Bonus Army Cleared Ground for Golf Course

Today, the Swamp Fox Golf Club lies just west of Kingstree off the Manning Highway. Two separate historical movements played a major role in its development.

In the 1920s and '30s, Kingstree and Williamsburg County had become a "winter colony" for a number of rich, northern industrialists and businessmen. Some owned plantations they turned into game preserves for hunting. A few owned houses in Kingstree. Some only spent winters here; others, like Howard Hadden, owner of Springbank, were here for as many as eight months out of the year.

In the early 1930s, businessmen in Kingstree began talking about the possibility of building a nine-hole golf course as another attraction for northern sportsmen. The Kiwanis Club took the golf course on as a project and was able to secure 115 acres four miles from Kingstree off the Manning Highway from Miss Susan Gourdin in early 1935. A Board of Directors was established for the golf course. The board included Howard S. Hadden, T.M. Gilland, F.W. Thomas, J.D. O'Bryan, the Rev. E.W. Cantwell, Thomas McCutchen, and A.M. Schrieberg. 

The board hired Robert White as architect for the course. In 1916, White was named the first President of the Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA). After his tenure with the PGA, he designed a number of golf courses throughout the eastern United States.

Robert "Bob" White

Source: Wikipedia

The drive to establish a golf course near Kingstree intersected with another movement that brought the labor for clearing the land for the course to town. Military personnel serving in the World War had been promised a bonus for signing up. They were to receive $1 a day for every day they served while in the United States, and $1.25 per day for days served overseas. However, once the war was over, the federal government was reluctant to pay the bonus. Twice Congress passed bills to pay the veterans, but both President Warren Harding and President Calvin Coolidge vetoed them. Congress was able to override the Coolidge veto, but by the time settlements could be agreed upon, the stock market had crashed in October 1929, and President Herbert Hoover announced that the bonus payments would be postponed until 1945 or until the veteran died. Many veterans then began calling the bonus the Tombstone Bonus.

Many of the veterans who returned were suffering from what we would call today PTSD. Some had been gassed; others were shell-shocked, and many had become alcoholics in trying to deal with the stresses of attempting to return to civilian life. Frustrated by what they perceived as foot-dragging by the federal government, they formed themselves into what they called the "Bonus Army," and during the Hoover administration, they staged a march on Washington, D.C., which was dispersed by federal troops. After Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President, his administration feared a repeat of the protests and came up with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which was to set up camps for the veterans who were having trouble re-entering society. They would be given work and paid $30 a month. One of the first camps set up in November 1934 was called Camp Williamsburg.

It was located about four miles south of Kingstree at Red Hill on Black River at the site of an old Civilian Conservation Corps Camp. P.G. Gourdin was hired as supervisor for the camp. Initially 236 men were brought to the camp. Some of them were sent to Georgetown daily where they worked at planting pine trees; others were given the job of cutting fire lanes in existing forests and rebuilding and improving fire towers. Still others were responsible for clearing the land that was to become the golf course.

By early 1935, there were 170 men in camp from 38 states, representing 62 different occupations. They were admittedly sometimes a rough lot.

The Charleston Evening Post of May 30, 1935, reported that one of the campers was in Kelley Sanatorium in Kingstree, missing one-half inch of the end of his nose after an altercation in which another camper had bitten it off. "Stranger still," the paper said, "his nose was pinned to the bulletin board at Camp Williamsburg." The paper went on to describe that after the camper had been taken to the hospital, Dr. E.T. Kelley received a phone call from the camp, reporting that the missing part of the nose had been found and asking if he wanted it brought to town. Dr. Kelley's reply was reported as "Too late now. We've done the best we could with what was left."

Despite the work, many of the men still had problems adjusting to civilian life and in August 1935, about 20 of them got drunk one Saturday night. Taken to the county jail, they wrecked the second floor, breaking out windows and screens and defacing the walls. One newspaper article pointed out that despite their numbers and their drunkenness, the sole Kingstree police officer on duty was able to quiet them down. The article noted, "They will whoop and curse and stagger about, but they are so depressed that they obey the first command of authority, regardless of their alcoholic condition." And they willingly paid for the damage they had inflicted on the jail.

However, The New York Times sent a reporter to Kingstree and a lengthy story appeared later that month. It painted a picture of a town that was "continually disturbed" by the campers. One Kingstree woman reportedly said, "When these men are around on and after their pay day, a lot of women here drive to Florence to shop. They just cannot risk going into the stores here." Another woman reportedly returned home to her home on Main Street one afternoon to find that one of the veterans had wandered into her house and was "sleeping it off" in the master bedroom. Town children, the article stated, were no longer allowed to play outside as their mothers didn't want them exposed to the language often used by the men of Camp Williamsburg.

The article also took great pains to point out that no one in Kingstree played golf, making it appear as if the campers were randomly building a golf course that no one would use. No mention was made of the reasons why the Kiwanis club had started the golf course project. The article quoted "one disgruntled veteran," who said, "Hell, I'll bet there ain't a whole bag of them golf clubs in forty miles of this tank town."

The campers were incensed by the Times article, and they wrote a letter to the editor, refuting each statement made in the story. The letter noted that women and children from Kingstree often came to the camp to eat with the campers and to provide entertainment by singing for them. Businessmen from the area were making monetary contributions toward the upkeep of the camp, the letter said.

However, the government announced that three of the FERA camps in South Carolina would close in September 1935, with veterans who were still homeless and unable to fend for themselves entering the Civilian Conservation Corps. The Kingstree Camp remained open to house those veterans who, for whatever reason, could not or would not enter the CCC. These remaining vets would be paid $1 to $3 a week instead of the $30 a month.

Looking across one of the original nine holes at the Swamp Fox Golf Club today.

To make a long and convoluted story shorter, the golf course was completed, and in November 1935, the course's board of directors hired Jack Hitchcock to serve as the course professional. A native of Toronto, Canada, he had been the course pro at Charlottetown Course on Prince Edward Island before coming to Kingstree. When he moved here, he initially stayed with Howard and Agnes Hadden at Springbank. As for the Bonus Army, the United States finally paid the World War veterans their bonus in 1936. The Bonus Army is a little remembered story from U.S. history. If anyone is interested in learning more about the Bonus Army, you might want to read The Bonus Army: An American Epic by Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen. Several paragraphs in the book are devoted to Camp Williamsburg and Kingstree.

UPDATE:  The November 7, 2018, post about jazz bandleader Amos White recently elicited a comment from Steven Fiche, who is helping Amos White's grandson,  Dr. Eddie "Snakepit" Edwards build a website on which to archive his music, videos, and art. In the Gallery on the website, you will find a picture of a much older Amos White with his grandson, Eddie, who is a saxophonist.