Every year for the past several years, Artist Larry Glaze has hosted an event featuring classic cars and classic people at his home just west of Carthage.
This year, Glaze and the attendees honored a Carthage veteran and part of “The Greatest Generation,” that battled Naziism and Facism and saved the world 75 years ago at the event, held on Sunday, Oct. 14.
Maynard Mitchell, 93, Carthage, downplays his role in World War II, but there’s no hiding that he was one of millions of Americans who left their homes in America to travel to distant lands with no guarantees that they would come home alive, or even at all.
Mitchell grew up in Kansas, and after he graduated from high school, found himself at Camp Crowder in Newton County, learning to climb utility poles as a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
He and his unit were sent to France late in the war and they found themselves cleaning up the debris of war left behind by the fighting.
He and his unit worked to restore some communications in parts of France where the Germans had stripped out all the copper wire, leaving almost no telephone or telegraph communications.
When they would find a line that was salvageable, they’d notify local workers and help them get it restored.
Mitchell said this weekend it was “good duty,” that it didn’t involve combat or put him at undue risk, but knowing what I’ve read about the aftermath of some of those battles, there was still risk.
There were mines and unexploded bombs and shells across the landscape. In some places Mitchell worked, there was unexploded ordnance from two wars.
He described working in the area of Verdun, a city in France that was the focal point of one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War, and a place where there are still to this day, places where people can’t go because of millions of unexploded shells from that bloody 1916 battle.
In 1945, when Mitchell was working there, that ordinance was there as well as the shells and bombs dropped in the 1944 battles in the area.
Glaze, a U.S. Navy veteran himself from the 1950s and 1960s, also honored U.S. Air Force Col. Ken Cordier, who Glaze first introduced to the Carthage area three years ago when he hosted him at this same event.
Cordier was an F-4 Phantom pilot who was shot down over Vietnam after more than 170 missions, and held for six years as a prisoner of war in the notorious Hanoi Hilton.
Also on hand were classic cars from the Old Geezers Kustom Car Show in Lamar.
Thank you gentlemen, for your service.
