11/11/2025
My name is Charlie, and I am 103 years old. I am a U.S. Army Air Corps of World War II. I was born in 1922, and I grew up in Pine Hall, North Carolina. It was a very small town with one store, a post office, and a train station.
My parents built a cabin that had a great big room downstairs and a smaller room upstairs. The kitchen was outside the cabin so that it didn't heat up the house. There were seven children in our family. Most of us children slept upstairs, but the younger ones slept on the main floor of the house. There were two large beds downstairs, and near the fireplace there was another little bed for the kids. Instead of having steps to get upstairs, there was a ladder. We would go upstairs and close the opening, so, if we decided to move around, we wouldn't fall back to the ground floor.
My mother was a wonderful cook. She liked making chicken, and she also made bread. My grandmother, Betty, was an even better cook, and she made biscuits. In the kitchen, she had a big piece of marble. She took flour, spread it out on the marble, and rolled out the dough. Those biscuits lasted for six months with no mold because she used salt.
I was drafted to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, then sent to Georgia to Fort Stewart. We called it Swamp Stewart because it was in a swamp. I was in the U.S. Army Air Corps, but now it is called the U.S. Air Force. I went through basic training as a medic in a group of about 20 people, but there were 500 or 600 people there in total. At Fort Stewart, the anti-aircraft troops were trained to shoot down German planes if they came over the ocean, which was why the base was in a swamp instead of a city.
The training center was divided into a white section and a black section, and the black section was much smaller than the white section. Our commanding officer was white, and he was from the North. He was about as partial as he could be on our behalf. The majority of the people were from the South, and they wanted medics to do KP (Kitchen Patrol) work, which he was against.
From medic training, I went to Bombay, India by ship. To get there, we took a troop train from Georgia to Florida, then to Tennessee, and finally, to California. We got on the ship in San Francisco, and we were on that ship for 43 days. We were the only black combat unit; the rest of them were white. The white soldiers were angry at the black soldiers because the captain of the ship said, “On my ship, combat troops don’t serve KP, and the black troops on the ship will not serve KP either.”
The medics were assigned to protect the tail end of the ship, and there was a white group in the front, so there was friction. When we walked at night on the ship, we had to make sure there were at least two or three of us together. If you were out there alone, they would throw you off the ship. I was seasick for a few days, but it cleared up. We slept in a large room with the rest of the black unit.
After we arrived in Bombay, India, I did medic work. There was bombing in both India and China during World War II. When people were injured, we treated them. There was a hospital on the ship, and there were medic units in various countries as well. I had my appendix removed over there in a field hospital (which was scary).
When we were on the ground (and not on a ship), we slept in a tent in a field, and we also used tents for treatment. We had latrines that were just big holes that we dug. We got mail from home; they called it air mail. We got a little carton of letters, and, sometimes, food from home. I got cookies from my family.
When the war ended, I returned to the U.S. and saw the Statue of Liberty as the ship arrived in the harbor. They transported us home to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and that's where I was discharged at midnight. A guy came out and told us that if we wanted to go to Greensboro, it was $100. We could go five to a car, which would be $20 apiece ($360 apiece in today’s dollars).
At about 2 a.m., we stopped to get gas for the car, but they didn't want to sell us any because we were black. All we were trying to do was get home. They did allow us to buy gas, but they wouldn't serve us food or drink, even after defending our country. When my family saw me, they were so happy!
I met my wife, Corinne, after I got out of the service. We have two children. We took a great vacation by car all the way to California. People advised my wife not to prepare for the trip too much, but just call hotels a few hours ahead of time, which she did. She carried a lot of nickels and dimes with her, and she went to a phone booth and called the motel or hotel where we wanted to stay.
My best advice is this. “Honest living is the best thing you can do.”
PruittHealth
