M il ita ry
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Rank & File
Spanning more than 250 years, our list of Oklahoma’s
most important military moments shows the forty-sixth
state’s inestimable influence on our nation’s military
history—in war and in peace. By Randy Krehbiel
Oklahoma’s militar y traditions run deep, reaching back to the days of
the Indian warrior and the Scotch-Irish frontiersman. “Because we were a
territory much longer than most other states, we had a military presence
much longer than most other states,” says Bob L. Blackburn of the Oklahoma
Historical Society. “Then there is the Scotch-Irish tradition of being ready to
fight at the drop of a hat: Protect your property, protect your family, protect
your rights. And then there is the American Indian tradition, the warrior
tradition.” It’s a tradition that makes choosing and ranking the forty-six
outstanding moments in our military history a difficult task indeed.
oklahoma historical society
1. Forty-Fifth Infantry
Division formed
22. Members of the First U.S.
Volunteer Calvary also were known as
the Rough Riders and were precursors
to the 45th Infantry Division. This 1898
photograph is of Rough Rider Tom Isbell
of Vinita, who killed the first Spaniard in
the Spanish-American War.
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Few events are more important to
Oklahoma City and the state than the
siting of Tinker Air Force Base. Aware
that the War Department was planning a new Midwest air base, in late
1940, Oklahoma City leaders formed a
nonprofit corporation that bought 960
acres southeast of downtown and offered
them to the federal government for free.
On April 8, 1941, the Midwest Air De-
u.s. air force
No aspect of Oklahoma’s
military heritage is more embedded
in our state’s character than the
Forty-Fifth Infantry.
Oklahoma Territory’s first
legislature authorized a militia that,
in time, became the Oklahoma
National Guard. In 1923, the ONG
became part of the new Forty-Fifth
Infantry Division, made up of the
National Guard units of Oklahoma,
Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.
In September1940, the Forty-Fifth
was mobilized and ordered to basic
training. Three years later, it fought
its way ashore on Sicily; over the next
two years, it would spend 511 days in
combat and become known as one of
the Army’s toughest fighting forces.
After World War II, the Forty-Fifth
became an Oklahoma-only outfit. In
1969, it was reconstituted the FortyFifth Infantry Brigade.
2. Tinker Field awarded
to Oklahoma City
O k l a h o m a To d a y. c o m
pot was awarded to Oklahoma City. The
groundbreaking was on July 30.
Renamed the Oklahoma City Air
Depot, the base opened on March 1,
1942. In October, it was renamed again,
this time for Major General Clarence L.
Tinker, an Oklahoma native of Osage
ancestry killed while leading a bombing run in the Pacific. Steady pay lured
thousands of Depression-weary Oklahomans from their farms and small towns,
and by late 1943, Tinker Field employed
13,500 people. Another 23,000 worked
at the adjacent Douglas Aircraft factory.
3. U.S. Army Field
Artillery Corps assigned
to Fort Sill
Fort Sill appeared headed for the
same fate as every other cavalry outpost
on the southern plains until someone
decided it would be a great place to fire
off cannons.
And so it has.
Built in 1869, Fort Sill’s usefulness
appeared to be nearing an end at the
turn of the twentieth century. But Theodore Roosevelt and his administration
had a soft spot for Oklahoma and for
Fort Sill. They also had an interest in
improving the Army’s artillery training
and effectiveness, so in 1902, a field
artillery battery was formed at Fort
Sill. The last cavalry unit departed a
few years later, and in 1911, the Army’s
School of Fire for Field Artillery formally began operations.
In the years since, practically everyone
who’s ever served in the Army has passed
through Fort Sill. Today, in addition to
being the field artillery school for the
Army and Marines, Fort Sill is one of
the Army’s five basic training sites.
2.
The 1941 construction of the second
lane of the runway at Tinker Air Force
Base in Midwest City
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4. Pearl Harbor attacked
The Japanese attack of December 7,
1941, shocked the nation as few events
before or since. It laid waste to the U.S.
Pacific Fleet and killed more than 2,400
soldiers, sailors, and Marines. Oklahomans felt a particular pang: Their namesake battleship, the U.S.S. Oklahoma,
had been ripped open and sunk, taking
more than four hundred sailors with her.
One of the Navy’s oldest battleships, the
Oklahoma was a giant whose vertical
triple expansion machinery vibrated the
ship like a tuning fork. Commissioned
in 1916, she never fired a shot in anger
and never would.
5. World War II military
bases installed
Oklahoma had one full-fledged
military installation—Fort Sill—in
1940. Over the next four years, it
would acquire four air bases, two
ordnance works, an Army training base,
two military aircraft factories, and other
war-related operations, including two
flight schools where Royal Air Force
pilots were trained. Remarkably, many
of the World War II installations are
still in use. Tinker Air Force Base, of
course, is one of the nation’s largest
military installations. Vance Air Force
Base in Enid and Altus Air Force Base,
though smaller, are just as integral to
their communities.
6. Liberation of Dachau
45th infantry division museum
The Forty-Fifth Infantry Division had
seen a lot during its 511 consecutive
days in combat in the European theater,
but nothing prepared it for April 29,
1945. Ordered to take a concentration
camp near the Bavarian town of Dachau,
the unit stumbled upon what would
become one of the most notorious of
Hitler’s death camps. Battle-hardened
soldiers, wrote Brigadier General Felix
L. Sparks, “became extremely distraught.
Some cried, while others raged.” Soon,
the entire world would do the same.
6.
As April 29, 1945, dawned, the men
of the 45th Infantry Division had little idea
that by day’s end, they would liberate more
than 30,000 prisoners from the Dachau
concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
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7. Fort Gibson founded
The United States’ westernmost
outpost when it was built in April 1824,
Fort Gibson represented the first permanent U.S. military presence in what
is now Oklahoma. It was also the first
of present-day Oklahoma’s early frontier
forts, which included Fort Towson
(1824) and Fort Washita (1842). At the
height of Indian removal, Fort Gibson
had the largest garrison in the nation.
Located on the Grand River just above
its confluence with the Arkansas, Fort
Gibson became a jumping-off point for
expeditions to the southern plains and
was where, for many, the Trail of Tears at
long last ended.
8. Admiral William
Crowe appointed
chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff
It is said that Crowe owed his appointment as Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff to a ninety-minute briefing he gave President Ronald Reagan in
1985. Reagan, impressed, soon nominated the scholarly Crowe to the United
States’ top military position. Crowe
served four years and turned down
President George H.W. Bush’s offer to
remain on the job, retiring instead to a
teaching position at the University of
Oklahoma. He served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom during the
Clinton administration.
9. McAlester Army
Ammunition Plant
Old-timers remember the coming of
the “ammo plant” in 1943 as the thing
that ended the Depression in Pittsburg
County. Its construction, on seventy
square miles of rocky scrub timberland
southwest of McAlester, put 20,000
people to work. Nine thousand were
employed making bombs and bullets
at the Naval Ammunition Depot,
as it originally was known, during
peak production in 1945. Today, the
McAlester Army Ammunition Plant
is the U.S. military’s primary bomb
maker and the Department of Defense’s
largest storage facility.
10. World War II
Prisoner of War camps
The War Department wanted its
prisoner of war camps in rural areas with
mild climates and a shortage of farm
labor. Oklahoma fit the bill. Beginning
in 1942, eight base camps soon were
established, with at least twenty-four
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fort sill national historic landmark museum
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10. A German POW camp at Fort Sill
branch camps added thereafter. The
prisoners, all from the European
theater, were put to work on farms and
cutting brush in the basin of what was
to become Lake Texoma. A few even
worked at an ice plant in Waynoka.
Forty-six of the POWs died during their
imprisonment, and most were buried at
the old military cemetery at Fort Reno.
11. Invasion of Sicily
The Forty-Fifth’s first combat of
World War II came during the invasion
of Sicily on July 10, 1943. The Sicily
campaign lasted thirty-eight days, twenty-two of which the Forty-Fifth spent on
the frontlines. General George Patton
summarized the division’s heroics with
his usual flair: “Born at sea, baptized in
blood, your fame shall never die.”
12. Battle of the Washita
The trail to the Battle of the Little
Bighorn began on a cold November
1868 morning at a bend in the Washita
River. Lieutenant Colonel George A.
Custer, recently restored to command
after a court-martial and one-year
suspension, attacked the Southern
Cheyenne and Arapaho village of Chief
Black Kettle in present-day Roger Mills
County. After the fight, Custer ordered
all the Indians’ horses shot and their
lodges and supplies burned. It was the
start of the “total war” policy that over
the next decade would drive the Plains
tribes into submission.
13. Camp Gruber
Camp Gruber’s 1,700 buildings and
network of utilities—and the relocation of State Highway 10—were built
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M il ita ry
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19. Frontier forts
established
u.s. air force
on more than 60,000 acres east of
Muskogee during four months in 1942.
Almost 45,000 troops trained or were
stationed at Gruber during World War
II. Reactivated in 1967, the camp is
now the primary training center for the
Oklahoma National Guard.
14. Battle of Honey
Springs
On July 17, 1863, about 2,800
Union troops described by commanding officer Major General James G.
Blunt as “mostly Indians and Negroes”
defeated a somewhat larger force of
Confederate Indians and Texans near
present-day Rentiesville.
15. Dodge-Leavenworth
Expedition
The two-month march during
summer 1834 led to improved relations with the Kiowa, Comanche, and
Wichita and established a U.S. military
presence on the southern plains. The
expedition included First Lieutenant
Jefferson Davis; Lieutenant Colonel
Stephen W. Kearny, father of the U.S.
cavalry; Captain Nathan Boone, son of
the famed frontiersman; Jesse Chisholm, later of Chisholm Trail fame; artist
George Catlin; and thirty Cherokee,
Delaware, Osage, and Seneca warriors
who served as hunters and guides.
16. Global War on Terror
Members of the Oklahoma Air
National Guard and Air Force Re-
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serve were activated within days of the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Ground troops soon followed. Over
the past nine years, thousands of the
state’s citizen soldiers have served in
Iraq and Afghanistan, often more than
once. In 2011, all 3,400 members of
the Forty-Fifth Infantry Brigade will be
deployed to Afghanistan. Oklahoma’s
permanent military bases have been
deeply involved in training and supporting combat operations. Through
mid-September, 105 Oklahoma service
members and five civilians had been
killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
17. The BRAC era
The state’s five bases not only survived
five rounds of the Base Realignment and
Closure Commission between 1989 and
2005 but grew as duties were shifted to
them under the Department of Defense’s
plan to reduce the number of active
installations in the U.S. The final round,
announced in 2005, initially brought
nearly four thousand new jobs and $354
million in new construction, with most
of the growth at Fort Sill.
18. General Tommy
Franks named
commander of U.S.
Central Command
As CENTCOM commander in chief,
the Wynnewood native planned and
carried out the United States’ military
response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Enlisting in the Army
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20. Code Talkers in
World War I and II
At a time when American Indians
were discouraged and even prohibited
from speaking their tribal languages, the
U.S. Army turned them into a secret
weapon. Suspicious that the Germans
were tapping into Allied telephone lines
in World War I, American officers used
Choctaws from Oklahoma to communicate troop movements and other
sensitive information. The ploy worked
so well that as preparations for World
War II began, the military recruited
seventeen Comanches as code talkers,
thirteen of whom landed at Utah Beach
during the Allied invasion of France on
June 6, 1944.
22. Oklahoma Rough
Riders
In 1898, Theodore Roosevelt, then a
lieutenant colonel in the Army, wanted
men “used to rough living, rough
country, and rough riding” for his First
Volunteer Cavalry. He found them in
abundance in the Oklahoma and Indian
territories. In 1900, the second Rough
Riders reunion was held in Oklahoma
City with vice president Roosevelt in
attendance. Seven years later, it was
Roosevelt who signed the legislation proclaiming Oklahoma the forty-sixth state.
23. Oklahoma National
Guard patrols the oil
fields
In Oklahoma’s early years, overproduction was a problem in the oil fields.
Attempts by the Oklahoma Corporation
Commission to control production largely were ignored. By mid-1931, however,
oil had dropped to ten cents a barrel,
and Murray sent the National Guard,
under his cousin Cicero Murray, to shut
down twenty-seven oil fields statewide.
Through a variety of subterfuges, “hot
oil” still was pumped from the fields into
hidden tanks and sold on the sly, but oil
men and politicians grudgingly accepted
the need for regulation, leading in 1935
to the creation of the Interstate Oil
Compact Commission.
24. Colonel Robinson
Risner released
One of America’s top air aces in Korea,
Robinson Risner of Tulsa recently had
made the cover of Time magazine when
he was shot down over North Vietnam
in September 1965. He spent more than
seven years as a POW in the notorious
Hanoi Hilton, years in which the nation
became increasingly disenchanted with
the Vietnam War and domestic politics.
To many, Risner’s 1973 release signaled
the end of a long and difficult period in
U.S. history.
25. Combat nurses
Women have been in combat since
ancient times but never in the num-
bers who risked their lives to care for
America’s fighting forces in World War
II, Korea, and Vietnam. One of the
best-known and most decorated of
these nurses was Rosemary Hogan, an
Oklahoma farm girl from Ahpeatone
taken prisoner by the Japanese on Corregidor. Hogan spent nearly four years
in the notorious Santo Tomas prison.
After liberation, she remained in the
military, transferred to the Air Force,
and became one of the first women to
achieve the rank of full colonel. Hogan
died in 1964 and is buried at Arlington
National Cemetery.
26. The Forty-Fifth
deployed to Korea
The reconstituted Forty-Fifth had
regained full wartime strength in 1949
and was about to embark for summer
camp at Fort Hood when North Korea
invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950.
The Oklahoma-only Forty-Fifth became
the first National Guard division to
enter combat in Korea. Arriving at
Inchon in December 1951, it would see
429 days of combat, most of it in fierce
engagement with Chinese and North
Korean forces.
4.
Oklahomans felt the sting of the attack
on Pearl Harbor when Japanese torpedoes
and bombs sank their namesake ship, the
USS Oklahoma, on December 7, 1941, called
by President Franklin D. Roosevelt “a date
which will live in infamy.”
21. General Dennis
Reimer named U.S. Army
chief of staff
As head of the Army from 1995 to
1999, Medford native Dennis Reimer
modernized and streamlined operations
in the years of military downsizing
following the end of the Cold War.
“During his watch, he has helped to
define just what the post-Cold War
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photo credit
5.
In this 1942 photo, Cadet Ralph
Baker cozies up to a BT-13 at Enid
Army Air School—later renamed
Vance Air Force Base—built on the
site of his family’s farm.
With the end of the Civil War,
the U.S. Army turned its attention
to subduing the Plains Indians. The
Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 created
the Cheyenne-Arapaho and KiowaComanche reservations in what is now
western Oklahoma, and in 1868, Major
General Philip Sheridan led a winter
campaign intended to break the will of
the last holdouts. Camp Supply—later
Fort Supply—was established in November. Fort Sill was built the following year. In 1875, Fort Reno became
the “police station” for the CheyenneArapaho reservation.
Army will look like,” said U.S. Senator
Strom Thurmond upon Reimer’s
retirement. Reimer later served as the
first director of the Oklahoma City
National Memorial Institute for the
Prevention of Terrorism.
oklahoma historical society
in 1965 at the age of twenty, Franks
worked his way through the ranks, starting as a private and retiring as a four-star
general. His appointment to commander
of CENTCOM in June 2000 gave
Franks responsibility for all U.S. military
forces in a twenty-five-country region,
including Iraq and Afghanistan. Franks
retired in May 2003.
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to understand what that has done to
Iraq,” Oklahoma City native Anthony
Shadid told The Oklahoman in April
after winning a Pulitzer Prize—his
second—for his Washington Post reporting on the war in Iraq.
30. Stand Watie
surrenders
20. Comanche Code Talkers of the Fourth
Signal Company in World War II
27. Berlin Airlift
However unlikely, an international
incident involving one of Europe’s
largest cities had an impact on Enid,
Oklahoma. The 1948 Soviet blockade of
Berlin—in effect, the first major battle
of the Cold War—triggered a need for
pilots, and that in turn led to the reactivation of Enid Army Air Field. Renamed
Vance Air Force Base in honor of Medal
of Honor recipient Lieutenant Colonel
Leon Vance of Enid, it became and remains one of the Air Force’s leading pilot
training schools.
28. Altus Air Force Base
reactivated
With open spaces and clear skies,
southwestern Oklahoma was a logical place to train pilots. The Army Air
Corps put its basic multiengine flight
school there during World War II, and
when Korea and the Cold War ramped
up demand for transport and bomber
flight crews in 1953, it reopened the former Altus Army Air Field. Today, Altus
Air Force Base is a primary training site
for airlift and air refueling crews.
29. Anthony Shadid
wins Pulitzer Prize for
war reporting
“I want people to understand that
there is an aftermath, and I want people
The old Cherokee warrior became the
last Confederate general to surrender
on June 23, 1865—more than two
months after Appomattox. Watie’s
regiment fought in twenty-seven major
engagements and many more minor
ones, most of them hit-and-run raids
on Union soldiers and supply trains.
31. Opothleyahola’s
retreat
In one of the most tragic episodes
of Oklahoma’s history, the eightyone-year-old Creek chief led more
than two thousand loyal Indians,
slaves, and free blacks to Kansas after
the Confederacy took control of
Indian Territory at the outset of the
Civil War. Hounded by Confederate
soldiers, Opothleyahola’s loyalists
arrived in southeast Kansas in the
dead of winter 1861, starving and
suffering from exposure. The surviving
refugees were put in squalid camps
where many more of them died,
including Opothleyahola in 1863.
32. Red River Bridge
War
No Oklahoma governor enjoyed
calling out the National Guard more
than William H.D. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray, and never did he call them out
with more élan than in 1934, when
Texas governor Ross Sterling sent
Texas Rangers to block access to the
free bridge across the Red River. “You
fellows be easy on Mr. Sterling’s Rangers,” Murray told the guardsmen. “Just
give them a light kick in the pants if
you have to.”
33. St. Etienne
Oklahoma National Guard elements
of the Thirty-Sixth Infantry Division
distinguished themselves at St. Etienne
in 1918, their first major action of
World War I. Two Oklahomans, Corporal Harold L. Turner and Sergeant
Samuel H. Sampler, received the Medal
of Honor.
34. First Aero Squadron
A most unusual shipment arrived
at Fort Sill in 1915: eight Curtis JN-2
airplanes packed in wooden crates, representing the whole of American military
aviation might. A year later, they became
the first U.S. airplanes in combat when
the First Aero Squadron, the first aviation unit in the American military, flew
south to participate in General John
Pershing’s pursuit of Pancho Villa.
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the Seventh Cavalry’s raid on Cheyenne peace
chief Black Kettle’s camp appeared in George
A. Custer’s book, My Life on the Plains.
35. Boomers, Sooners,
and land runs
The first illegal “Boomer” settlement appeared on the North Canadian
River in 1879, followed the next year
by David Payne’s attempt to establish
the town of Ewing near what is now
downtown Oklahoma City. In each case,
and all those to follow, the settlements
were broken up, but the Boomers won
in the end. Their efforts led to the first
of Oklahoma’s land runs in 1889, and it
fell to the Army to maintain order along
the starting lines and to keep out the
overeager Sooners—a job that proved
largely impossible.
36. Indian cavalry and
infantry units
American Indians in the U.S. Army
was not a new idea; Indians had fought
with frontier soldiers almost as much as
they had fought against them. In 1890,
though, the War Department created
Indian-only units in eight cavalry and
thirteen infantry regiments. Troop L,
Fifth Cavalry, stationed at Fort Reno,
was made up of Cheyenne and Arapaho.
*A note on the methodology: Oklahoma Today’s editors collaborated with four experts (see page 62), each of whom suggested
recommendations for the most important military moments in Oklahoma history. The editors and Tulsa World reporter Randy Krehbiel,
who wrote the piece, selected and ranked the final forty-six from those suggestions in ascending order.
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12. This illustration by Alfred Kappes of
O k l a h o m a To d a y. c o m
Troop L, Seventh Cavalry, at Fort Sill,
consisted of Comanche, Kiowa, and
Apache, including Chiricahuas who
were technically prisoners of war.
37. Sherman and Satank
at Fort Sill
General William Tecumseh
Sherman—named for the great Indian
leader of the early 1800s—came to
Fort Sill from San Antonio in 1871
to investigate reports of Kiowa raids
into Texas from their reservation in
what is now southwestern Oklahoma.
In a dramatic 1871 confrontation,
General Sherman personally arrested
Kiowa chiefs Satank, Santanta, and
Big Tree on the steps of the Fort Sill
commandant’s house. Sherman ordered
the three taken to Jacksboro, Texas, for
trial in the deaths of seven men killed
in an attack on a wagon train, but as
the men left Fort Sill, Satank began
singing his death song. Within a mile
of the post, the old chief was shot dead
while attempting to escape.
38. Chilocco National
Guard Company
There is no better example of the
American Indian’s commitment to
fighting for his country, regardless of
his country’s commitment to him, than
Company C, 180th Infantry Regiment,
Forty-Fifth Infantry Division. Comprised largely of students at Chilocco
Indian School near Ponca City, it produced some of the state’s military heroes,
including World War II Medal of Honor
recipient Ernest Childers.
39. First Kansas Colored
Regiment
Organized by flamboyant Kansas
senator James Lane in 1862 before black
soldiers were even allowed in the U.S.
Army, the First Kansas Colored Regiment Volunteers Infantry saw extensive
service in Indian Territory. The first black
soldiers to see combat and the first to
fight alongside whites­—at the First Battle
of Cabin Creek in 1863—they played an
important role in the Union victory at
Honey Springs later that year. The regiment is considered the precursor to what
now are known as the Buffalo Soldiers.
40. Civil War Indian
regiments
Oklahomans often are surprised
to learn that their state was not only
involved in the Civil War but was
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profoundly affected by it. An estimated
five thousand territorial citizens served
in eleven Confederate Indian regiments
and eight battalions between 1861 and
1865. About 3,500 joined three Union
Indian Home Guard units.
41. Battle of the
Spanish Fort
In the first recorded battle in what is
now Oklahoma, in 1759, three hundred
Spanish soldiers with Indian allies and
two cannons unsuccessfully attacked a
fortified Wichita village on the north
bank of the Red River in present-day
Jefferson County.
washita battlefield national historic site
fort sill national historic landmark museum
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42. Salerno and Anzio
At Salerno, just weeks after the
fall of Sicily, elements of the FortyFifth fought their way inland to the
mountains around Oliveto and then
up the Italian peninsula to Cassino,
where they were relieved for training
in January 1944. Later that month,
the Forty-Fifth’s 179th Infantry
entered the beachhead at Anzio,
where it withstood a furious German
counterattack. The Allies broke out in
late May and reached Rome less than
two weeks later.
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25. These Women’s Army Corps
Army Staff Sergeant Eric Maddox of
Sapulpa ended one of the most intense
manhunts in history on December
13, 2003, when he convinced one of
Saddam Hussein’s bodyguards to show
him where the one-time Iraqi strongman was hiding.
44. “Sinking” of the J.R.
Williams
45. Vosges Mountains
Attached to the Seventh Army’s
August 1944 invasion of southern
France, the Forty-Fifth found itself in
the Vosges Mountains by September.
Against an entrenched enemy and
tom gilbert/tulsa world
On June 15, 1864, Confederate
forces under Colonel Stand Watie won
one of the greatest “naval battles” in
Oklahoma history by forcing the Union
steamboat J.R. Williams aground at
Pleasant Bluff on the Arkansas River.
Although her crew and Army escort
abandoned the boat, Watie was unable to bask in the glow of his victory
because many of his men took the boat’s
cargo of food and supplies back to
Indian Territory.
46. Oklahoma Military
Academy established
“The West Point of the Southwest,”
founded in 1919, turned out some
2,500 officers and noncoms, including
six general-grade officers, during its
half century of operation. The school
closed in 1971, largely a victim of the
era’s anti-military sentiment. Today, it is
home to Rogers State University.
Towana Spivey’s roots in
Bob L. Blackburn, since
Indian Territory date to 1837. He
1999 the executive director of the
written widely about the military,
Infantry Division Museum since
has been the curator and director
Oklahoma Historical Society, has
including a children’s book on the
1987. He is a decorated veteran
of the Fort Sill National Historic
written more than eighteen books
Battle of the Little Bighorn.
whose service dates to 1973.
Landmark Museum since 1982.
on topics from Sonic to Jack Zink.
Randy Krehbiel has
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difficult terrain, the exhausted Allies
slowed to a crawl. On October 23,
however, elements of the Forty-Fifth
forced a crossing of the Mortange River
to break the German defenses.
has been the curator at the 45th
Longtime Tulsa World reporter
O k l a h o m a To d a y M a g a z i n e
Michael E. Gonzales
fort sill national historic landmark museum
43. Oklahoman Eric
Maddox captures
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O k l a h o m a To d a y. c o m
u.s. air force
members, also known as WACs, served at
Tinker Air Force Base in 1944; more than
150,000 American women served in the
WAC during World War II.