At 91, military veteran still serving

By Gary Gray
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: December 8, 2008

SALTVILLE, Va. – Samuel Hugh Helton, 91, sat at the center of a long metal table inside the modestly furnished Hardy Roberts VFW Post 7328 as snowflakes flew by the building’s windows.
He faced forward, rigidly, as if at attention, decked out in dress uniform, complete with polished boots and glossy buttons – a military mannerism he maintains to this day in his role as the post’s adjutant and firing detail commander.
An assortment of articles, old photos and newspaper clippings marking his World War II military legacy sat on the table or lay nearby: a picture of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s body hanging upside down in 1945 alongside his mistress Clara Petacci in Milan; a flattened and framed gunny sack with the names of places visited written on it in black ink; his discharge papers from the U.S. Army, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines.
“Hugh Helton’s left his DNA all over this world,” said Post 7328’s 71-year-old bugler, Ralph Frye, as three other fellow members chuckled at the remark.
They sat opposite him in folding chairs, giving Helton the stature of headmaster while they became willing pupils.
Helton arranged, re-arranged and straightened the paper memories, picking them up and giving them a tap to square the edges now and then.
The gregarious Helton was born in Elk Garden, Va., in 1918. His father, who worked on a farm, moved his wife, three sons and one daughter to Saltville in 1924 where his hourly waged jumped from $1 to $2.
“I’ve known him since the ‘30s,” said Tommy Louthen, 76, the post’s chaplain. I lived across from his family. I remember we used to throw rocks at him.”
Helton cocked his head toward Louthen, opened his eyes wide and answered: “That’s because I’d get all the ladies and they wouldn’t.”
By 1937, just after he finished high school, Hugh Helton talked his brother Carl into joining the U.S. Army with him.
“I was only 17, and he and I didn’t really want to go in, but we didn’t want to back out,” he said. “So we got to drinking and – well, back then there wasn’t anything for a man to do. You might cut somebody’s lawn for a nickel. I wanted to get out and see the world.”
His first stop was Fort Howard, Md., with the 12th Infantry, 8th Division. He referred to it as “the old army,” before the traditional 12-man squads were formed.
“I made ‘expert’ with the old Springfield rifle and was selected to serve on the honor guard for President Franklin D. Roosevelt,” he said. “That was before Pearl Harbor was attacked. We made trips to Washington, D.C., to serve in the honor guard for King Edward VIII [British king] and General de Gaulle of France.”
When Helton was discharged in 1940, Hitler was on the move in Europe. The veteran moved to Baltimore where he went to work at Bethlehem Steel Co. as a fabricator, working there until 1942.
“The FBI and Customs and Immigration Service were rounding up Germans, Italians and Japanese who were in this country illegally, and I was offered a [civilian] job at Fort Howard to guard the prisoners,” Helton said.
Meanwhile, allied ships were being sunk by the Germans in the Atlantic Ocean and men were jumping ship to avoid being torpedoed by U-boats.
But instead of shying away, Helton got the itch once more to see the world and joined the Merchant Marines, a fleet of U.S. civilian-owned ships under the authority of the U.S. Coast Guard engaged in the transportation of troops, weapons and the trade of goods and services.
“One reason I joined was because I wanted to get out and see some action,” Helton said while stretching his head upward a bit.”
But never having stepped foot on a ship, Helton had to undergo 90 days of training at Sheep’s Head Bay in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Forty-five days into that training word spread that the Merchant Marines were looking for 500 volunteers to ship out immediately. Believing the real thing would be a lot better than training, Helton jumped at the opportunity.
The luxury cruise ship the Queen Mary had been converted into a troop transport vessel, and Helton thought that his first tour at sea would be on the famous ship.
“Not my luck – we ended up on an old tanker, and we headed for Aruba [island in the Caribbean Sea] to pick up a load of high-octane fuel for the American and British air forces,” he said. “From there we headed to Bristol, England, way up on the northern route to miss the German U-boats.”
He would end up making five round trips to England, losing four of the 60 ships in the convoy.
“We’d anchor the ship way out from land and take smaller boats,” he said about visits to England and other ports of call. “We’d take food with us and give it to people. They didn’t have much.
“We’d also hit the bars. We’d get a cab driver – I remember in England, all they had was White Horse Scotch Whisky.”
Helton also recalled that some visits to England weren’t all fun and games.
“I remember we could hear the V-2 rockets whizzing over our heads,” he said.
The V-2 was the first ballistic missile and first man-made object to scream overhead at more than 60 miles above the Earth’s surface.
The Germans were still trying to perfect the missile’s trajectory at war’s end. That didn’t happen, though the weapon did kill more than 7,000 military personnel and civilians.
That count could have been much higher, Helton said.
“If he’d [Hitler] developed it earlier on, he would’ve blown England out of the water,” he said.
His travels also took him on what he called, “the pineapple run,” in which he and his mates would sail back and forth from California to different ports in Hawaii picking up and dropping off fuel and fresh water.
He also spent time aboard a freighter on a route from Newport News, Va., through the Panama Canal to North Africa. The ship was loaded with 300-pound bombs.
“We hauled stuff there to help General [George] Patton fight [German General Erwin] Rommel, and from there we’d head to Sicily and France,” he said.
He also signed on to ship out to the Philippines, and was there when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
“The war had been over for two months, but the Japanese over there would not give up,” he said. “American troops went out to these caves with a bullhorn and told them to come out. Some came out shooting; they just wouldn’t believe the war was over.”
Helton said he witnessed American soldiers go to the edge of caves in which the Japanese were hiding and give them one warning.
“After that, they’d use the flamethrowers to kill them as they hid in the caves,” he said. “They wanted to die for their emperor.”
In 1946, World War II was over and Helton had logged about 300,000 miles at sea in nearly three years with the Merchant Marines. At that point, Helton said, he finally felt like he had scratched his itch.
He came back to a port on America’s West Coast, went to Stockton, Calif., and bought a one-way Greyhound Bus ticket to Saltville.
Shortly after his return he married Saltville’s Christine Colley. They have two daughters and a son.
He helped form VFW Post 7328 and went to work for Olin Chemical at one of its plants in Saltville.
“The first thing I did was I went to work on a labor gang that helped build the plant,” he said. “I worked my way up from that to foreman, making about $3 an hour. I worked there 20 years.”
He later went into business in Saltville with his brother-in-law, opening a furniture refinishing shop. He remained at the shop for 20 years.
In 1988, with Helton already in possession of honorable discharges from the U.S. Army and U.S. Coast Guard, the government decided to classify the Merchant Marines as a branch of military service in its own right.
That means he holds three honorable discharges from three separate branches of the armed services – a feat post members say not too many Americans have accomplished.
Today, the ever-alert and surprisingly healthy Helton takes no blood pressure medication, cholesterol pills or any prescribed medications.
“Cookies,” he said with a straight face. “I eat cookies with every meal.”
David Catron, 75, the post’s quartermaster, first met Helton in 1961 and would buy furniture from his shop.
“I don’t know of anybody of his age that does what he does,” Catron said. “Besides his duties here, he always helps people when they ask.”
Barry Greene, 66, post commander, has known Helton since 1989. Greene agreed with Catron about Helton helping people and also said the 91-year-old still sings in his church choir.
Frye, the bugler who made the other members crack up when he said Helton had “spread his DNA all over this world,” also called him “their hero.”
Helton hasn’t changed at all in the 12 years he has known him, Frye said, and his resiliency is something to behold.
“I just hope we can do this again when I’m 100,” a grinning Helton told the Herald Courier after the interview.

Ellie