Archive for category: Scroll of Honor

Chemist in Battle

Written by: Kelly Durham

After his 1935 graduation from Greenville High School, Henry Ayer Raysor II headed to Clemson College. Over the next four years, as Raysor worked toward his degree in Chemistry, the world inched ever closer to war.

Harry Raysor marched with the Freshman Platoon and served as a member of the staff of The Tiger, the college’s student newspaper.  He was a member of the Greenville County Club and Alpha Chi Sigma, the national professional chemistry fraternity.  Harry was awarded a degree in Chemistry in 1939.  That degree set his life on a course that would end in war.

Harry married Melba Burgess in June 1940 and in November was called to military service.  Second Lieutenant Raysor reported to the Army’s Chemical Warfare Service.  Following the United States’ entry into the war, Harry was assigned to the 3^rd Chemical Battalion at Fort Benning, Georgia.  The battalion was equipped with 4.2 inch mortars for firing chemicals, smoke, and high explosive rounds in support of infantry operations.  Following stateside training, the battalion shipped to North Africa in April 1943, joining the 3^rd Infantry Division in time for its participation in the July invasion of Sicily.  According to Harry’s classmate James Sweeney, the 3^rd Chemical Battalion was released to the II Corps reserve within a few days of the Sicily landings.  The battalion’s soldiers were put to work guarding POW camps and supply depots, but their time in combat was not over: the invasion of Italy loomed just ahead.

The 3^rd Infantry Division landed at Salerno, Italy in September 1943 with Raysor’s 3^rd Chemical Battalion once more in support.  By January 1944, General Mark Clark’s Italian campaign had bogged down into a costly slugfest as the Americans battled entrenched German defenders and harsh winter weather.  Harry Raysor, now a captain, was the commanding officer of the 3^rd Chemical Battalion’s C Company.  On the morning of January 12, Raysor was sheltered in a building near the village of Cerasuolo when a German air raid commenced.  Raysor’s building was hit by a German bomb and he was killed.  On January 17, Raysor’s body was interred in a temporary military cemetery in Marzenello, Italy.

After the war, Raysor’s remains were returned to Greenville and buried in the Woodlawn Memorial Park.  Captain Raysor was survived by his widow and son, his parents, and a sister. For more information on Captain Henry Ayer Raysor II see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/henry-ayer-raysor-ii/

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

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

Just before Thanksgiving of this year an anonymous donor left a box of World War II era medals at the Hospice Store in Greenwood, SC.  No one at the store knows who brought in the medals but when they noticed a name, Lt. Comdr. John E. Muldrow USN (class of 1937), engraved on one of the medals, one of the employees decided to “google” the name on the internet.  Her search quickly found the name on the Clemson University Scroll of Honor Memorial (SOHM) website.  She reached out to Clemson Alumni through a contact email listed on the website.  Commander Dave Lyle, USN Retired, a member of The Clemson Corps alumni group has been researching the heroes on the SOHM for 10 years.  He contacted Ms. Kim Mays, the manager at the Hospice Store, to determine what they wanted to do with the medals.  The medals included the Navy Cross (second in precedence only to the Medal of Honor), two Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Air Medals, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.  It was later discovered LCDR Muldrow was actually awarded 5 Air Medals.

Ms. Mays said they wanted to find a home for the medals, preferably descendants or family members who are still living.  CDR Lyle contacted a colleague, Brigadier General Charles King, USAF Retired, who had done a lot of research for the Clemson Scroll of Honor alumni profile of LCDR Muldrow since they were both from Bishopville, SC.  He had been in touch with several members of the Muldrow family in 2013 as he was researching both LCDR John E. Muldrow, Jr. and his first cousin SGT Henry G. Muldrow, Jr. (class of 1938), US Army Air Force.  Most of BGen King’s Muldrow family contacts have passed away, but he was able to find family members in New Mexico, Texas and South Carolina.  One of the surviving family members is John Ellison Muldrow, whose father, a cousin of LCDR Muldrow, named his son after the fallen Commander.  BGen King plans to give the medals to the LCDR’s namesake in New Mexico, with the request that Mr. Muldrow will lend them temporarily to the Lee County Veterans Museum in Bishopville for special events.

LCDR John Muldrow was killed in action on May 9, 1945 near the end of his second combat tour in the Pacific when his PB4Y-2 Privateer four-engine patrol bomber was shot down during an attack on Japanese held Marcus Island.  LCDR Muldrow’s first cousin, SGT Henry G. Muldrow, Jr., was killed during a bombing raid over Germany in February 1945 and is buried at the Ardennes American Military Cemetery in Belgium.

We want to thank Ms. Mays and everyone else at the Hospice Store for their initiative in finding out more about the hero who earned these medals and in doing so preserving a little part of history.

You can learn more about LCDR Muldrow on the Clemson Scroll of Honor Memorial website at

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/john-ellison-muldrow-jr/.  You can also learn about other Clemson heroes at https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/. 

 

 

 

Winter War

Written by: Kelly Durham

Carl Long, Jr. of Saluda attended Clemson College from 1936 to 1938, majoring in agronomy.  Following his stint on campus, Long was employed by Saluda Hosiery Mill, one of the dozens of textile plants which employed the majority of manufacturing workers in the state.  A newspaper article described Long as “a promising young businessman from a prominent family.”

Long entered military service in January 1941. America’s first peace-time draft had been implemented and thousands of young men from all over the country were being called to active duty for training.

Long didn’t have far to travel. He reported for basic training at Fort Jackson, then home of the 118^th Infantry Regiment of the 30^th Infantry Division.  Long’s next assignment was farther afield.  Iceland, where he was deployed for fourteen months, must have seemed a world removed from Fort Jackson and nearby Columbia.  While in Iceland, Long earned “high esteem and praise” from his commanding officer, traits which were likely factors in his being ordered to Fort Benning, Georgia for Officer Candidate School.

By this time, the war was in full swing and the Army had great need for capable young officers.  Long received his second lieutenant’s commission and was next assigned to Camp Blanding in Florida and then Camp Rucker, Alabama.

He was ordered overseas and assigned to the 13^th Infantry Regiment of the 8^th Infantry Division which had crossed Utah Beach in early July 1944 and was then attacking the French coastal city of Brest.  Long was wounded, awarded a Purple Heart, and promoted to first lieutenant for “meritorious service” in battle.

After liberating Brest, the 8^th Infantry Division turned east and began a steady advance across France and into Luxembourg.  By the end of November, the division had been committed to the ongoing battle in the Hürtgen Forest, inside Germany itself.  In cold, wet, often snowy weather, the 8^th continued to push eastward into the teeth of fierce German resistance.  Poor weather minimized the American advantage in airpower while the rugged terrain favored the well-fortified defenders.

On December 26, 1944, Long died of wounds suffered in Germany. He was survived by his parents, who were notified of their son’s death three weeks later.  Long was also survived by his brother, grandfather, and three uncles.

For more information about First Lieutenant Carl Long, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/carl-long-jr/

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

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

Over Over There

Written by Kelly Durham

One hundred two years ago today, the Great War ended.  As the clock ticked its way to 11 am on the 11^th day of the 11^th month, the World War stumbled to its deadly conclusion.  The fighting was over—but not the dying.

Among those celebrating the end of the War-to-End-All-Wars were the men of the 85^th Aero Squadron.  Only the previous day, the 85^th had flown its first mission over enemy lines reconnoitering the railway yards at Conflans-en-Jarnisy.  One of the 85^th’s pilots was First Lieutenant Henry Lee Suggs, Clemson College Class of 1916.

Suggs had enjoyed a distinguished collegiate career after arriving on the tiny campus in northwestern South Carolina in the fall of 1912.  An electrical and mechanical engineering major from York, “Hawkshaw,” as he was nicknamed by his fellow cadets, served as president of the Wade Hampton Literary Society, president of the Junior Science Club, and president of the York County Club.  He was a member of the Tiger staff, the Thalian Dancing Club, and the Senior Banquet Committee.  He also found time to play football.  As a guard, said to be the strongest man on the team, he helped anchor the line of a Clemson squad that never yielded more than fourteen points in a single contest all season.  In 1915, Suggs’s senior season, the Tigers battled Davidson to a six-all tie in the very first game played on Riggs Field.

Upon Suggs’s graduation, Taps, the cadet yearbook wrote that “Since he is a man of such great ability, we can but predict for him boundless success…” Suggs enlisted in the Army in May 1917 and earned his commission after completing officer training.

Following the armistice, the 85^th Aero Squadron remained in France, undertaking aerial photography of the Hindenburg Line of defensive positions along the border between Germany and France.  On December 18, forty-five minutes into an observation mission near Toul, Suggs’s plane went into a spin and crashed.  Suggs was picked up alive and taken to a field hospital where he died that same day.

Suggs’s remains were returned to the United States in June 1919 and he was buried at Bethel Presbyterian Cemetery in Clover.  He was survived by his mother and two brothers.

For additional information on First Lieutenant Henry Lee Suggs, see:

http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/henry-lee-suggs/

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

http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Blue to Gold

Written by: Kelly Durham

Mrs. Broadus Connell must have felt both pride and anxiety.  Four of her five sons were serving in the armed forces.  That gave her the right to display Blue Stars in the window of her home in Camden.

One of the stars represented the Connell’s son Ivey, a twenty-three-year-old first lieutenant assigned to the 505^th Parachute Infantry Regiment.  Ivey, a member of the Class of 1943, had attended Clemson from 1939 to 1940 and had studied vocational agricultural education.  He entered military service with the National Guard and by September 1943 was a mortar platoon leader in the Army’s first paratrooper division, the famous “All American” 82^nd Airborne.

The 82^nd had been activated in March 1942 at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana under the command of Major General Omar Bradley.  In August, the division, now commanded by Matthew Ridgway, was designated “airborne.”  In the spring of 1943, the 82^nd was sent overseas, landing in North Africa.  The division’s first combat jump was into Sicily as part of the invasion force on July 9, 1943.  Once Sicily was secured, American forces under the command of General Mark Clark prepared for the invasion of Italy.

Clark’s Fifth Army landed at Salerno on September 9 and began a desperate battle to secure a beachhead against determined German defenders.  On September 13, clinging tenaciously to a shortened perimeter, Clark called on the 82^nd for a night drop.  One of the division’s regiments jumped that night.  Ivey Connell’s 505^th followed the next night.  By the end of the day, the beachhead was declared secure.

Connell’s regiment was involved in reconnaissance actions from early morning on October 5 as the various companies sent out patrols to ascertain enemy strength and positions.  By afternoon, companies from the Second Battalion were in contact with the enemy.  Connell’s 81 mm mortar platoon was providing fire support.

Connell shifted his platoon to a position from which to provide more effective covering fire for a parachute infantry company attempting to withdraw.  He established an observation post from which he could direct fire.  He was killed when an enemy mortar shell landed on his position. According to the citation for his Silver Star decoration, Connell’s “courageous action contributed to the successful withdrawal of our forces and is a credit to the services.”

Connell was survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Broadus Connell; his brother Norman, then also a first lieutenant with the paratroopers in Italy; brother Stephen, a corporal with the paratroop forces in England; brother Roddy, a sergeant with a tank destroyer unit in Alabama; one other brother and two sisters.  With Ivey’s death, one of the family’s Blue Stars was replaced with a Gold one.  In addition to the Silver Star, Ivey was awarded the Purple Heart.  After the war, his body was returned to Camden where it was buried in the Wateree Baptist Church Cemetery.

For more information about First Lieutenant Ivey Kiben Connell, see:

http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/ivey-kiben-connell/

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

http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

Special thanks to Rafael Alvarez, Museum Technician, 82d Airborne Division Museum.

“Brown-Water” Soldier

Written by: Kelly Durham

The Vietnam War recalls images of soldiers and Marines trudging through thick jungles and wading through rice paddies.  But, for a small number of soldiers, this war was fought from a boat.

William Raymond Yongue, a member of the Class of 1964 from Chester, was a member of the “brown-water navy,” the “Riverines.”  Composed of Army and Navy units, the Riverines were formed based on the experiences of the French in their Indochina War.  The Riverines engaged in both transport and combat missions along the waterways of the Mekong River Delta.  Yongue’s assignment to the 1097^th Transportation Boat Company seems strangely appropriate—he had been born in February 1941 in Honolulu where his father was serving in the Navy.

Yongue attended Clemson for three years before joining the National Guard.  He earned his second lieutenant’s commission from the Palmetto Military Academy at Fort Jackson and volunteered for active duty.  He was ordered to active duty in January 1967 and by that summer had arrived in Vietnam.

The 1097^th Medium Boat Company had arrived in Vietnam at the end of May 1965.  In June of 1967, it moved to Dong Tam where it was assigned to support the operations of the Army’s 9^th Infantry Division.  The 1097^th was the only tactical boat company in the Army’s Transportation Corps.  Its mission was to tow artillery barges supporting the division’s artillery operations.

Yongue’s company utilized LCM-8 flat bottom boats designed for use in rough or exposed waters.  Its four-foot, six-inch draft made it ideal for use in the delta’s maze of waterways. LCM-8s were propelled by four Detroit Diesel boat engines.  Its propellers were protected by a skeg assembly.  Even so, trouble on the river was never far away.

On Tuesday, September 26, 1967, Yongue’s boat was patrolling in the Mekong Delta.  One of the craft’s propeller became fouled by an underwater obstruction.  Yongue dived overboard in an attempt to diagnose the problem and free the propeller.  He never resurfaced.  Initially declared “Missing In Action,” Yongue’s body was later recovered.

Yongue was survived by his parents and two brothers, one of whom was then a captain serving at Fort Knox, Kentucky.  Yongue was the recipient of the National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation with Palm, and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal.  He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

For more information about First Lieutenant William Raymond Yongue see:

http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/william-raymond-yongue/

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

http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

 

Cut Short

Written by: Kelly Durham

The headlines in The Tiger campus newspaper in August 1941 included nothing about the war that had been raging in Europe for nearly two years, nothing about the war in China which had been going on even longer.  Lawrence Aldine Bearden and the other new “rats” arriving at Clemson College as members of the Class of 1945 were treated to the exciting news that $110,000 in bonds had been sold to fund “Clemson’s long-cherished project—the construction of a 20,000 seat capacity modern stadium.”

Bearden, a native of Westminster, came to Clemson from Greensboro, North Carolina to major in Textiles.  While he and his classmates would in fact see the dedication of the new stadium during the 1942 season, by the following spring, they would be trading cadet gray for the khaki of the armed forces.

The end of the 1942-43 academic year brought great changes to campus.  In order to keep pace with the manpower demands of the rapidly expanding US military, graduating seniors who had completed ROTC training were assigned to Officers’ Candidate Schools (OCS).   The academic careers of underclassmen, like Bearden, were cut short as cadets were ordered to active duty.  Those who performed well in basic training were given the opportunity to advance to OCS.

Bearden’s record earned him an officer’s commission in the Army Air Force.  By the summer of 1944, Bearden had qualified for the most coveted job in the military—fighter pilot!

By August, Bearden was assigned to the 369^th Fighter Squadron of the 359^th Fighter Group.  The 369^th was flying America’s newest and best fighter, the P-51 Mustang.  The Mustang had superb flying characteristics plus the range to accompany US 8^th Air Force heavy bombers all the way to their targets and back.  This greatly reduced the numbers of the bigger, slower bombers that fell victim to German fighters.

On August 10, 1944, Second Lieutenant Bearden took off with other aircraft on a local training flight from the 369^th’s home airfield at East Wretham in Norfolk County, England.  Bearden was flying Darlin’ Earline, the aircraft usually assigned to Lieutenant Ferris Suttle.  While flying in a string formation at approximately 8,000 feet, Bearden’s aircraft left the formation and then dove into the ground near the village of Garboldisham, less than eight miles from the base.  The Army Air Force accident report failed to determine the cause of the crash, but the result was obvious enough:  Bearden was killed and the Mustang destroyed.

Second Lieutenant Lawrence Aldine Bearden was buried at Cambridge American Cemetery, Cambridge, England.

For more information about Lawrence Aldine Bearden visit:

http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/lawrence-aldine-bearden/

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

http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

On His Way

Written by: Kelly Durham

John Dendy McBrearty was a young man on his way.  After graduating from high school in Pelzer in 1931, he enrolled at Clemson College as a general science/pre-medical major.  As a Clemson cadet he was promoted to corporal in H Company as a sophomore and served as a sergeant in I Company the following year.  He also served as a member of the Junior Council before transferring to the Medical College of South Carolina to continue his studies.

Following his June 1938 graduation from the Medical College, McBrearty interned at Greenville General Hospital where he endeared himself to the members of the staff by the faithful performance of his duties.  He joined the Medical Reserve Corps as soon as he was qualified.  McBrearty, a member of the Greenville County Medical Society, practiced medicine in Williamston for two-and-a-half years before being called to active duty.

McBrearty entered the Army and reported to Randolph Field near San Antonio, Texas in preparation to becoming an Army Air Force flight surgeon.  McBrearty was soon transferred to Tulane University in New Orleans and then was attached to the Anti-Submarine Command in New York.

On July 22, 1943, Captain McBrearty was flying with pilot Second Lieutenant Neal T. Bish on a routine training flight in a UC-78 Bobcat.  The Bamboo Bomber, as it was also known, featured wooden wings and tail surfaces, a welded steel-tube fuselage covered with a wooden and fabric skin, a single low wing, and two engines.  The aircraft was primarily used for personnel transportation, liaison and communications flights.

Bish’s and McBrearty’s aircraft was about twelve miles from Albany, New York when it encountered difficulties in a summer storm.  It crashed near Earlton, killing all on board.  The aircraft was destroyed by fire.

John Dendy McBrearty was survived by his wife, the former Sarah Hepburn of Florence, his mother, and a sister.  He is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery.

For more information about Captain John Dendy McBrearty see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/john-dendy-mcbrearty/

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

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/ 

 

Non-Battle Death

There were surely many ways to die in World War II.  The National World War II Museum estimates that sixty million died world-wide during the conflict, a staggering figure that includes forty-five million civilians.  The United States military recorded 416,800 deaths and while most of these were attributable to enemy action, a startling 83,400 fell into the category of  “nonbattle deaths.”

Thomas Albert McTeer of McClellanville was a member of Clemson’s Class of 1942—the first class to graduate following America’s entrance into the war.  McTeer was an honor student in civil engineering who served as vice president of the campus chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers.  He was a member of the Episcopal Student Association and marched with the Sophomore, Junior and Senior Platoons.  He completed ROTC summer training and qualified as an expert on the firing range.

The son of a Great War veteran, McTeer’s parents must have felt a mixture of pride and trepidation when their older son entered the Army following graduation.  Lieutenant McTeer trained at Camp Blanding, Florida and participated in maneuvers at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts before shipping overseas to North Africa in May 1943.

McTeer was assigned to the 111^th Engineers Combat Battalion, a unit of the 36^th Infantry Division.  The 36^th was a Texas National Guard outfit called to federal service.

On June 25, 1943, McTeer died in North Africa of gunshot wounds.  He was awarded a Purple Heart, but the cause of his wounds is not known and his death was listed as “nonbattle.”  Nonbattle deaths included those resulting from vehicle accidents, airplane crashes, illness, disease, and other causes not occurring from enemy action.

Thomas Albert McTeer was buried in the North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial, Carthage, Tunisia.  He was survived by his parents and his younger brother.

For additional information on Lieutenant McTeer see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/thomas-albert-mcteer/

For more information on Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor see:

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

 

Target Tokyo

The night was filled with the roar of more than two thousand powerful Wright-Cyclone 2,200 horsepower engines as the bombers lined up along the miles of Tinian’s taxiways.  Five hundred sixty-two B-29 Super Fortresses assigned to the mission would begin taking off at 2100 hours, turn north, and fly fourteen hundred miles above the trackless Pacific Ocean to strike the target: Tokyo.  Staff Sergeant John Walker Stalnaker of Ninety Six, a member of Clemson College’s interrupted Class of 1946, was the flight engineer on the B-29 nicknamed The Gamecock.

Stalnaker had enrolled at Clemson as an architecture major in the late summer of 1942.  The United States was already at war and rumors about the cadets’ futures ricocheted all around campus.  In the middle of the spring semester of 1943, the rumors were swept away by fact.  All underclassmen would be ordered to active duty at the end of the academic year.

Stalnaker found himself in the Army Air Force.  He trained on the most complex and expensive weapons system of World War II, the B-29 bomber, the development of which, at $3 billion, exceeded even the cost of the top-secret Manhattan Project with which it would soon be linked.  The B-29 had been engineered by Boeing to meet Army Air Force needs for a longer range bomber to cover the vast distances encountered in the Pacific Theater.  The aircraft was bigger, faster, could carry more bombs, and fly greater distances than the B-17s and B-24s used in Europe.  It combined a pressurized cabin with state-of-the art weapons systems, including a centrally-controlled gunnery system that allowed two men to operate four machine gun turrets.

The May 23, 1945 raid would feature the largest number of B-29s to take part in a single mission in the entire Pacific war.  Stalnaker’s B-29 was manned by a crew of eleven and was piloted by Second Lieutenant Robert T. Boggan.  Stalnaker’s position was directly behind the copilot in the aircraft’s forward compartment.  His job included the in-flight monitoring of the four sophisticated engines as well as all the other mechanical, hydraulic, and electrical systems on the aircraft.

The objective for the mission was Tokyo harbor.  The bombers would drop incendiary bombs from altitudes of eight to eleven thousand feet.  Arriving over the target from the west in the early hours of May 24, the bombers were greeted by an estimated one hundred fifty searchlights, a few enemy fighters, and intense anti-aircraft artillery fire.  In clear weather, with good visibility, many of the aircraft were struck and damaged by enemy fire.  Stalnaker’s bomber was one of these.

The Gamecock took a direct hit in its number four engine.  Boggan was unable to control the aircraft.  Three members of the crew—all gunners with duty positions farther to the rear of the aircraft—were able to bail out of the stricken bomber.  They were captured by the Japanese and spent the remaining three months of the war as POWs.  The other members of the crew, including Stalnaker, were killed.

After the war, Stalnaker’s remains were returned to the United States and reinterred at Elmwood Cemetery in Ninety Six.

For more information about John Walker Stalnaker see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/john-walker-stalnaker/

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

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

 

 

Night Mission

It seems odd to drive through campus without seeing students. The University’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic has left campus and downtown Clemson with only a tiny fraction of its normal population. It is strange to note the absence of students on the grassy expanse of Bowman Field–strange, but not unprecedented.

In response to military manpower needs during World War II, practically all of Clemson’s cadets left campus in the spring of 1943 to report for active duty. That year’s graduating seniors, most of whom had earned Army commissions through ROTC, reported as second lieutenants. Members of the Class of 1944, like John Oscar Mauldin of Greenville, reported for basic training.

Mauldin was a mechanical engineering major from Greenville, where his father, McHardy, had served as mayor. The younger Mauldin had marched and played in Tiger Band and had been a member of the Dance Association. Like many other Clemson men, Mauldin volunteered for the Army Air Force.

He earned his navigator’s wings in early September 1944 and then was ordered to report to the 422nd Base Unit at Tonopah Army Airfield in the Nevada desert. Tonopah was used as a training base for B-24 heavy bombers and their crews.

On October 25, 1944, Flight Officer Mauldin was assigned as the navigator on a night training mission piloted by Second Lieutenant Henry Rogers. At an altitude of 20,000 feet, one of the outboard engines began to overheat, so Rogers feathered it in an attempt to cool it off. According to the official crash report, the aircraft then became “hard to control” so Rogers feathered the other outboard engine as well. With two engines feathered, the aircraft could not maintain altitude.

Rogers reported an emergency and proceeded to descend over the airfield, but his attempts to unfeather his outboard engines were unsuccessful and the aircraft lost altitude so quickly that he was unable to turn on his final approach to the runway. Instead, Rogers straightened his glide

and attempted a crash landing. Rogers, his copilot, radio operator, and one gunner survived the crash with injuries. Mauldin and four others were killed. He was twenty-one years old.

Mauldin was survived by his mother. His body was returned to Greenville and was buried at Springwood Cemetery.

For more information about Flight Officer John Oscar Mauldin, see: http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/john-oscar-mauldin/

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

Scroll Shared History

They were born two months apart in late 1918, studied agriculture, marched across campus in the same parades, graduated as members of the Class of 1941, and on a dark night in April 1945, ended up sharing a foxhole.

Walter Bennett graduated from Orangeburg High School in 1936, completed a business course the

following year and then enrolled at Clemson College.   A member of the cadet band, Bennett was a vocational education major and a member of the campus chapter of Future Farmers of America.  He participated in the Calhoun Forensic Society, the Tri-County Club and the Orangeburg County Club.  In the summer of 1940, Bennett and many of his classmates attended ROTC Camp at Fort McClellan, Alabama.  As a senior, Bennett served as a cadet second lieutenant.

Marion Innis Jenkins of Yonges Island attended public schools in Meggett before enrolling in Greenwood’s Bailey Military Institute.  As a Clemson cadet, he majored in animal husbandry and served as president of the Animal Husbandry Club.  He was a member of the rifle team and served as president of the Episcopal Students Association and the Block and Bridle Club.  Like Bennett, he attended ROTC training at Fort McClellan.  Jenkins was an editor for Agrarian, the campus agriculture publication and was a cadet first lieutenant as a senior.

Both newly commissioned alumni reported for active duty with the Army shortly after graduation.  Both were eventually assigned to the 307^th Infantry Regiment of the 77^th Infantry Division, an old New York National Guard unit reactivated in March 1942 at Fort Jackson.

After months of organization and training, the 77^th, also known as the Liberty Division, landed in Hawaii on March 31, 1944.  Here the division practiced amphibious operations and jungle warfare.  In July, elements of the division took part in the assault landing on Guam.  By early August, Guam was secured, but the 77^th was afforded little time to rest.  The division landed on the east coast of Leyte, the Philippines on November 23 and was attached to the XXIV Corps.  In action against the Japanese on Leyte, Bennett, now a captain, was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism.  The 77^th remained in the Philippines until February 1945 when it was pulled out to prepare for the next major US invasion—Okinawa.

When US Army and Marine divisions landed on Okinawa on April 1, 1945—Easter Sunday—they kicked off what would become the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War.  The 77^th did not participate in the initial landings, but remained at sea, suffering from intensified Japanese kamikaze attacks.  On April 16, the 77^th landed on the island of Ie Shima, northeast of Okinawa’s Motobu Peninsula, to seize a Japanese airfield and key terrain.  The ensuing fighting was bitter as the Japanese defenders were committed to fighting to the death.

On Wednesday, April 18, a Japanese sniper killed famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle who was covering the 77^th’s campaign.  Then came the night of April 19.  It was the “worst night of my life,” remembered A. J. Tiffany, a mortar man in Captain Bennett’s H Company.  “We were so close to the front lines we had our mortars pointing almost straight up.”  Tiffany recalls that Bennett and Jenkins were huddled together in the same foxhole.  A Japanese shell scored a direct hit.  “I was only a few yards from them when they were killed… both officers were very well liked…”

Both were posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

Captain Walter Bennett was survived by mother and brother.  He is buried in Orangeburg’s Sunnyside Cemetery.

First Lieutenant Marion Innis Jenkins was survived by his parents, a sister, and brother who was then serving in the Army in India.  He is buried at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Cemetery in Yonges Island.

For more information about Walter Bennett see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/walter-bennett/

For more information about Marion Innis Jenkins see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/marion-innis-jenkins/

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

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

 

A Fine Pilot and a Fine Man
written by: Kelly Durham

Since the flight of Icarus, flying had always been seen as a dangerous endeavor.  Many had been killed during man’s centuries-long experimentations with flight.  Even after the Wrights finally conquered the air, tragedy was a frequent companion.  In 1908, while riding as a passenger during a demonstration flight for the Army at Fort Myers, Virginia, Thomas Selfridge, a twenty-six year-old first lieutenant in the Signal Corps, was killed when a broken propeller caused the Wright Flyer, piloted by its co-inventor Orville Wright, to crash.  Selfridge claimed the distinction as the first passenger to die in the crash of a powered airplane.  Selfridge wouldn’t be the last military man to perish in an aircraft accident.

William Duncan Workman arrived on the Clemson campus in the late summer of 1937 along with the other members of his Class of 1941.  “Dunc” was a general science student from Clinton who served as treasurer of the Laurens-Union County Club.  A four-year private in the cadet brigade, Workman’s cadet career was undistinguished, yet soon after graduation, he was in the service, eventually assigned to the Army Air Forces and flight training.

At the time Workman and his classmates graduated, the Army Air Corps was gearing up its flight training operations to fill the expanding ranks of aviators needed to face the world crisis.  This training was divided into three phases: primary, basic, and advanced—each twelve weeks long.  Before long, each phase was reduced to ten weeks; and after Pearl Harbor to nine weeks.

Perhaps the reduction in training time contributed to the high numbers of accidents and fatalities incurred during training.  According to historian Marlyn Pierce, more than 54,000 training accidents occurred in the continental United States over the course of the war.  The peak year for these accidents was 1943.  Heavy losses in the daylight bombing campaign over Europe had to be replaced.  As a result, thousands of young men were involved in stateside flight training.  Dunc Workman was one of these, assigned as a student-pilot to the 29^th Training Group at Gowen Field in Boise, Idaho.

Second lieutenant Workman had progressed to the third part of his flight training, the advanced phase.  He was flying the Army Air Forces’ workhorse heavy bomber, the B-17.  The weather in Idaho had been dreary all winter, with frequent snow, ice and fog.  Nearby mountains added to the challenging flying environment, as did the demanding training schedule.

On Tuesday, April 13, 1943, Workman was assigned as the student-pilot on a training mission during which he would practice instrument take-offs.  Flying “under the hood,” operating the aircraft solely on the basis of its instruments and without visual reference to the world beyond the cockpit, Workman was to coax his aircraft into the sky.  To assist in this hazardous task was flight instructor and safety pilot first lieutenant Richard Pease.  Also on board were four other crew members.

At 0816 hours, Workman began his take-off, rolling more than fifteen hundred feet down the runway.  Due to the torque created by the B-17’s four big twelve-hundred horsepower engines, the airplane tended to veer to the right when under full power.  Workman applied opposite rudder to counter the torque and straighten the aircraft.  When he relaxed rudder pressure, the aircraft again veered to the right.  Proceeding in a wide arc, the B-17 collided with another aircraft parked on a nearby ramp.  Still under full power and moving at a speed of seventy to eighty miles per hour, Workman’s aircraft crashed head-on into a second parked B-17.  The collision started a fire which quickly destroyed both aircraft.  One man on the ground and four in the aircraft, including Workman, were killed.

An investigation identified the probable cause of the accident as the safety pilot’s slow reaction and failure to close the throttles when the aircraft became unmanageable.

The loss of Workman and the others, tragic and preventable as it was, was not unusual.  It was, in fact, merely average.  During that pivotal year of 1943, the Army Air Forces averaged more than fifteen accidents and six fatalities per day.  Historian Pierce writes that these high loss rates, which over the course of the war were equivalent to a full infantry division, brought about a culture change within the service.  As the Army Air Force evolved into the post-war Air Force, a commitment to safety dramatically reduced training accidents and fatalities.

The changes would come too late for Workman and the 15,530 other airman killed in stateside training accidents during the war.  Yet, Army Air Force leaders knew that accidents were inevitable.  Their gnawing dilemma was to determine an “acceptable” level of losses both in training and in combat.

William Duncan Workman was survived by his mother, Mrs. Gene Workman.  Mrs. Workman planted a flower garden in memory of her son.  Mothers of other men serving in the military sent her tulips, irises, dahlias, and azaleas to add to the plot.  She also received a letter from the operations officer of her son’s squadron.  “Your son was in my flight here at Gowen Field.  I flew with him many times — he was a fine pilot and a fine man and his passing is a loss not only to you and his loved ones, but also to his country which he served so well.”  The author of the letter was Captain Jimmy Stewart.

For more information about William Duncan Workman see:

http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/william-duncan-workman/

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

http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

Victim of Tet
written by Kelly Durham

By the fall of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson had become concerned by the declining levels of public support for his administration’s prosecution of the war in Vietnam.  More and more Americans were beginning to think that the United States had erred in becoming involved in a struggle that seemed to have little direct impact on national interests.  A November opinion poll revealed that a majority of Americans either wanted to win or get out.

The president summoned General William Westmoreland to Washington for consultations.  Westmoreland, the commander of American forces in Vietnam, was emphatic that the US, along with its South Vietnamese and other allies, was winning the war.  During an interview, Westmoreland dared his communist adversaries to launch an attack telling Time magazine, “I hope they try something because we are looking for a fight.”  Be careful what you wish for.

One of the members of Westmoreland’s logistics staff at his headquarters in Saigon was Major Charles Lollis, Clemson College Class of 1963.  Lollis’s job included ensuring the supply of weapons to allied troops from the Republic of Korea, a duty that frequently took him into contested areas.

Charles Lollis was already an Army veteran by the time he enrolled at Clemson.  Dick Mattox, Class of 1951, returned to Fort Jackson in the summer of 1953 following his service in the Korean War.  He was assigned as a company commander, guiding young men through their basic training.  Based on the recommendation of his first sergeant, Mattox assigned Lollis as an acting platoon sergeant based on the fact that Lollis had completed a year of college—at Bob Jones University—and had spent some time with an Army Reserve outfit.  Lollis made such an impression that six years later, when Mattox was working in the admissions office at Clemson, Mattox immediately recognizeded Lollis’s name when it appeared on an admissions application.  “I contacted him shortly after his arrival and indeed he was the same man,” Mattox recalled.  Mattox recruited Lollis to join his Army Reserve battalion headquartered in Clemson.   “I again had the opportunity to serve with this good man.”

Lollis, from nearby Liberty, enrolled at Clemson as an electrical engineering major for only one academic year.  He then worked as a bowling alley manager and became involved in construction work.  In 1961, he accepted a position with Sangamo Company living in Illinois for six months.  By then, he and his wife Jean had four children, two boys and two girls.  In January 1963, Lollis, now a captain, returned to active duty and was assigned to Fort Gordon, Georgia.  Assignments in Alaska and New Jersey followed.   While in Alaska, Lollis was promoted to major.  After completing a Signal Corps school at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, Lollis was ordered to Vietnam.

On January 30, 1968, Westmoreland got his wish.  The “something” the enemy tried came to be known as the Tet Offensive, the largest attack of the war, in which more than 80,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops attacked targets all over South Vietnam, including its capital Saigon.

On February 6, Major Lollis was killed when the military vehicle he was riding in was ambushed by enemy forces.  The fighting in Saigon would last into the middle of February.  The North Vietnamese would lose between 32,000 and 45,000 killed during their offensive.  More than 1,500 American and other allied personnel would be killed,  but the shock of the attack had an even greater impact.

After Tet, American public opinion turned sharply against the war. In March, President Johnson announced that he would not be a candidate for reelection.

Lollis was survived by his widow Janice and their children Charles, David, Janice and Sandra.  He was awarded the Legion of Merit (posthumously), Purple Heart and Army Commendation Medal.  Major Lollis is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

For additional information about Major Charles William Lollis see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/charles-william-lollis/

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

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

January Sacrifices

It’s unlikely that Herbert Gregg Easterling would have graduated in 1944 even if he had stayed in school.  Easterling, of Florence, arrived on campus as an English major in 1940, a member of the Class of ’44.  The war eclipsed the Clemson careers of these young men as they were called to duty at the end of the 1942-43 academic year.  But by then, Easterling had already been overseas for six months.

The son of Mr. and Mrs. Ben Easterling, Herbert left Clemson in 1941.  He married Frances Smith of Florence and was soon in flight school, learning to fly multi-engine bombers for the Army Air Corps.  By December 1942, he was overseas and flying the famous B-17 Flying Fortress as a member of the 97^th Bomb Group.

Easterling joined the group in Algeria where its mission was to support the Allies’ North Africa campaign by striking enemy airfields, harbor facilities and marshalling yards around the Mediterranean Sea.  The 97^th supported the July 1943 invasion of Sicily and the invasion of Italy that September.

The 97^th established its headquarters at Cerignola, Italy in December 1943 in order to fly long-range missions against targets in Northern Italy, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece.  It was on a mission to the shipping docks at Piraeus, the Aegean Sea port near Athens, Greece, that Easterling and his crew were killed.

On January 11, 1944, First Lieutenant Easterling’s aircraft was lost when it entered turbulent air.  The official accident report listed “prop wash” as the cause of the accident.  Easterling and his crew were reported as missing.  Their remains were later found, but it was impossible to separately identify the remains and so Easterling’s crew was buried together in an American Military Cemetery near Rome.

Sadly, the heartbreak of the war was not over for the Easterling family.  Twelve months later, in January 1945, the family received notice that another son, Sergeant Ben Easterling, a Wofford College alumnus, had been killed in action in France.

Herbert and Ben were remembered in a joint memorial service in August 1949 when Ben’s remains were returned to Florence.  The brothers were survived by their parents, three sisters and a brother.  For more information on Herbert Gregg Easterling see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/herbert-gregg-easterling/

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

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

 

 

 

 

Ball Turret Gunner

It was the most isolated position on the crew.  Sure, the tail gunner was stuck at the very back of the fuselage beneath the tail section, but at least he could crawl back through the narrow tunnel and into the B-17’s waist when things calmed down.  Not so for the ball turret gunner.  Once he climbed into the cramped, hydraulically controlled turret in the belly of the airplane, the ball turret gunner was alone.  Sure, he had a great view, able to spin his turret in any direction, but he was also exposed to enemy fire coming from any point on the compass.

After closing his hatch and being lowered into position, hanging beneath the airplane at frigid altitudes of up to 25,000 feet, the ball turret gunner’s only contact with the rest of the aircraft’s crew was through the interphone.  There was no room to stretch out and relieve aching muscles, no “relief tube” for bodily functions, and should the Plexiglas bubble in which he sat be pierced by bullets or shrapnel, the gunner would have to battle frostbite as well as the enemy.

When Boeing designed the B-17, Army Air Corps planners envisioned a heavily-armed aircraft capable of its own defense against speedier, more maneuverable fighters.  To that end, the Flying Fortress, as the B-17 came to be known, bristled with machine guns, from nose to tail, dorsal to belly.

It was into the ball turret on the underbelly of B-17 Gremlin’s Buggy that Staff Sergeant Robert Mixon, Jr. climbed on a cold November morning in 1943.

Robert Mixon had entered Clemson College the fall semester of 1940.  There was trouble aplenty overseas, but the sentiment among most Americans was that the fight was Europe’s business, not ours.  Mixon was from the growing town of Yemassee which straddled the Beaufort and Hampton County line with a population of 684, up more than twenty-five percent from the 1930 census.  Hailing from a rural area, it seemed only natural that Mixon would study agriculture at Clemson.

Mixon remained at Clemson for two years, then joined the Army Air Forces.  By that time, the war that had seemed so far away had reached out and ensnared the United States.  The American military was mobilizing at an unprecedented pace and the first Americans into the fight against the Germans in Europe were the men of the Army Air Forces, particularly the heavy bombers of the Eighth Air Force.

Mixon was assigned to the 385^th Bomb Group which arrived in England in June 1943 and established its headquarters at Great Ashfield, Suffolk, on England’s east coast.  The 385^th earned a Distinguished Unit Citation for its participation in the long, hazardous Regensburg mission in August of that year.

On November 29, three hundred sixty B-17s, including Gremlin’s Buggy took off on the Eighth Air Force’s one-hundred-fortieth mission, its target the north German port of Bremen.  Lieutenant Richard Yoder was the pilot and leader of the ten-man crew which included  copilot Lieutenant Robert Payne, a bombardier, navigator, top turret gunner/flight engineer, radio operator, two waist gunners, the tail gunner and Mixon in the ball turret.  It was Mixon’s twenty-second combat mission.

Payne recalled that he left the flight deck and “went back to the bomb bay for a few minutes as we passed over France and all seemed well and in good spirits.”  The B-17s were scheduled to hit the target beginning at approximately 1430 hours, but unfavorable cloud conditions and the malfunction of radar bombing equipment caused more than two hundred of the aircraft to abort the mission.  Not so for Gremlin’s Buggy.  Yoder, Payne, Mixon and the crew pressed on through the perilous skies.

As the bomber formation approached the target, enemy anti-aircraft fire became more intense—and more accurate.  Payne remembered that Mixon, from his unique vantage point beneath the airplane, could see flak explosions getting closer. Mixon reported, “They are bursting right beneath us!”  “Then,” Payne said, “all went dead as we found we had gotten into a bit of trouble… it is very possible that the radio op(erator) and ball gunner had been killed.”  The five men in the front part of the airplane were able to bail out and were taken prisoner by the Germans.  Gremlin’s Buggy crashed near Fesenfeld, about fourteen miles south of Bremen. The radio operator and the four gunners in the aft section of the plane, including Mixon, were killed.

Over twelve thousand B-17s were built.  Thirty-five hundred were shot down over Europe.  Each aircraft carried a crew of eight to ten men, many of whom, like Robert Mixon, Jr., never came home.

For more information about Staff Sergeant Robert Mixon, Jr. see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/robert-mixon-jr/

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

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll-of-honor/

Deadly Foe

Written by: Kelly Durham

By the time John Coleman Carlisle of Newberry checked into the barracks, he probably knew already that his days on campus were numbered. Carlisle’s Clemson bore faint resemblance to the bustling college where just two years before one of the largest cadet corps in the country had marched across the green expanse of Bowman Field. By that fall of 1944, cadet gray had been largely replaced by Army khaki and green as activity on campus had switched from academic instruction to the training of Army engineers and pilots. As he walked the paths to his textile engineering classes, Carlisle would have encountered young Army officers on their way to military-oriented instruction in engineering, surveying and flying.

Upon completion of his freshman year, Carlisle enlisted in the Navy, undergoing basic training at Bainbridge, Maryland. His next assignment was aboard a ship in the Pacific theater of operations. By this point in World War II, American and Allied forces were tightening the noose around Japan. Victories at Iwo Jima and Okinawa put America’s state-of-the-art heavy bomber, the B-29 Superfortress, within range of Japan’s home islands. But, when Carlisle became ill, he found himself at nearly the opposite end of the great Pacific Ocean, on the island of Samoa.

Located 1,800 miles northeast of New Zealand and 2,600 miles southwest of Hawaii, Samoa was a backwater. The only enemy action there had occurred shortly after Pearl Harbor, in early January 1942 when a Japanese submarine had surfaced and briefly shelled the US Naval Station at Tutuila.

From a distance of nearly three-quarters of a century, it’s easy to forget how different life was in 1945. Radio—AM radio at that—was the only instant mass medium. People still wrote letters, drank Coca-Cola from glass bottles, and went to the movies every week, but the war was changing things, in part by accelerating discovery in many fields, from communications and aviation to medicine.

One of the more frightening diseases of the day was poliomyelitis–polio for short–which was considered primarily a childhood disease, with most cases occurring in children from six months to four years of age. Polio in these younger children generally resulted in mild symptoms—only one case in a thousand resulted in paralysis. And once afflicted, an individual developed an immunity to the disease. With steadily improving community sanitation, such as better sewage disposal and clean water supplies in developed countries, fewer infants and young children were exposed to the disease—and so fewer developed an immunity to the virus. As a result, many were not exposed to the virus until late childhood or early adult life—when one case in seventy-

five resulted in paralysis. The most notable example was President Franklin Roosevelt, who had contracted polio at the age of thirty-nine.

Major US polio epidemics began to be recorded in 1894, when one hundred twenty-six cases occurred in Vermont. Eighteen of the afflicted died. In 1907, twenty-five hundred cases of polio were reported in New York City. In 1916, there were 27,000 cases in the United States, six thousand of which ended in death. Each summer a polio outbreak occurred in some region of the United States, with the epidemics becoming more serious in the 1940s. Theaters and swimming pools closed and many people avoided public gatherings for fear of infection.

Ironically, in a post-war report by the US Army Medical Department, the rate of polio in the Army was comparable to that found in the population at large—despite living conditions, especially in combat zones, where sanitation was often primitive. The low incidence of polio among troops indicated that the disease did not behave like measles or mumps, which frequently appeared in epidemic form among batches of new recruits.

Polio occurred less frequently in Europe than in the Middle East or China-Burma-India areas of operations. It was rare in the Southwest Pacific theater, except for in the Philippines, and only ten cases were reported in the South and Central Pacific in 1945. But one of those cases was John Carlisle—who at eighteen was in the vulnerable age group. Carlisle died from polio on October 31, 1945 at Samoa. He was survived by his parents, his brother, aunts and uncles.

The Germans and Japanese were not the only deadly foes that would go down to defeat. With the introduction of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine in the early 1950s, cases of the disease began to plummet. Efforts by organizations like Rotary International, the World Health Organization, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have been effective in battling polio. The last case of polio in the United States occurred in 1979. In 2015, there were only seventy-five cases worldwide, a reduction of 99.9% since the 1980s. Today, polio exists only in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria.

For more information on John Coleman Carlisle, see: http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/john-coleman-carlisle/

For additional information on Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor see: http://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

A Speck in the Ocean
Written by: Kelly Durham

It’s just a speck on the map, a tiny dot of green contrasting with the blue expanse of the vast Pacific Ocean, but in 1944, the little island of Angaur’s location, north of New Guinea and east of the Philippines, made it valuable real estate.  General Douglas MacArthur had promised to return to the Philippines and had convinced President Roosevelt to support his campaign for recapturing the islands from which he had so ignominiously been driven two and a half years earlier.  MacArthur believed Angaur was an ideal site for the construction of an airfield from which land-based aircraft would be able to reach Japanese targets in the Philippines.

A sparsely-inhabited island in the Palau chain, Angaur is only three square miles in size, yet it was garrisoned by committed Japanese defenders.

While the 1^st Marine Division attacked the neighboring and larger island of Peleliu, the Army’s 81^st Infantry Division was ordered to capture Angaur.  Among the officers of the 81^st’s 322^nd Regiment was Captain John Harold Lightsey, Clemson College Class of 1940.

Lightsey of Fairfax, had graduated from Clemson with a degree in agronomy and had been a member of the Animal Husbandry Club, the Literary Society and the Tiger newspaper staff.  He had also served as vice-president of Kappa Alpha Sigma, the local chapter of the American Society of Agronomy.  Lightsey remained a cadet private throughout his four years at Clemson.

Following graduation, Lightsey worked at the college for several months before securing employment as an agronomist with the Dixie Guano Company in Laurinburg, North Carolina.  He was called to Army service in September 1941.

September 1944 found Lightsey waiting anxiously as the battleship Tennessee, accompanied by four cruisers and dozens of aircraft from the carrier Wasp, bombarded Angaur.  After a delay caused by a shortage of landing craft, the 322^nd Regimental Combat Team, including Captain Lightsey’s Company G, finally landed on Beach Red on the island’s northern side on September 17.  At the same time, the 321^st RCT landed on Beach Blue to the east side of the island.  Although each RCT was counterattacked during the night, the American forces were able to link up the next day.  By September 20, the Americans had forced the Japanese back to a position known as “The Bowl,” a hill into which the defenders had constructed fortified caves and from which they intended to make their last stand.  Lightsey was wounded in this fighting.

For a week, the 322^nd repeatedly attacked the Bowl, but the Japanese hung on ferociously, firing back with artillery, mortars, machine guns and hand grenades. The defenders were gradually worn down by hunger, thirst and the relentless American shellfire and bombing.  By the September 25, the Americans had penetrated the Bowl, but rather than continue to fight for every foot of bloody ground, the attackers called forward unconventional weapons: bulldozers.  American combat engineers used the clanking machines to seal shut the entrances – and exits – to the caves.  The battle dwindled to a series of small scale skirmishes, sniping, ambushing and booby-trapping.  The last day of fighting was October 22.  The Americans had finally taken the island, but – rare for the Pacific campaign – had suffered more casualties than they had inflicted.  Among these was Captain John Lightsey who died on September 28.

Lightsey was awarded the Silver Star for his role in leading Company G during  the attack.  He was survived by his wife of less than two years, the former Janie Phillips of Cordele, Georgia and their two-month-old daughter Janice.  In addition, Lightsey was survived by his parents, five sisters and three brothers, one of whom was serving not too far away on New Guinea.  A fourth brother, Lieutenant Ralph Lightsey had been killed in an airplane crash the previous year.

Construction of airfields began even before the battle died out.  Still, the airfields weren’t completed in time to support the initial landings in the Philippines causing some, like 5^th Fleet commander Admiral William F. Halsey, to question the necessity of the attack on the Palau Islands.

For more information about John Harold Lightsey visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/john-harold-lightsey/

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

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

 

 

 

Crew Mates

Written by: Kelly Durham ’80

The first shots fired by the Germans against the English in World War II came at sea on September 3, 1939—and they came by accident.  The young captain of the German submarine U-30 mistakenly identified the passenger liner Athenia as a British warship, firing two torpedoes and dispatching the vessel to the bottom of the North Atlantic.  One hundred seventeen passengers and crew were killed, including twenty-eight Americans.  Unwittingly, the German commander had violated the rules of submarine warfare by striking a liner without warning and without concern for the safety of its passengers and crew—a strategy that would soon be adopted by other belligerents.  This was the opening encounter of the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign of the war running from that September evening until the defeat of Germany in May 1945.

As the British battled the Germans at sea and in France, Rueben Lafayette Thomas, Jr., and his fellow cadets of Clemson’s Class of 1940 were preparing for their June 3 commencement ceremonies.  Thomas, a textile engineering major from Spartanburg, soon found himself among the growing number of young men swapping their cadet uniforms for the uniform of the US Army.  Thomas volunteered for the Army’s aviation program, earning his wings and being assigned to fly multi-engine bombers.

Deckerd Jefferson Gray, a general sciences major from Ware Shoals, had been a member of the cadet corps as well.  A member of the Class of 1941, Gray stayed remained on campus only for his freshman year.  He too soon found himself in an Army Air Forces uniform.

Fate and the crucial Battle of the Atlantic were about to bring these two Clemson men together.

The British suffered severe losses of men, ships and goods to the German U-boat fleet during the first years of the war.  Numbering just fifty-seven at the war’s outbreak, the Germans’ U-boat fleet would add 1100 more boats by war’s end.  Once the United States was pulled into the conflict by the Pearl Harbor attack, U-boats quickly deployed to the waters off the American east coast.  There they found, initially at least, good hunting.

Beginning in January 1942, U-boats exacted a heavy toll on US and Allied merchant shipping transporting raw goods and finished products along the east coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.  Over the first three months of the year, fifty-three ships were sunk.  Based on March losses, the US was on pace to lose more than two million tons of shipping for the year.  The “exchange rate,” defined as the ratio of merchant ships lost to U-boats sunk, would reach 89 to one for the year—a clearly unsustainable figure.  American leaders scrambled to train the men and to create the organizations and equipment needed to counter the increasing U-boat threat.

The Navy had responsibility foroperations beyond the coastline, but, according to a 1945 Army Air Forces report entitled The Antisubmarine Command, “the shock of Pearl Harbor found the Navy quite unable to carry on the offshore patrol necessary to the fulfillment of its mission.”  As a result, the burden for antisubmarine patrols fell mainly on the Army Air Forces whose units were neither trained nor equipped for this type of mission.

American strategists sought assistance from their British allies, whose survival as an island nation depended on defeating the U-boat menace which sought to encircle Great Britain and choke off its supply of food, petroleum and other vital goods.  US forces learned from their British allies that close coordination between sea and air forces along with continuous offensive action were necessary to defeat the U-boat threat.  As Army Air Forces and Navy units developed their command and control relationships and procedures, their coordinated attacks began to slowly push the U-boats out

of coastal waters.

The Army Air Forces’ 1^st Bomber Command, including the 40^th Bombardment Squadron, was given the task of protecting coastal shipping and attacking the U-boats.  As coordination between air and sea units improved, shipping losses in coastal waters began to slowly decrease.   Even as the U-boats gradually withdrew from the east coast and the Gulf, the Army established an Antisubmarine Command in November 1942.

The withdrawal of the U-boats from American waters did not mark victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, only a change of venue.  German submarines continued to achieve remarkable success, sinking one hundred forty-two Allied ships in November alone, almost all of these in the North Atlantic.  To help counter the continuing threat,   the 40^th Bombardment Squadron was redesignated the 4^th Antisubmarine Squadron and moved its headquarters to the Royal Canadian Air Force base at Gander, Newfoundland.  From there, the squadron flew antisubmarine patrols and convoy escort missions along North Atlantic shipping lanes.

By the spring of 1943, the Battle of the Atlantic had clearly swung in the Allies’ favor.  Sinkings were down and the Allies pressed their advantage by forming the 479^th Antisubmarine Group.  The 4^th Squadron moved its headquarters again, this time to the Royal Air Force base at Dunkeswell in southwestern England and began to hunt the hunters.

On August 8, 1943, Thomas, now a captain, the pilot of a modified B-24 heavy bomber, and a veteran of over one hundred twenty-five operational missions including eight hundred hours of combat time, took off on a patrol mission over the Bay of Biscay.  The body of water separated western France from northern Spain and included the heavily fortified German U-boat base at Brest.  The B-24D Liberator bombers flown by the 4^th Squadron were modified with a special radar to help the crew locate—and attack—U-boats.  The radar operator assigned to this flight was Technical Sergeant Deckerd Gray.

Between 1159 and 1225 hours, Thomas’s aircraft radioed that it was under attack from enemy fighter planes.  No additional transmissions were received and the aircraft was listed as “overdue” at 1920 hours.  Over the next day and a half, search aircraft failed to find any signs of the aircraft or its crew.

Thomas, Gray and the eight other members of the crew were listed as missing.  Gray was awarded the Air Medal with oak leaf clusters.  Thomas was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with oak leaf clusters.  The official history of the 4^th Antisubmarine Squadron noted that “This was an old crew.  Capt. Thomas had been in the thick of the antisubmarine warfare since Dec. 7, 1941… It was impossible to replace him…”

Both Gray and Thomas are memorialized at the Cambridge American Cemetery, Cambridge, England.

For more information on Deckerd Jefferson Gray visit:

https://cualumni.clemson.edu/page.aspx?pid=1606

For more information about Rueben Lafayette Thomas, Jr. see:

https://cualumni.clemson.edu/page.aspx?pid=1539

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

https://cualumni.clemson.edu/scrollofhonor

Additional resources: http://uboatarchive.net/

http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com (Dixie Arrow photo)

Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea: The Daring Capture of the U-505

by Daniel V. Gallery, Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.)

 

 

 

Athlete, Scholar, Man of Letters

“At first we weren’t even sure there would a ‘Taps’ this year, what with a war going on and everybody’s yelling about film and copper shortages,” wrote the editors of Clemson College’s 1943 yearbook.  “But, in spite of all of our anxieties, we have succeeded in giving you an annual, one which we think compares favorably with the fine Clemson annuals of the past years.  If you like it, we’re glad.  If you don’t, keep it to yourself.  We’ll be hard to find.”

The editors got it right.  A lot of people liked the volume, for Taps was chosen, along with four others, as the best collegiate annuals in the nation for 1943.  They were right in another sense as well:  within weeks of graduation, they would indeed be hard to find, scattered like their classmates among military training bases all over the country as they prepared to fight a global war.

The editor-in-chief of the 1943 Taps was James Crayton Herring, Jr., a general sciences major from the Orr Mill community in Anderson.  “Cotton” Herring was a noted baseball player, having played at Anderson’s Boys’ High School and for the Orr Mills and local American Legion teams as well.  At Clemson, he was a four-year member of the baseball team, finishing his career on coach Frank Howard’s 12-3 1943 team.

In addition to working on the Taps staff and playing ball, Cotton Herring was involved in a variety of other campus activities.  Like all the boys of his day, Cotton was an ROTC cadet, rising to the rank of cadet second lieutenant by his senior year.  He was a member of the Block C Club, Blue Key, the Anderson County Club, served as a commencement marshal, and was listed in Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges.

That cloud of uncertainty that hung over the Taps staff afflicted most of the cadets on campus in the spring semester of 1943.  By graduation, students, faculty and administrators knew that Clemson was undergoing an epic change.  Nearly all the students would leave the campus’s rolling hills that spring.  Those who would one day return would serve in all theaters of the world-wide war then consuming lives and futures at an alarming rate.  And many, students and graduates alike, would never return to campus, would never return at all.

Cotton Herring was assigned as a new lieutenant to the 79^th Infantry Division’s 314^th Infantry Regiment.  The division had been activated in June 1942 in Virginia and had trained in desert tactics in Arizona and winter operations in Kansas.  In April 1944, the division departed from Massachusetts for the voyage to Great Britain.  Upon its arrival in Liverpool, the division began training in amphibious operations.  The division landed at Utah Beach a week after D-Day as Allied forces were building up men and materiel and anticipating a breakout from the Normandy beachhead.  The division was committed to combat on June 19 with an attack on high ground south of Cherbourg, a key harbor needed to supply invasion forces, but still held by the Germans.  After a week of hard fighting, the division entered the city on June 25.

After a brief rest, the 79^th resumed the offensive in early July.    In its two hundred forty-eight days in combat, the 79^th would suffer more than 15,000 casualties, including 2,476 killed in action—among them Cotton Herring, who was killed on July 26, just eleven days short of his twenty-first birthday, as the division was forcing the Ay River.

James Crayton Herring, Jr. was survived by his parents and his sister.  For more information about James Crayton Herring, Jr. visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/james-crayton-herring-jr/

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

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