Folkston's Two Drugstores Were Headquarters for War News in 1944.

Photograph shows one of Folkston's World War Two drugstores, Stapleton Pharmacy. Inside Stapleton's Rexall Drugstore, on Folkston's Main Street, local men listened to the news of World War Two, and celebrated the Allies Invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Dr. W. D. Thompson operated his Folkston Pharmacy across the street, also a headquarters for news of World War Two.

It was June 6, 1944. On the shores of Normandy in France, Allied troops were storming ashore. D-Day had begun. The resistance from Nazi forces was fierce as the amphibious craft unloaded their fighting men on the sand beaches, beaches that soon turned red with blood from American and Allied forces.

On Folkston's Main Street, the town's mayor, Charlie Passieu was more excited than anyone. With a wide smile on his leathery face, his necktie hung loosely around his neck; he stopped in every store along the street, shouting as loud as his voice would let him "Our boys have landed". He repeated it over and over again as he made his rounds into every store, his smile getting broader with each stop.

Stapleton's Rexall Drug Store, owned by E. B. Stapleton whose son, Junior, was in service, was perhaps the most popular stop for the townspeople to get the latest war news. A crowd soon gathered around the marble top soda fountain, swapping tales of what they had heard on the radio.

Mayor Charlie Passieu was unusually proud. His son, Louie was Flight Officer on a B-29 bomber, The Raidin' Maiden, flying out of China, Burma and India in the Pacific fighting. Most of the men of Charlton County, by this time, were in the Armed Forces. That year there were no males in the High School Graduating Class. Most had volunteered for service when they turned 17.

Across Folkston's Main Street from Stapleton's drug store, pharmacist W. D. Thompson leaned closer to his short wave Hallicrafter radio. His daughter, Willette, was an army nurse involved in the war zones. Thompson was listening to the whines and whistles of the fading newscasts coming from Europe by short wave, but with much the same news as on American radio stations. Thompson in his drugstore often listened to Tokyo Rose, a Japanese radio propagandist, trying to torment America's fighting men.  A half-dozen men crowded around Thompson with his Churchill-like features, straining to hear more war news right from the front on the strange looking short wave radio.

On the beaches at Normandy, among the thousands of American Troops were men from Charlton County. Some died, while others were injured in the fighting as the Allies fought for a foothold in Fortress Europe. Several returned home after the war with one leg amputated, or with other crippling injuries.

Little else got done in Folkston that June 6^th in 1944.  All of Charlton County buzzed with the excitement in France. White-haired Folkston lawyer Colonel A. S. McQueen entered Stapleton's Drug Store on his crutches. His son, Bill, was in the military overseas. A smile crept across the elder McQueen's wrinkled face as he heard the news of the Normandy invasion. McQueen, the Charlton County Historian, who had lost a leg to amputation, and couldn't stand long at a time, sat down in one of the wrought iron chairs in the drugstore beneath a whirling four-bladed ceiling fan. The scene in Stapleton's Drug Store was one of jubilation tempered with worries over whether the landing would be successful or repulsed by Nazi Germany's defenders.

The radio soon aired the voice of Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, warning the nation of the tenuous invasion. President Franklin Roosevelt soon followed on the radio newscast, in his soft tones, leading the nation in a prayer for the success of the invasion and the safety of American troops. Just the day before, on June 5, 1944, Roosevelt had taken to the airways to announce the capture and death of Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini at the hands of Italian partisans. At that very moment, 175,000 young American soldiers were about to embark on Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe. A million more would follow.

Soon word spread throughout the nation that the Americans had advanced inland. Because of the American intervention, the chances of the invasion failing diminished considerably. The men in the two Folkston drug stores did nothing else all through that day. America and its allies on the shore in France took precedent over all other activity. The men in those drug stores felt that if they left the radio news reports, it would be seen as "deserting their troops." It was well into the evening of June 6, 1944 before the men began leaving the Folkston drug stores and returning to their homes. The invasion was apparently going to succeed.

The people of Charlton County had tired of the war. It had been going on then for nearly three years. Rationing, wartime inconveniences, and fears for the lives of Charlton County servicemen and women had consumed the people. The Charlton County Draft Board, The War Rationing Board, and day and night jobs in shipyards in Brunswick and Jacksonville had almost become a way of life. Troop trains with their soldiers, sailors, tanks and guns rumbled through Folkston day and night. Local lady volunteers met troop trains that stopped for water for its locomotives, handing out sandwiches and coffee to the eager troops.

On the roof of the Charlton County courthouse, volunteer aircraft spotters phoned in reports of every plane flying over Folkston. Home Guard units guarded the railroad bridges across the Saint Marys River near Boulogne, and high school students conducted endless scrap drives, scouring the county for old tires and metal to be used in the war effort.

On that June 6, 1944, the men in Folkston's two drug stores could see an end to what seemed like an eternity of worry and sacrifice. At that time, numbers of Charlton County servicemen had already given their lives on battlefields around the world. More would lose their lives, while others would be maimed, in the months that lay ahead.

In those two Folkston Main Street drugstores on that 6^th day of June 1944, the strain of the war showed on the faces of those standing at the counters. The invasion of Europe by Allied forces was to signal the beginning of the end to World War Two. The men there knew this, and rejoiced, although many more Charlton County boys would lose their lives and limbs before the final victory of Japan and VJ Day in 1945.

Perhaps no other time in history has so consumed the men and women in Charlton County as did that June 6^th day fifty six years ago. D. Day, when Allied forces began their onslaught onto Fortress Europe to liberate the thousands held in enemy prison camps, and the millions more who had been under the Nazi flag since the fall of France. Churches opened their doors as those on the home front gathered there to pray and to ask protection of their loved ones.

Those two Folkston drugstores provided men of the county with a place to rejoice at Allies victories and a place to seek comfort when word was received of the death or injury of "One of our boys."