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Charles Lewis Woodhurst was born at Abbeville, SC on May 18th 1934 to Claude Hamilton (1) Woodhurst and his wife Mayzelle Susan Argo.
He married Mary Louise M. Moore of Anderson, SC, the daughter of William Lee Moore and his wife Lettie Ruth (nee) Wilson.
He and Mary produced one child, Rose Machelle Woodhurst. Rose Machelle married Jackie Rogers and produced a child Addie Louise in 1988.
He graduated as a mechanical engineer from Clemson University in 1959, joined the Army in 1960 and then pursued a distinguished Army aviation career. He served in Vietnam, Germany and England, and reached the rank of Colonel. He gained numerous military awards including the Distinguished Flying Cross. During his army career he also obtained an MBA degree from the University of Georgia and an MA degree from the University of Southern California. In 1984, whilst in England, he undertook further postgraduate studies at the University of Cambridge. In 1986 he was appointed US Military Attache in Nepal.
He died aged 68 on March 24th 2003 at the Flowers Hospital in Dothan, Alabama. He had been residing at 36081 Troy, Pike County, Alabama. His obituary was published on March 29th 2003 in The Montgomery Advertiser. He was buried on April 14th with full military honours at the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
The following account was found on one of the many US veteran websites some years ago:
By 1st Lt. Barry Nelson (17th AVN-IO)- Some claim "Ace von Zipper" didn't fly biplane at all-it just headed for the nearest Viet Cong by itself. "It's fantastic," one of his fellow Army spotter pilots had said. "He's got something going every day. He gets more action than anybody else." The Ace will soon be just an Army flight instructor at Ft. Stewart, Ga., where he'll go back to simply being Capt. Charles L. Woodhurst. Perhaps only the red-and-gold patch on the right shoulder of his uniform will clue the initiated that the captain has "done time" in Vietnam.
In the Hue-Phu Bai area of Vietnam's I Corps tactical zone, home of the 17th Aviation Group's 220th Bird Dog Company, 14th Battalion, things were different.
There for a full year, "Ace von Zipper" was known as a one-man war - a bundle of nervous energy who bolted down his noon lunch and dashed back to his airplane on the run-a man said to have once missed his R-an-R flight because he was busy bringing air strikes and artillery on a Viet Cong company he'd caught in the mountains, on a day he wasn't scheduled to fly. Woodhurst steered on a single-engine, rocket-armed O-1D surveillance plane through 700 combat missions in over a thousand flying hours for the 220th, in support of U.S. Marine, Vietnamese and Korean operations in the northernmost Corps of the Republic. His exploits against the VC are near legendary among his fellows; and the enemy may remember them, too. There was the time, for example, when during a routine visual reconnaissance flight, Woodhurst dropped several hundred tons of bombs on the VC. Checking a choice area for enemy activity. Woodhurst suddenly noticed that the ground was beginning to explode for hundreds of yards around him. It turned out he had flown through the bombing torrent of a surprise B-52 raid. Unperturbed, the Ace casually reported he was fairly certain that particular group of VC would never fire at him again "it being highly doubtful that they'd seen or heard the high-flying bombers either. But Woodhurst did his own work, too-lots of it. One time he spotted 25 VC paddling boats across a river, with several more troops waiting on the banks, and called for artillery. He was surprised to be told in reply that there were no VC in the area and artillery support was therefore refused. The Ace knew Charlie when he saw him and with or without help he couldn't let him get away. In a series of headlong dives and low-level passes, Woodhurst blasted the boats out of the water, first with rockets then with his automatic rifle leveled from the cockpit window. Hurrying back to the home airfield, he quickly calculated the river speed, applied time and distance, checked his map, and predicted where the bodies would be in the morning. And sure enough at the designated time and place a Vietnamese patrol fished 12 dead Viet Cong from the stream. Now vindicated in his belief that a large VC force was in the area, "The Zipper" prowled the morning sky until he had the enemy fixed. This time the U.S. Marine Corps was on call-and in the versatile Woodhurst's direction a cataclysm of artillery, fighter jet, armed helicopter and tank fire ravaged the area leaving 31 enemy dead. Woodhurst was pleased, but not satisfied. "You should have seen the one that got away," he grumbled. Charles Woodhurst was said to have powers of vision far beyond those of normal men-or perhaps, as others claimed, he flew with his window open so he could smell trouble. Whatever the method he and his Bird Dog flushed bevies of Viet Cong from the I Corps countryside in a year of pursuit.