THE BLOOD OF HEROES NEVER DIES

        With another Memorial Day having come and gone, let us take a brief moment and salute those men from our county who have given their lives in the service of the United States of America.  

These are the men who have given the last true measure of devotion so that we may be free.

Take a few minutes and read the 199  names and say a prayer in their memory.  I pray that this list shall never be added to, except through the discovery of names from distant wars which are now only known to God.  

WORLD WAR I ERA - John W. Adams, George L. Attaway, Walter Berry, James Bradley, Leon F. Brannon, Fisher Brazeal,  Linton T. (Leonard) Bostwick, Joseph J. Bracewell, James Brown, Tom Watson Bryant, Sammie Burke, David Burton Camp, Freeman Coley, Ashley Collins, William Coney, Alvin T. Coxwell, Samuel Evans, James W. Flanders, Clarence David Fordham, Oscar Fulwood, John W. Green, James C. Hall, Archie Hinson, Syril P. Hodges, Delmar M. Howard, Ben F. Howell, Wallace C. Huffman, Jesse Kelley, Frazier Linder, Dewitt Lindsay, Ed McLendon, Walter E. Martin, James Mason, George McLoud, Jessie Mercer, Rayfield Meacham, George C. Mitchell, Robbie  New, Cecil Preston Perry, Wilbur Pope, John H. Sanders, Roger O. Sellers, John Stevens, Ed Stuckey, Louis M. Thompson, Edgar Towns, Fleming du Bignon Vaughn, Ed Washington, George Windham, James A. Williams, Henry K. Womack, Wayman Woodard, and McKinley Yopp. 

WORLD WAR II ERA - Robert T. Adams, Hardy B. Alligood, Connie Ashley, Jack Baggett, Charles E. Barron, Clinton H. Barron, Robert B. Bidgood, Cary H. Braddy, Palmer Lee Braddy, Eldridge D. Branch, Howard W. Brantley,  Bobbie E. Brown, Walter C. Browning, Gurvice A. Clark, James Coleman, Jerome W. Collins, Robert A. Colter, Hilton F. Culpepper, John C. Culpepper, John M. Dalton, Blanton T. Daniel, David G. Daniels, Jr., John R. Deamer, Walter B. Dixon, Daniel C. Fordham,  Thurman Foskey, James E. Fountain, Lester Graham,  Robert C. Graves, Horace J. Green, Joe R. Grier, Talman B. Hanley, Robert C. Harden, Freeman L. Harrison, Carice L. Harvey, E. Clay Hawkins, Hansford D. Heath, Edmond S. Hobbs, John C. Huffman, Willie T. Holmes, John W. Holt, Nathaniel Hooks, Billy Y. Horton, Robert L. Horton, James B. Hutchinson, Quien W. Johnson,  Henry Will  Jones, Wexell Jordan, Jr., Joel L. Keen, William A.  Kelley, Albert H. Knight, Peter Fred Larsen, Robert M. Leach,  Robert E. Lee, Otis C. Leverette, Embree W. Loague, Christopher C. Lowery, W. Carson McMullen, Chester C. Miller, Thomas L. Miller, Hugh M. Moore, Clem Moye, Carlton L.  Mullis, Albert F. Nobles, Harris O'Dell, Blakley A. Parrott, Jr., Martin H. Patisaul, J. Felton Perry, L. Cleveland Pope, Julian Rawls, Vernice Ricks, Randall Robertson, Henry V. Rogers, Jonnie F. Rowland, Roy C. Rozier, Thomas J. Russell, Jr., James Scarboro, Emory F. Scarborough, Hyram F. Scarborough, John Roy Scarborough, Roy W. Shepard, Jonnie W. Shinholster, John A. Shirley, Fred L. Smith, George B. Snellgrove, J. Frank Snellgrove, John H. Spivey, Hudson L. Stanley, G. Bert Stinson, Grady N. Strickland, Charles L. Taylor, Emil E. Tindol, Zollie L. Tindol, Willie J. Tingle, Jace M. Waites, Cleveland A. Warren, James R. Warren, John H. Warren, Columbus Watkins, Walter P. Watson, Rodger Watts, William R. Werden, Jr., Oliver W. Wester, Olson W. Wilkes, Robert E. Williams, J. Miller Windham, Luther B. Word, Jr., and  Frank R. Zetterower, Jr..

KOREAN WAR ERA - James E. Daniel, Robert H. Grinstead, Roy T. Hughes, Albert A. Lewis, Joseph E. McCullough, T.J. McTier, Walter E. Nesmith, James C. Rix, Bobby Robinson, Ralph B. Walker, Bobby R. Wood, and Lonnie G. Woodum.

VIETNAM WAR ERA - George W. Baker, Jimmy Bedgood, Tommy N. Bracewell, Billy E. Brantley, Harlow G. Clark, Jr., James E. Cook, James E. Cooper, David L. Copeland, Robert E. Davis, Jimmy Harlan Evans, Bobby L. Finney, Gerald C. Fordham, William Z. Hartley, Walter C. Hurst, Jr., James Linder, Jr., Edward B. Lindsey, J.D. Miller, Billy Mimbs, Felton Lee Mimbs,  Eddie L. Smith, Bobby Stanley, Donald E. Stepp, Ralph W. Soles, James A. Starley, and William C. Stinson, Jr..

IRANIAN CONFLICT 1980 - Dewey Johnson.

In his 1915 poem Canadian soldier John McRae wrote,

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

      Between the crosses, row on row,

   That mark our place; and in the sky

   The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

   Loved and were loved, and now we lie

         In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

   The torch; be yours to hold it high.

   If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

         In Flanders fields.

         The poem became a rallying symbol for the war effort of Canada and Great Britain in World War I.  After the United States entered the war and began to experience a high number of casualties in the trenches of Europe, University of Georgia professor, Moena Michael, took up the cause of remembering the fallen heroes of our country as well as those serving over there.  

Inspired by McRae’s hauntingly beautiful words, Michael penned her own  poem, “We Shall Keep the Faith,” in which she wrote, 

“We cherish, too, the poppy red

That grows on fields where valor led;

It seems to signal to the skies

That blood of heroes never dies,

And now the Torch and Poppy Red

We wear in honor of our dead.

Fear not that ye have died for naught;

We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought

In Flanders Fields.

In Flanders Fields we fought.”

.

Michael became known as “The Poppy Lady.”  It was her patriotic vision which lead  to the tradition of wearing poppies, which still continues today.   

TEE HOLMES: THE SHADOWS OF HIS SMILE

       With seventy summers behind him, William “Tee” Holmes, was forever young. Beneath that graying hair was still the same boyish face and the same impish grin.  Rarely did anyone ever walk away from him without a smile on their face.  Few people I have known have been so admired and loved by so many.

  Tee Holmes never knew his daddy.   They were both cut from the same cloth of one of Laurens County’s oldest families.  One was called “Willie T.,” the other simply, “Tee.”  And, they were both lieutenants.  

Willie T. Holmes joined the Georgia National Guard before his 20th birthday.   Holmes was transferred to  the 77th Division, which was heavily engaged in the siege of Guam and the deadly Battle of Leyte Gulf, where 1st Sergeant Holmes received a battlefield commission to 1st Lieutenant  for his heroic actions. 

The 77th was sent into Ie Shima, Okinawa to root out entrenched Japanese fortifications.  Before dawn on April 21, 1945, Japanese soldiers counter attacked in mass.  Holmes’  company, holding the left wing of the battalion’s position,  was overrun. The entire company was nearly wiped out.  Among the dead was Willie T. Holmes.  Several years later in the late 1940s, Willie’s body was brought home for burial in Northview Cemetery.  Willie’s brother took Willie’s son down to the depot to meet the train.  “I never knew my father,” said the boy.  “I knew it was a sad day.”

That young boy, born in the middle year of World War II, was William T. Holmes, forever known to all that knew him  as “Tee.”  “Tee” grew up in the in the Fabulous Fifties, the last decade of American innocence.  He lived on the edge of downtown Dublin and knew every spot in town and the places to have fun.  

“One of my friends threw a firecracker into what he thought was an empty drum at Laney’s Service Station,” “Tee” remembered.  “All of a sudden, it went ‘ka-boom!”  The empty drum was filled with something that exploded.  “We spent most of our Saturdays at the Martin Theater,” “Tee”  fondly remembered of the days when he and his friends roamed the town looking for fun things to do.   “There was always something to do downtown.”  Tee graduated from Dublin High School in 1961.  

“Tee,” after his graduation from Dublin High in 1961 and Middle Georgia College,  joined the Marine Corps and trained as a helicopter pilot.  In his book “Bonnie Sue, A Marine Corps Helicopter Squadron in Vietnam,” Marion Sturkey described “Tee” as  having a slow and nasal southern drawl, which no one could ever mistake as coming from a Yankee.  “ ‘Tee’ loved to play his guitar and sing.  In times of real and perceived crises, he always wore his perpetual and impish grin,” Sturkey fondly remembered.  

In early December 1965, “Tee” was sent to Vietnam.  When he arrived, he was told he would replace his friend Lt. Johnson, whom he had seen only eight days before back in the states.  “Tee” was devastated when he learned that his buddy had been killed in action in his first week in Vietnam.  “Tee” was assigned to HMM-64 to fly UH-34 helicopters.  Since “Tee” hadn’t flown a UH-34 in three and half months, he was told to wait and to go back to Okinawa for more training before he could fly any missions.  An operations officer came in the room looking for a copilot to fly on a “milk run” to Da Nang.  “Tee” felt comfortable in the UH-34, so he volunteered to go along for the experience, a decision he soon came to regret.

On the morning of December 8, 1965, the copter, with Capt. Jim Givan in command, took off for Da Nang.  It was raining.  Fog cut the visibility way down.  Givan and Holmes piloted the helicopter at a low altitude, just far enough off the coast as to avoid ground fire.  The weather took a turn for the worse.  While winds were gusting up to thirty-five knots, the flight to Da Nang was completed without any incident.  The crew unloaded their cargo, helicopter parts and equipment, and the necessary liquids, eighty cases of beer, before returning to their base.  The weather went from bad to worse.  Clouds had dropped down to two hundred feet above sea level.    While flying just above the wave tops with automatic controls, something went wrong, terribly wrong.

Tee (left) and his buddies in Vietnam

With no warning of any kind, the engine died.  Enemy fire from the beach riddled the air craft.  Being less than two hundred above the water level, there was no time to get out.  Within seconds, the UH-34 hit the water.  “Tee was the last one of the crew to safely exit the aircraft.    “I struggled for some time before I realized I had not released my seat belt and shoulder harness.  I was going to the bottom.  When I finally got out, it was a long way to the surface and it seemed an eternity to get there,” remembered Holmes.  The waves were eight feet high.  The salty ocean spray pommeled the four crew members.  The men were scattered and not able to see each other unless they were on the crest of wave at the same time.  The other ships in the flight returned to pick up their comrades.  The men in the water were in a dilemma.  If they waved their arms, they would alert the gunners on the beach.  If they didn’t, they might not be seen.  “It was an easy choice, I waved and splashed like a maniac!”  “Tee”, the captain, and the crew chief, Sgt. Glenn, were hoisted to safety.  Cpl. Corle, the gunner, didn’t make it. 

“Tee” survived his tour of duty in Vietnam.  After the war, Holmes worked a successful 25-year stint as a  sales representative of the Cram Map Company, followed by 17 years of service to Home Depot.   

As one of the ageless ones, “Tee’s” death from cancer  on June 16, 2013 came as a mind numbing shock to his scores of friends, who still see his perpetual smile and remember his endless wit.  

  “I shall forever on my days left on this earth miss ‘Tee’ Holmes and his smile and his stories and his friendship and his gentle ways,” wrote Anna Montford Shepard.

“Tee's” classmates in Paul Wilkes' chemistry class at Dublin High can remember the famous ‘Tee’ Holmes method" of problem solving, when he would sometimes arrive at a correct answer by an illogical injection of irrelevant numbers into an heretofore-unknown formula. There must have been a genius hiding in Tee somewhere, commented Phillip Haynes, who as a ground soldier in Vietnam, saw “Tee” and the chopper pilots  (and medics) as the heroes of the war..

           Outside of his wife Peggy and daughter Carrie, no one knew “Tee” Holmes better than high school classmate and friend of more than six decades, Earl Vaughn.  Holmes and Vaughn grew up in the exciting, carefree years of the 1950s in Dublin.  

They laid Tee’s body to rest, fittingly in the Georgia National Cemetery in Canton, on Monday.  In his last final words to his best friend, Vaughn told “Tee’s” mourners what they already knew.  They had all listened to stories (laughing, crying or learning from them,) they all had listened to his music and everyone  present fondly  remembered the friend they had known since the first time they met him.

         

         “I'm fairly certain I have never used the word "precious" to describe Tee Holmes before,” Vaughn remarked.  But, I think it's safe to say that Tee was precious to all of us.  He was a loving husband and father to Peggy and Carrie, and a treasured friend to the rest of us,” concluded Vaughn.

Pete Jernigan and Tee Holmes

ca. 1960

It was in the year 1965, when we almost lost “Tee” for the first time,  when Johnny Mandel and  Paul Webster’s “The Shadow of Your Smile” was awarded the Grammy’s Song of the Year and the Oscar’s Best Original Song.  Webster’s opening lyrics perfectly capture the sentiment of the friends of the young boy whom they came to know and love; “The shadow of your smile when you are gone will color all my dreams and light the dawn.”

Steve Rainey, Tee Holmes, Pete Jernigan

ca. 1960

THE SPANISH AMERICAN WAR

THE SPANISH - AMERICAN WAR


This month marks 115th anniversary of the climax of the Spanish-American War.   The combat in Cuba lasted only a few weeks.  Consequently, only a few Laurens Countians saw any action during the war.  The origin of the war goes back to the early 1890s  when Cuban political parties were formed to seek independence from Spain.  Before it was over, the United States would spend four years fighting a war which did not officially end until July of 1902, when hostilities in the Philippines finally ceased.

On the day after Valentine's Day in 1898, the U.S.S. Maine exploded in Havana Harbor.  After an investigation determined that the explosion had been caused by a mine, cries for war and "Remember the Maine!" were heard over the entire country.   U.S. Naval Forces under the command of Commodore George Dewey began moving toward the Philippines.  On April 19th, 1898, Congress approved a resolution declaring war against Spain.  After months of training, U.S. Marines landed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on June 10th.   Ten days later, the main U.S. force arrived in Santiago Harbor.  

On July 1st, the battle for control of Cuba took place in the heights of San Juan.   Col. Henry K. Carroll commanded the 3rd, 6th, and 9th (Colored) Cavalry regiments.   Colonel Leonard Wood commanded the 1st and 10th Cavalry regiments together with the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, known as the "Rough Riders."   Gen. Joseph Wheeler, namesake of Wheeler County, Georgia and a former Confederate Cavalry General, was originally in command of the American Cavalry in Cuba.  Wheeler fell ill early on in the fighting.  It was said that, at the sight of the retreating Spanish soldiers  dressed in their blue coats, Wheeler yelled "Hurrah!  We've got the d... Yankees on the run!"  

Along the Santiago Road near the San Juan River Valley, Carroll's Cavalry was waiting to attack.  The 9th Colored Regiment held the right.   Their objective was Kettle Hill.  Behind the 9th, the "Rough Riders" were in held in reserve.   As the lead elements began to tire, the Buffalo Soldiers of the 9th Cavalry became entangled with the "Rough Riders."   The 9th made it to a depression about half way up the hill.   Col.  Roosevelt told the commanding officer of the 9th to charge or get out of the way.  As Roosevelt galloped ahead, the soldiers of the 9th took to their feet and their horses and followed him.    The Spaniards were falling back, from one line of defense to another.  The cavalry swarmed to the top of the hill to plant their colors.

Spanish soldiers concentrated rifle and artillery fire on the victorious Americans.  The battle swung back and forth.  Roosevelt took four men and charged the Spanish line.  After their officers had deserted them, the men of the 9th  jumped into action and followed Roosevelt, who led the men to victory and became immortal in American history.

One Laurens County man was a member of the Buffalo Soldiers of the United States Army.  William Little was born in Baldwin County, Georgia on April 4, 1875.  Little enlisted in the army in 1898.  He was assigned as a cook in Company F of the  9th U.S. Cavalry.  Little remembered Col. Roosevelt as "a great fighter who would get on his horse and say 'follow me' which the men gladly did."  After the war, Little  re-enlisted on April 11, 1899 in the 1st Cavalry.  On September 16, 1900,  he was shipped overseas to the Philippine Islands.  Private Little was assigned as an orderly to Governor-General Arthur MacArthur.

Arthur MacArthur has served as adjutant of the 24th Wisconsin Infantry during the Civil War.    At eighteen years of age, MacArthur led his regiment up Missionary Ridge and won the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism.  He was promoted to major and then to Colonel at nineteen  years of age.  Col. MacArthur was promoted to Brigadier General during the Spanish American War.  He was appointed military governor of the Philippines in 1900.  Small insurrections took place until 1902.  He was subordinated to a civilian governor, William Howard Taft,  in 1901.   MacArthur was described by one colonel as "the most egotistical man I have ever seen until I met his son."  His son was the legendary General Douglas MacArthur.

After three years and twenty three days of service, Little was discharged from the service. Little returned to Dublin where he was living at 606 South Jefferson Street in 1946.  At the age of eighty five, Little was living alone but he loved piddling around in his garden and going to church.

The war continued in Cuba for a few more weeks.   President William McKinley signed a resolution annexing Hawaii as a territory of the United States on July 7th,  1898.  On July 17th, Cuban and Spanish forces surrendered at Santiago.  A month later U.S. forces occupied Manila,  the capital of the Philippines.   The Treaty of Paris was signed on April 11, 1899.  Some Spanish forces continued to resist until June.

  Those Laurens County men who did serve during the Spanish-American War saw much less action. Laurens County men actually began their training in the early 1890s when the Dublin Guards were formed.  The guards mustered in the hall of the Stubbs-Leitch Building during the Spanish-American War.  The building was located at the southwest corner of West Jackson Street and South Jefferson Street.   Most of the men joined units in Georgia.  William W. Ward, a river boat captain of wide repute, joined the Macon Hussars which were mustered into the U.S. Army as the 1st Georgia Regiment.  The Hussars trained at Fort Oglethorpe at Chickamauga Park, Georgia.  From there, the Georgians were sent to Puerto Rico in anticipation of a full scale battle in the Caribbean.  The war ended so quickly that Ward never saw any action.

Other Laurens Countians who served in the armed forces during the Spanish-American war were John D. McDaniel, William Lingo, Jule B. Green, Andrew J. Bass, "Pet" Pritchett, Neal Jones, J.E. Burch, Wesley Kea, and "Windy" Williams.  It is a shame that the newspapers of the era have not survived.  They would add many more details to our knowledge of the activities of our county's men during the war.

The Spanish-American War was one of the shortest, but also one of the most important, wars in our country's history.  It established the United States as a world power.  America began its territorial control over the islands of the Pacific Ocean.  Within forty years the control of the Pacific Ocean would become one of the main focal points of World War II.  The lasting reminders of the war in our community are streets named for some of the war's most well known participants.  Grateful Dubliners named streets for Gen. Joseph Wheeler, Adm. George Dewey, Adm. Winfield Scott Schley, and Col.  Theodore Roosevelt.  Roosevelt Street was renamed in the 1940s.  After  Lawrence Street was named in honor of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the city council changed Roosevelt Street in southwestern Dublin to Hester Drive.  That portion of North Calhoun Street north of West Moore Street was originally named Sigsbee Street after Charles Sigsbee, captain of the " U.S.S. Maine. "  The Dublin Guards, who intensified their training during the war, later became Company A of the 121st Georgia Infantry and the first National Guard company in the southeastern United States.

KORIEAN POWs WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN

The Korean War officially ended on July 27, 1953 sixty years ago.  They were prisoners of war in the so called "Forgotten War."  Under the truce agreement, prisoners of war were to be returned.   Decades later it was revealed that about a thousand American POWs were never returned to their country.  This is a story of three  who made it back home, and one who didn't.
 

Master Sergeant Wesley Hodges had been in a war before.  In World War II, Hodges was a member of the 38thMechanized Cavalry Recon Squad that repelled German counteroffensive in Monscham, France in Dec. 1944.  He was a bantam driver, and his squad was the first to enter Paris on August 25, 1944.  Hodges was awarded three bronze stars for actions in North Africa, Normandy, and France.   On Nov. 2, 1950, Sgt. Hodges was with the First Cavalry group at Unsong.  All of his battalion, including the commanding officer, were taken to Pyoktong, where they were held until August, 1951.   From there they were moved to Camp No. 3, Chansong.  Hodges remained at Chansong until he was moved to Wervon.

Sgt. Hodges, who was awarded the Silver Star for his heroism in Korea,  told of a terrible life in ten by ten huts. "We were crowded and slept on mud floors.  We had no haircuts, no shaves, and few clothes.  We did get some trousers and jackets in July, 1951. " When asked about medical treatment, the sergeant just shook his head.   While in the prison, Hodges dropped from one hundred seventy one  pounds down to 90 pounds.   Hodges and thirty three hundred other POWs signed an appeal for peace, and act for which he and others were later chastised by the American government.  Of that group, half made it out.  One thing that kept him going were the letters which starting coming from his wife in October, 1951.   Hodges, who had three brothers in the service, said "I'm just happy to put my feet under mama's table in Dublin."

Left to right: In soldier's uniform (tie, with cap) Emerson Burns,  center (with tie and hat) Wesley Hodges and right (in dark long sleeve shirt between flags) 

Emerson Burns  left Adrian, Georgia at the age of eighteen  when he joined the Army in 1949.  Burns was sent to Korea on August 4, 1950.  While in Korea, Sgt. Burns worked as a radio operator and truck driver.  In November 1950,  Burns and his unit barely escaped capture when the Chinese Army overran his division.   A member of HQ Company, 38th Regiment, 2nd Division, Burns was in Wanju in January of 1951 when he and seven hundred fifty other soldiers were taken prisoner.    Burns and his unit had gotten through the roadblock at Kunure, where many of the 2nd Division troops had been killed.    Burns' six by six truck had its gas tank shot out.  The men were forced to march for three months.  On the seven hundred mile march the men were given twelve total days of rest.   One in five of the men would live to see the end of the war.  Burns and the others were taken to Camp Number 1 near Chonwon.  When they first arrived,  the prisoners were fed twice a day.  Their diet mainly consisted of soy beans and millet.   Later the meals were changed to dry fish and rotting eggs.  They had to eat it.  It was their only food.

Temperatures in the Korean winter often fellow to thirty degrees below zero.  Burns (left)  recalled that the men were allowed to have a fire in a home-made furnace for about an hour a day.  The men lived in mud huts with mud floors.   Eventually Burns was stricken with beri-beri, a disease caused by vitamin deficiencies.    When truce talks began in 1951,  the prisoners were allowed to write letters home.  In the long days in the mud huts, Burns dreamed of living in Dublin.  He did not know that his parents, Mr. and Mrs. R.D. Burns, had already moved to Dublin.  Burns wrote home several times, stating that he was doing as well as could be expected.

Tyrois Odom, another Adrian boy who eventually moved to Laurens County, was a cannoneer in Battery C, 555th Field Artillery.    On the night of July 13, 1953, Odom was wounded in the hip during fighting between Kumhwa and Kumsong.  "We had been firing pretty regular.  We had been hit quite a bit in return.  About 1:30 a.m. we got a direct hit.  We had to leave our guns and take cover on the side of the mountain, " Odom said.   Odom remembered hearing bugles, but had no idea that his position was about to be attacked.  His battery was surrounded.  All that didn't surrender were killed.  The Associated Press called the action "one of the worst massacres of Americans in the Korean War."   The artillery was providing support for the South Korean army when three Chinese divisions smashed the U.S. lines from three directions.

Odom was lying down when the attack came.  He sat up and saw a Chinese soldier firing.  The shots were coming toward him.   The little puffs of dirt were getting closer.  He whirled around.  A bullet hit him in the hip, causing Odom's leg to double up.   Odom decided to lay motionless, what he learned as a child as "playing possum."  It worked.  The Chinese soldiers kept moving, leaving Tyrois lying dead, or so they thought.  Two other Americans were dead, each within fifty feet of Odom.   Odom and another soldier, Austin, who wasn't wounded,  "played possum" for sixty hours.   Austin had his helmet kicked off, but didn't move a muscle.  The pair survived on a case of c-rations and creek water for eight days.   They may have never been detected until  an American bomb blast buried them in dirt.  "Then we had to move and they captured us," Odom explained.   Unable to walk, he was carried by stretcher and truck for several days.  He spent only a few days in a camp before the war ended.

After the war, POWs were being released daily.  The members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars,  under the leadership of R.T. Peacock, Jr., W.M. Towson, Johnny Floyd, Lamar Thornton and W.G. Hanley, and the American Legion, represented by H. Dale Thompson, Harold E. Ward, Murray Chappell, and Horace Hobbs,  began plans to honor the hometown heroes with a welcome home parade.    A large banner welcoming home the trio was placed downtown.  Merchants displayed American flags prominently throughout the downtown area.

A celebration was held on October 2, 1953.  It was one of the largest crowds ever assembled in Dublin.  Bill Courson was the master of ceremonies.  Speaking that day were W.W. Jordan, mayor pro tem  whose only son was killed in World War II, and Guy Stone, National Executive of the American Legion.  The families of the three men were honored guests at the event.

Albert Arnau Lewis, of Laurens County,  served for six years in the United States Army through all of World War II.  When the United States entered into the Korean War, Lewis re-enlisted in the Army.  Sergeant Lewis, of the 503rd Field Artillery,  fell into the hands of the North Koreans and was sent to a prison camp.  Word was sent to the American government that Lewis died of pulmonary tuberculosis on April 30, 1951.  Nearly three years after his death the truth was revealed about the his death.   Lewis did not die from tuberculosis, but from malnutrition.  He starved to death.  There were no parades for Sgt. Lewis.  His name on the war memorial on the courthouse lawn and a short story in The Courier Herald are the only public memorials to the fallen soldier.

This is the story of four unforgettable men of the so called "forgettable war."  They are reminders of what we are, or what we should be, as Americans.  Let them never be forgotten.

And now, let us remember those Laurens Countians who gave their lives during the Korean War Era: James E. Daniel, Robert H. Grinstead, Roy T. Hughes, Albert A. Lewis, Joseph E. McCullough, T.J. McTier, Walter E. Nesmith, James C. Rix, Bobby Robinson, Ralph B. Walker, Bobby R. Wood, and Lonnie G. Woodum.