Recently, Mayors Robert Smith of Columbus and Scott Ross of West Point signed proclamations designating March as Red Cross Month. For 95 years, the Red Cross has played an important role in helping people in the Golden Triangle area. It was in 1917 that the local chapters were founded in response to the events of World War I.
During World War I, the Red Cross assisted local servicemen and their families, helped provide needed personal articles for soldiers, and in 1918 opened an office at Payne Field, an Army Air Service pilot training base at West Point. After the war ended and the need to assist servicemen decreased, the local chapters became inactive.
As World War II broke out in Europe and Asia, the local chapters were reactivated. The chapters provided help ranging from assisting servicemen’s families with emergencies to knitting olive drab sweaters for soldiers. The Red Cross also opened an office at Columbus Army Air Field in 1942.
By Feb. 1945, the Lowndes County Chapter had raised $38,072 for national programs, loaned over $10,000 to local service families with emergency needs, rendered 9,487 service contacts, and assisted 700 families with disaster relief. In addition to providing assistance, the chapter held regular parties at the Air Base. It was during World War II that the local chapter also became more evolved in disaster relief.
Along the Tombigbee River, many people associate the Red Cross with relief efforts during the formerly frequent winter and spring floods. During World War II, two floods along the Tombigbee found an active Red Cross Chapter ready to help. In 1946, the Lowndes County Chapter acquired four surplus assault boats to use in flood relief. Since then, whether the disaster has been a fire, a flood or tornado, the Red Cross has responded.
My father always credited the Red Cross with helping him survive World War II. He was on a 96th Bomb Group B-17 that was shot down over Frankfurt, Germany on May 12, 1944. He spent the rest of the war as a POW. A 1946 Commercial Dispatch article reported on his speaking on behalf of the yearly Red Cross fund drive: “Rufus Ward, former staff sergeant in the Air Corps and tail gunner of a B-17, who was shot down over Germany and held prisoner for nearly a year, said in his talk that ‘dollars and cents could not pay for what the Red Cross had meant to him during his entire period of service.'”
In the States, as well as overseas, the Red Cross was on the spot when needed most. During his imprisonment at Stalag Luft 4 in Germany, the POW’s received as many packages (Red Cross) as transportation would allow, and the packages meant not only food but hope. When he was liberated and sent to France he received supplementary feeding from the Red Cross, which provided orange juice and malted milks to rebuild his prison-starved body. A Mississippi Red Cross Canteen worker (Dorothy Stout of Vicksburg) wrote a letter telling of his liberation to relieve the mind of his anxious family, even before they were notified by the government.
In late April 1945, Dorothy Stout and two other Red Cross workers were on a German road in a “clubmobile” near the front lines providing coffee, doughnuts and cigarettes to “combat soldiers.” There, on April 28, they encountered 1,500 Americans newly liberated from a German prison camp. Among the former POWs was Ward, with whom she had mutual friends in Mississippi. She wrote a letter that day to Mae Puckett in Columbus and described him as dressed “in various parts of Jerry (German) uniforms” and having “quite long hair” and a “sort of Robinson Crusoe” appearance.
In a Sept. 23, 1995, interview in the Jackson Clarion Ledger, Stout recalled that day: “We rushed up to them (the liberated POWs who she described as wearing “remnants of American and German uniforms) amid their shouts of ‘No, no, you’re going to get full of our lice. If you touch us you’ll have to get deloused,'” Stout said. “But nothing stopped our joyous, thankful hugs and greetings … It was without a doubt the most delightful and memorable moment of World War II for me.”
Today, the Red Cross continues to help service personnel and their families and locally in times of need. Though the local chapters were merged into a single regional chapter last year, Red Cross offices continue to be located in both Columbus and Starkville and services have not changed. The local advisory board continues to ensure that with community support, the Red Cross will always be there when help is needed. However, we must always remember that for the Red Cross to be there to help us during a disaster we must still support it when there is no disaster.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native and local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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