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Floyd Fulbright
By Peggy Gosselin
Canton bureau chief

[Editor’s note: This was part of a series saluting Haywood County, North Carolina veterans of World War II, published in The Mountaineer. Used with the permission of the author, and contributed by Paul Fullbright.]

CLYDE -- Military medals mean nothing to Floyd Fulbright, who enlisted in the Navy at the age of 16 for another reason. "I wasn’t interested in medals. I went into the service to do everything I could to see that the Germans didn’t get over here," said 77-year-old Fulbright. Fulbright remembers vividly the sight of soldiers at the onset of World War II training with "broom stick" guns in Waynesville. Fulbright recalls seeing Haywood County enlisted men marching to the railroad station in Frog Level to leave for assignment. "Someone had a big sign erected that said, ‘From here leaves the greatest soldiers,’" he said. When his older brother, James, received his draft notice, Fulbright also wanted to join the war effort, he said, even after James was turned down because his hand had been badly burned. "I met up with some Navy boys and joined up," said Fulbright. He remembers the date, Feb. 11, 1943, with clarity.

Fulbright didn’t tell recruiters he was only 16. He reported to Camp Perry, Md., for basic training. "It wasn’t nothing but a mud hole," Fulbright said. He only had been at boot camp three weeks when the call went out for volunteers to go to gunnery school. "Five of us volunteered for the U.S. Naval Armed Guard, which turned out to be a suicide outfit," he said. The men in the Armed Guard would serve as gun crews on merchant ships that German soldiers were sinking. "Our training was brief. They said there was no use training us because we would probably get killed," Fulbright said.

After being promoted to seaman first class, Fulbright was put on a boat loaded with 10,000 tons of ammunition. "I asked if I shouldn’t have a life jacket, and an officer told me if our boat got hit I’d be blown so high I’d have to look down to see the moon," said Fulbright. There were more peaceful times when the boats hauled wheat or other supplies, but Fulbright said the pending threat ever loomed. "We lived one day to the next, because we never knew when the Germans might bomb our boat," he said. Fulbright sailed to several ports aboard the SS Bull Run oil tanker, hauling crude oil to ships. The Bull Run made its way to the Panama Canal, Marshall Islands, Caroline Islands, Admiralty Islands, Philippines, New Guinea, Australia and Iran from 1944 to 1945.

Misfit on leave

Once, during a brief visit home while on leave, Fulbright was confronted with the hardships of war being experienced on the home front. Wanting to visit his sister in Franklin, Fulbright requested gasoline from the county’s ration board. "They told me I could have seven gallons. That made me hot. I told them to keep it; I would walk," he said. The incident unnerved Fulbright, who had grown accustomed to a different attitude in the military. The men who served in the U.S. Naval Armed Guard earned the reputation of being a bunch of misfits, Fulbright said. "Everybody was afraid of us and didn’t want nothing to do with us," he said. "Everybody knew we were crazy and bad. MPs (military police) would see us walking down the street with only half our uniform on and they’d decide they had somewhere else to go. They’d better go somewhere else," Fulbright said.

Three years after enlisting in the Navy, his hair had turned white at the age of 19. He couldn’t eat or sleep, and he had to hold a cup of coffee with both hands to keep his trembling hands from spilling the hot liquid. "I figured I should have been killed. It was a great shock to me because I was still alive," he said. He’s not sure what the military’s point system involved, but he said a sailor could get his discharge and go home after accumulating 70 points. Fulbright racked up 300 points and decided he had seen enough of the war. "I told them I was coming back to the mountains to die. I was sick and my nerves were real bad," he said. Fulbright was discharged on Nov. 18, 1945.

A month later, he received a letter from Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, stating, "I want the Navy’s pride in you to reach into your civil life and to remain with you always. "You have served in the greatest Navy in the world. It crushed two enemy fleets at once, receiving their surrender only four months apart. It brought our land-based airpower within bombing range of the enemy and set our ground armies on the beachheads of final victory. It performed the multitude of tasks necessary to support these military operations. No other Navy at any time has done so much. For your part in these achievements, you deserve to be proud as long as you live," Forrestal wrote to Fulbright.

Fulbright returned to Haywood County, recovered and went to work at American Enka Corp. in Buncombe County. His wages were 30 cents an hour, he said. He was eventually promoted to shift foreman and later transferred to the research department. He retired about 12 years ago. He also began working with the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office and has worked as a deputy and special officer for 42 years. He married Bobbie Bramlett in 1948. They had one son, Timothy, and a daughter, Deborah. Bobbie died in 1975.

"I still think about the war. A lot of people I knew were killed. It’s like a bad dream," Fulbright said.