Photo By Staff Sgt. Anthony Jones | Lt. Col. Luke Kimbrel, commander of the 1st Battalion, 279th Infantry Regiment, 45th...... read more read more
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OKLAHOMA CITY - Eight decades after the 45th Infantry Division marked its final day of combat during World War II, the Oklahoma National Guard has returned to Italy to begin preserving the history of the Thunderbirds who gave the last full measure of devotion in the fight for freedom.
During the war, the 45th ID spent 511 days in combat, making four amphibious landings at Sicily, Salerno, Anzio and Southern France. Through those campaigns, the Citizen-Soldiers liberated two concentration camps, and nine Thunderbirds were awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary valor.
While the Division’s actions were once legendary within the Oklahoma National Guard, as time grows between the war and today’s Soldiers, fewer know the history of the Division.
To ensure that history is not lost forever, Oklahoma National Guard leadership is launching an initiative to preserve and share that history through the Thunderbird Trail - a proposed memorial trail tracing the Division’s footsteps through Italy, France, and Germany, ensuring their sacrifices are never forgotten.
“We’re building a pathway to record where the 45th passed,” said Dr. David D’Andrea, an Oklahoma State University professor serving as the project’s historical advisor. “From Sicily to mainland Italy, Southern France, and all the way to Germany.”
From May 3 through May 12, D'Andrea led a group of Oklahoma National Guard leaders through Italy, visiting battlefields, museums and unit memorials in order to lay the groundwork for the Thunderbird Trail. While traveling, the Oklahoma Guardsmen were met by local civic leaders and museum and academic professionals who are enthusiastic about deepening their nation’s ties with the Oklahoma National Guard.
The group hopes that in addition to building a greater appreciation for the 45th’s role in the war, the Thunderbird Trail will help bring more attention to the Italian Campaign, something the group believes is under-represented and under-studied as compared to the more famous campaigns in France that draw the attention of popular culture.
D’Andrea said while there are several monuments dedicated to the 45th scattered across Italy, there is little or no connection between them and they tell a disjointed story of the war. He hopes creating the Thunderbird Trail will connect existing monuments and memorials in Italy and Europe with new monuments to tell a complete story of the 45th’s Soldiers and their contribution to freeing Europe from Nazi control.
The first of the new monuments is scheduled to be installed in September 2025 to mark the 82nd anniversary of the Operation Avalanche landings at Salerno. The monument is being funded by the Chickasaw Nation as a way to honor the Native American Soldiers who served in the 45th Infantry Division during the war.
The new monument, a 10-foot-tall obelisk marked with a Thunderbird, memorial message and a rough map of other locations to be included in the Thunderbird Trail, will be placed in a park alongside monuments to other units that landed in Paestum, Italy in September 1943.
In addition to the site for the new obelisk, the Guardsmen visited numerous battlefields, museums, former headquarters locations and towns the 45th liberated to see how locals remember the Thunderbirds and evaluate what types of monuments can be placed in those locations.
One of the locations visited by the team was a former concentration camp in Campagna, Italy liberated in September 1943 by Soldiers of the Division’s 157th Infantry Regiment, the same regiment that would later liberate the infamous Dachau concentration camp near Munich, Germany in the final weeks of the war.
“Campagna is the first Jewish internment camp freed by the Americans,” D’Andrea said, adding when the Allies landed at Salerno, the Italian guards told the Jewish prisoners to flee before the German army could kill them.
When hundreds of Campagna residents were injured during a bombing, several Jewish doctors risked being captured by Germans and returned to treat the injured.
“The Jewish doctors came back into the city to help the civilians at the threat of their own lives,” D’Andrea said. “The first-hand accounts from the Jewish internees say ‘We finally knew that we were free when we saw the Americans entering the city.”
While the Division’s liberation of Dachau in Germany is well documented through photos, videos, newspaper articles and reports, the liberation of Campagna has gone mostly unnoticed to historians outside the Italian mountain town for decades, according to D’Andrea, who noted that even in Division reports of the day only a few lines are dedicated to the liberation.
The Division’s wartime newspaper “The 45th Division News” wrote a brief story with the headline “Refugee Doctors Treat Italians” in the days after the liberation.
“When all the Italian doctors in a shelled town evacuated, someone had to stay behind and care for the civilians. Two Polish doctors, a Czech and Austrian, all of whom had been in a concentration camp, took over the job, and our Medic Captains John Talley, Joe Doran and Lt. Michele Digeorgia found these men doing major surgery with only one scalpel between them.
“They used half a bottle of cognac to sterilize their lone instrument, and used what Talley called ‘Vocal anesthetic.’ In other words, they talked to the patient while they amputated his leg. There were more than a hundred patients. The medics fixed them up with captured Italian supplies, and the hospital still functions.”
The site of the one-time internment camp now serves as a museum dedicated to teaching about the prisoners held there, the Holocaust in Italy and the fight to end the suffering of its victims.”
Lt. Col. Neal Harvey, commander of the 545th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 45th IBCT, said for him, visiting Campagna tied together the important role the 45th played in liberating Europe during the war.
“Coming to Campagna and seeing the museum and concentration camp, walking through the exhibits showed what the 45th had done and what it meant to the people,” Harvey said. “As a current 45th member, it brings honor, a sense of heritage and history that you can tie yourself to and see that everything you do has a lineage of great men and great Soldiers.”
Another key stop was the hillside outside Oliveto, Italy, now known to locals as Heroes' Hill, where 2nd Lt. Ernest Childers of the 180th Infantry Regiment led a daring assault on September 22, 1943.
With just eight enlisted men under his command, Childers advanced against a series of enemy machine gun positions. Under fire from two snipers, he eliminated both before maneuvering behind the first machine gun nest and neutralizing its crew. Pressing forward, he approached the second nest and threw rocks to draw out the occupants. When the German soldiers rose up, Childers shot one while another was killed by one of his men.
Continuing the assault alone, Childers moved uphill and captured an enemy mortar observer hiding in a nearby house, securing the position and saving countless lives.
For his extraordinary courage and leadership under fire, 2nd Lt. Childers was presented the Medal of Honor on April 22, 1944.
Lt. Col. Luke Kimbrel, commander of the 1st Battalion, 279th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, said being at Heroes' Hill and experiencing the battlefields where past Thunderbirds fought was humbling.
“Overwhelming is an understatement. Seeing it with your own eyes definitely puts it into perspective, and it sometimes makes that perspective even harder to comprehend,” Kimbrel said, standing on the site where Childers fought. “Standing here and looking at it and looking at maps from World War II and the graphics of where the units moved and and the challenges they faced, aside from just fighting the Germans, with terrain and distance and, and how they were able to accomplish so much, is incredible.”
As the Thunderbird Trail comes to life, one of its most powerful impacts is emerging - educating future generations of Guardsmen through staff rides.
Staff rides are a professional military education tool used to study historical battles or campaigns. They are conducted on the actual terrain where the battle took place, helping participants develop leadership skills, critical thinking, and tactical understanding.
By creating the Thunderbird Trail, the Oklahoma National Guard honors the heroes of World War II while preparing future leaders to understand the complexity of large-scale combat operations against near-peer threats. Walking the same battlefields where past Oklahoma Guardsmen fought gives today’s Citizen-Soldiers insight into the harsh realities those warriors faced.
"I believe there are multiple leadership lessons of the Thunderbird Trail,” said Chief Warrant Officer Greg Kratochwill, command chief warrant officer for the Oklahoma Army National Guard. “From an operational, tactical perspective, you experience what leaders had to do from a training, planning and execution of missions perspective; as the scale of these operations are significant.”
Kratochwill said leaders can gain a better understanding and appreciation for the challenges faced by past generations when they physically walk the terrain.
“Overcoming logistics, communication, medical services, administrative documentation, movements were leadership challenges at every echelon,” Kratchowill said. “The significance of the Thunderbird Trail, as it is tied to current and future leader development, will provide both context and perspective in what we do as Soldiers in the Oklahoma National Guard; maintaining the Thunderbird connection will add to the understanding of ‘Always Forward.’”
One of the final sites visited by the Oklahoma National Guard delegation was the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno, Italy. The cemetery is the final resting place for more than 7,800 American service members who fought in Italy during the war, more than 900 of whom are Thunderbirds of the 45th Infantry Division.
While at the cemetery, the Guard leaders took part in ceremonies honoring those killed in action. They placed sand from the Anzio beaches in the names of 45th Infantry Division Soldiers who were killed in places like Venafro, Persano, Salerno, Anzio, Telese and Oliveto, as well as a flag lowering ceremony as Taps played.
Kratochwill said visiting the cemetery was both cathartic and surreal, adding he did not realize the sense of emotion placing sand on the headstones would create within him.
“The gravity of their sacrifice was brought to a profound level,” Kratochwill said. “We are in the profession of arms and conceptually understand what the ultimate sacrifice represents. That being said, not everyone experiences that reality and I think it’s important to honor their sacrifices as part of our profession.”
Honoring the fallen Thunderbirds of World War II isn’t just a moment of reflection - it’s the heart of the Thunderbird Trail. Their legacy continues to guide today’s Citizen-Soldiers.
| Date Taken: | 05.19.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 06.04.2025 17:11 |
| Story ID: | 499625 |
| Location: | OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA, US |
| Web Views: | 165 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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