Memorial Dedicated to Honor Flying Tiger

Hundreds of eyes turned skyward Saturday as a Chinese plane, trailing smoke, peeled off from a formation of four, heading west.

That “missing man” flyover culminated the midday dedication of a second memorial at Gilliam-McConnell Airfield in Carthage, both honoring young fighter pilots lost in battle defending people in distant lands against invading oppressors.

The new memorial joins a historic granite monument supporting the bronze tablet France sent to Carthage in 1917 following the death of James Rogers McConnell — last of the Lafayette Escadrille to fall before the United States entered the Great War.

Now two new granite pillars stand in tribute to a 21-year-old Flying Tiger pilot from High Falls lost in World War II. One is engraved and has his picture on a ceramic tile. The other carries a golden plaque and a second tile showing a gigantic granite cross that bears his name on a mountainside in China.

The plaque says in both Chinese and English, “2nd Lt. Robert Hoyle Upchurch will live forever in the hearts of the Chinese people.” It was hand carried from China by a delegation of 11 men who had flown halfway around the world to take part in these ceremonies.

Two flags — the red flag and gold stars of the People’s Republic of China and the Star-Spangled Banner — snapped in the breeze overhead as cadets of Pinecrest High School’s Air Force Junior ROTC lifted sabers over delegates from China and other dignitaries crossing a red carpet as they arrived.

Mayors and representatives of every municipality in Moore County came, each bearing a resolution endorsing the day. State Sen. Harris Blake greeted them and welcomed J. Don Hobart, the official representative of Gov. Bev Perdue.

Among the Chinese delegates were two from Huaihua — where the Flying Tigers were based — and two from Zhijiang, Pinehurst’s sister city. There were delegates from Hunan’s capital city of Changsha, the district’s central city of Chenzhou, and from Guidong, Moore’s sister county.

The crowd — estimated at more than 300 — stood to face the two flags as a brass ensemble conducted by the Rev. Dr. Paul Murphy played the anthems of two nations. Airfield owner Roland Gilliam then led the Pledge of Allegiance.

A nearly full-sized replica of a Curtiss P-40N fighter plane like the one Upchurch had flown “over the hump” on the Burma front to get into China stands on the memorial site. It was a P-40 Upchurch was flying Oct. 6, 1944, returning from the last mission of the day when last seen near cloud-shrouded mountains in Hunan Province.

Upchurch was listed as missing in action. His mother and father never knew his fate.

But in the mountains of Guidong County, a team had hiked four days to reach the crash site in hopes of rescuing the doomed plane’s pilot. It was not to be. They returned with bits of the wreckage and what they could recover of his body, which was washed, wrapped in red silk and placed in the traditional 7-inch thick coffin reserved for heroes.

Hundreds in Guidong gathered to mourn their unknown American pilot, and they buried him down the slope from a Ming Dynasty tower on Santai Mountain overlooking the city.

For more than 60 years Guidong people brought flowers and said prayers there until DNA identified him. When his remains were reburied in the family plot with military honors, the mayor of Guidong wrote to propose the two counties formally form a sister-county bond.