In December of 1944, O. Stanley Smith of Columbia was a 19-year-old artillery officer in the 75th Infantry Division in World War II, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, the fight for the Colmar Pocket and the battle for the Ruhr River. During the war, he was 6-feet-1-inch tall and weighed 135 pounds. “My friends would kid me than I was so skinny I could turn sideways and never get hit,” Smith, now 88, said.
On Friday, June 8, 2012 Smith was standing tall again. This time he was among six South Carolina World War II veterans in the Westin Poinsett Hotel to receive the French Legion of Honor from that country’s consul general.