BEYOND THE DROPZONE A SPARTAN KING AND TWO S.C. GENERALS

S.C. Generals Stan Spears (r) and Gene Rogers (l) make a pilgimage to Thermopylae, site of the last stand of Sparta’s lionhearted Leonidas
By W. Thomas Smith Jr.

Maj. Gen. Stanhope S. Spears and Brig. Gen. Eugene F. Rogers, vacationing last month with their wives in Greece, tour the site of the 480 B.C. battle of Thermopylae where some 300 Spartans and an untold number of allied Greek soldiers all under the command of Spartan King Leonidas — the towering warrior immortalized in the statue (pictured) — battled to-the-death a force of Persian invaders perhaps 100-times their number.The doomed but heroic stand of the Spartans defending the pass at Thermopylae, not only severely bloodied the much-larger Persian army, but bought time for allied Greek forces who would go on to win victories over the Persians in the battles of Salamis and Platea, effectively ending Persia’s invasion of Greece.

“Had Leonidas, whose name means ‘lion-like,’ been an American and lived in the modern era, he surely would have been a candidate for the Medal of Honor,” says Rogers, the project co-chair of the national Medal of Honor convention to be held in Charleston, S.C. in 2010. “The Medal of Honor is the highest decoration awarded by our country for valor in combat, and when you consider today the 95 living-recipients of the Medal, they all — to a man — seem to possess what must have been the lionheart of Leonidas.”Rogers – a career attorney (co-founder of Rogers, Townsend, and Thomas law firm in Columbia, S.C.), a former U.S. Air Force JAG officer and World War II-era U.S. Marine – serves in the S.C. Military Department’s Joint Services Detachment (JSD). He divides his time between his home in Columbia and his villa in Rafina, Greece near the home of daughter, Carol, and grandson, Michael Eugene Papaletsos. He is married to former S.C. Rep. Elsie Rast Stuart.

Spears is the adjutant general of S.C. He commands the S.C. Military Department, which is composed of — among other elements — the S.C. Army National Guard, the S.C. Air National Guard, the S.C. State Guard, and the JSD. Spears’ wife, Dorothy, took the photograph of the “Spartan king and two S.C. generals.”— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.