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thedrifter
03-15-08, 08:07 AM
Wars of last 100 years touched many lives in Greensboro
By Jim Schlosser
Staff Writer
Saturday, Mar. 15, 2008 3:00 am

GREENSBORO — By the time Greensboro welcomed the 20th century, it had established itself as ready to take up arms.

The 20th century was no different.

During World War I, Greensboro sent more than 1,500 men and women off to war. Eighty-six from the city, including a woman, nurse Annie Revelry, died either in combat or from deadly diseases that were more dangerous than bullets.

One of the last surviving World War I vets from Greensboro, philanthropist Joseph Bryan, said in a 1991 interview that his memory was not of mustard gas and soldiers in gas masks. Most of all, Bryan, who died in 1995, remembered many dying of influenza and pneumonia. Revelry contracted pneumonia attending the sick and wounded on the French front.

Memories of World War I arose from the ashes in 2000 when fire swept the Grissom Building housing Burtner Furniture Co. downtown.

Owner Tiny Burtner said the fire destroyed everything except the contents of the store's safe. When he opened the safe he found in sound condition the watch, medals and other personal items belonging to his uncle, Henry K. Burtner, the first Greensboro soldier to die in that war.

All of North Carolina's World War I vets are said to be dead, and only one is believed to be alive in the nation.

World War II

Now World War II veterans are dying off. Fortunately, many told their stories to military historian Ned Harrison (himself a World War II vet) and others.

If the Civil War transformed Greensboro at the end, World War II consumed it from start to end, 1941-45.

The government called on manufacturers such Cone, Blue Bell and Burlington Industries to make uniforms and other gear for the military. Vick Chemical Co., maker of cold remedies, switched to making lubricants for military vehicles.

Insurance workers at Pilot Life's headquarters near Sedgefield made room on their campus for officers assigned to the U.S. Army Air Corps eastern command. The officers slept in the old Sedgefield Inn across High Point Road from Pilot Life.

War-bond drives, victory gardens and scrap-metal drives to turn junk into bullets dominated daily life. Greensboro residents endured food and gas rationing, and blackouts of windows so the city looked dark when viewed from airplanes.

The government feared the Germans and Japanese would target Greensboro because of the petroleum tank farm near the airport. The airport became a military installation during the war, with soldiers encamped in woods off the runway.

City leaders — who had watched the city suffer during the Great Depression — saw the war as an economic stimulus. They went after every war-related contract possible. The big plum came when the Army Air Corps announced in 1943 that it would build a basic training camp, BTC-10, in Greensboro. It later became the Overseas Replacement Depot.

The facility opened within nine months, a city within city, covering more than 500 acres with about 900 buildings that stretched from Summit Avenue near East Bessemer Avenue and east to English Street.

Greensboro people opened their homes to the soldiers. Romances bloomed, and more than a few Yankee men met local women, married and made the city home after the war. One was Ed Wynn, a Long Island native who rose to the rank of major on the Greensboro police force.

"I first saw my wife on the Glenwood bus," he said in 1993, recalling the crowded bus system that hauled soldiers and civilians all over Greensboro.

Of the 9,763 men and women from the Greensboro area who went to war, according to historian Ethel Arnett, 264 were killed while training or in combat. A loss that hit the city hard was that of George Preddy, who still ranks high as an ace in the U.S. Air Force, which grew out of the Army Air Corps. He is credited with shooting down 27 enemy planes, more if unconfirmed hits are counted.

Preddy downed a German aircraft that was attacking a crippled American bomber. As a result, the bomber made it back to base.

The bomber's co-pilot was a Georgian, the late Allen Matthews, who settled in Greensboro after the war. He learned in 1984 that the man who had saved his life was a Greensboro native, George Preddy. He couldn't thank Preddy. The air ace was killed on Dec. 25, 1944, when an Allied anti-aircraft squad mistook him for a enemy plane and shot him down.

Four months later, Preddy's brother, fighter pilot William Preddy, was shot down over what's now the Czech Republic. A farmer hauled him in a horse cart to a hospital in Prague, where the Germans kept the farmer and his patient waiting for 45 minutes. Preddy died.

A female casualty of the war was Mary Nicholson of Greensboro, who learned to fly here and joined the Air Transport Auxiliary of the Royal Air Force. She ferried planes between bases in England and was killed in a crash.

Some of those who fought and made it home assumed no wars would loom soon. They signed up for the reserves, figuring there was little chance they would be activated.

Five years later, they were called back to active duty for combat. The Korean War had America and its allies fighting the world's largest fighting force: the Chinese army.

Korea

Unlike the unity that existed during World War II, the Korean War proved divisive. Many Americans disagreed with President Harry Truman's decision to send troops to the Korean peninsula after the North Koreans attacked South Korea.

Those who weren't opposed to the war nevertheless accused the administration of fighting the war half-heartedly.

Get in or get out of Korea, evangelist Billy Graham thundered during a crusade in Greensboro in 1951.

William Gerichten of Kernersville was a U.S. Marine caught in the war's most fierce fight, the battle of the Chosin Reservoir. In frigid winter weather, an estimated 100,000 Chinese troops surrounded 17,000 Marines, 2,000 Army soldiers and 1,000 British Royal Marines.

It took 15 days for the Americans and British to fight their way out of the entrapment at "Frozen Chosin," suffering heavy casualties.

Gerichten said in 2000: "When it really got cold, it got 40 and 45 below zero, and that's not counting the windchill factor. I remember I wore seven layers of clothing."

The war ended in a stalemate in 1953, with 85 Greensboro-area men killed.

A survivor, the late Greensboro surgeon John Lyday, later became the model for Trapper John in the movie and TV series "M*A*S*H." One of Lyday's fellow battlefield surgeons, Dr. Dick Hornberge, wrote under a pen name a book about his unit that became the basis for the movie and series.

Vietnam

After Korea, America enjoyed about 12 years of peace before it was fighting again, this time in the jungles of Vietnam. A photo of a soldier said it all. He was carrying a grenade launcher with words chalked on the side: "Here we go again."

The Greensboro area lost 78 men in Vietnam, including Lt. Billy Flynn, who had grown up in the Cone Mill villages. Bright and athletic, he quit Page High School his junior year after deciding he didn't have the political pull to win a West Point appointment.

He joined the regular Army, which had a special program for soldiers with potential for going to West Point. Flynn received an appointment through the program, graduated from West Point and was killed six months later in Vietnam.

Phill G. McDonald, another poor boy, was the city's hero of the Vietnam War.

At 25, he lived off the High Point Road near the coliseum, worked at a cedar plant and was devoted to Central Assembly of God Church on Florida Street.

He would have been draft-exempt when he turned 26, but the day before his birthday, he received his notice.

McDonald was killed in Vietnam in 1968, after his platoon was trapped by an enemy machine gun nest. Wounded, McDonald crawled forward and threw grenades at the nest, then returned and kept firing to cover his comrades' escape. He saved many lives while sacrificing his own.

President Nixon awarded him the Medal of Honor posthumously. The plaza at the governmental center downtown is named for McDonald.

During the Vietnam War, Greensboro protestors joined others across the nation in denouncing the war. A weekly vigil took place outside the federal courthouse during the war.

Afghanistan and Iraq

The Persian Gulf war of the early 1990s was a fought and won without any hardship in Guilford. As best can be determined, the city and county suffered no casualties.

The same can't be said for the current Iraq war. To date, six Greensboro men have been killed there. No area deaths have been reported from Afghanistan. At least three killed in Iraq died in accidents. Josh Gibson, an Eastern Guilford High graduate, who was one of 13 who died when their helicopter crashed.

At least three died by the worst enemy of American soldiers in Iraq: roadside bombs.

The first, in 2003, was Army Cpl. Mark Anthony Bibby, 25, an A&T student who was in a local reserve unit called to active duty.

The veterans of this war are still young men. Unlike for those surviving from World War II and Vietnam, plenty of time remains to collect their stories.

Ellie