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Crouse and the Last Year of World War II
Did You Know? 250 Years, Celebrating One Community XL. Crouse Community History & Photo Project / Mona Ramsey November 11, 2026
Crouse Community History & Photo Project
Today is Veterans Day, a day set aside for all who have served in the United States Armed Forces.
In 1945, while the gins still ran, the churches held services, the stores stayed open, and families went about the daily work of Crouse, the Lincoln County News carried short notices about sons and daughters of the same households who were overseas. The names that appeared in those columns belong to the families whose houses, farms, and businesses have filled earlier installments of this series. The war news and the community news arrived in the same paper.
In January the paper reported that Pfc. Paul J. Thomas, son of J. A. Thomas of Crouse, had been wounded in the European fighting. The same week Mrs. D. F. Chapman of Crouse, Route One, received a telegram that her son, Pfc. Hoyt W. Chapman, had been slightly injured in Germany on November 19. He had been overseas twenty months after training at Fort Bragg.
The Chapman name was already familiar in the village; earlier notices had listed the Chapman brothers as ginners. The telegram arrived while the gin season was still part of the local calendar.
In February Sgt. John Newell Aderholt was reported recovering in a hospital in England from a head wound received November 9 while serving with Patton’s Third Army. He had just been awarded the Oak Leaf Cluster for bravery and had sent the badge and his Purple Heart home to his wife, Mrs. Margie Aderholt. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. M. B. Aderholt of Crouse. The Aderholt name had long been tied to the care of livestock in the community; now it appeared in a war notice from Europe. Later that month Lieutenant Walton H. Boring of Crouse was named in an account of Navy fighter pilots who shot down a Japanese VAL dive bomber near Manila Bay. He and another pilot, flying Hellcats, destroyed one of two VALs that were heading toward Mindoro. The notice placed a Crouse name in the Pacific air war while the community continued its ordinary rounds.
March brought word that men of the 80th Division had received the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. Among those listed from the Lincolnton area was Pvt. Wm. L. Bollinger, Jr., noted as the nephew of Maggie Bollinger Smith. The Smith and Bollinger connections were part of the wider web of Crouse and Lincoln County families that the paper treated as local news.
In April Mrs. Minnie Heafner of Crouse was notified that her son, Tech. 5th Grade Bruce F. Heafner, had received a Certificate of Merit for service in France while serving as Battalion Mail Orderly. A June notice added that he had fought with the 243rd Field Artillery Battalion supporting Patton’s drive across France and Germany, that he had been a prosecution solicitor of Lincoln County before entering the service in February 1942, and that the battalion had trained at Camp Shelby and spent much of 1943 on coastal defense in Florida before landing in France in the summer of 1944. The Heafner name had already appeared in earlier installments, linked to schools, to the Methodist church, and to ordinary village life. The mail orderly’s citation was another line in that same family record.
May brought the first word in months from Sgt. William “Bill” W. Nolen. He cabled his parents, Mr. and Mrs. L. M. Nolen of Crouse, that he was safe and hoped to be home soon. He had been a prisoner of the German government since the previous summer after flying fifteen bomber missions. A June account described the mission: a new B-17 on its first flight to Frankfurt was shot up by flak and fighters, jettisoned its bombs, and crash-landed near Abbeville, France. The crew found German soldiers waiting; when they ran for the woods they were fired on, turned back, and surrendered. He returned after fourteen months as a prisoner. The Nolen name was already part of Crouse history, Dr. Winslow Washington Nolen had lived in the village, and Lem Nolen, Bill’s father, would later paint the life around it. The cable to L. M. Nolen arrived while the village was still waiting for other sons to come home.
Tech. Sgt. William “Bill” W. Nolen
The same spring the paper noted that Banks S. Heafner, son of Columbus M. Heavner of Route 1, Lincolnton, belonged to a Sixth Infantry Division quartermaster company awarded the Meritorious Service Unit Plaque for work in New Guinea and Luzon.
In June Petty Officer 2/C Ause Harvey, son of Mr. and Mrs. Odell Harvey of Lincolnton, was reported aboard a ship that took part in the Okinawa invasion. He kept a wing fragment of a Japanese plane shot down close to his position. He had finished Lincolnton High School, attended N.C. State for two years, and trained at Bainbridge before the long Pacific voyage that ended at Okinawa. He was scheduled for advanced gunnery school in Washington. The Harvey name, like the others, was already known in the Crouse area.
The hardest notices came in June. Pfc. R. B. “Jack” Heavner, son of Mr. and Mrs. L. N. Heavner of Crouse, was killed in action on May 9 on Pansy Island in the Philippines. He had been in service three years and overseas since August 1941. His wife, the former Mary Brantley of Key West, received the War Department letter. Surviving brothers and sisters were listed; a later note records that Luther Vance Heavner was also a brother and that his name was left out of the published list.
Luther Vance Heavner was a photographer while serving in the Armed Forces and on April 29, 1945 he was present at and captured the execution of Mussolini. At another time he snapped a photo of Gen. Eisenhower and President Roosevelt in the same Jeep. Daughter Paula recalled, “He served in the US Army and was wounded and received the Purple Heart, the foxhole he was in was hit and the soldiers to his right and left were both killed and he lost his right arm.” The Heavner family had deep roots in the Indian Creek and Crouse area; the notice arrived while the rest of the village continued its summer work.
Also in June Corporal John W. Beam, son of Mr. and Mrs. B. C. Beam of Crouse, was reported with the 194th Glider Infantry of the 17th Airborne Division when it crossed the Rhine to secure the Wesel bridgehead. He had earlier taken part in the invasion of Southern France and had been awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge and had been in the Battle of the Bulge.
Before the war he had attended North Brook and Lincolnton High Schools and worked on his parents’ farm. The Beam name was already familiar from earlier installments on local physicians and from the ordinary life of the creeks.
In July Lt. Joyce Heafner of the Army Nurses’ Corps returned from overseas and spent leave with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Heafner of Lincolnton, Route 1. The same month Louise Elmore of Crouse married Robert E. Holt of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, at the Methodist
parsonage; the groom had just been discharged after overseas service. The wedding notice sat beside the war news as ordinary community life continued.
In August memorial services were held at Bethphage Lutheran Church for Pvt. Luther B. Reep, killed in Germany on March 24 at the age of twenty. He had trained at Camp Croft and gone overseas in November 1944. He was survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. L. M. Reep, and brothers and sisters. Also, in August two babies were born in Lincolnton on VJ Day, August 14: a son to Sgt. and Mrs. M. C. Loy of Crouse, and a daughter to Pvt. and Mrs. C. B. Johnson of Route Three. The birth notice on the day the war ended in the Pacific is the kind of item the local paper printed without comment.
September brought word that Sgt. Jack C. Yoder had transferred from Cherry Point to Camp Lejeune and spent a weekend with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Yoder of Crouse, and that Sgt. Robert L. Yoder had been ordered overseas. In October three-year-old Stephen Elmore, son of Mr. and Mrs. Forest Elmore of Lincolnton Route 1, died after being kicked by a mule; his father was a soldier in Japan. The same month Sgt. Paul J. Hill of Crouse, a bombsight repairman with the 314th Bombardment Wing on Guam, was listed among those commended for keeping Superfortresses ready for the raids on Japan. His wife, Margaret Heafner Hill, lived at Crouse.
The notices do not tell what the families said when the telegrams arrived or how the community marked the returns. They do show that in the last year of the war the same paper that carried gin notices, church news, and ordinary social items also carried the names of Crouse sons and daughters who were wounded, cited, imprisoned, married, or lost. The gins, the churches, the stores, and the farms kept their schedules. The war news arrived in the same columns.
The names that appeared in the 1945 papers are only part of the longer record. Other Crouse residents served in later years and in earlier ones. Their service is preserved in archived photographs and in family memory rather than in transcribed newspaper notices. Among them are C. A. McGinnis, Ken Moore, Andrew Rutledge, Chris Heafner, Edmund Sain, Floyd Ramsey, Glenn Reep, James Leatherman, Johnny Sain, Ralph “Monk” Eaker, Johnny Parker, Les Yoder, Louie Dellinger, Mark Baker, Memry Baker, Mike Huss, Dennis “Monk” Dellinger, Oscar Sappenfield, Tom Davis, Ben Heavner, Tommy Dellinger, Webster Metts, Ron Blake, Nick Kaufman, Ashe Davis, Harold “Buck” Meeks, Perry Cashion, and Charles Lewis Elmore. The list is not complete. There are more names that belong on it. If a name has been left out, a comment below will add it. The photographs and the names together stand as the local record of those who served.
Veterans Day is the day set aside to remember all who have served.
Sources
· Lincoln County News, January 15, January 18, February 12, February 21, March 26, April 23,
· May 21, May 28, June 4, June 25, June 28, July 12, July 26, August 6, August 16, September 2, and October 15, 1945. Transcribed for the Crouse Community History & Photo Project.
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