Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior - Softcover

January 1942–July 1963

Mapleton Farm was two miles north of Speed, a small North Carolina coastal plains town of about eighty people with a cluster of white frame houses shaded by tall old oaks and elms. The tracks of the Atlantic Coast Line ran through town. There was the post office, the train station, three stores, and the Speed Baptist and Episcopal churches.

My grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Shelton, developed a farm of over one thousand acres. He was one of the state’s first “master farmers,” recognized for introducing modern agricultural techniques, especially for breeding quality Hereford cattle. Ben Shelton and his family did well on their farm, but the Depression hit them hard. Grandfather died on August 30, 1931. He had three sons and two daughters. My uncle Henry Gray Shelton (who later went on to become a state senator) borrowed money to save the farm and provide a home for my grandmother and his fourteen-year-old brother, my father, Hugh Shelton.

Hugh would marry my mother, Sarah Laughlin, in January 1939. From the very beginning Mother was known as “Patsy,” since she’d been born on St. Patrick’s Day and lived at 1107 St. Patrick Street. Mother was a graduate of Eastern Carolina Teachers College and taught first grade at Speed Elementary School. She also played the organ at Speed Baptist Church—in fact she played it for more than sixty years, until she died on February 16, 2006, at the age of eighty-nine. My parents lived on Mapleton Farm, across Route 122 from the main house of my grandmother and my uncle Henry Gray. I was my parents’ first child, born on January 2, 1942, less than a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor. My father and Uncle Henry were exempt from military duty due to their essential farm work. But both my maternal uncles, Buddy and Cham Laughlin, served in the Army in World War II. Like most of their generation, they didn’t dwell on their experiences, but just quietly got on with their lives once they came home.

My younger brother, David, was born in 1944, my sister, Sarah, in 1949, and the youngest, Ben, in 1956. It was a good thing we had a large family because there was always plenty of work to go around. We raised corn, tobacco, soybeans, millet, peanuts, and cotton, in addition to mowing pastures and cutting silage for the registered Hereford herd of around two hundred head.

One of my earliest memories, when I was about three-years-old, is of helping my grandmother “Mammy” Shelton feed her chickens. A speckled rooster must have seen me as a threat to his brood because he flew up, pecking at my head.

“Mammy!” I yelled.

She grabbed the rooster and wrung its neck, then dropped the flapping body to the ground, where it jumped and rolled for almost a minute.

“Can’t have that kind of chicken around here, Hugh,” Mammy said.

Sunday after church we had stewed chicken with dumplings.

My maternal grandfather was the Edgecombe County Manager and he worked at the old courthouse. Mother used to tell how I would accompany him for quick trips to work, and we would have great times together. For the most part I was very well behaved, but on one of those trips I decided to exert my independence. I was four at the time.

Granddaddy pulled up to the front of the courthouse and parked, taking the same spot as always. “Now you stay here in the car, Hugh, and Granddaddy will be right back.”

“Okay,” I said. Then I slid across to the driver’s side and had no trouble occupying myself playing with the knobs, buttons, and that great big steering wheel. I’d looked out the open window at the busy town square and pretend that I was driving the car. It was so much fun . . . for about five minutes. Then I got bored. To this four-year-old, it looked a lot more interesting on the other side of that window than it did on my side. So I opened that heavy car door and left to explore.

I crossed the street and walked around a bit, and eventually entered Mr. George Howard Fountain’s office. “I’m looking for my granddaddy,” I said, gazing up at the man behind the desk.

“What’s his name?” he asked.

“Granddaddy,” I replied.

“Any idea where he works?”

“At the courthouse,” I said, turning and pointing through the big plate-glass window.

“Well, let’s go over and find him,” the man said, taking my hand with a warm smile so typical of Tarboro in the 1940s.

Needless to say, Granddaddy was surprised, although not upset. I was the apple of his eye. On the way home he would stop and pick up The New York Times; he read it out loud to me and my brother David from the time I was two. I seemed engrossed, Mother would say. Since that time period included the war years, maybe those early newspaper sessions with Granddaddy explain my fascination with the military.

I also remember as a small child holding Daddy’s big hand as we walked among the placid, deep-chested cattle with their dark reddish orange coats and white heads, chests, and feet. The herd was stocky and fat by today’s standards, and it produced top-quality, well-marbled beef.

At about age nine, I started helping grind millet and corn-stalk silage, which we loaded onto a clanking conveyor belt into tall, cylindrical brick silos and two underground silage pits. This was a late-summer job, done before school started after Labor Day. The fermenting silage radiated heat and a sweet-sour smell. Grinding silage was tough, unpleasant work.

One summer morning I was pitching chopped silage onto the conveyer belt and my sweaty face and neck were itchy with flecks of stalk. The sun pounded down and the humidity was about 90 percent. I was thirsty—real thirsty. A big thermos of cold water sat in the shade of the tractor. I lowered my pitchfork and gazed at the thermos. Then I saw Daddy watching me under the brim of his cap. He didn’t say a word. That wasn’t necessary. The message was clear: we drank water when we took a break, once an hour and at lunch. I lifted the pitchfork and got back to work.

We also raised pigs for ham, bacon, and fresh pork. Every October, the adults would slaughter several hogs, then hoist them on a block-and-tackle to bleed out. They’d deep-fry strips of skin into cracklings and then wash the ropy white lengths of small intestines and cook them into chitterlings. To put it mildly, that produced a rather unique odor. I’m proud of my southern heritage, but to this day I cannot eat chitterlings.

Hunting was good on the farm; rabbits, squirrels, and deer were plentiful. My daddy taught me to shoot when I was seven, first with a .22, then, when I was about twelve, with my own 20-gauge shotgun, and later with a family heirloom Parker 10-gauge double barrel that kicked so hard it almost knocked me over. Years later, during infantry training, the skills of marksmanship and silent stalking became second nature to me, but they had been recreation for me as a young kid hunting on the farm.

I began raising Hereford steers as a 4-H project when I was nine and continued until I was seventeen and a senior in high school. Each year I had the responsibility of raising a young steer calf, taking the animal soon after it was castrated. The steer barn was three-quarters of a mile through woods, pasture, and over a stream from our house. My brother David and I walked to the barn twice every day in the summer heat and freezing winter rain to feed, wash, and curry our steers and trim their hooves.

The April livestock shows where cattle were judged on their condition and appearance were the high point of the 4-H year. My parents bought me a black leather silver-studded steer halter to show my calf. When the auction was over, I replaced that fancy halter with one made of rope before the steer was taken away to slaughter. Like other farm kids, I learned to be kind to animals but not unduly sentimental about their fate.

The steers were quite small in the beginning but grew rapidly during the year. Once I took on steers as a 4-H project, I acquired what city people might have seen as an unusual maturity for a child. One of the greatest lessons I learned was that the animal was my responsibility. I could ask for advice, but no one else would do the work.

The 4-H club in Edgecombe County, as elsewhere in rural America, was a wholesome focus of activity for young people. We took very seriously the 4-H pledge to dedicate our Heads to clearer thinking, our Hearts to greater loyalty, our Hands to larger service, and our Health to better living. Farming was a family-centered way of life; 4-H prepared boys and girls for a future in agriculture.

But 4-H also honed organizational skills valuable off the farm, particularly the ability to speak in front of other people at a very young age. It’s no coincidence that I have felt comfortable with public speaking since I was a boy.

When I was twelve, I joined the county 4-H livestock judging team with three other boys. We practiced under the supervision of the county agricultural agent, Charlie Lockhart, who critiqued our ability. Usually our team would visit a neighboring farm and be shown a group of four cattle we had never seen before. Individual team members would have to rate each cow or steer, writing its rank in a small notebook before declaring.

One fall day we judged Hereford steers on a farm south of Tarboro. When it came time to declare, I held up my notebook and did my best to speak confidently. But I was certainly aware of Charlie Lockhart and the three other boys. “I place number four first,” I said, using the proper judging formula. “I place number three second. I place number one third. And I place number two fourth.”

Then Charlie came forward and spoke in a kind, quiet tone. “Hugh, do you really think number four is fuller in the loin than number three? Let’s look at them again.”

What am I missing? I thought. Then Charlie took the time to show the whole team. As always, he was patient and thorough.

This was excellent training for later life: I learned to gain from constructive criticism, and because of Charlie’s respectful demeanor, I learned how to give it most effectively, too. Throughout my career I would encounter great leaders who reflected Charlie’s manner, and many others not so great who had missed that lesson.

At Speed Elementary School, I was so bored in second grade that I cried because my mother, who had been my first-grade teacher, had already taught me the alphabet, numbers, and cursive writing at home. Fortunately, I was able to skip third grade and move right on to fourth, which, combined with 4-H projects, made life challenging again.

Rural Edgecombe County was a great place to live in the 1950s. There were no drugs and no alcohol problems. Crime was almost nonexistent. In summer, unlocked screen doors caught the breeze.

Schools reinforced home values. Every morning we had a short prayer, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. There were rules, and we followed them. If we did not, what’s now called corporal punishment (which we knew as paddling) was the quick and certain outcome.

I made it a point to be good and avoid being paddled. I knew that if I was bad I’d get my rear whacked both at school and at home by Daddy, who was an old-fashioned disciplinarian. One day in lunch line, Ray, the kid in front of me, began stomping his feet and the noise echoed loudly on the pine-plank floor.

Mrs. Hart, the teacher in charge of the lunchroom that day, strode up. “Hugh Shelton, you stop that racket.”

As soon as she turned her back, Ray grinned and began stomping again.

Mrs. Hart marched back and shook her finger at me. “Didn’t you hear what I said, Hugh?”

“Mrs. Hart,” I said, trying to explain, “I wasn’t stomping my feet.”

Lying was bad. Trying to cover up the original offense was even worse. Punishment came fast: a solid whack to my backside. Ray grinned again, but the matter was closed. Although there was no justice that day, I didn’t complain. I was learning to accept the hand I was dealt and make the best of it. But I never stood in line near Ray again.

That was far from the end of my troubles at school, thanks to a bully named Arnold—the playground tyrant who picked on everybody. Up through seventh grade, I was smaller than him. But by eighth grade I had shot up six inches and had long arms, strong from farm work. One day on the playground during a recess baseball game Arnold swaggered up and pushed me hard in the chest. I’d never been in a fight, but I wasn’t going to let this guy continue intimidating the school. My reach now exceeded his by several inches, so I got under his flailing arms and proceeded to use him as a punching bag, bloodying his nose and swelling his left eye. Unknown to either of us, up in the schoolhouse, the principal, Mittie Spencer, my mother, and several other teachers watched me pound Arnold to the grass and continue until he cried uncle. They couldn’t have been happier. Finally somebody had paid Arnold in the only currency he understood.

I never saw him bully anyone again.

I met Carolyn Johnson when I was starting fifth grade and she was in fourth. Carolyn was tall for her age with blond hair and striking blue eyes. There was an immediate spark of attraction.

She was one of six children and, like me, had grown up on a farm. Her father, James Johnson, owned and drove an eighteen-wheeler, and her family had moved from Tarboro to Speed that summer. The Johnsons were a great family and a joy to be around.

Carolyn and I began to date in the fall of 1958, when I was in eleventh grade at North Edgecombe High School. That was before I had a driver’s license, so we went on a triple date to a drive-in movie with Berry Lane Anderson and Bobby Joyner and their girlfriends. We saw the new Alfred Hitchcock thriller, Vertigo, with Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. I don’t remember much about the movie, but I do remember thinking that Carolyn was prettier than any Hollywood star. After that, we began to date regularly.

My family always had three or four horses on the farm. The one that I usually rode was a white gelding named Silver. He was wild, loved to rear up, and had a very tough mouth on the bit. I often rode him two miles into Speed to visit Carolyn and watch television with her family. They all enjoyed I Love Lucy and Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour. I preferred Chuck Connors in The Rifleman because he was a tough farmer defending his rights, although I thought it odd that he never did any real farm work. I sure could have used all that free time away from the barn and plowing to chase bandits and renegades.

Once, riding Silver back to the farm after watching Gunsmoke at Carolyn’s house, I started him galloping. His mane was flying when the right rein snapped. I had trained him to neck rein and could guide his direction but could not slow him down. “Whoa” did not work with that horse. Silver was at a dead run all the way to the farm; like all horses, he was eager to get home. He turned off the highway and onto the dirt road leading to the barn. Unfortunately, the gate was closed. Silver skidded to a stop but I kept going right over the gate.

In hindsight, I suppose this was good training for all the parachute-landing falls I later made in the Army, but I sure didn’t feel any value in it at the time. I was bruised, battered, and had the wind knocked out of me. Even worse, my good jeans and shirt were torn and dirty. “Okay, horse, you want to run, we’ll run.” I tied a light line to the right rein and ran Silver up and down a plowed field until he was completely winded. I felt bad about that when Silver died the next day.

I rode the school bus for years,...