Retired CMPD officer, Vietnam vet reflects on following in father's footsteps

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The son of a late war hero is a war hero himself.

JC Stanton, a retired Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer shared his father's and his memories from World War I and Vietnam War, respectively, with Eyewitness News reporter Mark Becker.

Claude Stanton's story began 100 years ago on a desolate battlefield in France.

“He said as the days went on, with the mud, the sanitary conditions, he said it was, it was something like, you couldn't imagine,” said JC Stanton.

JC Stanton was a CMPD officer for 30 years.

As a boy, he'd listened to his father describe the horrors of life in the trenches during WWI.

“He said orders they'd give them. Fix bayonets. He said the next thing they tell you, they'd blow a whistle, and you'd go over the top. You'd go up the ladder,” said JC.

Claude Stanton survived three trips over the top, but the poison gas that hung in the air took its toll.

“He said his lungs started burning bad. He had trouble breathing,” said JC Stanton.

On his way to a field hospital, Claude Stanton had a remarkable encounter.

“They picked him up in a (Model T) truck with a canvas on it, and he said it was odd because he remembered there were cartoons drawn on the canvas. And he said, he couldn't figure out, why do they have cartoons on the Red Cross ambulance? Side of an ambulance?” said JC Stanton.

It wasn't until decades later that Claude Stanton realized the ambulance driver was a young Walt Disney.

Walt Disney would go on to build an entertainment empire, while Claude Stanton would come home to Swain County, disabled and almost broke.

He fought to get his benefits back for the next 25 years.

“They finally went back and back paid him, but $50 a month for 10 years, that's not a whole lot of money,” said he said.

In 1968, JC Stanton followed his father's footsteps and enlisted in the Army.

He was 19 and the Vietnam War was raging.

“There was a lot of combat going on in Vietnam, it was shocking," said he said.

JC Stanton survived two tours of duty in Vietnam, and like his father, he paid a physical price. He was exposed to Agent Orange which eventually led to cancer, and the emotional scars of the war are still with him.

“At two o'clock in the morning, when you wake up in a cold sweat and your heart's running 130 beats a minute, and it's waking up from something you experienced, you saw that you can't unsee,” he said.

Despite the trauma, he and his father never second-guessed their decisions to serve.

“What I went through, what my father went through, I just feel I’m lucky to be living in this country where I can make that choice,” he said.

Five years ago, the veterans office in Asheville found two of Claude Stanton's medals that had been missing for 95 years.

The office presented the medals to his widow, who is now 101 years old and may well be one of the few surviving widows of WWI veterans.

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