KEEPING THE PEACE IN MILLTOWN

The Textiles Strikes of 1934

In a day when our young men and women of the Georgia National Guard are busy training to keep the peace on the other side of  the world in the desert cities of Iraq, it seems quite proper to remember a time when a hundred young Laurens Countians left their jobs and their schools, yes their schools, to protect the textile mills of West Georgia and their workers from strikers, some local and some brought in by northern unions to disrupt mill operations or protect workers’ rights, depending on how one looks at the situation.  It was a time, especially at the Bibb Mills in Porterdale, Georgia, when some of the peacekeepers, those imported in from northern cities by mill owners, were more violent than those simply seeking to earn a decent wage with decent working hours.

In the summer of 1934, a quarter of a million textile workers across the United States were very unhappy.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged the unions and the mill owners to resolve their differences without the use of a strike.  On September 4, 1934, fights broke out in Macon.  Later 17 people were arrested in Porterdale, a mill town in Newton County, Georgia.  By the middle of the month, violent outbreaks were paralyzing the cities of Macon, Columbus and Augusta, as well as smaller mill towns across the state.   By mid September,  three fourths of Georgia’s 60,000 textile workers were on strike.  Throughout the South, southern governors began calling out National Guard units to protect the state’s twenty-nine mills and those who continued to work in them.

On September 15th, after the conclusion of Georgia’s Democratic primary, Gov. Eugene Talmadge called nearly four thousand guardsman of the Georgia National Guard in an action which remains the largest peace time mobilization of the Guard in Georgia’s history.  Headquartered in Dublin was the 121st Infantry, the first National Guard regiment organized in the Southeast under the current system of the National Guard in 1919.

For years local members of the Guard had trained for civilian duty.  Only on rare occasions had the members of the 121st Infantry ever been called to face a mission of such magnitude.  Approximately a hundred men in Headquarters Company and Co. K under the command of Capt. T.C. Keen and Lts R.L. Webb, CL. Deveraux and Clifford H. Prince, summoned their men for duty.    Early on Monday
morning September 17, 1934, fifteen trucks pulled out of Dublin loaded with a hundred men, each armed with a rifle, 40 rounds of ammunition and a bayonet. Nine men, J.L. Sears, M.M. Cannon, R.E. Drew, R.L. Thomas, W.H. Drew, G.Z. Brown, A.R. Attaway, D.E. Sheppard and J.H. Carlisle ,volunteered their services to the mission to keep the peace in Porterdale.

The mobilization had an immediate impact on the community because  later that afternoon, eight of  the men were scheduled to attend football practice, not for some college team or a semi-pro squad but for the Dublin High School Green Hurricane.  Starters Bob Werden, “Peck” Dominy and John Hinton and reserves J.T. Hadden, Jack Flanders, Harris Dominy and Barton Tindol left their shoulder pads and jerseys behind and exchanged them for a olive drab uniform and a gun.

The guardsmen arrived in the mid afternoon and were immediately assigned to man machine gun positions at all entrances around the perimeter of the town and at strategic points inside the city limits.    Guardsmen patrolled the streets at all hours of the day to maintain order.  The main order of the day was to protect the mills and all persons legitimately entering or leaving the premises.

Fortunately for all of those concerned, there was very little trouble in Porterdale.  The greatest hardship for the boys was the lack of sleep.  Some guardsmen commented that if they were able to get some sleep, they would like to stay in town until Christmas.  Some of the men got to go to dances and dance with the local girls.    Lt. Deveraux commented that he had not been in his tent and that the only sleep he got was while he was walking on guard duty.  Sgts. Palmer Currell and Otis Sanders returned to Dublin to procure a load of coats and blankets when the weather turned cooler than usual. Lt. R.L. Webb commented, “ There are no baths, no steam heat at night and no moonshine.”

It has been said that an army travels on its stomach and the week in Porterdale was no exception.  Douglas Barron swore he did nothing but peel potatoes the entire time he was there.  Mess Sergeant Henry Walden prepared some decent meals which included a hearty plate of spaghetti and cheese.

By the end of the week the wave of violence across the state had waned.  Mill workers, with no way to accomplish their demands, returned to the their jobs, first in dribbles and then in large waves.  The only strife in Porterdale came from the peacekeepers who had been hired by the owners of the town’s four mills, one of which was the rope and twine factory, the largest of its kind in the world.  The hired mercenaries were all of northern and foreign descent and were very tough and armed with billy clubs and sawed off shotguns, according to one local guardsman.  A mill policeman got into a skirmish with a group of mill workers and fired into the crowd, striking, but not seriously, wounding three men.

As for the National Guard, it was a quiet week.  There were three shots fired and only one casualty.   Herbert “Zip” Beckham was in his tent when he was cleaning his supposedly unloaded rifle when it discharged and tore a hole in his tent.  There was a momentary panic, followed by hilarity and chastisement.  John McGlohorn suffered a similar embarrassment when his weapon accidentally discharged.   A guardsman from Hawkinsville was on guard duty late one evening when he heard something approaching in the woods.  He warned the  intruder to halt but got no response.  After a second warning, he fired his automatic rifle into the dark, only to find out that he had not killed a striker but a local farmer’s cow.  

The National Guard only made two arrests in Porterdale.  A sentry observed two “hillbillies” walking through the woods with their squirrel guns in hand. Operating on specific orders of martial law, the pair was confronted and their weapons were seized.  The men were sent to a specially prepared prison at Fort McPherson in Atlanta, though most of the local guardsmen believed they were free of any harmful intentions and that they just used poor judgment in walking armed through the woods in the middle of a military action.

By the end of the week with the situation at Porterdale well in hand, Gov. Talmadge relieved the 121st Infantry of its mission and ordered them to return to their homes and yes to their schools, just in time to attend the opening of the Dublin Theater and  to play Hawkinsville in the football game the following weekend.  Many of these men remained in the guard and served our country in World War II. Unfortunately many of them, including Bob Werden, Palmer Lee Braddy and  John R. Scarborough, were killed in action.

Members of the local national guard companies who participated in the mission at Porterdale were:

                         

Headquarter’s Company

Col. L.C. Pope
Lt. R.L. Webb
Lt. Joel Lord
Sgt. Bennett L. Carroll
Sgt. Lake T. Proctor
Sgt. Otis T. Sanders
Sgt. Hubert B. Willis
Sgt. Harry M. Hill
Corp. Thos. H. Hobbs
Corp. John W. Horne
Corp. Joseph H. Horne
Corp. F.C. Tindol
Corp. Wm. P. Tindol
PFC Thomas L. Cook
PFC Herman E. Lord
PFC Millard E. Barron
Pvt. Charles M. Barron
Pvt. Joseph A. Dickens
Pvt. Addison B. Savage
Pvt. John Scarborough
Pvt. Jack P. Snider
Pvt. Charles L. Webb
Pvt. Kelso C. Horne
Pvt. Lord B. Tindol
Pvt. Hardy Smith
Pvt. James R. Fountain
Pvt. Hunter Horne

Company K
                             

Capt. Trammell Keen
Lt. C.D. Deveraux
Lt. Clifford H. Prince
1st Sgt. C.G. White
Sgt. Albert O. Braddy
Sgt. Charles B.  Keen
Sgt. James A. Rivers
Sgt. Durrell Sapp
Sgt. Henry L. Walden
Corp. William S. Drew
Corp. Robert J. Lee
Corp. Joe Sumner

PFC Palmer L. Braddy
PFC Frank Brantley
PFC Herbert Beckham
PFC Hubert R. Clarke
PFC Ben F. Curry
PFC William Dominy
PFC John Gilbert
PFC Francis L. Hall
PFC AltonKillingsworth
PFC James Lord
PFC Ernest McGowan
PFC Joseph McGowan
PFC Edward E. Mullis
PFC Ernest L. Sellars
PFC Wm. P. Strickland
PFC Jack Flanders
PFC Willard Beasley
Pvt. Ray Camp
Pvt. George Carr
Pvt. Fred J. Coleman
Pvt. Stewart Conner
Pvt. Earle E. Crafton
Pvt. Letcher Curry
Pvt. Harris F. Dominy
Pvt. Ralph F. Edwards
Pvt. James R. Fort
Pvt. Thos. E. Fountain
Pvt. James D. Gordon
Pvt. J.T. Hadden
Pvt. Comer F. Holton
Pvt. Herbert C. Holton
Pvt. James F.  Jernigan
Pvt. Edward Jordan
Pvt. Alfred P.  Keen
Pvt. Oliver M. Laney
Pvt. Ernest H. Stewart
Pvt. George F. Lord
Pvt. James L. Maddox
Pvt. Jno M. McGlohorn
Pvt. John B. Passmore
Pvt. James L. Russell
Pvt. L.B. Smith, Jr.
Pvt. Jas. Scarborough
Pvt. George W. Stuckey
Pvt. Charles M. Sykes
Pvt. Kimball F. Thomas
Pvt. James W. Ward
Pvt. Ephron C. Wynn
Pvt. Leon R. Byrd
Pvt. Wm. E. Edwards
Pvt. Hudson T. Hall
Pvt. Robert Werden
Pvt. Jack Hadden
Pvt. John Hinton

MACK FITZGERALD

THE RAID ON PLOIESTI
Black Sunday

In the summer of 1943, it became apparent to the country’s top military strategists that in order for the United States to defeat Hitler and his German army, the oil refineries at Ploiesti, Romania must be destroyed in advance of the invasion of Italy  following the withdrawal of the Italian government from the war and the taking over the ancient country by German forces.

Operation Tidal Wave was planned to destroy or severely cripple oil production by the Axis powers.  One of the participants in the bold mission was Dublin’s Mack Fitzgerald.  After Mack, a native of Fitzgerald, Georgia, received his training as a flight engineer and gunner aboard a B-24 Liberator bomber, he and his crew were deployed to Europe, from where they were deployed to Bengasi, Libya in North Africa, located some 1200 miles from Ploiesti, Romania and within the range of the bombers.

“The Liberators were to conduct low-level bombing practice runs over the Sahara Desert in preparation for attacks in the Italian/Romanian theater.   Although designed for high altitude bombing, low level missions were critical for accuracy,” Fitzgerald recalled.

“Because of the nature of the planned mission, volunteers were asked to participate. All the airmen in the 98th Bomb Group volunteered for the mission except one. The men were told that if all the men were killed in their efforts to destroy the oil refineries and the destruction of the refineries was successful, the mission would still be considered a success. It was estimated that the destruction of the oil refineries would shorten the war by at least six months,” Fitzgerald remembered.

At dawn on August 1, 1943, a day which would later be called, “Black Sunday,” Mack’s plane, under the command of Hubert Womble, lifted into the war under complete radio silence as one of nearly 180 bombers flying in three waves north across the Mediterranean Sea.
 
“The lead navigator's plane went down in the sea. This created many problems for the large number of aircraft that were expecting to be led to Ploesti by the lead navigator. Waves 1 and 2 got off course by making a wrong turn. Wave 3 more closely followed the plotted route arriving 1st at the destination instead of last as previously planned,” Fitzgerald recollected..

The bombs of the first wave had longer fuses to create one mass explosion with the bombs of all three waves detonating at one time.  

“Wave 3 had to drop their bombs first. By the time the aircraft of waves 1 and 2 arrived at the refineries, they had to drop their bombs into an already exploding scene,” said  Mack, who  remembers seeing parts of the refineries up in the air higher than his airplane.

Mack's plane, hit by anti aircraft fire, lost 2 engines.  Hubert Womble, the pilot, had no choice but to make an emergency landing in an open field.   The pilot’s foot was amputated in the crash and the bombardier was left trapped in the plane.  Those who escaped fanned out in pairs.  Mack and his buddy, Sgt. Reid eventually turned themselves over to a Romanian farmer.   Still suffering from shrapnel in his foot, Mack was taken to a Ploiesti hospital for badly needed care.

From the hospital, the men were taken to a makeshift prison near Timisul, Romania in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.  One hundred and ten prisoners were confined in a small, cramped quarters.

Living off a diet of thin soup and crusted brown bread with occasional exercise, Mack and his fellow prisoners made it through one day at a time. Each and every escape attempt was unsuccessful.  On some days, the men survived by the simple presence of a radio.

“Some time after, we began to get  Red Cross food parcels with dried milk, candy bars, spam, soap and cigarettes,” Fitzgerald looked back as he also remembered wearing Romanian army clothes instead of the uniform he had on when his plane crashed.  Life in prison was made somewhat normal by the camp commander, who allowed the men to attend church and write postcards home.

On the last day of August 1944, elements of the Russian army began to move into the Timisul area from the north.  Prison guards came in to the barracks and told Mack and the prisoners that the war, for them at least for them, was over and the men were free to go.

        Arrangements were made and B-24s began arriving in Romania to pick up the 110 Americans to fly them aboard Liberator bombers back to Italy after 13 months of imprisonment. Mack returned home to the states and back to duty.

Mack’s life turned dramatically when he was summoned to Atlanta to visit his father, who was undergoing surgery.  While he was in the hospital, he met a beautiful student nurse, Deedy DeLoach.  They fell in love and married soon thereafter.

After a short recuperation period, Mack was assigned to  Cochran Field , an Army Air Corps training field south of  Macon, Georgia.   Shortly thereafter, Mack’s request for a transfer down the road to Warner Robins was granted.  As the war was coming to a close in July 1945, Mack Fitzgerald was discharged from the Army Air Corps in July 1945.   During his three and one half years of service in USAAF, Fitzgerald, received several medals, including,  the Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal and the POW Medal.

After a series of odd jobs, Mack went to work back home in Fitzgerald with Sears, for whom he had worked in Macon before the war. And he was home, home!. Mack and his family moved to Tifton in 1968 and in 1972 to Dublin, where he retired in 1980 after 25 years of service.

The Raid on Ploiesti was deemed as a failure because of  "no curtailment of overall product output" in oil production.   The daring and difficult raid on Plioesti became one of the costliest for the American Air Force in Europe. At least 53 aircraft and 660 pilots and crewmen were lost.  Considered the worst single day loss in the war, that day will be forever known as "Black Sunday".

But for Mack Fitzgerald, his family and friends and all of those people who have been blessed by his friendship and service to his community, that day is not the true story of Mack Fitzgerald.