Several weeks ago, Bob Calton, a friend and chairman of the History Committee at the Belle Meade Country Club, asked me to identify the estimated 100 club members who served in the Army or Navy during World War II. I relished researching this and identified 142 club members who served in one of the armed forces during the war. Listed below are summaries of the war stories of eight of them. After you read them, I think you will agree that they were part of the “The Greatest Generation.”
George Paul Clements (1916-1988) was an Army Air Force lieutenant who served, during World War II, in an intelligence unit. His first major action was in the landing on Leyte in October 1944. On Leyte, he and his unit worked behind the Japanese lines. Along with gathering intelligence, they were instrumental in the rescue of the crew of a downed U.S. bomber. Clements continued to serve in the Philippines until after the Battle of Manila when he was able to rescue his mother and sister who had been stranded there throughout the Japanese occupation. Clements later came down with malaria and spent two months recovering in Thayer Military Hospital in Nashville.
Miss Cornelia Fort (1919-1943) was the second woman accepted into the Women’s Auxiliary Ferry Service in World War II. She was killed when her BT-13 basic training plane crashed 10 miles south of Markel, Texas on March 21, 1943. Cornelia was in route from Long Beach, California to Love Field in Dallas. The crash occurred because Flight Officer Frank Stamme Jr. was flying too close to Cornelia’s plane. His plane hit her’s, tearing off the tip of her plane’s wing and 10’ of her plane’s leading edge. He was able to control his plane, but her’s went into a spin and crashed. She was the first woman pilot to die on active duty in US history. Cornelia was 24 at the time of her death.
William Langley III “Red” Granbery (1920-2001) had his college education at Princeton interrupted by World War II. Enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Force, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in November 1943. The following May, on his fourth mission to drop resistance fighters and supplies in German-held territory, he was the bombardier of a stripped-down B-24 in the Eighth Air Force flying over occupied France. His plane was hit and burning, forcing him to bail out. He landed near Dreux in northwestern France where the underground lodged and fed him for eight days, providing him with a peasant’s smock for disguise. He was moved five times during this period, finally arriving at a villa near Paris where he met three other crew members who had similar experiences. There, he fell into German hands. The Gestapo put him in a French prison for thirty-six days of solitary confinement and questioning. There, he was fed bread, soup and coffee.
On Aug. 16, Granbery and other American and British officers and enlisted men were put in crowded boxcars with no provision for sanitation, and sent by rail to the German massacre center at Buchenwald near Weimar. Although not mistreated by the S. S. troops there, he witnessed many French and Russian civilians being herded into gas chambers. Before the horrors of Buchenwald were at their height, he was moved by boxcar to Stalag Luft III at Sagan. Several months later, he and others were marched through the snow in below zero temperatures to Moosburg, to which Allied troops were driving at the time. Two weeks later, on April 29, 1945, he was freed and landed in the United States on June 4th.. On October 10, 1953, Granbery married Anne Nichols Caldwell, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth Caldwell, of Nashville.
Kelly Leslie Dorris Jr. (1923-2018) attended Vanderbilt as a freshman, and left to accept an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he graduated in 1945. He served as an ensign in 1945 on the US Atlanta off the coast of Japan. Later in 1950, Leslie was selected by Admiral Hiram Rickover to be one of the first two officers in the new nuclear submarine program. Later, he was commander of the USS Trigger that accompanied the USS Nautilus to the North Pole. When he retired from the Navy in 1968, Commander Kelly was given the Legion of Merit.
Hugh J. Morgan, Jr. MD ( 1893-1961) was a brigadier general, Dr. Morgan commanded the 300th General Hospital, the Vanderbilt Medical Unit, during World War II. He also was the Chief Medical Consultant to the Attorney General of the U.S. Army during the war. This position entailed the clinical oversight and direction of field military medical personnel in all four theaters of the war.
John H. Noel (1937-2002) was a B-17 bomber pilot in the European theater during World War II. On July 28, 1943, Noel’s plane was shot down over Oschersleben, Germany, having literally been cut in two immediately behind Noel’s seat. Nevertheless, he was able to eject and parachuted into the North Sea, the only member of his ten-man crew to survive. Picked up by the Germans, he was incarcerated for twenty-two months in a Prisoner of War camp in Moosburg, Germany. A telegram delivered to his wife, Andromedia “Andy” Noel, said that he was missing in action. Six weeks later, she received another telegram stating that John was a prisoner of war.
Joe Thompson Jr. (1919-2012) enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in August 1941 where he became an aerial reconnaissance pilot. Earning his wings in Texas, he then sailed to England, arriving there in October 1942. Joe first flew with the British Royal Air Force’s 66th squadron before joining the 109th tactical reconnaissance squadron of the 9th Air Force, advancing to the rank of Major. He flew a P51 Mustang on more than 90 reconnaissance missions, mostly behind enemy lines, photographing Omaha Beach just two days before the D-Day Invasion, as well as German troop movements during the Battle of the Bulge. For his service, he received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Air Medal with fifteen Oak Leaf clusters and six Bronze Stars, the Distinguished Service Badge, and the French Croix de Guerre. A few weeks before his death, President Sarcozy of France honored Joe with the country’s highest decoration, the Legion of Honor.
Joe M. “Buddy” Whitson was a first lieutenant in Company E, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment in the U.S. Army. His regiment was with General Douglas McArthur when he fulfilled his promise to the Filipino people, made when he left Corregidor in 1942, that he would return. He did so on October 20, 1944 and by February 1945 his army had the Japanese cornered in caves at Corregidor. On “Buddy” Whitson’ 23rd birthday, Feb. 18, 1945, he and his regiment were in the thick of the Battle of Corregidor. They were successful. In one cave, where Whitson and his men were fighting, there was an explosion, shrapnel from which blinded Lt. Whitson for two weeks. He also was shot through the palm of his hand. For his bravery and leadership at Corridor, General McArthuur gave him the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest honor that can be given an American soldier. He also received three Silver Stars and two Purple Hearts.