In October 1943, Jacob Zeigler decided to defend his country by volunteering to serve in the United States Navy.

The decision took him to Maui, Hawaii, and the shores of Iwo Jima.

More than six decades later, Zeigler visited Washington, D.C., to see sites including the Iwo Jima Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

Zeigler was one of several local World War II veterans that participated in the Honor Flight South Carolina program, a nonprofit initiative that allows war heroes to see memorials and monuments dedicated in their honor at the nations's capital.

Joining Zeigler on Saturday's one-day Honor Flight were local veterans Charles O'Brien Bennett, Bob Hammond, Alva Moore, Charles Payne, David Pou and Shelby Pou, all of Orangeburg County, and Michael Watson of Bamberg.

"He's excited about the trip. He's been talking about it," said Zeigler's wife of 66 years, Almida, on Tuesday. "He's looking forward to being with the guys."

Long before that trip, Jacob Zeigler took a cross-country journey that separated him from his young family.

The Zeiglers had a 15-month-old daughter, Linda, and another child on the way when he left South Carolina. Almida Zeigler remembered that Linda was dressed in a pinafore that day.

She watched as her husband waved goodbye through the train window at them.

"He said that was his most vivid memory of the last time he saw us," Almida Zeigler said, adding that being separated from her husband for two years was the worst part of his deployment.

Jacob Zeigler was stationed in Maui as a member of the U.S. Navy Construction Battalion Marine Unit. Their job was to support the 4th U.S. Marine Battalion.

To limit the possibility of any attacks against soldiers on the train, they took what Zeigler described as a zigzag route to California.

"It took forever," he said.

He finally got there and boarded a ship bound for Maui. It was then that he was informed his wife had given birth to an 8-pound boy named Jacob Zeigler III.

Zeigler's battalion constructed a training simulation of battle scenarios the Marines would experience while fighting at Iwo Jima. Because the topography of Maui was similar to that of Iwo Jima, training there proved to be invaluable to the American soldiers that captured the Japanese island after 35 days of brutal confrontation, he said.

Zeigler, who is retired from Greenwood Packing Co., said he was also responsible for making sure the runway was clear for plane landings in Maui.

"Many of our buddies were killed when they were coming in," he said. "We had to take care of them and support them."

He said his most poignant memory from his wartime service was losing some of his friends.

Toward the end of the Battle of Iwo Jima, Zeigler's battalion was sent there to support the Marines. But he said there was no mission to support at that juncture -- the battle was already won.

"They turned the boat around," he said.

During his down time in the Navy, Zeigler played in a baseball league. "We were always champions," he said of his team.

Debra Bonnett, Zeigler's daughter, said her father was so well liked by the battalion's lieutenant that other soldiers would get him to ask the lieutenant for favors.

"He would always go to the lieutenant and asked him to, 'Let us do this,' and he would let him do it," Bonnett said. Fellow soldiers called Zeigler "Zeke."

Zeigler recalled that during his two years in the Navy, there was a rank promotion up for grabs in his battalion. However, he said he wasn't going to try for it because he felt there were others more qualified competing for the promotion.

The lieutenant asked him why he wasn't going for the promotion. "He said, 'You need to get your butt up there,'" Zeigler said.

And so he did. Zeigler said he ended up getting promoted to third-class machinist.

"They (my fellow soldiers) hollered, 'How in the world did you get that?'" he said.

Zeigler said he believes he got the promotion because, at the time, he couldn't afford to give any money to the church offering.

Because of the promotion, Zeigler said, "I was able to give back more."

Bennett joined the Navy in 1944 following his high school graduation in Eustis, Fla., because it was a family tradition, he said.

"At first, I served on a destroyer tender," he said. "Near the end of the war, I went to the Pacific and served on a destroyer before I mustered out in July 1946."

Bennett's duty did not involve combat but the servicing of destroyers, although he said his boot camp scores were high enough to earn him a place in the ship's fire control.

"There I was, mostly involved with the firing of the guns on the ship from the director's room," Bennett said. "That involved a telescopic outfit that would pinpoint the target and input the data necessary to aim where the guns would fire.

"On the ship, we could do anything in repair work. We had a more advanced machine shop than many others you could find at that time. The work involved anything from hydraulics to equipment for the demolition crews."

It was during a visit by his best friend that Bennett met his wife.

"He brought a couple of friends out when I was in San Francisco on the destroyer, which was tied up with a whole fleet of destroyers under Telegraph Hill," Bennett said. "My future wife, June, was with them.

"We got married not long after that. We will have been married for 63 years next year."

Bennett said his final days of military service almost involved ending a prison uprising.

"They alerted us that there was an inmate riot at Alcatraz not long before I got out," Bennett said. "We were preparing to go in and open up some holes in the building if it couldn't be put down, but that never materialized."

Eager to join the fighting, Moore enlisted in the Marines in June 1943 at the age of 17.

"I enlisted before I got out of high school in Grafton, W. Va., and got out after the war in November 1945," he said. "I served in a ground offense unit in the South Pacific and the Philippines."

Moore said he saw a lot of combat during his service.

"I was on a Liberty ship when we went in at (the Battle of) Leyte Gulf, although we never went ashore once it was secured," he said. "We later made a landing in the northern Philippines. I spent my 19th birthday there."

After participating in several other invasions in the area, Moore said his unit later returned to the southern Philippines before being shipped back home in July 1945.

"On the way home, they dropped the atomic bomb (on Hiroshima, Aug. 6, 1945) and we heard about it," Moore said. "The ship's PA system came on and announced it while we were at sea.

"We were all back home before the war ended. We were in California in November 1945 when Gen. Hollings Smith announced to us that date had been scheduled as D-Day for southern Japan."

"I thought about staying in the service but I had lost my father, so I came back home and finished high school," he said.

Moore reentered civilian life as a lineman for Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. of West Virginia -- "Ma Bell," as he called it -- retiring as a foreman after 35 years.

He said during a trip to Florida to visit his mother-in-law, he and his wife began looking for a place to retire.

"We wanted to go south, but not to Florida," Moore said. "We were looking for a happy medium. They were running a commercial on national TV about South Carolina about that time, and we thought it looked good.

"The folks we contacted in Orangeburg sent us a bundle, and it looked good. We've been here since 1983."

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A day of remembrance

T&D Staff Report

Several World War II veterans from The T&D Region participated in the inaugural Honor Flight Lowcountry on Saturday.

The National Honor Flight began in May 2005 as a way to allow World War II veterans to visit the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., free of charge. The trips are paid entirely with private donations.

Sandra Bryan with Honor Flight South Carolina said 85 veterans, most from Bamberg, Lexington, Orangeburg, Richland and Union counties, took part in Saturday's event. Another 100 veterans also traveled from Charleston on the same day.

These members of the Greatest Generation began the day at 6 a.m. with preparations for the flight from Columbia Metropolitan Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The group first traveled to the World War II Memorial by bus, complete with a police escort. The veterans proceeded to the monument's South Carolina Pillar for the Presentation of the Flags ceremony, honoring all branches of the armed service.

After lunch, the veterans were taken on a three-hour tour of Washington that included visits to the Korean War, Vietnam War, Battle of Iwo Jima and Lincoln memorials.

Prior to boarding their flight back to Columbia, the Honor Flight veterans were escorted to Arlington National Cemetery to observe the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, which contains the remains of unknown American soldiers from WWI and II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Closing out the day's event was a heroes' welcome home for the group upon their return to Columbia Saturday evening.

For more information about Honor Flight South Carolina, call 803-582-8826 or visit honorflightsc.com.

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