(Stanley Harrison) The Great Depression... that's what they called it.

A decade of misery, and it hit the nation hard.

The stock market went bust in 1929.

Across the nation in the '30s, 15 million people unemployed.

Thirty percent of South Carolina's workforce had no jobs.

Free food lines were the norm in South Carolina.

In Columbia in 1932, more than half a million free meals were dished out to the destitute.

Nearly everyone in the state was affected.

Farmers could only get a penny a pint for their milk, so many poured it into the ground.

Eggs were 10 cents a dozen, and many people couldn't even afford that.

Bartering became an acceptable way to put food on the table... a chair for a chicken.

(Willie Varnish) Times was really, really tough, and every once in a while, you'd get a yard chicken or something, and that was a king's treat.

Nothing throwed away except the feathers, and that wasn't throwed away-- that, and the container-- to dry out and stuff pillows and mattresses with.

(Flonie Higgins) Well, everybody was poor, so we didn't-- when you looked at people, you didn't think, Well, they're poor, 'cause you were poor also.

We were not rich.

In fact, we were poor, as a great many people were.

My mother, Sadie Tronco, was the godmother... you might put it that way.

She raised four kids during that Depression.

She only had about four requirements... go to church, pay your bills, work hard, take care of your family.

That's all you had to do.

(Eugenia Mabry) The money my grandfather had left my father had all gone in the stock market, but it didn't bother me.

I was able to-- I got along so much better than the average, I do believe.

Nobody had anything then, and it never bothered me.

Young people don't realize what the Depression is.

I went through that, too, besides the War, and people don't think about the Depression like we had.

Looking back, I don't see how some of those people made it.

I had people out of work for months.

They continued to take the paper and paid their bills, so they must have accumulated a little.

Back in those days, money went a long way.

If you had a job making money, you lived like a king.

You pretty much had it made.

(Harrison) Among other shortcomings in those Great Depression years, South Carolina had no provision for old-age pensions, no assistance for the blind, no aid for dependant children.

Between 1920 and 1935, 80% of the state's high school graduates left the state to seek a better life.

Unemployment, high... personal health, low.

Times had seldom, if ever, been worse.

These were the years of the Great Depression, years that produced a nation of survivors, a country of patriots, a proud people, strong people.

It can truly be said, the Great Depression created, honed, toughened what we now call America's, South Carolina's Greatest Generation.

[no dialogue] [no dialogue] (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

(Harrison) At last there was hope.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President of the United States in 1933.

FDR dropped on South Carolina and the nation a blizzard of programs with three-letter IDs-- the TVA...FSA...CCC... PWA...and the WPA-- programs designed to give people jobs, put money in their pocket.

Yeah, I remember the WPA, or the PWA, the Progress Works Administration and Works-- I forget what the WPA was, but I think that's the one where they put people to work, and they built a lot of our state parks.

Back then, we thought they was wasting money.

Of course, it created jobs and put more money into circulation.

They got some good projects that cost very little money, and they were well-done, well-built, and we're still using them today.

(Harrison) An airport was built in Greenville.

The Dock Street Theatre and the Navy Yard in Charleston took on new life.

There was help for the farmers.

From this national bowl of alphabet soup came great promise for South Carolina.

The truest bright spot was called Santee Cooper.

With PWA funds and labor paid for by the WPA, the Santee Cooper system was built and begin delivering electric power to the Lowcountry.

(Bill Fletcher) Their idea was to cut the trees down, get the stumps and tops and everything out.

He says, "Forget about that.

"Cut the trees down or leave them standing... "it don't make any difference.

We want that lake filled up."

That was the number one priority at that time.

He says, "Get that lake filled up...we need the electricity."

(Harrison) The power plant's first customer was a company producing material to strengthen the steel used in the construction of America's battle fleet.

[no dialogue] We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin.

The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air, President Roosevelt has just announced.

The attack was made on all naval and military activities on the principal island of Oahu.

(Harrison) Anyone who was alive and at a remembering age knows exactly where they were on that fateful Sunday, December 7, 1941.

(Horace Crouch) We were on our way back from Mount Hood on the 7th.

I didn't have a radio in my car, and I didn't know anything about the attack until I arrived in Pendleton and drove up to a main street, and it had the stoplights and so on.

It was raining, and one of the paperboys flashed a newspaper in front of my windshield, and it was quite dramatic.

It was a Sunday, I believe, and I was in the living room.

That's when I heard about it.

I'm sorry, but I was a warmonger.

I said, "Thank goodness!

"At last we'll have to fight those horrible Nazis and rescue those people over there!"

I became a Marine, and after some period of time, about 30 days or so, Pearl Harbor broke.

I was at the rifle range in San Diego, California.

December 7th when they bombed Pearl Harbor, I had no idea where Pearl Harbor-- I'd never heard of it, I don't think.

We were on a house party with a group of schoolteachers up in the mountains on the weekend of December 7th, and someone just accidentally turned the radio on, and then we heard about Pearl Harbor being bombed.

We said, "Where's Pearl Harbor?"

Someone said, "The Philippines," and my girlfriend said, "Oh, my goodness... my brother just landed there two weeks ago."

That was rather a dismal thought of what would happen.

As it turned out, it was... he was in the Death March and died in a prisoner of war camp.

Sunday morning, I don't know what time, here comes-- we had little radios... we didn't have television.

We had radios, sit around listening to them.

Really, truly, I don't thing we were listening.

We were probably playing poker--some real cheap poker-- passing the time that morning.

Someone came down the street between the two tents and said, "The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor!"

The reason I vividly remember it is someone said, "Who is she?"

We didn't know Pearl Harbor.

(Harrison) At Pearl Harbor on that fateful Sunday, 9 South Carolinians went down with their 1168 shipmates aboard the battleship "Arizona."

[no dialogue] (Roosevelt) December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.

The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

With confidence in our Armed Forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.

[applause] (Harrison) The nation was at war against Germany and Italy-- Hitler and Mussolini in Europe-- against Japan and its emperor, Hirohito, in the Far East.

The country was fighting mad.

There wasn't any doubt as to the fact that we had to get involved, that we must put our shoulders to the wheel, so to speak, and 16 million men and women joined voluntarily, or otherwise, the Armed Services.

Many of them did things other than the Armed Forces.

It was very common for the women at that point to get involved in industry.

(Harrison) Prim and proper ladies December 6th became Rosie the Riveter December 8th.

I helped make things and did a little bit of welding, but it only was just a straight welding thing... acetylene thing, I think it was.

All I did was work and go home... walk back home and go back to work.

(Glenda Jolly) I had gone to school, and they said, "We've got enough typists.

We need somebody to go to mechanics school."

I said, "Well, I know the difference in wrenches, but that's about all I know about mechanics."

I went to school in a three months course and then went out to the air base as a propeller mechanic.

I wanted to do something, and I did what I could in my hometown while I wrote to the American Red Cross in Washington.

They asked me to come up to be interviewed.

After I was interviewed, they accepted me.

I went home for a few weeks until the next class began.

When I graduated, the Navy offered me a job in Washington in code breaking.

I didn't know whether to accept or not because Hopkins was right there, and that's where I wanted to go.

But I knew my country needed me.

(Harrison) Frances Josephson became involved in a secret mission... so secret, she was told, that if she even mentioned the assignment to anyone, she would be shot.

Frances was to help break the Japanese code before the Battle of Midway Island, a pivotal battle.

Marine James Sloan was on that 1-mile-square spit of land waiting for the Japanese.

Admiral Yamamoto continued as a key figure in developing Japan's battle plans.

Frances Josephson continued her efforts to help break the Japanese code.

We knew where he was going to be, what kind of a plane he was going to fly, and he was going to the Solomons, and we shot him out of the sky.

(Harrison) That done, Wave Josephson was then assigned to the job of breaking the German code.

In recruiting for the Navy, her picture was on a poster in nearly every post office in America.

I had someone here in Summerville who was a skipper of a merchant ship, and one night he formally thanked me for saving his life.

I didn't save his life, but he knew that the messages sent to him helped him to change the course of his ship.

(Harrison) Glenda Jolly went to propeller school in Columbia and was put to work on B-25s at the old Columbia Airport.

We'd go out in the plane and find out where everything was and what to do and change tires.

The first tire I ever changed in my life was on a B-25.

The B-25 was what they were using in the War.

What was important about it, we had to learn to keep them up, keep them running.

You couldn't just neglect them.

They had to be--everything, every part that you took down, had to be manually flexed to show any crack or any damage to it.

If it was the slightest damage, you couldn't use it.

[no dialogue] [no dialogue] (Harrison) Not everyone enlisted.

Draft boards were soon formed and empowered to assign numbers to eligible men, defer some, call the rest up for service.

I was about 19 years old, working at Sears.

I decided to stay up all night and be the first one in Columbia to register for the draft.

I stood on the steps of Columbia High School, which was on Washington Street at that time, and I was the first to register.

Hooray, you know, big hero, but something unique that I did, and my order number was 4493.

I wanted in action as quick as I could.

I figured the quickest way was to get in the paratroopers.

Then I thought, Lord, I want to be a fighter pilot.

Never been in a plane, never ridden in a plane, but they were ready to take us in and train us.

(Hugh Duck) I had problems about fighting.

I loved my country-- don't get me wrong-- but there was plenty of buses in this area.

As we would walk to school, the white children would come by in the buses, but we had to walk to school.

We didn't have a bus.

We couldn't attend the high school in Travelers Rest, and we didn't have any means of getting to high school from the area where we lived.

That meant in the beginning that I had mixed feelings about going into service because I felt that I didn't have all the privileges that other young men my age might have.

That's the reason I had mixed feelings about going in the service.

Of course, that didn't keep me from being there, doing my duty.

(Moffatt Burriss) Everybody was gung ho, everybody in our parachute unit.

I was in the 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 82nd Airborne Division.

We had our jump training in Benning and our training as a division, combat training, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which started in September of '42 and lasted until April of '43 when we went overseas.

Everybody was really gung ho and anxious to get overseas and start fighting.

While I was plowing in the cotton field one day, I heard a noise...it sounded like an automobile.

I didn't see an automobile and I knew an automobile shouldn't be close to me because automobiles were few and far between in those days!

I looked up, and the noise was coming from above.

A yellow airplane was flying over our plantation where I was plowing.

I said, "Whoa!"

I stopped the mule, and he stopped, and I leaned over on my plow and watched that airplane till it faded away in the distance.

I said to myself, If someday I could just touch an airplane, or even ride in one, I would be the happiest person in the world.

I tried to get into the Air Corps, but they would not let me in because of race.

They thought that a black man did not have the initiative, the ingenuity, the technology, and didn't even have the ability to fly an airplane, so they would not accept me.

I went to Tuskegee and got ready when two things happened to open the door for us.

First, one of the black pilots filed a lawsuit against the War Department for not letting him in.

At the same time, Mrs.

Eleanor Roosevelt heard about our plight in Tuskegee, so she came to see about us.

She came to the airport and saw the black pilots taking up students, bringing them back, and Mrs.

Roosevelt said she wanted to take a flight.

Her bodyguards said, "No, Mrs.

Roosevelt, "we're not going to let you fly.

"In the Deep South with black pilots?

By no means are you going fly!"

But she said, "I'm going if they'll take me."

The bodyguards tried to hold her back, but they wouldn't dare put their hands on her.

She asked the chief pilot if she could take a flight, so the chief pilot took her up in a Piper Cub.

He flew her over the campus of Tuskegee and showed her George Washington Carver's museum on the campus, showed her the countryside, and brought her back.

When she got out of the airplane, she said, "You're going to hear from me!"

She went back to Washington and told the President those men down there can fly.

"I know they can because I had a flight with them."

They were anxious to get into the War because they wanted to fly those faster planes.

They wanted to fly those faster and more maneuverable planes.

They painted the tails red.

First, I didn't think much of it.

I said, "If a red- tailed plane crash, everybody would know it was a black pilot trained at Tuskegee!"

They weren't afraid of that.

They wanted to let people know that they were anxious to go, and they would recognize them.

When a pilot see a red-tailed plane on the right, a red-tailed plane on the left, a red-tailed plane above, he called, "Crew, be of good cheer...the 99th is here!"

(Harrison) Henderson became a flight instructor at Tuskegee.

Horace Crouch washed out in pilot training, but he wanted to fly, so he became a navigator.

He was eventually ordered to Columbia to begin training in B-25 bombers for a secret mission.

The venerated airman Jimmy Doolittle was in command.

(Crouch) I was flying navigator for the squadron commander at the time, and when we took off at Houston, he told me to set a course for Columbia, South Carolina, which was quite a surprise to me because no one had corresponded with us indicating that there was an Army air base here.

We, of course, knew Fort Jackson was here.

But, anyway, we arrived here in Columbia, South Carolina, and I was quite amazed when we arrived.

Our executive officer presented to the squadron commander the invitation we got from Washington and from General Doolittle-- Colonel Doolittle at the time.

And it was.... They wanted 25 crews from the 17th and 89th.

They got them all, and they had dealt me out because they figured this was my hometown and I would want to stay around awhile.

But I told them I wanted to go, and so I got a slot to go at that time.

In the beginning, we had absolutely no idea of just what it might be in the end.

No extremely great importance was placed on it at all there.

They simply at every briefing cautioned everyone not to speculate as to a possible destination or target at all like that.

For the most part, the troops did exactly that, kept their mouths shut and so on, to such an extent we got to the point where we didn't care what was over the hill there.

We just copied one time--one hill at a time as we progressed.

(Harrison) They were going to bomb Japan just four months after Pearl Harbor.

Doolittle's Raiders would do the improbable... the impossible, some said... a suicide mission for sure, others said.

They would fly their fully loaded B-25 bombers off the deck of an aircraft carrier, and they did!

(Crouch) We took off ten hours early.

At this point, it became obvious that the good Lord was stepping in and changing the plans because going in by day, we can see what we are trying to see...trying to locate.

Had we gone at night, it would be very difficult.

As we were headed for our target there, the ship that was leaving Tokyo Bay fired at us with something on the order of a 20-millimeter.

It did not have a point-detonating capability, so he didn't put anything close to us at all.

We lined up on our target.

I missed the first building I attempted to hit.

It went between two buildings.

They were in line, and in between the two buildings, there were about six or eight Japanese having a bull session, and my bomb landed in the midst of those fellows.

They probably needed some first aid after that.

The second bomb was about 2/3 of the way down the second building that I was attempting to hit, so that was a good bomb there.

(Harrison) Mission accomplished!

The Japanese now knew that America was alive and would bring the War to their doorstep island by island with names most South Carolinians who were sent there had never heard of before... Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Luzon.

We knew, and they must have known, America would win no matter what it took.

[no dialogue] Two years later and halfway around the world, preparations were being made for the invasion of Europe by Allied Forces, and South Carolina had become a veritable arsenal with training bases dotting the state involving thousands of soldiers, sailors, Marines, pilots, the Coast Guard, and, yes, even Frenchmen.

Columbia, Orangeburg, Walterboro, Charleston, Parris Island, Greenville, and up and down the coast, and with the production of ships and fabric, the growing of cotton, tobacco, and other crops to help win the war effort... everyone who could helped in whatever way they could.

There were scrap metal drives and war bond rallies.

Cooking grease was saved.

Gasoline, sugar, and cooking oil were rationed.

I remember my mother saving all the grease from the bacon, and somebody would come around once a week and collect it.

Your aluminum pots and pans... you gave them away to make whatever the Navy needed.

(Harrison) The mass of men and material assembled in England for the invasion of Europe, D-Day, June 6, 1944, was awesome... 21,100 vehicles... 1,500 tanks... 12,000 planes... 176,475 men.

Among them that day, Cal East.

(Cal East) We were never told the date, and that date was never released to anyone until we were all sealed aboard the ships.

In the meantime, we were given a sack of mail-- a pretty good-sized sack-- that was filled with maps and material outlining what we were going to find on the French coast.

It was probably the most beautiful piece of intelligence that I'd ever experienced.

It was the result of a lot of work by the French underground.

There were pictures of the beaches taken obviously from little fishing boats, and they just weren't fishing.

They were out there taking pictures, and those pictures got into the hands of the Allies.

The maps were a thing of beauty.

They showed in color all the beaches.

They had pinpointed every pillbox.

They told you what the caliber of that gun was, what the ammunition was, if the pillbox were to be damaged or knocked out, where the additional ammunition would come from, what German group would bring it, and where they were located.

It was a marvelous piece of intelligence.

They also had the underwater demolition pieces plotted, although at high tide you couldn't see them anyway.

It was just a matter of luck as to whether you hit one or not.

Unfortunately, we did hit one going in, and it put a big hole in the bottom of the ship, which we didn't realize.

We made the assault on the beach.

We had off-loaded everything before making the trip-- doors, supplies, everything-- to make the ship as high in the water as possible so we could get in as far as we could onto the beach.

When we hit the beach, the bow of that ship was in only 15 inches of water so when the ramps went down and the troops disembarked, they hardly got their feet wet.

They were in probably a foot of water.

[no dialogue] (Duck) The only thing we knew, it was headed to France, and a few days after the invasion of France.

We unloaded ships and put the merchandise on trucks or trains to go forward to the front line.

(Harrison) George Mabry and his brother Buford were among the thousands of men and women who eventually landed, worked, and fought in Europe after D-Day.

Eugenia Bradford, the Red Cross lady, went ashore on D-Day plus 11 and was assigned to an evacuation hospital.

(Eugenia Mabry) I was really scared to death-- over nothing really-- but the colonel called us all in and said, "Let me tell you something, young women!

"You must know the password every single night "because there are no troops "between us and the German lines, just a few patrols.

"They have some guards down here at this crossroad, "and you better be able to give him the password "because they are told to shoot first and ask questions afterwards."

[no dialogue] (Harrison) Buford stepped on a mine and had part of a leg blown off.

He was taken to that same evacuation hospital.

(Buford Mabry) And suddenly the door opened, and in walked the cutest little thing I had ever seen.

She had--dressed in her little Red Cross uniform-- had a basket on her arm, was going along the row of cots opposite my bed.

So I told the fellows, "Stand back, stand back," and I watched her.

As she went up and down, she got cuter and cuter.

Finally, she circled around and came to where I was lying.

She walked up and looked down, and I don't know... I think she assumed I was just one of the trench foot cases, but she took a second look.

Then she looked down, I looked up at her, and she smiled.

I smiled back, and then after a bit she left.

I stopped everything and called the nurse, said, "Nurse, come here quick!"

I said, "Who was that little thing?"

She said, "That's Georgia."

I said, "Tell me something about her."

She says, "What you want to know?"

I said, "I'd like to know something about her personal life."

"Oh, she's practically engaged to one of the surgeons."

I said, "The one attending me?"

"No, it's another one."

I said, "Good...I want you to do me a favor."

She said, "What's that?"

I said, "You go and tell him "that Lieutenant Mabry of the United States Infantry "tells that major to find himself another girlfriend because I'm going to marry that one!"

He wrote and said if I didn't get on over here, he was going to find there was a lot of good-looking nurses in his hospital, and I'd better hurry and get there!

I wrote that I can't come unless the Red Cross releases me, and the only way they'll release me is that I am planning to get married.

So he wrote to the Red Cross and asked them to send me home, and they did!

(Harrison) Lieutenant Mabry got a new leg and won the hand of that cute, little Red Cross lady.

Brother George won the Congressional Medal of Honor, one of five South Carolinians to earn that medal in World War II.

Burriss's outfit continued to slug its way through the mountains of Italy, then landed in France, and fought their way into Germany.

(Burriss) I had a man in my company, a young Austrian Jew who had escaped from Austria.

His family was taken prisoner, put in a concentration camp when the Germans came into Austria.

He escaped, came to the U.S., joined the paratroopers, and his mission was to try to locate his parents.

He was assigned to my company just about a month before we got to this camp.

When we got there, we found this Catholic priest, and he asked the priest, "You ever heard of my family?"

And he named them.

The priest said, "I don't know how to tell you this, "but your father, mother, brother, and sister were put to death one week ago."

If you've ever seen two grown men cry, he did and I did.

[no dialogue] My platoon sergeant got killed because they made the attack with bayonets, and they were ordered not to load their rifles.

They were going to use bayonets, and unfortunately, he got in a coal fabric, where they make briquettes and things like that.

A German ran up on him with a Schmeisser machine pistol, and he didn't stand a chance.

(Burriss) My company and another one was selected to make a daylight crossing of the Waal River to hit the bridge from the back, the bridge at Nijmegen.

They were having trouble taking it.

It was heavily defended, so they came up with the idea that we would attack from both sides at the same time.

We had to go 3 miles below the bridge and make a daylight crossing in the face of machine guns with mortars, artillery, and 20-millimeter.

They were lined up on a dike on the other side.

It was a suicide mission, but we had a desperate situation in Arnhem.

The British paratroopers up there were surrounded by a German tank unit, Tiger tanks, and they were really being cut to shreds.

If we didn't get there in a matter of hours, all would be lost, so we were given that mission.

As I say, it was really a suicide mission.

My company suffered between 50- and 60% casualties in the 15 minutes that it took us to cross the river.

[no dialogue] I had just lost another wingman, and we were over in France in a little apple orchard, sleeping in tents.

The roads were full of Germans.

That was when--the breakthrough at Saint-Lô, and the Germans had to retreat in the daytime.

I said, "I'll show you some action!

"Load some frag bombs on my plane and these two, and we'll go over right now."

We took off and went over.

You didn't have to go but five minutes, and some of them were setting up a roadblock.

I went in to strafe the roadblock and dropped the frag bombs-- fragmentation bombs-- and they were supposed to come in behind me.

Usually, we flew in fours.

When you went in to strafe something, when there were eight 50-caliber machine guns, people on the ground didn't stand up and shoot back.

They were in the holes.

They were in the foxholes or hiding somewhere.

When you pulled off, your next guy's coming in, and you're around here.

When he pulls off, the third one's coming down...all strafing.

By that time, the fourth one-- if you're the lead, you're back and can go in and strafe them again.

But that time when I went in and strafed and dropped my frag, they shot the devil out of me, so I tried to go back down.

(John Stith) I got shot down one time by antiaircraft.

We had an early morning strike against Kavieng, which was the second major Jap base next to Rabaul, just 150 miles north of Rabaul.

The second pass, I felt something, and my wingman said, "You're streaming oil."

I headed out to sea right away because I didn't want to get captured and got out about 10 miles before it quit, made a water landing and sat there for about five hours and finally got picked up by a PBY Dumbo.

(Harrison) Before the War was over, 200,000 South Carolinians were in uniform.

Nearly 4,000 of South Carolina's finest lost their lives.

Thousands more were wounded.

Four days after the invasion of Okinawa, President Roosevelt died.

Thirty-three days later, Germany surrendered to advancing American and Russian troops.

[no dialogue] [no dialogue] (Burriss) We brought a delegation back, meeting of the Russians and the Americans, and that was our first meeting of the Russian troops and American.

So we celebrated...we couldn't speak their language, but we could drink their vodka.

We had a big party that night.

The next morning, the Russian colonel, who spoke English, I said, "I surely would like to see Berlin."

He said, "So would I."

I said, "Let's go... I've got a vehicle."

We put the Russian colonel in, a couple of lieutenants and sergeants, and off we go.

When we get there, it's still burning.

It's just a pile of rubble, the most battered place you've ever seen.

For weeks and weeks, we could hear the heavy artillery.

One thing I'll never forget, it was real cold still in that part.

You didn't have but about three or four hours of daylight... real daylight.

But it's cold and snowy, and across the hall-- somewhere across, not the hall but across-- you'd hear some guys... they really could sing.

They'd sing different American songs, "America the Beautiful," and they'd always sing "Star-Spangled Banner."

They'd holler, "Come on, Joe, the coffee's on!"

Joe Stalin.

All the German guards get here, and they knew that they were done for.

(Harrison) Joseph Tronco was a crewman on one of those troop ships that dodged the suicide bombers.

South Carolinians wearing Marine green dodged bullets on the island.

Okinawa was secured on June 22, 1945.

12,600 American personnel were killed in the onshore- offshore battle.

Then the two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the War was finally, finally over.

VJ Day... August 15, 1945.

[no dialogue] [no dialogue] (Frances Josephson) The day that Germany surrendered was not as big a day as when we dropped the bomb because we knew then that the War was over.

Oh, everybody was hilarious... in Washington, just running up and down the streets and hugging everybody and "The War is over!"

and "My brother's coming home!"

[no dialogue] We are gathered here, representatives of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored.

(Harrison) They came home triumphant and with a certain feeling they could remake the world.

Many took advantage of the GI Bill to go back to school.

Others secured GI loans to build and own a home.

(Joseph Tronco) Everybody wanted a house...everybody.

Thank God, there was an old Southern boy named Simon Foster, and he built a lot of small houses for people.

GIs coming back wanted a house.

It didn't matter how big it was or how small.

My home was my castle.

I'd been away three, four, or five years, or whatever.

That's what we wanted...all of us.

(Eugenia Mabry) I went back to teaching school after I had three children.

I kept teaching at that very school-- I taught about thirty years, counting the seven years before I went into the War.

(Earnest Henderson) Many men who had fought and came back home wanted to learn how to fly.

They would come to our airport and learn to fly on the GI Bill.

They would use that money to learn.

I was training there from 1945 until 1949, training students there at Tuskegee...civilians.

Then in 1949, I moved to Columbia and went into the dry cleaning business.

While I was in dry cleaning, I went to Benedict College and finished my degree, because at the Hampton Institute, my education was interrupted by the service.

I got my degree at Benedict, a B.S.

in business administration, and then my superintendent told me why don't I get my master's degree while I'm young.

So I went to the University of Wisconsin and got my master's in counseling and behavioral studies with a minor in administration and came back to Columbia.

While I was in Columbia, I organized a flying club there.... as soon as I got to Columbia.

We were flying Piper Cubs... J-3s is what we were flying.

I trained several people.

I did not charge them.

I didn't make money out of it.

I was flying for the experience.

They paid for the airplane, and I gave them flying.

After the War, we became the world's leaders.

Before we were not that big.

France was ahead of us... Germany was ahead of us... Britain was ahead of us.

We were sort of a second, but we won the War through production.

(Jim Mauldin) We just had a bunch of dedicated people that wanted to win the War and just went all out to do the best they could.

I don't recall anybody in a combat situation that even questioned anything that I told them or their platoon leaders to do.

We didn't have a lot of education.

Our outfit was made up with people from all over the United States.

Some of them couldn't read and write.

They were basically illiterate.

A lot of them grew up on farms.

We had people from the cities, which kind of blended in with the farm boys, and it worked out real good.

They were just dedicated individuals that felt they ought to go, even if it meant getting killed.

I know all of them didn't want to get killed.

They were just that dedicated.

(Crouch) For most of my life, I've been intent upon being a soldier or an airman, so what I was attempting to do was to be an acceptable soldier and airman in order to get the job done that I was so assigned.

That's been my ambition and effort throughout.

Now that I'm 83 years old, I can't think of too much to change there, except that it's very lonesome, very lonesome.

(James Sloan) From 1941 till '76 when I retired, I enjoyed every minute of it.

I suppose you might say that I was intensely patriotic, because there are so many experiences you have where you come along and meet people who are patriotic and those who are just purely selfish.

The difference is amazing.

I remember parents of Marines who... the highlight of their life was to go to Parris Island.

Down there they have a graduation ceremony when their son is given his Marine Golden Anchor.

It's a fantastic experience... because that day he's a Marine.

[claps softly] Dad and Mom standing on the sidelines, enjoying every minute of it.

We were in there fighting for our country.

We were doing the best we could...we gave it all we had.

All that I had, I gave it to my flying, training those men.

I'd like for the people that did not serve to realize what a great sacrifice that the people that did serve made.

Some people even--you know, I was fortunate enough to come back without no injuries of any sort.

Other people came back with missing limbs and so forth, and some was not able to come back.

[no dialogue] So many of my generation are gone.

We should have started talking a long time ago, but we didn't know that we should...it didn't occur to us.

Somebody made sacrifices for me, even before I went.

My dad wasn't in service, but my relatives before me, they made sacrifices long before I came along, and certainly I did, and my generation did.

In generations to come, some of us are going to make sacrifices.

All of us should realize that all of us have a duty to perform.

It takes all of us to make the country what it should be.

Do I think that today's generation could have done the same thing?

My answer to that is yes.

I think that people today with the same genes and the same makeup, faced with the same situation, could react the same way.

My only concern is that the generation has been exposed to a lot of things that weaken their will to do it.

When you look at the drug picture and at the ease with which people live today, their generations have never been through a depression.

Given the same opportunities and the same...problems, I think that today's generation could handle it, but they haven't been called upon yet.

I think we had a generation of men and women that cared about this country.

They were upset with what was happening, and they were ready to defend this country and the world.

(Harrison) Are they "South Carolina's Greatest Generation"?

That's for others to say.

They lived through a terrible depression and a world war.

Those who served in uniform and those who remained home to work and hope and pray are in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties now, or in their graves.

They didn't think then, and the survivors still don't think, there was anything special about them.

They were Americans.

They learned the art of survival in the Great Depression.

Their nation came under attack...it went to war.

They had to do something.

They were willing to do anything to help win it, and they won it.

After the War, they went about the business of building a great nation with a broader prospective, a state with a brighter future.

They knew what had to be done, and they set about doing it.

They had paid their dues and defended our liberty.

After a debilitating depression, a terrible war, what most people of that generation wanted was to get on with their lives.

Our country has a lot to show for that, and we must not forget them.

Program captioned by: CompuScripts Captioning, Inc.

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