“Boy, that was some show – and I had a ringside seat!” — “The whole invasion looked like a huge sand table covered with toys. We don’t even hear the roar of battle – the only guns I hear are my own.”
Tasked with keeping German air forces at bay during the D-Day invasion, along with his 506th fighter/bomber squadron, that was how one of Rockingham’s sons, Lt. Thomas C. ‘Tommy’ Leake III, described the scenes he witnessed above Normandy’s beaches on June 6, 1944.
In 1946-1947, like most of the country, Rockingham was looking forward and moving past World War II. Local businesses were stirring back to normal; land was donated for Richmond Memorial Hospital; and, a labor strike among the textile community brought the downside of the free market to our doorstep. Rockingham High’s debate team nearly won a state title arguing the resolution: “The federal government should provide a system of complete medical care for all citizens at public expense.”
But local uniformed men who had made the supreme sacrifice were still in the forefront of collective memory. Despite looking forward, we were determined not to forget.
Approximately 108 Richmond County servicemen lost their lives in the war. Among them, ten members of Rockingham’s First Methodist Church had a tangible connection to one Sunday School class. On July 20, 1947, the Ledbetter Bible Class – 110 strong – gifted and dedicated the Carillonic bells in the steeple tower to the ten.
Worshippers attending services since 1947 have passed the plaque on the wall commemorating them. It’s worth pulling back for a moment’s look at those remarkable young men.
Lt. Tommy Leake was one of only four who surpassed his 23rd birthday.
A member of student council and Phi Psi fraternity at NC State, Lt. Leake was a prolific letter writer. He details a firsthand account of the campaign as it unfolded from early June until the liberation of Paris in late August 1944. He tells of “making life miserable for the enemy”; and, of “straf[ing] tanks, trucks, and trains.” Tommy describes a Nazi army that abandoned much war materiel in its frantic retreat from the invading allies. Weapons and motorcycles were among discarded items; and, he told his mother of making silk sheets from captured German parachutes.
Like many, Leake was coaxed by false hopes springing from the invasion’s early successes. “If experts are … right, I’ll be home before you know it.” “I’m expecting the Germans to quit in the first week of October.”
He longed for the war’s end, hungered for news from home, mused about a peacetime career and future marriage, and eagerly followed the progress of his brother, Hal, who would fly in WWII’s China-Burma-India theatre. Leake was as human as the next young GI in complaining about army chow. Speculating about returning home, he ribbed his mother: “If you ever serve salmon, spam, or wieners, I’ll leave home!”
On a pass to London in August, he exulted about attending a broadcast of Glenn Miller’s band. Tommy had a chance to say his name and hometown on air.
On August 27, 1944, forty Luftwaffe fighter planes overwhelmed Lt. Leake’s 12-plane squadron. Several letters to Tommy from his mother, dated after that day, are especially poignant as she would not be informed of his death until November 14. Thomas C. Leake III rests in Epinal American Cemetery less than 200 miles from his La Chapelle airbase near the French-Belgian border.
The oldest of the ten honored Methodist GIs, Sgt. Hilliard C. Parsons, Jr., enlisted at age 28, just over two years before the attack on Pearl Harbor thrust America into the war. Assigned to Panama for some 40 months, Hill participated in the US military’s mission to defend the Panama Canal.
Sgt. Parsons was discharged from active duty two days after Japan’s formal surrender marked WWII’s close in September 1945. A son of Anna and H. C. Parsons, Sr., Hill’s father died suddenly about two weeks later. In November 1945, Hill re-enlisted and was assigned to the US Occupation force in Germany as a bomb disposal expert.
At age 35, Sgt. Hill Parsons suffered a heart attack in his quarters on August 4, 1946; he was pronounced dead upon his arrival at the hospital in Munich. On September 15, Hill was laid to rest in Eastside Cemetery, with military honors, near his dad.
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Among ten young Rockingham Methodist men honored for their WWII sacrifices, Andy Rohleder, Walter Covington, and Raymond White shared a friendship during their youth. That was only fitting as their fathers were friends and associates in the W. S. Covington cotton business. The earthly remains of the sons now rest in honor 7,000 miles apart. In memory, however, they are within whispering distance of each other as their families erected memorials to the three within the same block at Eastside Cemetery over 70 years ago.
Andrew H. ‘Andy’ Rohleder III played baseball for Rockingham High School before graduating in 1939. He enlisted in the Navy shortly after the war began, earning his commission and aviator’s wings in May 1943.
Autumn 1944 marked a crucial period in WWII’s Pacific war. Flying off the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, Andy and his fellow pilots of Air Group 18 were considered among the war’s most effective. As part of the force tasked with reducing enemy air capability ahead of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s liberation of The Philippines, Lt.(jg) Rohleder’s dive bomber was one of several aircraft lost in heavy fighting over Formosa on October 12, 1944. Andy was reported missing along with his radioman, Theodore Smith.
Declared dead in mid-December 1945, family and friends may have held scant hopes until Andy’s remains were positively identified in mid-1946, and he was temporarily buried in China. Andrew Rohleder was laid to rest in Hawaii’s National Memorial Cemetery within days after burials began there in 1949.
The future was promising for Walter Steele Covington, Jr. upon finishing Rockingham High with honors. Desiring a medical career, Walter first entered The Citadel before joining the Army in August 1943. Assigned to the medical reserves, Walter studied at Davidson before his call to active duty in 1944.
The actions of ground-based infantry troops typically decide wars, and this describes Walter’s 8th Division, 28th Regiment service. The French port of Brest became a key to delivery of allied munitions, and Pvt. Covington’s outfit was a part of seizing it from entrenched German defenders in late summer 1944.
The battle of Huertgen Forest followed, sprawling from eastern Belgium to western Germany near Cologne. Fought through Autumn 1944, the Huertgen offensive became a test of German resistance on home soil. Walter was killed in the Vossenack area on December 9, a week before the Battle of the Bulge opened. Three months would pass before the family learned of their 19-year old’s death. He is buried in the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Liege, Belgium, just 50 miles from where he fell.
Eager to serve his country, Callie Raymond White, Jr. enlisted in the Army Air Corps in March 1944 – barely 17 and before the school year ended. Permitted to finish high school, Raymond trained in electrical engineering at multiple colleges before reporting for duty in February 1945.
After the war’s end, Raymond was among a select group of pilot candidates chosen from hundreds as qualifying grew more competitive. Assigned to Headquarters Squadron of the Army’s 8th Air Force, he joined the allied occupation forces on Okinawa in October 1945.
Raymond White, Jr. died suddenly on January 29, 1946 at that faraway base, exactly one week after his last letter home. Just shy of his 19th birthday, this patriotic young man had been in the nation’s service nearly two years. He clearly possessed a sense of humor as among his high school class’s tongue-in-cheek ‘wills and testaments’ is noted: “Raymond White wills his wavy locks to [football] Coach [Fant] Kelly.”
Talented, motivated, and an Eagle Scout, a full life seemed filled with promise for Raymond. He is at rest in Hawaii near Andy Rohleder.
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Championship-caliber baseball has been a mark of Richmond County sports. One of ten Rockingham Methodist servicemen honored for their WWII sacrifices, Clyde Carlyle Capps was an early part of that tradition more than 80 years ago. Graduating with Rockingham High School’s class of 1940, Carlyle lettered in baseball and was a second baseman for the school’s first baseball state champion that year. In the championship game against Mt. Airy, Carlyle singled and scored as the team rallied late to win the title.
A notably proficient military pilot, Lt. Carlyle Capps was serving as a flight instructor when he was killed in a mid-air crash, in Mississippi, on April 23, 1944. He had earned his commission and wings only five months before. Some will recall his younger brother, R. C. ‘Billy’ Capps, who was active in the community, especially with the Boy Scouts.
A December 7, 1943 letter to his parents noted the second anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. In it, he recalled enjoying Cokes with a pal in Rockingham’s Fox Drug Store when the radio interrupted programming with news of the attack. Two of his observations capture the sentiments of young men, such as Carlyle, in that era: “I could see the anger and determination that was arising [in the surrounding faces].” “We of the United States are not barbarians, we love and believe in Jesus Christ, and live not by the sword.”
Lt. Carlyle Capps lies at rest near family in Rockingham’s Eastside Cemetery.
Capps’ friend and classmate, William L. ‘Billy’ Covington, was orphaned by age 15, losing his mom in 1930, then his dad in 1937. He went to live two older aunts on Page street, Mrs. Whitie C. Covington and Mrs. Ola C. Henderson. Billy was in uniform before the Pearl Harbor attack.
Co-piloting a B-24 Liberator bomber when it was shot from the skies over Erichshagen, Germany on May 19, 1944, Lt. Billy Covington’s fate, and that of his crew, sketches a story arc of the war’s hazards and tragedies; how long it lingered after the shooting stopped; and, finally, how people of former enemy nations came to reconcile.
We can imagine the lingering heartache among family and friends accompanying the news that a GI is missing. Immediately after the war, recovery teams diligently combed former combat areas in search of American and allied remains. A 1946 search of the Erichshagen site uncovered nothing of Billy, and only a set of ID tags from another crewmember.
In the late 1990s, an internet friendship struck up between a descendant of Covington’s crewmate, Laurence Nursall, and German businessman Enrico Schwartz. Although residing 200 miles away, Schwartz took a deep interest, searching over time with family and volunteers, finally unearthing a near-complete set of remains in August 1998: those of bombardier Timothy Tarpey of Passaic, New Jersey. Expecting twins at the time she was informed of her missing husband in 1944, Loretta Tarpey, tragically, suffered a miscarriage.
Over a four-year period, US military forensic experts identified Tarpey and several others from the mission, returning them for proper burials. Lt. Billy Covington was among the few members not identified and remains at rest with them in German soil.
A native of Rutherfordton, George W. Dobbins, Jr. had graduated from a Greensboro high school and was studying engineering at N. C. State when his family moved here. George, Sr. was superintendent of Pee Dee Mills.
George joined the Army Air Corps in May 1942, and was assigned to a ground crew in India as part of WWII’s China-Burma-India theatre of operations. Declared missing after an air crash in May 1944, George’s parents were informed of his death in August. He rests at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis.
PFC George Dobbins’ experience highlights the sacrifices made by his family – among others – in the service of our nation. Two of George’s brothers served in the military, and his dad served as an army corporal in World War I. George’s uncle, Edgar Dobbins of Rutherfordton, volunteered for the Mexican Border Expedition of 1916; afterward, he served in WWI for 18 months. Exposed to mustard gas on the battlefield, Edgar Dobbins never fully recovered, spending time in and out of veterans’ hospitals, through the 1920s, before his death in 1931.
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Of the ten honored young Rockingham Methodists killed in World War II, the fate of one provides a glimpse at one local soldier’s contribution at a key moment in the Battle of the Bulge. Another of those servicemen suffered, perhaps, the cruelest experience of the ten.
Opening suddenly with a major German offensive across Belgium and Luxembourg on December 16, 1944, the Battle of the Bulge would prove a crucial turning point of the European war. Sgt. Harvey Terry, Jr. was killed on Christmas Day while fighting near St. Vith, Belgium, 16 days after his friend, Rockingham’s Walter Covington, Jr., fell during action less than 40 miles away in Germany.
Harvey was a member of the 106th Division’s 424th Regiment. With most of the division cut off, the 424th evaded the enemy’s initial onslaught and joined the battle around St. Vith, fighting heroically for days against vastly superior forces. Military historians credit the efforts at St. Vith and Bastogne with delaying the Nazis’ timetable long enough for reinforcements to effectively respond. Without Harvey Terry and his comrades, the war would likely have prolonged.
The only child of Harvey S. and Mary Elizabeth Terry, Harvey Stansill Terry, Jr. rests within a few feet of the memorials to Raymond White, Andy Rohleder, and Walter Covington. Older generations of Rockingham school students will recall Harvey’s aunt, Miss Bessie Terry, a long-time educator and L. J. Bell School’s first principal. Initially laid to rest in Belgium’s American Cemetery near Walter Covington, Harvey Terry was re-interred at Eastside Cemetery in 1947.
Born in October 1913, just one month after his dad opened Rockingham’s first movie house – the Star Theatre – Henry C. Rancke, Jr. matriculated at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1931. He was a member of Phi Delta Gamma fraternity before completing his law degree at Carolina in 1937. Henry practiced law in both Rockingham and Mt. Gilead before joining the military in September 1940. He earned his aviator’s wings and commission eight months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Assigned to duty in The Philippines during summer, 1941, Henry Rancke could not know that he was embarking upon one of the war’s most perilous assignments. Following the Pearl Harbor attack, military personnel and war materiel were at a premium. Under attack by overwhelmingly superior enemy numbers, American troops in The Philippines would receive no reinforcements or re-supply. US and Filipino troops were, in fact, placed on half-rations in January 1942.
Henry had cabled home Christmas greetings, telling loved ones he was ‘OK’. The family last heard from him on March 16, 1942. The American base at Bataan fell in April, and the Corregidor base fell a month later. Japanese forces took many more US and Filipino prisoners than expected, and treatment was accordingly harsh. A handful of POW camps were established, and Henry was imprisoned at the Cabanatuan camp in the north of the multi-island country.
Details are sketchy, but Henry Rancke, Jr. died in captivity and was eventually interred in the Manila American Cemetery. Interestingly, two dates of death are associated with Henry: June 16, 1942, as noted by the Japanese to the International Red Cross, and September 19, 1942, as determined by the US. The inadequate hospital facility in Cabanatuan became overwhelmed upon the sudden closure of others, leading to dramatically increased death rates among POWs during June and July. If Henry was hospitalized and in poor condition then, the June date may be credible.
Discovery of the POWs’ rapidly worsening conditions prompted a daring January 1945 rescue mission on Cabanatuan. US Rangers and Filipino guerillas rescued over 550 POWs, and became the subject of a 2005 movie starring James Franco and Joseph Fiennes. The raid came too late to benefit Henry Rancke, and his fate is an especial indication of war’s cruelty. His enlistment 15 months before US involvement, however, was a mark of young Americans’ willingness to prepare and serve.
What did our country lose with the deaths of these young Rockingham Methodist servicemen? Their stories remind us of war’s costs, and of its cruelty. All but one were taken before age 30; their typical age was 22. Like the young in all of our circles, church and otherwise, each had much more living to do and much more to contribute.
But what would the world have become without such sacrifices? Rising tensions globally, and a clear-eyed consideration of international current events, are reminders that the question is still before us.
Let us remain vigilant, and let us never forget.