Our Servicemen and women were center stage at schools around the Upstate and Western North Carolina this Veteran’s Day, as students got to see history come to life. Wade Hampton High school ROTC students watched in awe as World War II veteran Dwight Clark recalled a military maneuver in which he saved a 3-day old baby's life while rescuing hostages in the Philippines in 1945.
Clark says, "We crossed the lake to the camp. The paratroopers dropped in and we brought everybody out. It was beautiful..." How close was he to the action? He smelled the smoke from General Douglas MacArthur’s corncob pipe. "General MacArthur was so happy…. He said God was with us today."
Clark was one of the more than two dozen veterans to be recognized for their service to our country Wednesday at Wade Hampton High in Greenville County. Korean War veteran Billy Rodgers was a machine gun operator on the front lines. He received a Purple Heart after he was shot by the Chinese in 1952. Rodgers says, "They carried me in the M.A.S.H. unit and the doctor was cutting my pants off and looking at my wound, which was a hip wound and came out the groin... and I said Doc, am I gonna be alright… and he says, son, I don't really know, I’m a dentist! I thought that was kind of nice for him to make me laugh." Sharing his contagious sense of humor as he tells a story, Rodgers chooses to focus on the positive. "It’s easier to think about light things, the happy things, and the funny things and the weird things, rather than the dark things.”
While we think of Veterans Day as a way to thank him, and those like him, he is thankful too.
"What I remember is the people who helped me, the kid who carried me down the hill, the nurse, the doctor, even those he was a dentist," says Rodgers. These men say they are never happier, than when they are with one another. "They went through the same junk I went through. They are just my kind of guys."
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