Poulnot was born on August 2, 1922, and was a member of The Citadel class of 1944. While most of his classmates went into the Army after their junior year, Poulnot decided to join the Navy in the fall of 1942. After his two years at The Citadel, he knew how to march and was appointed commander of his boot camp company. After boot camp in Virginia, he was sent to Quartermaster School in Newport, RI, he served three years in the Navy including combat tours in the Pacific. Poulnot reflects on mine sweeping operations at Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Saipan, and Tinian. Afterwards assigned to a destroyer, he took part in the battles for the Philippines and Okinawa. As a quartermaster, Poulnot was in charge of steering the ship to dodge incoming Japanese kamikazes. “You knew these guys were shooting at you and you knew they were trying to light on you like mosquitoes, and the name of the game was ‘stay the hell from under them,’ which we did successfully.” After the war, Poulnot enrolled in the College of Charleston, but he decided to apprentice as a Charleston Harbor pilot instead of getting a degree. He worked as a harbor pilot for forty-two years before retiring in 1987.
Henry Rittenberg was born and raised in Charleston, SC, only a few blocks away from the Citadel campus. In 1934 after winning the City of Charleston Scholarship, he had the means to attend The Citadel and entered that fall semester. After repeatedly failing to pass the physical examination for various commissioning programs, he was accepted for the OCS Limited Service but found there were no vacancies. Afterwards, he was assigned to the coast artillery near Boston as an enlisted soldier. When coast artillery troops were taken for field artillery assignments in 1943, Rittenberg volunteered and was deployed to England, later serving as a forward observer. He took part in the crossing of the Rhine and the battle of the Ruhr pocket in which thousands of Germans were taken as prisoners of war. He was present at the Elbe River on VE Day, May 8, 1945, and returned home in February 1946. After working as a pharmacist, Rittenberg went to medical school, which he completed in 1955. He worked as a general practitioner until he retired. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus and received an honorary degree from the Citadel. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the AOA Medical Honor Society, and the Hebrew Orphan Society.
Gregory Crocker was born in Smithfield, Virginia. In this interview, Crocker talks about his family’s tradition of military service, its influence on his decision to attend The Citadel in 2004, and an unanticipated tour of duty in Afghanistan. During his first year, Crocker enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve, believing that the experience would make him a better officer. In August 2006, the Army notified Crocker that he would be ordered to Afghanistan in 2007. He chronicles his surprise at the news, his preparation, and duties during his time there. Some of his duties were routine, some unsavory. The more mundane work of patrolling and training is punctuated by a horrific cleanup following a suicide bombing at a school in Baghlan, Afghanistan. Crocker also reflects on the peculiarity of a visit home midway during his deployment when, in a 24-hour period, he went “from being in a combat zone to walking in Wal-Mart back in Virginia.” After a wearying trip, Crocker returned to the U.S. on May 13, 2008. He comments on the Army’s well-meaning if irksome effort to help soldiers readjust to life at home. “ . . . You just go to all these briefings, basically that says, don't hit your wife, don't commit suicide, don't drink and drive. But by the time you get out of them, you really just want to kill somebody. They're that monotonous. I mean, they try to do that, but you really just, all you want to do is just get home.” Asked if his return to student life at The Citadel was difficult, he says, “most people here are more receptive, just 'cause they know I was a veteran. So they really don't give me any crap.” Crocker admits that his combat experiences in Afghanistan caused him to reconsider his initial decision to attend The Citadel in search of a commission. After his experiences, he has decided to remain an enlisted soldier.
Colonel John Allison was born September 19, 1921 in Albany, Georgia. He entered the Citadel in September of 1939 and left at the end of his Junior year in 1942 to enter the Army Air Corps as an Aviation Cadet. During World War II he received three Distinguished Flying Crosses as a bomber pilot. He flew 59 combat missions as a B-24 pilot and five as a B-25 pilot during almost two years in the Pacific, including the bombing of Japan. After returning to the Citadel after the war, he graduated in 1947 and then rejoined what was then the Air Force, becoming a squadron commander in Vietnam. He currently lives in Charleston and is an avid golfer. Allison reflects on his decision to attend The Citadel and his combat experiences in both WWII and Vietnam. He discusses his training as an Army Air Corps pilot and subsequent World War II military experience as a bomber pilot in the Pacific theater. He also alludes to his post-WWII career during the Cold War, including flights to gather intelligence over Russia and Cuba. Audio with transcript.
Chandler discusses the decision to attend The Citadel and recalls that his family lacked the resources to send him to a North East or Ivy League School. Though he enrolled in ’39, he was forced to delay his education for financial reasons, and became part of the class of ’44. After attending OCS training he was commissioned as 2nd Lt. in the 271st Infantry, 69th Division and served with distinction in the European Theater during WWII. He recounts his combat experiences, including when he was injured in Germany along the Siegfried Line, an incident for which he received the Purple Heart. After returning from the war, Chandler began a civic and legal career, elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, Circuit Judge, Associate Justice and eventually the Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. He has remained active in his community, both through economic development boards as well as in his church. He currently presides as Deacon of his church in Mt. Pleasant, SC where he resides with his wife.
Cart, a Charleston native, enlisted in the Navy at the end of his sophomore year at The Citadel in 1942. After finishing the Navy V-7 aviation cadet program at the University of Georgia, he began flight training at Lambert Field in St. Louis, followed by advanced training in different types of aircraft at Pensacola, Florida. He applied for and was accepted by the Marine Corps, commissioned as a second lieutenant, and became a dive bomber pilot in spring 1943. He tells of his combat flights in the Pacific Theater and also of taking the remains of two childhood friends back to Charleston for burial after crashes during their period of flight training. He was among the first to fly Corsairs in a unit that worked with company engineers to resolve a major safety problem. At the end of 1944, he went overseas to the Marshall Islands, flying from a land base to attack Japanese supply craft and other targets. He recalled that during the dive “you could see a grey streak. That meant the bullet just went by you.” He later flew more advanced planes, roughly 50 combat missions in all. After the war, he returned to Charleston, feeling a duty to take over his ailing father’s jewelry store. Twelve years later, he went into regional sales, flying a company plane while covering a large area during one period, and selling private planes during another. His Citadel experience, he recalled, taught him sufficient discipline that when he went into the Marine Corps, “I was ready for it.”
Orvin was born and raised near The Citadel in Charleston, SC. He decided to go to The Citadel and entered in September 1939. In his senior year at The Citadel he began medical school at the Medical College of Charleston as part of a government program to increase the number of doctors in the Medical Corps during WWII. After graduating from medical school in May 1946 he went straight into the Army Air Corps as a flight surgeon trainee but was discharged due to a hearing impairment after a physical examination revealed scars on his ear drums. After his discharge Orvin interned in New York City before returning home to Charleston and opening a general practice in 1948, which he ran for ten years. During this time he realized he enjoyed listening to patients and helping them with their problems. He trained in psychiatry, founded two hospitals specializing in the treatment of adolescents, and joined the Medical University faculty in Charleston. Orvin discusses his time at The Citadel and his fond memories of the years he spent there. His love for his alma mater inspired him to create the Brigadier Club in 1948, which continues to raise money for Citadel Athletics.
Henry Berlin was born August 19, 1924, in Charleston and enrolled at The Citadel in 1941. After enlistment and training, Berlin eventually served as a radar operator on an LST during the early Normandy landings. After the war he studied law at the University of South Carolina for two years and returned to work at Berlin's clothing store on the corner of King and Broad Streets in Charleston, SC. Berlin details his brief but rebellious tenure at the Citadel before going on active duty in May 1942. He describes how this rebellious streak ended his naval officer training in Columbia, SC, and how he was shipped to Maryland for boot camp. He discusses how he eventually became a radar operator on an LST ferrying troops and material across the English Channel in the days and months after D-Day. He relates harrowing trips across the channel, being targeted by German artillery during the early landings on Normandy, and the loss of troops as they disembarked from the LST in rough seas. After V-E day he describes his return to the US, his trip through the Panama Canal and his arrival at Pearl Harbor just before V-J day. He also touches upon his immediate post-war life including law school, a brief stint playing semi-pro baseball and return to his father's clothing shop in Charleston. Audio with transcript.
A native of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Adams recalls his WWII experiences and decision to enlist in the Navy as a seventeen year-old. Adams was assigned to the USS Duchess, which primarily served as an attack transport carrier. His most vivid combat experiences came in off-loading troops during the battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Although stationed in the boiler room of the transport, he went topside during part of the unloading and helped carry one of the wounded men aboard ship. After returning home from the war he graduated from The Citadel (1950) and capitalized on his entrepreneurial spirit, founding his own blueprint business as well as Charleston Yacht Sales until he retired from his real estate business, which his daughters continue to run in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.
Burnet Maybank entered The Citadel in September 1941 at the urging of his father, who had agreed to fund his college expenses so long as he attended The Citadel. He reflects on his decision to enter the Citadel and his tour of duty in WWII. In September 1942 Maybank joined the Army Air Corps and served as a B-17 bomber pilot flying on around thirty-seven missions in the European Theater of WWII. Maybank discusses some of his most memorable missions, including flying over the Normandy beaches a few days after D-Day in 1944, in some of the earliest bombing missions over Berlin, a mission against a “secret” facility in Denmark. He tells of a fellow Citadel cadet’s plane, Bill Daniel’s, going down in the North Sea. For his war service he was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, the Air Medal, and the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war years he returned home to become a lawyer and later lieutenant governor of South Carolina. Maybank resides in Charleston.
