported to be improving, but Estes died from his injuries two days after the crash.

Accidents would plague the Army Air Force pilot training program throughout the war.  Nevertheless, the system Estes was working to be a part of would produce not 4,500 pilots per year or even 7,000.  During World War II, 193,000 new pilots would enter the Army Air Force, an average of more than 48,000 per year.

Estes was survived by his wife, his parents, a sister, and three brothers, one of whom was serving overseas with the Army.

For more information on Billy James Estes see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/billy-james-estes-2/

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silver Star

Written by: Kelly Durham

For Fifth Army commander Mark Clark, the glory would be in the capture of Rome.  To get to Rome, one had to control the Liri Valley.  To control the Liri Valley, one had to seize the dominating high ground at Monte Cassino.  Through the winter of 1943-44, the Allies had been fighting their way north along the rugged Italian peninsula against both the Germans and the weather, struggling to seize this key terrain.  The 34th Infantry Division was in the thick of the battle for Monte Cassino and so was Frank Keith Fendley. 

 Fendley was a hometown boy from Clemson and a member of the interrupted Class of 1946.  He was an engineering major and was assigned to Company M-2, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Regiment of the Cadet Brigade.  At the end of their freshman year, the boys in the Class of ’46 were scattered to military posts far and wide, sucked into the massive personnel machine feeding soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines into the exploding ranks of the US military. 

After completing his basic and advanced training, Fendley shipped out to the Mediterranean theater, where he was assigned to Company B, 135th Infantry Regiment of the 34th Infantry Division.  The 34th was a National Guard division originally composed of troops from Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas.  Federalized in February 1941, it was fighting in Italy by the time Fendley joined its ranks.   

 January 1944 found the 34th’s 135th Infantry Regiment slogging through nasty winter weather in the rugged mountains of Italy, about halfway between Salerno and Rome.  The terrain was so rocky and treacherous, particularly in snow and ice, that US troops resorted to beasts of burden to carry weapons and supplies to forward positions.  On January 20, Private Fendley was promoted to corporal.  On the final day of the month, in action near the key terrain of Monte Cassino, Fendley displayed conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the Germans.  His conduct in battle led to his promotion to sergeant and would later result in the award of the Silver Star. 

 The battle for Monte Cassino was vicious, with both sides suffering staggering casualties.  In one two-acre field, survivors counted ninety bodies.  During the first two weeks of February, Fendley’s 34th Infantry Division made three attempts to capture the hilltop and break through to the Liri Valley.  Each attempt failed, and each was costly.  The division’s rifle companies, the front line soldiers enduring the worst of the fighting, suffered 65% casualties.  Existing on snow melt and canned rations, the 34th’s soldiers were exhausted and weather-beaten and were pulled from the front line between February 11 through 13.  Fendley was hospitalized with a “severe wound” during the campaign. It eventually took five Allied divisions to capture Monte Cassino.  

After a period of hospitalization, Fendley returned to his unit.  The 34th landed at the Anzio beachhead on March 25 and maintained defensive positions there until the offensive of May 23.  Leading the breakout, the 34th captured Cisterna and swung northwest to capture Rome.  After a short rest, the division proceeded to liberate Livorno.  Fendley confided in a letter to his mother that he expected soon to be relieved for special training for troops preparing for the occupation of Germany.  He was not.  Staff Sergeant Fendley was killed in action on September 18, 1944.  He was twenty years old. 

 Frank Keith Fendley was survived by his parents.  In addition to the Silver Star, he was awarded the Purple Heart.  After the war, his body was returned to Clemson, where he lies buried in the Old Stone Church Cemetery. 

 For more information about Frank Keith Fendley see: 

 https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/frank-keith-fendley/ 

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

 https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/  

 The Tiger photo courtesy of Special Collections, Cooper Library. 

See also The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, by Rick Atkinson, 2007.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mickey Mouse Radar

Written by: Kelly Durham

In November 1943, the US 8^th Air Force sent aloft Pathfinder aircraft equipped with new technology, an air-to-ground radar system to enable bombers to drop their deadly payloads through an overcast.  No longer would cloudy skies over the target area determine whether a mission would be launched.  The new apparatus was designated H2X, but it was code-named “Mickey Mouse.”  Clemson alumnus George Joseph Safy, Class of 1941, would become an expert in navigation utilizing Mickey Mouse.

Safy was a civil engineering major from Kingsport, Tennessee.  He played in the band and was a member of the campus chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers.  Safy left Clemson after his junior year.

By 1944, Safy was a member of the 847^th Bomb Squadron of the 489^th Bomb Group.  The group trained in the United States with B-24 Liberator heavy bombers before deploying overseas in the spring of 1944. Based at Halesworth, Suffolk, just eight miles from the English Channel coast, the group began combat operations on May 30, only a week before the planned D-Day invasion.  The 489^th initially concentrated on transportation targets in France in preparation for the Normandy landings.  Once Allied ground forces were well-established in France, the 8^th Air Force’s heavy bombers resumed their focus on strategic targets such as factories, oil facilities, airfields, and railroad marshalling yards.

Safy was a lead navigator trained in the use of the Mickey Mouse system.  Flying aboard Pathfinder aircraft, Safy would help a command pilot guide an entire formation of several bomb groups, composing a full wing, to its target in Germany.  While less than precise, Mickey Mouse enabled the bombers to strike targets even when cloud cover made it impossible to see them with the naked eye—or the sophisticated Norden bombsight.

On September 9, 1944, two B-24s from the 489^th’s Pathfinders were ordered to lead a wing formation of 265 aircraft to bomb the railroad yards at Mainz, Germany.  Safy was the navigator on a Mickey Mouse equipped B-24 piloted by Captain Thomas Plese.  Also on board was the mission’s command pilot, Major William Blum.

As the formation neared the target at approximately 1055 hours at an altitude of 22,100 feet, the other aircrews kept their eyes on the Pathfinder plane.  When it released its marker flares and bombs, all the other bombers would drop theirs.

Staff Sergeant John Davis, the left waist gunner on Safy’s crew, recalled that “As we came in on the bomb run, the flak started bursting around us, and the plane rocked from the force of the explosions…Suddenly there was an explosion right on us, and our aircraft started down immediately.  It must have been a direct hit.  We were going straight down, because I could see the formation of planes that we had been leading passing overhead and I was on my back.”

The flak had cut  the airplane in two.  Davis and two others from the aft section of the plane bailed out.  Miraculously, Blum, the command pilot, and one other crew member from the front portion of the bomber also managed to escape.  All five were taken prisoner by the Germans.  Safy, Plese and three other crew members were killed when the plane crashed at Bauscheim just east of the Rhine River from Mainz.

First Lieutenant George Joseph Safy was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters, and the Purple Heart.  He was survived by his parents and was buried in the Lorraine American Military Cemetery in France.

For more information on George Joseph Safy see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/george-joseph-safy/

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patrol Briefing

Written by: Kelly Durham

Good leaders explain the mission and their expectations to their team members.  David Nathaniel Green, Jr. was in the midst of such a briefing when his life came to a sudden end. 

 Green was a member of Clemson’s Class of 1965.  He was an engineering major from Sumter and a member of the Society for the Advancement of Management.  Like his father, who achieved the rank of major, Green went into the military service and was commissioned as an Army second lieutenant.  

 By 1967, the United States was engaged in a steadily expanding air and ground war in Vietnam. More than 380,000 soldiers were in the country and General William Westmoreland, the US commander, believed his troops were ready for major offensives that would seize the initiative for American forces. 

Second Lieutenant Green arrived in Vietnam at the beginning of May 1967.  He was assigned to A Company, 3rd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment of the 9th Infantry Division.  Green’s battalion was engaged in Operation Enterprise, a pacification and security mission in Long An Province.  The province was the gateway to the Mekong River Delta, the major rice-producing region of South Vietnam.  Controlling the waterways in the delta was important to sustaining the free transport of rice and other commercial goods.  Based at Rach Kien, the battalion’s mission was to destroy the enemy and deny him the “use of lines of communications.” 

 To destroy the enemy, one had to know where to find him.  In order to pinpoint Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army troops, American forces patrolled their areas of operations.  On July 24, Second Lieutenant Green was briefing a combat patrol before it was to be sent out on its evening mission.  At 1915 hours, A Company’s area was alerted by a shot from a .45 caliber pistol.  One of the company’s soldiers had accidentally shot himself in the hand.  A medical evacuation, or “dust off,” helicopter was requested and the incident was under investigation.   

 At 1945 hours, as Green went over the patrol plan, an explosion from an unknown source ripped through the group.  Eight soldiers were wounded.  Green was killed.  Evacuation of the soldier with the wounded hand was put on hold while two dust off flights airlifted a total of six soldiers to Army medical facilities.  Two others were not wounded seriously enough for evacuation.  Green’s official cause of death was listed as a non-hostile, accidental self-destruction. 

 Second Lieutenant Green was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation with Palm, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and the Combat Infantry Badge.  He was survived by his father and two brothers.  He is buried in Sumter Cemetery and is memorialized on the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, DC. 

 For more information on David Nathaniel Green, Jr. see: 

 https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/david-nathaniel-green-jr/  

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

 https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Hay du Puits

Written by: Kelly Durham

One of the many fascinating chapters of the story of D-Day concerns the artificial harbors known as “Mulberrys.”  These ingenious devices were constructed in Britain of steel and concrete, then towed across the English Channel and anchored off the invasion beaches.  The Mulberrys were designed to handle 7,000 tons of vehicles and supplies per day, yet they were conceived as only temporary answers to supplying the ever-growing Allied forces streaming across the beaches and into France.  To sustain long-term combat operations, Allied commanders planned to capture the major ports of Caen in the British sector and Cherbourg in the American zone.  Bennett McKellar Reynolds, Clemson Class of 1944, served with the 79th Infantry Division, which entered Cherbourg on June 25, 1944. 

 Bennett Reynolds was an agricultural education major from Bennettsville, SC.  He was a member of the Presbyterian Students Association and sang with the Glee Club.  He completed his junior year at Clemson and then entered active duty in June 1943.   

 Reynolds’s basic training took place at Camp Croft in Spartanburg.  Then, he briefly returned to Clemson as a participant in the Army Specialized Training Program.  From Clemson, he was ordered to Fort Bragg, North Carolina and then to Fort Meade, Maryland.  He arrived in England on May 11, 1944, just in time for the invasion. 

 The 79th Infantry Division began landing on Utah Beach on June 12.  It entered combat a week later, attacking to the north along the Cotentin Peninsula, at the tip of which was the highly valued harbor of Cherbourg.  The division battled its way into the port city on June 25.  Once they realized they could not hold Cherbourg, the Germans did a thorough job of wrecking the harbor.  It would take the Allies weeks to make the port’s facilities usable. 

 In the meantime, the 79th turned south to push the Germans out of the peninsula. The Americans needed to enlarge the beachhead, or lodgment area, to make room for the newly arriving units, which would help launch an offensive into the tank-friendly French countryside south of Normandy.  La Hay du Puits was a commune featuring the junction of key roads.  The Germans had moved into the town in June 1940.  Now, the 79th planned to evict them. 

 On July 5, the 79th began its assault on the town.  Against stiff German resistance, the attack made slow progress.  Over the following day, the 79th’s infantry regiments slowly encircled the town, forcing the German occupiers to withdraw to avoid being cut off.  But, as was their habit, the Germans counterattacked the next day, forcing the 79th to give ground before gradually regaining the initiative.  By the end of the day, the division had suffered one thousand casualties. 

 On July 8th, the attack was resumed with the 79th pushing ahead with tanks supported by engineers and infantry.  High casualties had forced many sergeants to take over their units as junior officers were killed or evacuated due to wounds.  On July 9, the division attacked into the town, rooting German defenders out of the rubble.  Private Reynolds was wounded during the fighting and died that same day. 

 Private Bennett McKellar Reynolds was survived by his mother and his half-brother, who was also serving in the Army.  He was awarded the Purple Heart.  He is buried in McCall Cemetery in Bennettsville.

 For more information about Bennett McKellar Reynolds see; 

 https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/bennett-mckellar-reynolds/  

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

 https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

B-24 Gunner

Written by: Kelly Durham

The B-17 Flying Fortress was the more famous of the American heavy bombers attacking German-occupied Europe, but its sister ship, the B-24 Liberator, carried heavier bomb loads, flew faster, and had a greater range.  It was produced in greater numbers than any other American military aircraft.  Robert LaVerne Anderson of Lake City was a crew member on a Liberator flying from a 15^th Air Force base in Italy.

Anderson, an engineering major, attended Clemson for the 1941-42 academic year and then entered the service, volunteering for the Army Air Force.  He trained as an aerial gunner and was assigned to the 758^th Bomb Squadron of the 459^th Bomb Group which deployed to Italy in early 1944.

Anderson and his comrades went to work in an “office” bristling with guns.  The B-24 was armed with ten .50 caliber machine guns for self-defense: two in the nose, two in the top turret just aft of the flight deck, one on each side of the waist, two in the belly turret, and two more in the tail.  The gunners, all given the rank of sergeant after

the Americans learned that captured non-commissioned officers got better treatment from the Germans than lower-ranking enlisted men, worked in an atmosphere that could be described as inhospitable.  Temperatures at mission altitudes of 20,000 feet and higher plunged as low as forty degrees below zero, forcing the crew, traveling in an unheated and unpressurized aircraft, to wear electrically heated overalls beneath their heavy flying gear.  Any exposed skin was susceptible to frostbite.  Thinner air at these altitudes also required the crew to wear oxygen masks.

And then there were the Germans.  Even in tight formations in which B-24s sought to protect themselves and each other from German fighter aircraft, losses were frequent.  And though the gunners, like Anderson, could shoot back at the fighters, German anti-aircraft fire was a threat against which Anderson and the rest of the crew could offer little defense.

The job of the gunner was to protect his aircraft so that it could deliver a bomb load of up to 8,000 pounds on enemy targets like transportation hubs, airfields, aircraft factories, fuel facilities and other enemy installations deemed of value.  On June 9, 1944, Anderson and the crew of Hogan’s Hellcats, a B-24 piloted by 2^nd Lieutenant Walter Michaels, were assigned to bomb a target at Munich, Germany, about 500 miles north-northwest of their base at Giulia airfield outside of Cerignola, Italy.

For protection against enemy fighters, the B-24s routinely flew in well-ordered formations, with each aircraft in a position from which it could help defend not only itself, but the other planes in its flight as well.  On this Friday morning, Hogan’s Hellcats was flying in the number 5 position of its formation, the third airplane on the right side of a vee-formation.  Ahead about fifty yards and level with Anderson’s aircraft was another B-24.  Staff Sergeant Michael Meindl was the tail gunner in this ship.  Facing to the rear and scanning the skies for enemy fighters, Meindl had an excellent view of what happened as the formation released its bombs over Munich.

“After making a successful bomb run,” Meindl reported, “five bursts of flak exploded directly under Lieutenant Michaels’ ship.  The tip of the left wing curled up and the ship went into about a 60% bank to the left.”  Michaels brought the airplane out of its dive, but the flak had damaged the bomber and the stress on the wing caused the number 3 engine to fall off.  “The last I saw of the ship,” Meindl continued, “it was spinning earthward, into the flak barrage below us.”

Only the airplane’s navigator, 2^nd Lieutenant Leonard Brosky, escaped Hogan’s Hellcats, blown clear when the ship exploded.  The other nine crew members were killed.  They were buried near Munich.  After the war, their remains were returned to the United States where they were interred at the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky.

For more information on Sergeant Robert LaVerne Anderson see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/robert-laverne-anderson/

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corpsman

Written by: Kelly Durham

Wilbur Harmon Creighton, Jr.’s World War II experience stands out for his having participated in the two largest amphibious operations in history.  Creighton was a Navy hospital apprentice first class and he served in both Europe and the Pacific.

Creighton was an agriculture major from North Augusts.  He was at Clemson only during the 1942-43 academic year.  Then, the War and Navy Departments ordered most college-age men to active duty.

While still only 18, Creighton opted for the Navy and became a corpsman, that service’s title for a medic.  Navy corpsmen served not only aboard ships and submarines, they also were assigned to Marine Corps units fighting ashore.

According to a newspaper account, Creighton, participated in the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion of Normandy, likely serving aboard one of the hundreds of Navy vessels in the massive fleet supporting the ground forces.  Fast forward to the spring of 1945 and Creighton was in the Pacific Theater accompanying the 1^st Marine Division as it battled on Okinawa.

Okinawa is considered by many historians to be the most brutal fighting of the war.  The Japanese defenders most often fought to the death in an attempt to make conquest of the island so costly that the United States would seek a negotiated peace rather than continue to insist on unconditional surrender.  The battle saw the heavy use of kamikaze attacks, particularly against the naval ships of the invasion fleet.  Estimates put Japanese and Okinawan deaths during the battle at more than 140,000.

From the Navy’s perspective, Okinawa was the costliest battle of World War II with more than 3,800 sailors killed, over 10% of the Navy’s total deaths during the war.  Those included sailors serving aboard ships as well as those ashore with the Marines.

Eugene Sledge, who served with the 1^st Marines on Okinawa, wrote that the Navy corpsmen “were probably more highly respected by Marines—as a group, and as individuals—than any other group of people we were involved with.” They served alongside the Marines, enduring the same miserable conditions and braving the same dangers.  The Japanese would specifically target corpsmen in order to keep wounded men from receiving the care that might eventually return them to battle.

On May 12, 1945, Creighton was killed in action as the 1^st Marine Division fought to capture “Sugar Loaf Hill” on the western side of the Japanese defensive live near Shuri.

Hospital Apprentice First Class Wilbur Harmon Creighton, Jr. was survived by his parents.  He is buried in North Augusta’s Sunset Hill Cemetery.

For more information on Wilbur Harmon Creighton, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/wilbur-harmon-creighton-jr/

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Engine Failure

Written by: Kelly Durham

The Rhody family of Starr was one of Anderson County’s  “patriotic families doing their utmost in the war effort.” According to the local newspaper, all three of the Rhody sons were in the service and the family’s two daughters were building B-26 Marauder bombers at the Glenn Martin Aircraft factory in Baltimore. The youngest son was Clarence Rhody, a member of Clemson’s Class of 1945.

Rhody arrived on campus with the last class to enroll before the United States was pulled into World War II.  An agriculture major, he was assigned to Company F, 2^nd Battalion, 2^nd Regiment of the Cadet Corps.

In March 1943, Rhody volunteered for the Army Air Force.  He was one of four, out of a group of twenty, passing an entrance exam to qualify for the air corps. Rhody was channeled into training to become an aerial bombardier.  He attended basic training at the University of Alabama and completed subsequent advanced training assignments at Laredo, Texas; Biloxi, Mississippi; San Antonio, Texas; Nebraska; and Kansas.

After completing his training, Rhody was assigned to the 6^th Bomb Squadron of the 29^th Bomb Group.  The squadron was destined to receive the new B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber, but these were not yet available, so initially the aircrews trained on smaller, slower, older B-17s. Once it received its new B-29s, the 6^th continued to train, because the new bomber was not simply an improved version of older designs.  According to B-29 pilot Chuck Sweeney, the Superfortress was “a technological marvel, an example of the supremacy of American science and engineering.  The B-29 was not just a collection of incremental improvements to existing aircraft design, a simple step in the evolutionary progress of any technology.  Incorporating scores of revolutionary advances, it was a quantum leap into the future.”  The new bomber featured a pressurized cabin, ten-ton payload, 300 mile per hour cruising speed at 30,000 feet, a centrally-controlled gunnery system, and “four giant, thirty-six cylinder Wright R-3550 engines.”  Those engines were among the reasons why, according to Sweeney, the B-29 “developed a reputation among some pilots as being unreliable and dangerous.”

The 6^th spent two months learning to fly the complex new bombers before deploying to North Field on the Pacific island of Guam in January 1945.  North Field was a sprawling air base with four main runways and revetments for more than two hundred B-29s.  From Guam, the Japanese islands were within the combat radius of the B-29s.

The 6^th conducted its first combat mission, an attack on Tokyo, on February 25, 1945.  Its high altitude, daytime bombing missions against strategic industries were not effective and the following month, the squadron switched to nighttime, low altitude incendiary attacks on area targets—Japanese cities.

On the night of May 13, 1945, Mothers’ Day, Second Lieutenant Rhody was the bombardier on First Lieutenant Frederick Bedford’s B-29, City of Baltimore. Their mission was an incendiary bombing raid on the city of Nagoya, a manufacturing and shipping hub in central Honshu.  About fifteen minutes after takeoff, one of the aircraft’s giant Wright engines failed.  By itself, the failure of a single engine did not constitute a major emergency, still it was sufficient to abort the mission and return to North Field. By the time City of Baltimore made it back into North Field’s traffic pattern, the weather had become “very bad and visibility very limited,” according to the aircraft’s radar officer, Second Lieutenant Dale Spencer. The bad weather and the dead engine made maneuvering the aircraft difficult.  The ship lost airspeed, drifted to the left of the runway, and crashed.  Eight of the eleven on board, including Rhody, were killed.  Spencer and two of the gunners from the aft section of the plane survived.

Second Lieutenant Clarence Henry Rhody was survived by his parents; his two brothers, both of whom were Army captains, one serving in Washington and one in England; and his two sisters working at the aircraft plant in, ironically, Baltimore.  Rhody was awarded the Purple Heart and after the war was reburied in the Silverbrook Cemetery in Anderson.

For more information on Clarence Henry Rhody see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/clarence-henry-rhody/

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

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

See also War’s End: An Eyewitness Account of America’s Last Atomic Mission by Charles W. Sweeney, Avon Books, 1997.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Navy

Written by: Kelly Durham

It is no surprise given Clemson’s long history of Army ROTC that the vast majority, nearly 80%, of the men on the University’s Scroll of Honor served in the Army and the Army Air Force.  Despite the fact that Clemson has administered an Air Force ROTC program since the late 1940s, it is the Navy rather than the Air Force which lays claim to the next largest group of Scroll of Honor heroes.  Joshua Ward Motte Simmons of Newberry is one member of the Navy contingent, which comprises six percent of the Scroll of Honor.

 

Simmons attended Clemson from 1904 to 1906 as an engineering major.  The young campus included few academic buildings. During Simmons’s time at Clemson, Agriculture Hall (now Sikes) was built, joining the Main Building (later Tillman Hall), Chemistry Building (Hardin Hall), Textile Building (Godfrey Hall) and Mechanical Hall. Enrollment was less than 600 cadets, all male, all white, and the majority from South Carolina.

Simmons left Clemson after two years and eventually made his way to Charleston.  When the United States entered World War I, Simmons joined the Navy.  Ensign Simmons served on two vessels, the USS Osceola and the USS Teal.

Osceola was a seagoing tug that steamed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and remained there as a station ship.  Teal was a minesweeper.  Launched in May 1918, Teal patrolled off the shores of New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.  It is likely that Simmons’s service on Teal, operating in and out of northern ports, put him in contact with soldiers returning from the war.  In addition to their gear, many of these soldiers carried the influenza virus that in 1918 swept across much of the United States and the world and was known as the Spanish Flu.

The flu was particularly deadly among young adults whose lungs it would damage and who would then often develop pneumonia.  That may well be what happened to Simmons.  He was admitted to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Virginia where he succumbed to pneumonia on March 14, 1919, at the age of 32.

Ensign Joshua Ward Motte Simmons was buried at Rosemont Cemetery in Newberry.  He was survived by his mother.  He was posthumously awarded the World War I Victory Medal.

 

For more information on Joshua Ward Motte Simmons see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/joshua-ward-motte-simmons/

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Man’s Curve

Written by: Kelly Durham

Richard King Thackston of Greenville grew up on his family’s dairy farm off of Buncombe Road and graduated from Parker High School.  He enrolled at Clemson College as a member of the Class of 1933 but would not graduate with his class.  A dairy major, King Thackston joined the Dairy Club and was assigned to Company B of Clemson’s Cadet Brigade.  He was also a member of Kappa Phi Fraternity.  Thackston attended summer school at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now Auburn University, during the summer of 1932.  After graduating from Clemson in just three years, he continued his studies with post-graduate work at New York’s Cornell University.

Returning to Greenville, he managed Thackston Dairy which produced more than nine thousand bottles of milk daily.  He also immersed himself in community service.  He chaired Greenville County’s Live-at-Home program for farmers, served on the board of directors of Franklin Savings and Loan, and was a trustee of the Greenville County Library.  He was a member of the Rotary Club and served on the executive board of the Blue Ridge Council of the Boy Scouts.

As the United States reluctantly prepared for war, Thackston registered for the draft in October 1940.  Although Thackston’s cadet curriculum at Clemson had focused on infantry training, he would end up in the Navy.

In June 1942, Thackston applied for the Navy’s Aviation Cadet program.  Based on his education, business background, and glowing references, King was appointed a lieutenant, junior grade in the United States Naval Reserve on August 11, 1942.  He reported for instruction to the Naval Training School at the Quonset Point Naval Air Station in Rhode Island on October 20.

Upon completion of his course of instruction at Quonset Point in mid-February 1943, Thackston received orders to proceed to the Twelfth Naval District in San Francisco for the first available transportation to the Pacific Theater where he was to report to the Commander, Air Force, Pacific Fleet for aviation intelligence duties.  Thackston’s orders authorized five days of leave prior to his departure.

On February 20, Thackston, his colleague Lieutenant (jg) James Joseph Britt, and Britt’s wife Margaret set out from Quonset Point for New York City where they planned to dine with Britt’s father.  Traveling in Thackston’s Chevrolet Coupe, the trio headed west on US Route 1.  In the vicinity of Madison, Connecticut, they reached Jannas curve, a hazardous bend in the road.

As Thackston guided his vehicle through the curve, the left front of his car clipped a tractor-trailer rig headed in the opposite direction. The collision caused Thackston to lose control of the car which crashed, seriously injuring all three occupants.  In those days before seat belts, Lieutenant (jg) Britt suffered cuts, bruises, and broken ribs.  Mrs. Britt’s pelvis and collar bone were broken.  Thackston’s injuries were the most serious:  two broken legs, several broken ribs, and a fractured skull.  All were taken to New Haven Hospital were Thackston was listed in critical condition.  The Britts survived their injuries, but Thackston died six days later.

The Navy’s official investigation into the accident noted that Jannas curve was “deceptive and dangerous.”  “The curve is not apparent to the driver of a car approaching” from the west, as Thackston was.  “There are no adequate signs to warn an approaching driver of the serious nature of the curve.”   The report said that there had been so many serious accidents there that the curve was “popularly known in the vicinity as ‘Dead Man’s Curve.’”  The Navy determined that Thackston’s and Britt’s injuries had occurred “not as the result of their own misconduct.”

Thackston’s story is a reminder of an often overlooked tragedy of American involvement in World War II: non-battle deaths made up approximately one-quarter of US military deaths.  Among Clemson men, the percentage was slightly higher, 26%.

Sixty-five Clemson men died during the war in non-battle aircraft accidents, most of them training accidents Stateside, but some in operational theaters while on non-combat missions.  Illness claimed at least thirteen and drownings, both during training exercises and leisure, accounted for seven more.  Two men were lost to friendly fire accidents and eight, including Thackston, to vehicle accidents.  One Clemson soldier was struck and killed by a train.  None of the more mundane ways people died took a hiatus during the war years.  The sacrifice of non-battle death was just as tragic, just as grievous, as death in combat.

Lieutenant (jg) Richard King Thackston was survived by his mother and two brothers, both then serving as officers in the United States Army.  He is buried in Greenville’s Christ Church Cemetery.

For more information about Richard King Thackston see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/richard-king-thackston/

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

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

Thanks to Dr. Debbie Jackson for research assistance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Heavy Debt

 

Written by: Kelly Durham

Clemson students of a later generation are familiar with the name of Otis Morgan who was killed in the last year of World War II.  They remember him not because of how he died, but because of how he lived.

Otis Foster Morgan arrived on campus during the Great Depression.  A civil engineering major from Laurens, Morgan was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Laurens County Club which he served as secretary.  He was associate editor of The Tiger and served as president of the Central Dance Association.  Morgan, a member of Alpha Chi Psi fraternity, was listed in Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges.  As a senior, he served as a cadet first lieutenant and company executive officer after completing ROTC summer training at Fort McClellan, Alabama.  After graduating on the final day of May 1938, Morgan lived briefly in Aiken before entering the Army.

Morgan was soon on his way to the Philippines.  Described by his friend Manny Lawton as a “neat, square-shouldered, aggressive lieutenant,” Morgan was assigned to a Philippine Scout unit.  He later moved to the 71^st Engineer Battalion of the Philippine Army’s 71^st Infantry Division.  The Philippine Army had been established only in 1935 as the Philippines formally became an American commonwealth on a pathway toward eventual independence.  The commander of the Philippine Army—as well as American forces in the archipelago—was former US Army chief of staff Douglas MacArthur.

The Japanese attack on the Philippines began on December 8, 1941.  American and Filipino forces were eventually pushed back onto the Bataan Peninsula.  Morgan’s 71^st Infantry Division fell back to Corregidor, the rock island fortress in Manila Bay.  Outnumbered, with limited food and ammunition, and with no hope for resupply, Corregidor finally surrendered to the Japanese on May 6, 1942.

Morgan, along with other American and Filipino survivors of Corregidor’s siege were marched north to the prisoner of war camp at Cabanatuan.  There Morgan was reunited with his Clemson classmate Ben Skardon.  Henry Leitner of the Class of 1937 was also present in the camp.

At its peak, 8,000 POWs occupied Cabanatuan, making it the largest such camp in the Philippines.  The compound covered about 100 acres divided by a road that ran through its center.  One side of the camp housed the Japanese guards and camp administration.  The other side held the prisoners and included a hospital nicknamed the “Zero Ward” because zero was the probability of coming out of it alive.

Ben Skardon’s health had deteriorated at Cabanatuan.  He had contracted beri beri and malaria and was suffering from diarrhea.  He had grown so weak that he could barely eat and was about to be committed to the “Zero Ward.”  Skardon’s story has been oft retold during the ceremony in which Clemson students receive their class rings.  Otis Morgan is at the center of the story.

“I was in very, very bad health in the prison camp,” Skardon recalled, “and there was no medicine and no way of improving your health.”  Leitner and Morgan kept Skardon alive by massaging his swollen feet and carrying him back and forth to the latrine.  Skardon had secreted his Clemson class ring by rolling it up in the sleeve of his uniform.  Morgan had learned a little Japanese and worked on a local farm as an “in charge,” a prisoner who could pass along instructions from the Japanese guards to their English-speaking prisoners.  To save his friend’s life, Morgan bartered Skardon’s ring for food.  “One evening Otis came in from the farm with a small can of potted ham and a live pullet-sized chicken.  Henry borrowed a tin pail, built a fire, and boiled the chicken.”  Skardon recalled that Morgan and Leitner took turns feeding him.  They even broke open the chicken’s bones and pulled out the marrow.  “My diarrhea dried up…my appetite was restored.”  Skardon regained his health and would survive his captivity.  Otis Morgan would not.

Morgan spent two years and seven months at Cabanatuan.  After American and Filipino forces returned to the Philippines in October 1944, the Japanese began to evacuate POWs, transporting them by merchant ship to become slave laborers in Japan.  Morgan, Leitner, and Skardon were among 1,619 prisoners aboard the Oryoku Maru at Subic Bay, Luzon when it was attacked by aircraft from the USS Hornet on December 15.  They survived the ship’s sinking but on Christmas Day were transported by train to San Fernando on Lingayen Gulf.  Two days later, the Clemson colleagues were loaded onto the Brazil Maru bound for Takao Harbor, Formosa.  Upon arrival there, Morgan and his fellow prisoners were transferred to yet another ship, the Enoura Maru.  On January 8, 1945, while still at Takao, this ship, which carried no markings identifying it as a POW transport, was attacked by aircraft from the Hornet.  Otis Morgan was killed when a bomb struck the port side hold.  He was buried in a mass grave along with 294 other POWs killed in the attack.  His remains were never repatriated.

First Lieutenant Otis Foster Morgan was awarded the Purple Heart.  He was survived by his mother, a brother, and a sister.  He is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing, Manila American Cemetery, the Philippines and on the Memorial Wall at the Aiken County Veterans Park.

In the telling of Ben Skardon’s story, his Clemson ring often gets star billing.  “It saved my life,” Skardon said.  But Skardon always acknowledged the role of his Clemson comrades, Henry Leitner and Otis Morgan.  Their actions converted the ring into the nourishment that rescued him from the “Zero Ward” and offered him a chance for survival.  During their long, dark days of imprisonment, Leitner and Morgan ministered to their weakened friend, purchasing with their efforts a second chance for his life.  Speaking sixty years after the end of the war, Skardon summed up his feelings: “My debt to Henry Leitner and Otis Morgan is heavy—it cannot be repaid.”

For more information on Otis Foster Morgan see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/otis-foster-morgan/

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Accidental Discharge

 

Written by: Kelly Durham

Teddy Gaines was looking forward to returning home.  He had been in France for a year and a half, had seen the Great War through to its end, and was anticipating a reunion with his wife and their toddler daughter.  During a visit with his friend and comrade, Major H. C. Tillman, Teddy seemed “jolly” and “happy,” but within an hour, Gaines was dead.

Theodore Williams Gaines was an agriculture major and a member of Clemson’s Class of 1909.  After leaving Clemson, Gaines returned to his hometown of Greenwood and took employment as a cotton buyer for the Greenwood Cotton Mill.  The mill’s president, J. C. Self, described Gaines as “true blue, loyal, faithful, upright, and a friend.”

In June 1916, Gaines married Miss Wilhelmina Foell of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who was then the superintendent of the Greenwood Hospital.  Their daughter was born the following summer.

When a coastal artillery company was organized in Greenwood, Gaines was elected its captain.  He later resigned to devote his energies to business, but when the company was activated for federal service upon America’s entry into the World War, Gaines rejoined the outfit.  The Greenwood battery was assigned to the 61^st Coastal Artillery Corps at Fort Moultrie before shipping out to France.

On December 17, 1918, Gaines was killed in his quarters by the accidental discharge of his pistol.  Major Tillman had visited with him only an hour earlier and noted that Teddy was looking forward to the prospect of returning home to his loved ones in Greenwood.  In a letter to Teddy’s father, Tillman described the shock of Gaines’s death and its impact on the unit.  “The entire regiment was if the wound had pierced each and every man. And so it had, for no man was so beloved or deserved it more.  And in death as in life, I say that he was the best of us all.”  Upon hearing the devastating news, Major Tillman at once sought to console Gaines’s brother, Milton, who was serving in the same battery.

A letter to Teddy’s family from Gerald Smart described the military funeral conducted in France.  Gaines’s body was covered with the American flag and rested on a bier in the town square where two thousand villagers paid their respects.  Smart added that “There was not a better liked man in the regiment…no one ever heard any man say evil of [Captain Gaines] who was loved by everyone.”

Teddy Gaines was survived by his wife and daughter, his parents, four sisters, and three brothers, two of whom, Milton and Newt, were then serving in France.  He is memorialized at the Edgewood Cemetery in Greenwood.

For more information on Captain Theodore Williams Gaines see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/theodore-w-gaines/

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over “The Hump”

Written by: Kelly Durham

The spring of 1942 was the low point of the Allies’ World War II experience in the Pacific.  Japanese forces had been victorious at Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, the Gilbert Islands, Guam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Malaya.  The Japanese violated Thailand’s neutrality and used it to stage an attack on Burma in a successful attempt to severe the Burma Road. This had been the only overland supply route serving Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Chinese regime in its war against the Japanese, a war which had been underway since 1937.  That spring of 1942, as Bataan and Corregidor fell, the Japanese captured Lashio, the southern terminus of the Burma supply route.  To keep their Chinese ally in the fight, the Allies made the consequential decision to resupply Chiang by air.  Half the world away, Henry Grady Stone, Jr. was making his own consequential choice.

“Gee” Stone was a junior general science major from Florence and a member of the Class of 1943.  He was also a member of the Flying Cadets, an organization of junior and senior cadets who already possessed their private pilot’s licenses.  In that dark spring of 1942, Stone elected to depart Clemson and volunteered for the Army Air Force.  Stone advanced through flight training and was designated for multi-engine flying.  After earning his pilot’s wings, he completed Stateside assignments before deploying overseas in September 1944.  Stone was sent to the Air Transport Command’s India-China Division to help fly supplies over “The Hump” of the Himalaya Mountains and deliver them to the Chinese.

Flying the Hump was risky business.  On a clear day, “all” a pilot had to do was climb from just above sea level to as high as 15,000 feet to scale the jagged peaks.  Weather was often a factor as warm, humid air from the Indian Ocean collided with cold, dry air sweeping down from Siberia.  These air masses then collided with the world’s tallest mountain range resulting in violent up and down drafts that could flip airplanes over and send them streaking toward the ground.  And there were also the Japanese, who fully realized the benefits of the aerial resupply effort to their Chinese enemy.  Japanese fighters contributed to the startlingly high losses of the unarmed transport planes flying the India to China route. Initially, the Hump had been flown by DC-3 commercial aircraft commandeered from Pan American World Airways, but by the time of Stone’s arrival, the Air Force was flying military aircraft like the familiar C-47 Dakota and the larger C-54 Skymaster.  One other aerial hauler in use, the C-87, was described as “an evil bastard contraption.” It was nothing, wrote aviation author Ernest Gann, like the B-24 bomber on which it was based.  The C-87’s electrical and hydraulic systems frequently failed at the extreme cold of the high altitudes required by the Hump.  Cockpit illumination was often lost during takeoffs, and the heating system on the flight deck produced either stifling heat or none at all.  These flaws aggravated the C-87’s accident rate which was 500% higher than that of the C-54.  Nonetheless, the exigency of the supply mission required that all available aircraft remain in service.

On November 13, 1944, First Lieutenant Stone was assigned as the copilot of a C-87 loaded with supplies and bound for Chengtu, China.  The airplane lifted off from Jorhat Air Base at 2017 hours.  Takeoff appeared to be normal with the engines running smoothly, but thirty seconds into the flight, between one and two miles from the end of the runway, the C-87 crashed, exploded, and burned, killing Stone and the two others aboard.  An investigation concluded that the airplane took off with its flaps extended, increasing its drag and making it impossible to quickly climb.  In addition, the investigators determined that the landing gear and the flaps could not both be retracted at the same time, so the extended gear added to the already increased drag further amplifying the difficulty of remaining aloft.  It was Stone’s thirteenth mission.

First Lieutenant Henry Grady Stone, Jr. was survived by his parents and a sister.  In 1948, his body was removed from the American Military Cemetery at Jorhat, India and returned to Florence where he was buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery.

For more information on Henry Grady Stone, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/henry-grady-stone-jr/

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

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