WASHINGTON, D.C. — Recognizing the valor of South Carolinians who fought in World War II, 19 electric cooperatives Wednesday joined Honor Flight of South Carolina to fly 100 veterans including two Dillon County men to Washington, D.C., to visit the memorial built in their honor and other historic sites.
“With each passing month, there are fewer veterans available to travel,” said Bill Dukes, Honor Flight of South Carolina president. “Their average age is over 88.”
In fact the oldest vet on this trip was 98, the youngest 82.
Veterans attending from Dillon County are Samuel P. McInnis and E.C. Carr.
Seven decades ago they were teenagers and on their way to war. Some volunteered for service, others were drafted. Some repaired airplanes or ferried supplies, and others lived through hellish battles in, as one veteran said, “no place you would ever want to be.” On Wednesday, however, they were honored guests in their nation’s capital, visiting a memorial built for them and the millions like them who “saved the world.”
The trip, free to the veterans and paid for by the electric cooperatives in South Carolina, was part of a series of flights organized by Honor Flight of South Carolina. This was the first trip from the state to be paid for by a single sponsor. It added to the more than 81,000 vets nationwide who have taken honor flights since 2005, when a small group of Ohio vets were ferried to Washington in private planes.
“It’s been a real blessing,” said Dukes, referring to the cooperatives’ sponsorship.
The tightly scheduled one-day adventure began with an 8 a.m. U.S. Airways flight from Columbia to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, where giant water cannons created an arc for entry and women, dressed as war-era USO girls, welcomed the vets in the airport. Floyd “Fig” Newton, a retired four-star U.S. Army general and South Carolina native, greeted them. An announcement had been made throughout the airport inviting travelers to come to the arrival gate to welcome the vets. Hundreds of busy travelers came.
At the World War II Memorial, dedicated in 2004, a plaza and pool are circled by 56 huge pillars of granite, one for each state and territory from that period and the District of Columbia. Some of the granite was quarried in South Carolina. Two-thirds of the 7.4-acre memorial site is landscaping and water.
During their stop, the vets took photos and shared stories. News media interviewed them. Some touched the South Carolina pillar, the memories evident in their quiet reflection and conversation. A bugler played. The American and South Carolina flags were presented.
Four buses took the vets on a tour of Washington with stops at other memorials—Korea, Vietnam, Iwo Jima, Lincoln—before arriving at Arlington National Cemetery, where an escort took the buses into the cemetery—a special exception the cemetery makes for these aging visitors. They watched the military precision of the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, the quiet reverence broken only by the relief commander’s orders, the clicking of the soldiers’ shoes and the snap of the rifles into place on their shoulders.
By 6:30 p.m., the Columbia-bound plane was in the air. Hundreds of people lined the airport gate area as the veterans exited their plane, including more legislators and other proud Americans.
“Our electric cooperative family has really been touched by this undertaking,” said Mike Couick, CEO of the state association of electric cooperatives. “We just hope every veteran who’s never been there is able to take a future Honor Flight. It is a heart-warming experience.”
Profiles of the 100 veterans have been complied into a 200-page color souvenir book. Email inquiries to HonorFlight@scliving.coop, or call (803) 739-5066.Readers may post words of appreciation to the veterans for their service at www.facebook.com/ SouthCarolinaLiving.
South Carolina honor flights are funded through tax deductible individual and corporate contributions. Anyone wishing to make a donation to the cost of future flights can mail them to: Honor Flight of S.C., P.O. Box 292421, Columbia, SC 29229. For more information, visit www.HonorFlightSC.com or call (803) 582-8826.
AGE: 85
HOMETOWN:
Little Rock
MILITARY SERVICE:
U.S. Army
CO-OP AFFILIATION: Marlboro Electric Cooperative
“Be a good boy,” Sam P. McInnis’ father advised, as the 18-year-old left home in 1944 to fight in World War II. It was the same encouragement his father would offer anytime his son left home.
“I was afraid the war would be over before I got there,” McInnis says. “I couldn’t wait because everyone was gone to the Army to fight the war, and I didn’t want to miss out.”
McInnis comes from a family of surviving war veterans. His father, E.L., was wounded in France during World War I. His oldest brother, Edward, began serving in the Navy a year before the Pearl Harbor attack. His youngest brother, Murdoc, fought in the Korean Conflict.
In the Army, McInnis served in the 275th Infantry Regiment, 70th Division, as a sergeant in the weapons company. The bullets sounded like a swarm of bees flying past his ears as McInnis crossed the Rhine River into the Ruhr Valley with the infantry to encircle a large number of German troops. He suffered permanent hearing damage from the loud machine guns and bursting shells.
“Everyone stayed scared all the time because you didn’t know what was going to happen next,” he says.
After the war ended in 1945, generals and civilians wanted soldiers to see the concentration camps and the bodies of the Holocaust victims.
McInnis was moved by the diseased and starved bodies stacked in mounds. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!” he says.
Canning tomatoes never seemed as wonderful as it did when McInnis returned home after 18 months of war to find his mother doing just that. It didn’t take him long to get adjusted to the peace of Little Rock, S.C., though he sometimes awoke from dreams of hand grenades rolling from German vehicles.
He married Ann McColl, raised two sons and one daughter, farmed and ran the family sawmill. As did his father, McInnis served on the Marlboro Electric Cooperative Board of Trustees. He retired from the board in 2008 after 37 years.
“Fighting in World War II was an experience you’re glad you had,” McInnis says, “but you don’t want to have another.” —CHRISTY J. OVERSTREET
AGE: 88
HOMETOWN: Dillon
MILITARY SERVICE: U.S. Army
CO-OP AFFILIATION: Santee Electric Cooperative
Growing up in Farmville, N.C., Elam “E.C.” Carr loved working with his hands, and by the age of 20, he was an apprentice pattern maker in a Newport News, Va., shipyard, helping forge portholes and propellers.
World War II was in full swing, and the demand for ships was high. But by 1944, the demand for able-bodied men to serve in the armed forces was even higher. Drafted into the U.S. Army, the craftsman-in-training set aside his tools to pick up a rifle as part of the 102nd Infantry Division.
“They needed men—they drafted everybody,” he says.
After basic training, Carr was shipped to Europe aboard the Queen Mary, a passenger liner pressed into service as a troop transport, and his unit joined the final days of one of the biggest battles of the war in Europe.
“I was there at the close of the Battle of the Bulge,” he recalls. “We saw some action.” The 102nd went up the Rhine River to the Elbe River, met up with Russian forces and mopped up the last resistance offered by the once-feared German army.
“There were thousands surrendering,” Carr says. “At one time we had 18 German generals [in custody]. After that we were an army of occupation.” And all before his 22nd birthday.
Carr received automatic promotions, based on time-in, but after V-E Day he hadn’t earned enough points to make it back home. “I made sergeant, stayed on in Europe, and in 1946 got out and went back to the shipyard in Virginia,” he says.
Carr finished the remaining two years of his four-year apprenticeship, then attended North Carolina State University on the GI Bill. Eventually he would marry, start a family, and settle in Dillon, where he lives today and owns Dillon Furniture Manufacturing.
At age 88, Carr still works every day at his factory, producing wood furniture for major hotels and resorts.
Looking back on his service during World War II, Carr said he was fortunate. He remembers the war’s horrors and heroes. “We took it one day at a time,” he says. “We went to Europe and we defeated the Germans. That was our job.” —PAUL GRIMSHAW
