LAURINBURG — St. Andrews University is seeking help from the community for a new history course on Laurinburg/Maxton Airbase and its role in World War II.
School officials announced the new course — HIS410 — ahead of this week’s 75 anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
The Army-Air Force base, about six miles from Laurinburg, opened in late October 1942 with a mission to train and equip glider airborne units for coordinated training with Army paratroop, infantry, artillery, engineers and medical units.
The class will be taught by history professor David Herr and Valerie Austin. It will begin in January with about 15 to 20 students.
SAU plans gather recollections from area residents about the base to create a historical archive, according to Herr.
We learned that the building that houses the Music Master store on 401 used to be one of the hangars at the airbase,” Herr said. “We think there are lot of hidden stories out there like that … stories that have not been collected or recorded.”
The interviews will be used for background research on the airbase and its role as one of the few training bases for the Waco Glider that was used on V-Day and other missions during the war.
The airbase was designed to be nearly self-sufficient, with hangars, barracks, warehouses, hospitals, dental clinics, dining halls, and maintenance shops. There were also libraries, stores and social clubs for officers and enlisted men.
Units and personnel that trained at the base were deployed to North Africa as part of the Operation Torch landings in French West Africa in November 1942, as well as the invasions of Sicily and Italy in the summer of 1943.
Visits by high-ranking Army and Air Force officers were common at the base, which meant parades and troops passing in review drills were frequent. Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Marshall are said to have visited the base on several occasions during the war to observe units performing parachute and glider training.
In early 1944, the mission of Laurinburg–Maxton base was changed to train student officers in advanced glider techniques and ground fighting. Also the training of C-47 pilots in towing the CG-4A Waco gliders, which were developed for the planned Normandy invasion in June.
Training in glider towing was previously conducted at Bowman Field, Kentucky, near Fort Campbell; the proximity to Fort Bragg by Laurinburg–Maxton and the Army airborne school there added a second school. The first glider pilot training class began on June 2, 1944, just four days prior to the Normandy Invasion.
“They called it the flying coffin,” Herr said of the glider.
Activity diminished over the summer of 1945 as people were discharged or transferred to other bases. In early September, just after the Japanese surrender, the base population was just over 3,700 personnel, down from the 10,000 in April. By the end of the September, it was down to 914. In October of that year, the base received notice that it would be inactivated by the end of the month.
When the base closed it was converted to civilian uses. The airfield was redeveloped into the civil Laurinburg–Maxton Airport.
The base hospital later became the Scotland Memorial Hospital, although today the hospital is in a new, modern facility about six miles southeast of the airport off U.S.74. Most of the other base buildings were torn down or sold off and moved over time.
During the course, students will interview community members’ recollections of the base and glider. In turn, these interviews will be added to a repository forming two portable displays that can be shared around the community.
“There is some interest in the community about whether or not we could build a glider for Scotland County,” Herr said. “It would be a huge undertaking.”
