Burleson County in World War II
Caldwell, Burleson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
During World War II, out of a population of 18,000, close to 1300 men and women of Burleson County joined the military, with 450 who attended Caldwell High School drafted or voluntarily enlisted. Many had never been outside the county before their service, but they deployed around the world in defense of freedom. Area residents sacrificed for the war effort abroad and at home from the onset of American combat. At Pearl Harbor, Seaman 2/C Thomas J. Gary of Somerville died aboard the U.S.S. California while giving his life to save his crewmates from burning. The Navy posthumously awarded Gary the Navy Cross and named two ships in his honor. Local National Guard Unit Company E, 143rd Infantry, 36th Division, sustained heavy losses at Salerno, Italy, with dozens of men killed, wounded, or captured. Other prisoners of war included 1st Lt. Hubert Womble, shot down over Romania during the Ploesti Oil Field raids, and USMC Major Paul Brown, who survived the Bataan Death March in the Philippines but died in a Japanese prison camp. The county’s citizen soldiers stormed Normandy Beaches on D-Day and fought in European and Pacific Theaters. Many women joined the Army and Navy Nurse Corps, and scores more worked in defense plants. Recycling drives around the county maximized the homefront war support effort. Some families received citations as “Agriculture Victory Leaders” for continuing farming operations during the war, even while short-handed at least five county families had five children at once serving in the military. Dozens of Burleson County men were killed during World War II, on battlefields overseas and in training accidents on American soil. Through countless heroic and unselfish acts, citizens demonstrated commitment to restoring liberty to the world. (2008)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the United States entered World War II, rural Burleson County answered far above its size: roughly 1,300 of its 18,000 residents put on a uniform, many leaving the county for the first time in their lives. Their war reached from the deck of the U.S.S. California at Pearl Harbor—where Somerville's Thomas J. Gary died saving his crewmates and earned the Navy Cross—to the bloody landings at Salerno, the Ploesti oil-field raids over Romania, the Bataan Death March, and the beaches of Normandy. At home, families ran short-handed farms, joined recycling drives, and sent their nurses and defense workers to the effort.
Why it matters
It captures how totally the Second World War reached into small-town America, where a single farming county sent its sons and daughters across every theater of a global war and measured victory in local sacrifice.
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Related people
- · Thomas J. Gary
- · Hubert Womble
- · Paul Brown
Related events
- · Attack on Pearl Harbor
- · Battle of Salerno
- · Ploesti raids
- · Bataan Death March
- · D-Day Normandy landings
Themes & tags
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