Monday, Nov. 09, 2009

Strand veterans go on record

GEORGETOWN -- Stewart Swift, Joe Shaw, Dick Robinson and Claymon Grimes - like many young men in the early 1940s - were eager to enter the military after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into World War II.

Grimes and Robinson had to wait until they reached legal age to join. Their parents wouldn't sign the forms they needed to enlist earlier. But all four eventually put their lives on the line to stop Adolph Hitler and then halt Japanese aggression in the South Pacific.

Thanks to a project launched by retired college vice president John Brock, their stories, plus tales of military service by almost 70 other Georgetown County veterans, have been preserved for posterity and are now available through the county library system.

Brock, who moved to the DeBordieu development after retiring from Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, N.C., got the idea for the project after watching Ken Burns' World War II documentary. Burns' film logged the history of the war through interviews with participants involved in battles in three towns to chronicle the sacrifices of Americans.

"I told my wife, 'Gosh, every community in America should do this because those stories are going to be lost,'" he said.

Figuring the Georgetown library might be interested, he broached the idea to officials there. The Friends of the Library organization provided seed money, and several military groups and veterans' organizations made contributions to launch the effort.

Brock, also a former newspaper reporter and weekly newspaper publisher, publicized the project in a column he writes for The Georgetown Times.

"In February 2008, we started filming interviews with veterans telling their stories and putting the interviews on DVDs," Brock said. "We had no idea how it would go."

Library staff member Heather Pelham volunteered to spend Saturday mornings for the next 18 months taping the interviews. Robinson not only shared his story on one of the segments, but also served as interviewer on almost half of the 70-plus other accounts that make up the collection.

"The whole idea was to honor the veterans of this community and get their stories recorded for posterity," Brock said. "It was a nonprofit venture and a labor of love for everybody involved."

Last week, as Veterans Day approached, Swift, Shaw, Robinson and Grimes gathered in a Georgetown Library conference room to share recollections of their military service. Some of the stories were laced with humor and humility; others were gripping tales that tore at the heart.

Robinson, who grew up in Greer downplayed his service. He was 16 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he said, and so he entered Clemson University after high school to study textile engineering. While there, he signed up for a program he thought would qualify him to be an Army Air Corps bombardier.

He weighed only 113 pounds at the time and figured that his physique would be ideal in the tight space in Air Corps bombers where a bombardier did his work. But he was turned down.

"Everything was fine until it came to the weigh-in," he said. "The corporal at the weigh-in said the minimum weight was 115 pounds, so I lost out on that. That might have been lucky. I may be dead now if I'd been accepted. Instead, I waited to be drafted."

He reported on New Year's Day 1944 and was assigned to Fort Knox, Ky., where he trained with an armored division. Later assigned to the 22nd Tank Battalion of the 11th Armored Division of Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army, he was in Europe for the Battle of the Bulge.

"They put me in a tank and made me an assistant gunner," he said. "The shells weighed a couple of pounds more than I did."

A key recollection of his service in Europe, and later in Korea, centered on the fear he figures all troops must handle.

"There was the anxiety you felt once you knew where you were going, as you got closer and closer, and after getting there, wondering if you'd be able to take it, wondering if your backbone was made out of jelly," he said. "The important thing was when you made it to the end [of a battle] and realizing that your spine wasn't jelly at all."

Swift is now 84. He earned a degree in business administration from the University of Miami after the war and moved to Litchfield after retiring in 1988 from a career as director of military transportation with the Association of American Railroads.

He started his military service as an aviation cadet, he said. "I wanted to be a member of the Brown Shoe Air Corps," he said, "but they had too many pilot cadets, and I wound up in the infantry. I don't have a glorious tale. My unit was there [in Europe] for the Battle of the Bulge and basically mopped up in West Germany and opened up a couple of death camps the Germans had there."

Downplaying any heroics, he said the most venturesome thing his unit did was crossing the Rhine River.

"After we got all the heavy equipment across the bridge over the river, the bridge collapsed, and we had to cross the river in rubber boats," he said with chuckle.

Grimes, who grew up in the S.C. Lowcountry, returned to law school after the war, married and moved to Georgetown in 1947 where he practiced law and served several terms in the S.C. State House of Representatives and 11 years as a member of the S.C. Senate.

He entered the Army Air Corps in 1943, earned his wings in March 1944 and eventually was assigned to Saipan after the Japanese Navy had been virtually destroyed in the Battle of Midway. As a P-51 pilot, his job was to battle Japanese aircraft intent on attacking U.S. bombers.

The smaller fighters were equipped only with compasses, so pilots relied on a larger craft with navigational gear to guide them back to base after a mission, he said. On one such mission, he was hundreds of miles from Iwo Jima when he engaged a Japanese plane, disabling it. But when he prepared to rejoin his group, the guiding aircraft was nowhere in sight. His compass was little help in finding Iwo Jima - which was only about 5 miles long and a half-mile or so wide.

"Iwo was just a speck in the ocean. All I knew, it was somewhere in that direction," he said pointing east.

"I figured I'd just fly that way until I ran out of fuel and then bail out. I had lost my oxygen in the dogfight, so I had to fly between 15,000 and 20,000 feet, then go lower to get good air to breathe."

Luckily, along the way he encountered a B-29 bomber and radioed the pilot, who offered to guide him back to Iwo Jima. But he had to take on another Japanese fighter intent on attacking that bomber before both made it back to safety.

Shaw was born in Easley and later moved to Clinton with his family. After the war ended, Shaw stayed with the Navy while considering a military career. Instead, at age 31, he turned down the opportunity, married, returned home, started a family and graduated from Clemson University in 1956 with a degree in chemical engineering.

After moving to Georgetown and working 28 years with International Paper Co., he retired in 1984. He and his wife now operate a bed and breakfast at the edge of a peaceful stretch of marshland.

His military history began after he joined the U.S. Navy's ROTC program at the University of South Carolina. He was called to active duty on July 1, 1943, and trained for duty on a Navy minesweeper. After completing school and becoming a lieutenant junior grade, he was shipped to Hawaii and assigned to the USS Palmer - just in time for the battle to liberate the Philippine Islands from the Japanese.

Last week, he recalled standing on the deck of the Palmer and watching as the USS Mount Hood, loaded with ammunition, sailed into Manus Harbor and exploded a mile or so from his ship.

"The blast destroyed other vessels near it," he said. "After the smoke cleared, there was nothing but debris on the water. We lost 700 men in the explosion."

On Jan. 7, 1945, after completing a minesweeping mission in the Lingayen Gulf, members of the Palmer crew spotted a twin-engine Japanese plane.

"It dropped two bombs that hit our ship and blew it half in two," Shaw said. "The ship sank in 6 minutes. We lost all the engineering crew and the men below deck. Thirty-seven members of a crew of 140 were lost," Shaw said as tears welled in his eyes.

Rescued and taken aboard the USS Hamilton, then transferred to the USS Idaho, their troubles were not over. As the Idaho and a convoy of ships steamed away in columns of five ships, a Japanese kamikaze pilot guided his plane between the columns, firing as it came.

The ships' gunners were afraid to fire because of the likelihood they'd hit other U.S. ships.

But as the plane neared, a gunner fired, blasting the bridge of the Idaho and killing 19 members of the crew.

Shaw's throat tightened as he described how the bodies of the dead were wrapped in weighted mattress covers and lay on deck for three days before they could be buried at sea.

Apologizing for the emotional account, he paused: "Memories like that are hard to forget."