Archive for category: Scroll of Honor

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/

An Excellent Account

John Herman Lightsey, Jr. couldn’t have had any idea what was in store for him and the other boys of the Class of 1942 when they arrived on the Clemson College campus in the late summer of 1938.  If Europe appeared to be on the precipice of war over Czechoslovakia, what concern was that to the new “Rats” sporting shaved heads and trying to survive the transition from rural high schools and farm life to the academic rigors of military school?

“Pie” Lightsey was from the Hampton County community of Brunson and enrolled as an agricultural engineering major.  Although his military record was undistinguished—he rose through the cadet ranks only as high as second lieutenant—Lightsey was nonetheless an active member of the Corps of Cadets.  He was a four-year member of the track team and also competed as a member of the rifle team.  He served as vice-president of the ABC Club, composed of cadets from Allendale, Barnwell and Hampton Counties, and marched with the Pershing Rifles drill team.  He also completed ROTC training at Clemson in the summer of 1941.

Lightsey’s class was the first to graduate after the attack on Pearl Harborthrust an unprepared America into a global war.  Most of his classmates were soon in uniform and Lightsey found himself in the Army Air Force.  After completing basic pilot training, Lightsey was ordered to multi-engine pilot training and assigned to fly bombers.

Eventually assigned to the 380^th Bomb Squadron of the 310 Bomb Group (Medium), by 1944 Lightsey was serving in the Mediterranean Theater as B-25 pilot.  The B-25, made famous by the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, was a twin-engine, medium bomber used to provide air support to front line troops and to attack transportation targets like road and rail bridges and harbors.

Operating from Ghisonsaccia Airdrome on the island of Corsica, west of the Italian mainland, the 380^th flew missions to interdict German lines of communication and disrupt the movement of enemy forces.  By June of 1944, the 380^th’s official unit history reported, the squadron had reasons to be optimistic.  Rome, the first of the Axis capitals to capitulate, had fallen on June 5.  The long-anticipated invasion of France had begun on the sixth and the Red Army had kicked off its massive spring offensive in the east.

The weather at Ghisonsaccia had grown hotter, but it was still much cooler than the previous summer which had been passed flying from air bases in North Africa.  There was little rain that June which meant that the squadron was flying missions practically every day.  At this point in the war, most of the squadron’s missions were directed against bridges—both road and rail—as the Germans tried desperately to transport and supply their ground forces resisting the advances of the US Fifth and British Eighth Armies.

On Thursday, June 22, Lightsey was assigned to fly as copilot in a B-25 commanded by Lieutenant Frank Peterson.   Their aircraft would be part of a small, three-plane formation targeting enemy shipping in Leghorn Harbor near Livorno, on the northwest coast of Italy.  It would be a short flight for the speedy B-25s which could cover the eighty-five miles to the harbor in less than twenty-five minutes.

The three planes likely came in low over the water, making use of their forward mounted cannon and machine guns.  According to the unit history, “Our planes gave an excellent account of themselves as several vessels in the Leghorn Harbor were sunk.” But the enemy could shoot too.  “Heavy, intense, and very accurate” anti-aircraft fire was directed at the attacking planes.

Peterson’s and Lightsey’s B-25 was hit on the right wing by enemy flak.  The right engine caught fire and the conflagration quickly spread, covering the entire right side of the aircraft.  One parachute was seen coming from the plane which nosed over into a vertical dive and crashed into the sea.    Lightsey and the other five members of the crew perished.  One other aircraft from the formation was so badly damaged by enemy fire that it crashed into the Mediterranean Sea before it was able to reach its home base in Corsica.  The trip to Leghorn brought Lightsey’s combat mission total to more than fifty.  It was his thirteenth mission of the month.

First Lieutenant John Herman Lightsey, Jr. was awarded the Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters in a posthumous ceremony at Hunter Field, Georgia in December 1945, three months after the end of the war he had helped to win.

Lightsey was survived by his parents and two sisters and is memorialized at the Florence American Military Cemetery, Via Cassia, Italy.

For more information about First Lieutenant John Herman Lightsey, Jr. see:

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

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

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

All Around Leader

John Leumas Childress was one of those people who excelled at everything he attempted.  From the time he stepped onto the Clemson campus as a freshman member of the Class of 1951 from Augusta, Georgia, Childress was recognized as a leader.

He was promoted quickly in the Corps of Cadets, serving as a sergeant his sophomore year and as first sergeant during his junior year.  Childress returned to campus following ROTC training at Fort Meade, Maryland and was appointed a cadet lieutenant colonel and commander of 2^nd Battalion.  His military aptitude was acknowledged by his selection to Scabbard and Blade, the military honor society.  But John Childress’s accomplishments were not limited to the military aspects of cadet life.

Childress was chairman of the Senior Council which handled student non-military disciplinary matters and made recommendations to Dr. Poole, the college president.  He was a member of Blue Key, the Aiken-Augusta-Edgefield Club, and served as president of both the Block C Club and his Senior Class.  And, among these activities and his textile manufacturing academic work, Childress also played on a pretty fair Tiger football team.

Coach Frank Howard’s 1950 Tigers could be forgiven if they weren’t keeping up with the United Nations’ response to the invasion of South Korea.  That late summer and fall Childress and his teammates were focused on another outstanding season.  Just two years earlier, the Tigers had recorded an undefeated gridiron campaign, completing their season with a Gator Bowl victory.  The 1950 Tigers also had high hopes for the season.

Childress, weighing 192 pounds, played end on a team that featured a high powered offense led by Tiger greats Fred Cone, Jackie Calvert, Ray Mathews and Billy Hair.  Clemson started the season with a 55-0 whipping of Presbyterian College, then shut out Missouri 34-0 and North Carolina State 27-0.  The next game was the annual Big Thursday match-up at the State Fair in Columbia.  After falling behind early, the Tigers rallied to salvage a 14-all tie with the Gamecocks.  That blemish fired the team which reeled off consecutive victories over Wake Forest, Duquesne, Boston College, and Furman before completing the season with a 41-0 drubbing of Auburn.  Over the course of the season, the Tigers had outscored their opponents 329-62.  The Tigers’ impressive record earned them a trip to the Orange Bowl, where they defeated hometown Miami 15-14.

Upon graduation, John Childress was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army and sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky for training.    Before shipping overseas, Childress participated in additional tank training at Camp Irwin, the Army’s sprawling maneuver range in California. Childress was assigned to the 179^th Infantry Regiment of the 45^th Infantry Division.

Originally a division of the Oklahoma National Guard, the 45^th had been ordered to federal service in 1951.  It deployed to Korea in December of that year.  The division was committed to the line against experienced Chinese forces and in bitter winter weather.  By spring, the division was on the offensive, participating in Operation Counter with the objective of establishing patrol bases around the Old Baldy Hill area in west-central Korea.

On June 26, 1952, as the war began its third year, Second Lieutenant Childress was leading his platoon of the regiment’s heavy tank company near Tumyon-dong.  The tankers were supporting infantrymen who were assaulting Hill 183.  As Childress’s tanks moved up the hill, enemy mortar and artillery fire became so intense that the riflemen had to halt their advance and seek cover.  Recognizing the perilous position of the infantrymen, Childress led his tanks through the enemy positions and to the crest of the hill, directing the advance and using his tank’s machine gun to fire on the enemy defenders.  According to the posthumous Silver Star citation, “Lieutenant Childress was subsequently mortally wounded by sniped fire, but only after he had inflicted many casualties on the attackers, and his accurate fire had enabled his comrades to withstand the assault. The gallantry and courageous leadership displayed by Lieutenant Childress reflected the greatest credit on himself and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Army.”

In addition to the Silver Star, John Childress was awarded the Purple Heart, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean Presidential Unit Citation and the Republic of Korea War Service Medal.  He was survived by his wife, Frances and was interred at the Westover Cemetery in Richmond County, Georgia.

For more information on John Leumas Childress see:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/john-leumas-childress/

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

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

Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor Memorial occupies a highly visible plot of ground—directly across the street from Memorial Stadium.  The Memorial is in the form of a barrow ringed with stones upon which are engraved the names of four hundred ninety-three alumni who died on active military service.  While the Memorial stands as a steady, silent tribute to these heroes, its companion, a comprehensive website, has recently undergone a major renovation.

A website that would more fully tell the story of the heroes inscribed on the Scroll of Honor Memorial was originally the idea of Dawson Luke, Class of 1956.  “I wondered: what did these people look like?  What’s their story?” recalls Luke, a member of the Clemson Corps, a constituent group of the Clemson Alumni Association.  “I asked the Scroll of Honor Dedication committee if we could somehow tell their stories.”  The committee gave Luke the green light and he embarked on what he describes as “a labor of love.”  Working with a group of committed volunteers, Luke led an effort to build a website for the Scroll of Honor, one that includes a page for each hero.

“We had a list of names,” Luke remembers, “but that’s about all we had.  If they had graduated, we could usually find their pictures in Taps, the college yearbook.  If not, we had to find them elsewhere.”  That meant a lot of research time and effort during a period in which Luke recalls, “resources were tight.”  Working on a university project is not without benefits however.  “John Seketa,” who at the time was the director of promotions for the Athletic Department, “helped find us some fantastic student helpers.”  Other volunteers, like Dave Lyle, Class of 1968, came from the Clemson Corps board and from ROTC classes.

“I was involved in the vetting of the names,” Lyle recalls.  “There were four hundred fifty or so to start with.  I searched through old copies of Taps and other papers and would occasionally get help from the Registrar’s office.  I also visited a lot of local libraries, from Oconee County to Sumter looking through compilations of that county’s war dead.  We would find a lot of misspellings, names that had been reversed and other errors.  The people who originally compiled the Roll of Honor in 1946 relied on hand-written lists and word of mouth.   It’s much easier now with the use of the internet.  We can double check spelling and other errors.”

In addition to visiting local libraries across the state, Lyle also took his camera along on trips with his wife Judy.  “We’d build some extra time into our travels and stop at cemeteries to take pictures of headstones which we’d include on the website.  Grave markers provided a lot of information,” Lyle points out, including correct spellings, dates of birth, and often the military unit to which the hero was assigned at the time of his death.

“I wanted to find out how they died,” Luke says.  “Dave’s passion was finding where they were buried and their obituaries.  One piece of information in a newspaper article might lead us to another. More and more stuff has shown up on the internet over the past ten years.”

“When you’re working with nearly five hundred names that span more than a century, it’s easy to make mistakes,” Lyle says—and that meant frequent updates to the website.  Both Luke and Lyle admit to getting frustrated with the intricacies of website maintenance.  With additional emphasis on website security and protecting content from unauthorized manipulation, Luke, Lyle and their Clemson Corps colleagues worked with University faculty, staff and students in the ROTC departments to maintain the old website.  Constant turnover and the continuing discoveries of more information about the Scroll’s heroes made keeping the website current a daunting task.

Plus adds Luke, “The old site didn’t show up very well on iPads.”  In addition, what had started out as a website dedicated to the Scroll of Honor had evolved into one with a broader focus, covering everything from Clemson’s military heritage to ROTC news.

With these factors in mind, the Clemson Corps, with the cooperation of the Clemson Alumni Association, decided to build and host a new website solely focused on the Scroll of Honor.  The new site, https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu, is now live and features a revised format and enhanced search capabilities.  It also contains an ever-expanding body of information about the heroes listed on the Scroll of Honor and offers an interactive and engaging opportunity for site visitors to learn more about the lives and sacrifices of these fallen heroes.

The relative ease of updating the new site is important because, Lyle says, “I don’t think we’ll ever finish.  We’ll keep adding new information as it’s discovered.”

Highlighting the sacrifices of the Scroll of Honor heroes motivates Luke, Lyle and their colleagues to continue to expand the information available on the website.  “The name on the stone doesn’t tell who the person was, what they looked like, what they did and how they died,” Luke explains.

Lyle agrees.  “It’s our job to tell the stories of these men.  Every year on Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day we gather and we promise we will never forget these heroes,” he says. “But before you can forget someone you have to know who they were.”

 

–Kelly Durham, wkellyd@me.com

Fiery Descent into the Sea

The war reached out and grabbed the boys of the Class of 1944.  Having endured the hazing and harassment of their Rat seasons, the academic rigors of their sophomore years, and the increasing responsibilities that fell on their shoulders as juniors, these young men would have been looking ahead to the senior year, when they would have taken command of the Corps of Cadets and would have left their mark on the Clemson College campus.  Instead, all too many of them would leave their lives on the world’s battlegrounds.

Ernest Theron Epps of Kingstree was an agronomy major and a member of Kappa Alpha Sigma the honorary society for agronomists.  With the end of the 1943 school year, most of Clemson’s students left campus for the military services.  Epps, who had signed up as a Navy reservist the previous November, was called to duty in June.

By 1945, Epps was flying as an aerial gunner on a Navy PBM-5 patrol bomber based at Kaneohe Air Station on the east coast of Oahu, Hawaii.  One suspects that Epps and his comrades greeted the May 8 surrender of Germany with restraint knowing that the Japanese continued to fight ferociously in the Pacific.  Two days later, on May 10, Epps was onboard his patrol aircraft as Lieutenant (j.g.) Roland Cocker lifted the seaplane into the sky.

At some point after dark, a fire ignited in the wing between the engine nacelle and the fuselage.  Unable to control the aircraft, Cocker, Epps and the crew crashed into the sea.  Nine men aboard were killed, including Epps.  Three survivors were rescued the following day by their squadron commander, Lieutenant E. E. Albertson.   Epps’s body was lost to the sea.

Ernest Theron Epps is memorialized at the Courts of the Missing, Honolulu, Hawaii and at the Williamsburg Presbyterian Cemetery in Kingstree. He was survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Peel Epps, two sisters and a brother.

For more information about Ernest Theron Epps visit:

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/ernest-theron-epps/

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

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

A Life of Outstanding Accomplishment

John Coryell Leysath grew up in the Orangeburg County crossroads of North, South Carolina, graduating from the public schools there and belonging to the Methodist Church.  He was the town’s first Eagle Scout and when it came time for college, he selected the small military school in the northwest corner of the state at Clemson.

Better known as Jack, Leysath excelled on campus just as he had at home.  He joined the Rifle Team and by his the end of his sophomore year was its captain and one of its high scorers.  An electrical engineering major, Jack was active with the Wesley Foundation, the Tri County Club and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.  He was an ROTC student, participating in summer training at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida before being designated as a Distinguished Military Graduate.

Following graduation from Clemson in 1954, Jack Leysath took a job with General Electric.  He reported for active duty with the Air Force at Camp Sampson, New York that August and was later sent to Hondo Air Force Base and Webb Air Force Base, both in Texas.  While at Webb, Leysath earned his jet pilot diploma.  He was next assigned to McDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida where he was promoted to first lieutenant.  Then, Leysath received orders assigning him for temporary duty at McConnell Air Force Base near Wichita, Kansas.

McConnell Air Force Base was a fairly new post, having been activated due to its proximity to Boeing’s Wichita factory that was then producing the B-47 Stratojet, the first swept-winged jet bomber built in quantity for the Air Force.  With the new jets coming right off Boeing’s assembly line, McConnell was an ideal location for the conduct of combat crew training.

On March 28, 1956, Jack Leysath climbed aboard a B-47 commanded by instructor pilot Captain William Craggs.  Joining First Lieutenant Leysath as a student was Lieutenant Colonel William Dames.

The B-47 Stratojet had been designed to fly at high subsonic speed and at high altitude to avoid enemy interceptor aircraft. Its primary mission was as a nuclear bomber capable of striking the Soviet Union. Initial mission profiles included the loft bombing of nuclear weapons. In loft bombing, the attacking bomber pulls upward when releasing its bomb load, adding to the bomb’s flight time and giving the aircraft extra time to get away from the blast effects of the bomb, particularly important if the bomb is a nuclear device.   The problem with loft bombing is that its repetition in training stresses the airframe and may cause metal fatigue.

Shortly after Captain Craggs and his two student pilots took off, as the aircraft reached about 2,000 feet in altitude, a Navy pilot flying nearby saw the B-47’s wings shear off.  The Navy pilot said there was a fire in the bomber’s mid-section and then an explosion.  The bomber crashed about four miles northeast of Wichita.  All three crewmen were killed.

Jack Leysath was returned to North where he was buried with full military honors in Pen Branch Cemetery.  He was survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Horace H. Leysath, one sister and one brother.  In its obituary of the young lieutenant, The State newspaper wrote that his was “a life of outstanding accomplishment.”

For additional information about First Lieutenant John Coryell Leysath visit: https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/john-coyell-leysath/
For more information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor see:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/

One In Sixteen Million

It happened fast but despite a flurry of activity in 1941 America was still unprepared for war.  As a result, the military accelerated its base-building efforts in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  One of the bases that had been established as the country scrambled to train, equip and deploy the sixteen million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who would serve in World War II was Hammer Field near Fresno, California.  At age thirty-five, Red Glenn was surely one of the older privates on the base.

Wallace Irvin “Red” Glenn graduated from Greenwood High School and enrolled in Clemson College in 1925.  Glenn, an architecture major, was assigned to Company F, 2^nd Battalion of the Corps of Cadets.  Glenn attended Clemson for only his freshman year.

Following the December 7, 1941 attack by the Japanese, the Roosevelt administration was faced with the daunting task of converting the world’s largest economy from a peacetime, consumer-oriented one into the “Arsenal of Democracy” that would provide the men, machines and materiel that would win the war.  Part of that conversion was the induction into the armed forces and the training of millions of young men, many of whom had never left their native states.  Now, the demands of a nation at war saw these same young men—and some a little older—shipped to every region of the country.

Red Glenn found himself assigned to the Army Air Forces Flying Training Command at Hammer Field.  The mission of the 4^th Air Force Replacement Depot there was to train replacement pilots, aircrew and ground personnel for what would become the largest Air Force in the world.  Fliers and technicians from all over the United States would pass through the base for training enroute to assignments overseas.  Eventually, Hammer Field’s mission expanded beyond aircrews to include Air Force nurses.

Glenn, a ground support crewman at the base, would have been engaged in keeping the base’s many training aircraft in flight-worthy condition.  Following “several weeks” of illness, Glenn died at the Hammond General Hospital in nearby Modesto on February 2, 1943.  He was survived by his father and step-mother.  His body was returned to Greenwood and he was buried in Edgewood Cemetery.

For additional information about Wallace Irvin Glenn see:

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

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

https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/wallace-irvin-glenn/

Final Flight

John LeHecka graduated from high school in Rock Hill in 1960 and enrolled that fall at Clemson College.  An agronomy major, John remained in school through his sophomore year before joining the Peace Corps. He spent two years serving in East Pakistan, what is now Bangladesh.  That experience, recalled his friend John Fuller, imbued LaHecka with greater maturity and thoughtfulness.

Following his Peace Corps tour overseas, LaHecka returned to Clemson University in January 1965.  In addition to resuming his agronomy courses, he also enrolled in advanced Air Force ROTC.  John’s experiences overseas must have prepared him for new challenges, for as a senior, he served as a cadet lieutenant colonel and commandant of the Cadet Leadership School.  He also found time to compete with the fencing club under the direction of architecture professor Hal Cooledge.

LaHecka graduated in December 1967 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. He reported for active duty and pilot training to Craig Air Force Base near Selma, Alabama on January 15, 1968.  John Fuller remembers meeting LaHecka when both were assigned to Hurlburt Field at Fort Walton Beach, Florida for Forward Air Controller (FAC) training.  Located near Pensacola, the area featured “beautiful white beaches, fresh oysters, and cold beer,” wrote Fuller.  “Our training program had about three weeks of content compressed into about three months.”

Upon leaving Florida, the training became more intense and more serious: Jungle Survival School at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines.  The two lieutenants arrived at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Vietnam on July 30, 1969 and were assigned to the 20^th Tactical Air Support Squadron at Pleiku Air Base in the Central Highlands.  Since neither officer had previous experience flying fighters, they were categorized as Class B FACs, meaning that, by prior agreement between the turf conscious Army and Air Force, they were not allowed to control airstrikes for American ground troops.  As a result, LaHecka and Fuller found themselves flying out-country interdiction missions along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail along the borders of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

LaHecka was trained in night missions flying the O-2, the military version of the Cessna Skymaster, a twin-engine piston-powered aircraft with one engine in the nose and a second in the rear of the fuselage. One advantage of the O-2 was that its side window could be opened in flight allowing the navigator to use a Starlight Scope to help identify targets in the inky blackness of the jungle night.

After four months in country, LeHecka and Fuller were selected to fly highly classified Prairie Fire missions.  Fuller remembered these as the unit’s “most demanding mission, even though it was always conducted in the day.”  Prairie Fire sent Special Forces Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols (LRRP) into Laos and Cambodia to conduct reconnaissance operations and find downed airmen.  LeHecka a

nd the other forward air controllers would coordinate fire support from Army Huey and Cobra helicopter gunships as well as Navy A-1 and Air Force F-4 fighters during the insertion and extraction of these LRRP teams.

On January 10, 1970, LeHecka and Fuller flew to Kontum, the base for the Special

 

Forces teams assignedto southern Laos.  LeHecka picked up Sergeant First Class Sam Zumbrun, a highly decorated former medic now conducting reconnaissance missions for Prairie Fire.  During their mission, LeHecka’s aircraft was struck by enemy small arms fire.  LeHecka was killed and the luckless Zumbrun was stuck in a sophisticated aircraft without the skills to pilot it.  Without a pilot, the plane crashed, killing Zumbrun.  Both LeHecka’s and Zumbrun’s remains were recovered.

First Lieutenant John LeHecka was buried in the Lutz Cemetery, Lutz, Florida.  He was survived by his wife, the former Charlotte Featherson.

 

For more information about Lieutenant LeHecka see:

https://cualumni.clemson.edu/page.aspx?pid=1703

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

https://cualumni.clemson.edu/scrollofhonor