NOTE: The above video is a livestream of WIS featuring current newscasts, Soda City Living and Gray Media\u2019s Local News Live.<\/p>\n
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) – A World War II veteran is being honored in Columbia Thursday afternoon by the Consul General of France in Atlanta.<\/p>\n
World War II veteran Staff Sergeant Phillip BruceCook will be bestowed the Legion of Honor, France\u2019s highest distinction, at the South Carolina Historic Aviation Foundation in Columbia at 1:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
Cook was born in Swansea, South Carolina, and enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1943 at 17. <\/p>\n
Trained as an aerial gunner, he was deployed to England and assigned to the 524th Bomb Squadron, 379th Bomb Group, Eighth Air Force, based in Cambridgeshire.Staff<\/a> <\/p>\n Sergeant Cook completed 35 combat missions before returning to the U.S. to train new gunners until his honorable discharge in October 1945.<\/p>\n In recognition of his service, Staff Sgt. Cook was awarded the Air Medal with five Oak Leaf Clusters, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with four campaign stars, and the World War II Victory Medal.<\/p>\n Feel more informed, prepared, and connected with WIS. For more free content like this, subscribe to our email newsletter<\/a>, and download our apps<\/a>. Have feedback that can help us improve? Click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 WIS. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NOTE: The above video is a livestream of WIS featuring current newscasts, Soda City Living and Gray Media\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,4087,4088],"class_list":{"0":"post-4382","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-france","9":"tag-march-madness","10":"tag-ncaa-tournament"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}