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SOLDIERS: Veterans remember University’s response to wars
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shoot at the boat from the
banks of the river. One day
in October 1008. however,
the violence escalated. Rifle
fire and rocket-propelled
grenades rained down on
the boat from both banks
of the river.
“When you’re on the
river, you’re going to get
shot at," Banks said,
spreading his hands as if
holding an imaginary bas
ketball to show the size of
the holes that hot metal
and gunpowder were rip
ping into the ship.
“Everybody that I
passed, everybody that I
saw was bleeding every
body,” he said. “That will
stay with you, brother.”
A few years after Banks
returned home, he enrolled
at the University. With the
horrors of war safely in the
past, he resumed his edu
cational career —and his
social life.
“I was probably as big a
party dog as you’re gonna
find,” Banks said.
He said it wasn’t so dif
ferent back in the early
19705. He tailgated, trav
eled to Atlanta for Braves
games and went to some of
the then-limited bars down
town in moderation, of
course.
Banks said his service in
the military taught him
maturity. His days of a 0.87
GPA are long gone, and to
this day, he still takes class
es online. Since he was
released from the military,
he said he has never made
a grade lower than a B.
And his patriotism
remains stronger than ever.
“If anybody ever invaded
our country, if I were strong
enough to pick up a weap
on, I would fight. I would
fight to this day,” he said.
“What is life without free
dom? What do you have
without freedom?”
• • •
Peyton Austin Rheney
enrolled in the University
more than 70 years ago.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was
president, “Gone With the
Wind” was yet to be filmed,
and a meal at the Varsity
—then located across from
the Arch where Five Guys
is now cost 15 cents.
Rheney’s University was
one of approximately 3,300
students few enough
that you knew most of them
at least by face, if not by
name, he said.
Life in pre-World War II
Athens was not necessarily
easy, but still “very satisfy
ing.”
“In ’3B, that was a part
of the first depression,” he
said. “Most everybody at
the University was there on
a shoestring.”
For three years. Rheney
was housed in Camp
Wilkins —a wooden bar
rack-style building that
housed a couple hundred
students.
“That was sort of an old
dormitory building on what
is now the South Campus,”
said Nash Boney, University
historian. “It was almost
like a fraternity for the ag
students.”
Boney said the building,
located near the modern
day vet school, was origi
nally used as a 4-H building
and later leveled in 1966.
There was a creek near
by where Rheney canoed
and fished in his free time.
And, in the fall quarters
especially, the “big bands”
came to Athens to enter
tain students with their
pre-war times.
“All the big bands came,
we enjoyed that,” said
Rheney, now 89. “That was
kind of a highlight, you
know.”
Rheney attended classes
in what is now the Holmes-
Hunter Academic Building
on North Campus, and even
maintained the tradition of
not walking under the Arch.
Rheney said in those days,
there was a penalty for
underclassmen who walked
under the structure.
“They kinda worked on
you then,” he said.
Rheney said he remem
bers the long treks from
Camp Wilkins on the south
side of campus all the way
to his classes on North
Campus —a walk he said
kept the students in pretty
good shape.
Even tailgating was next
to a religious experience
back then.
“It was pretty much like
it is today,” he said. “There
was some beer, but not as
much as you got now. Most
of the students didn’t have
the money back then to
buy the beer.”
It was the camaraderie
Rheney enjoyed even
sans clothes.
Rheney said the stu
dents had a tradition of
"...
III ,
Coutnurt Jambs Hosns
A In 1968, lames Horne had Just graduated
from the University and entered the military.
Home strongly supports the troops to this day.
gathering downtown, clad
only in their underwear, to
march to the women’s
school near Prince Avenue.
“We did it every year.
That was just a tradition,”
he said. “It was a very pleas
ant occasion to go to school
at Georgia.”
But everything changed
on Dec. 7, 1941, when the
United States’ neutrality in
World War II came crashing
down as fast as the kami
kaze planes that sank
American ships in Pearl
Harbor.
On that day, 20-year-old
Rheney was in Camp
Wilkins when he heard the
news broadcast on the
radio.
“Of course, we knew that
we’d be engaged because
we were finishing, we were
seniors,” he said. “I knew
that I’d be very much
involved. There wouldn’t be
any way that I would do
anything but go and fight,
you know.”
The seniors were allowed
to finish out the year, but
upon graduation the fol
lowing May, Rheney enlist
ed with the Marine Corps.
He spent the next four
years fighting in the South
Pacific, living in tents in
coconut groves and over
taking pivotal islands for
the Allies.
Rheney said his marine
division was one of the
main participants in taking
back the island of Guam.
“I ate breakfast early
that morning, in July '44,
about 4 o’clock, with two
other second lieutenants,”
he said. “And I was the only
one that came back.”
He said the other two
were killed shortly after
landing, but it was Rheney’s
job to lay some wire further
ahead. And though he had
to step over his fallen com
rades’ bodies, he succeeded
in his mission.
Rheney suffered the
blows of more islands and
more combat. One by one
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the Allies advanced as sci
entists at home completed
testing on the weapon that
dealt a final blow to the
Axis powers: the atomic
bomb.
For Rheney, news of the
Allied bombing of the
Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
was well-received and long
awaited.
“It was a great relief
because we already had
orders to land on the main
island of Japan,” said
Rheney, who still has the
military order in his posses
sion. “We’d already taken a
lot of chances and we didn’t
feel like we’d make it if we
landed on the main island
of Japan."
On the way back to
America back to normal
cy Rheney was stricken
with what they then called
shell shock and battle
fatigue. Today, it's known
as post-traumatic stress
disorder.
But even after he
returned to health, war
wasn't done with Sr. Ist Lt.
Peyton Austin Rheney.
Enter: The Korean War.
Just a few short years
after he returned from serv
ing in World War 11, Rheney
found himself on a train
bound for San Francisco,
where he’d ship out to
Korea.
About 150 miles north of
New Orleans, however, the
train ran headlong into a
passenger train and
careened off the tracks.
"That was a terrible blow
that I had to live through,”
he said, adding the spilled
oil from the engines soon
ignited, trapping people
who were pinned from the
initial Impact. But come
rain or sleet or deadly train
wreck, the U.S. government
was determined to get
Rheney to Korea.
More than a year serving
in Korea, two terms as
mayor of the town of
Wadley, four point-blank
.NEWS
bullet shots to the head,
stomach and arm by a
manic depressive girlfriend
and 58 years later, Rheney
still remains optimistic.
“I’m very thankful and
very pleased,” he said. “And
I thank the good Lord.”
• • *
James Home remem
bers Stegeman Coliseum
somewhat differently from
how we see it today. Before
Oasis, there was registering
for classes in person.
“We used to register
down in the Coliseum with
big, long tables,” said
Home, a 65-year-old gradu
ate of the University. “It’d
take all day to register,
you’d have to stay in line
forever. Back then, it was
just part of the process.”
He remembers Sanford
Stadium, too, quite a bit
differently. The real place
to be, he said, was on the
outside looking in.
“The railroad track was
the big tiling,” he said, ref
erencing the tracks by
Oconee Hill Cemetery, just
across East Campus Road
from the stadium. “People
would get up there in the
morning and that’s the
crowd that’d be doing all
the drinking."
The spots were so pre
cious that some students
would camp out the night
before to get prime tailgat
ing real estate, he said.
Home said downtown
wasn't similar to what it is
today. Before bars such as
Bourbon Street and
Flanagan’s fought for stu
dents’ attention, he said
there was a pool room
above The Varsity —then
on the comer of Broad
Street and College Avenue.
He added that Athens
was dry, and students who
wanted their whiskey fix
had to drive to South
Carolina or know a guy.
“A lot of people put
themselves through school
bootleggin’ whiskey,” he
said.
In 1968, Home sat in the
Coliseum and became the
first person in his family to
earn a college degree. But
after graduation, his 1A
draft status the group
most likely to be drafted
into the Vietnam War
caused employers to look
the other way.
“If you got that classifi
cation, you were just wait
ing to get your letter to go
to Atlanta to get your phys
ical,” he said. “If you passed
the physical, you were
gone.”
That letter came on Aug.
1, 1968 fewer than two
months after his gradua
tion from Georgia.
Home remembers his
first glimpses of Vietnam as
his plane descended after a
22-hour flight from the
United States.
“Once we got to Vietnam,
[the pilot] said, ‘Look out
of the window,’” he said.
“All I could see were bomb
craters. I knew I was in the
wrong place.”
He recalled the near
nightly rocket and mortar
attacks.
“Sometimes I’d sleep
through it and sometimes I
wouldn’t,” he said. “It was
an intense year of my life.”
Home returned to the
The Red a Black | Thursday, November u, aoio
United Btates in 1970,
amidst national outrage
from war protesters. Even
at the University.
“They weren’t huge [ln
Athens], but there were
several pretty large demon
strations,” said Boney, who
was teaching history at the
time. “Somebody threw a
Molotov cocktail into the
ROTC building; there was
a march to the President’s
House [on Prince
Avenue].”
Boney added the pro
testers would congregate
at the Arch and in front of
Old College, where much of
the administration was
housed. Police would make
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sure the protests remained
peaceful, he said.
“It was hard adjusting
back they were pretty
tough out there,” Home
said. “I never really told
anybody that I was a
Vietnam veteran for a long
time.”
The student who had
tailgated for Georgia games
outside Sanford Stadium,
ate meals at The Grill and
took pictures under the
Arch after graduating was
now a stranger, even in his
own country.
“I don’t regret serving,”
lie said. “That was just part
of growing up in America
then.”
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