Oklahomans saw all sides of WWII combat

During the war, Oklahomans served in every branch of the military in every theater of combat.

They were “The Rock of Anzio.” They marched into Munich and they hopped islands in the Pacific.

Military might

As many as nine Japanese torpedoes ripped into the hull of the USS Oklahoma on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, while the ship was anchored on Battleship Row. The ship capsized, killing 429 of her crew.

The crew assigned to the battleship came from across the country, but the ship itself was a symbol of the state’s sacrifice during the war.

The state’s military contributions are most closely identified with the U.S. Army’s 45th Infantry Division, the Thunderbirds.

The division landed in Sicily in July 1943 as an untested National Guard force that hadn’t yet won the confidence of the regular Army.

By the time the fighting in Sicily was done, Gen. George S. Patton called the 45th, “one of the best, if not the best division in the history of American arms.”

‘The Rock of Anzio’

The 45th was organized in 1923 and included National Guardsmen from four states — Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona. Emmett Steeds, who joined the Oklahoma National Guard in 1936, was part of the unit activated and sent to the Mediterranean during World War II.

It didn’t take long for Steeds to see the reality of warfare once the division landed in Sicily.

“My company commander was killed and my lieutenant was shot through the legs,” Steeds said. “I got shot at several times. I can remember a man walking along side of me and a machine gun opened up and this guy got killed.”

Mike Gonzales, curator of the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City, said National Guard troops hadn’t proven themselves in combat before the Sicily campaign. D-Day in Europe wasn’t until 1944, and American ground forces hadn’t seen much action.

“There was a considerable amount of trepidation on behalf of the regular U.S. Army as to how well these National Guardsmen would perform in combat,” Gonzales said.

Those concerns soon went away. Patton, who commanded the division in Sicily, made his famous declaration about the division after the fighting in Sicily was over.

In early 1944, the 45th went on to Italy and landed at Anzio, where some of the toughest fighting of the war occurred. Allied forces on the beach at Anzio survived withering artillery fire.

“The Germans were on the high ground looking down at Anzio,” Gonzales said. “The only thing you can do is dig a deep hole and hope you don’t suffer a direct hit.”

American troops were pinned down for months before breaking out and pushing the Germans off the beachhead to take Rome.

It was in this battle that the 45th earned the nickname “The Rock of Anzio,” Gonzales said.

The division went on to participate in the invasion of southern France and pushed into Germany, taking Munich before the end of the war.

The division and its Thunderbird symbol, worn as a patch on soldiers’ uniforms, Gonzales said, had won respect as a hard fighting, tough unit.