The Restored Burlington Northern Depot & WWII Memorial Museum

http://depothill.net/

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RESOURCES ( WWII, railroads, Red Oak Iowa )

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

The War Front

An after-action report on the North Africa Tunisia Campaign, in which soldiers

from Montgomery County Iowa, as part of the 168th Infantry Regiment, 34th “Red Bull”

Infantry Division, participated:

"Time of attack: 0730 hours [01 FEB 1943]. At this juncture about 50 German dive bombers

suddenly appeared and started raining bombs down on the troops. No anti-aircraft artillery

was available! Only the 30 and 50 caliber machine guns mounted on half-tracks and tanks,

all of which went into action, as well as many of the rifles of the Infantry.

The desert was soon littered with burning tanks and half-tracks. Several planes plummeted

to earth in flames and many white parachutes dotted the sky as some were able to jump before

going down. After dropping their bomb loads, the Germans withdrew."

Read the above report, in its entirety: http://www.34infdiv.org/history/168inf/4212-4303DrakeRpt.pdf

An after-action report on the Italian Campaign:

"Company "F" [of the 168th Infantry Regiment] reached the crest of hill 1168 at first light [24 SEP 1944].

A dense fog has settled on the mountain-top. Captain Frank M. Cockett, Company Commander,

ordered the 1st Platoon to out-post the Company position...Before the Platoon had time to organize

a position...the enemy had set up a machine gun and opened fire, forcing the Platoon to withdraw

a short distance and dig in. No position was secure on the hill that day.

With the limited visibility, the enemy could infiltrate through the thick undergrowth to within

a few feet of a position before being detected. One German walked within ten feet of a position

before he was observed and fired upon. The enemy persisted in his attempts to infiltrate the

Company's position throughout the day. A prisoner reported that the men of his group wanted

to surrender but after that their officer had threatened to shoot anyone of them who made the attempt.

Whatever the truth of this report, the Germans continued to run toward the Company's position

with their hands up, some with the hope of being captured, and others only to drop and fire."

Read the above report, in its entirety: http://www.34infdiv.org/history/168inf/4409.html

WWII casualties in the 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division:

http://34thdivdeathcasualties.homestead.com/HomePage.html/

WWII history of the 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division:

http://www.custermen.com/ItalyWW2/Units/Division34.htm

WWII history of the Iowa National Guard, on the Iowa National Guard website:

http://www.iowanationalguard.com/Museum/IA_History/WW2.htm/

History of the 34th“Red Bull” Infantry Division, on the Minnesota National Guard website:

http://www.minnesotanationalguard.org/units/34id/history.php

The Home Front

From Pulitzer Prize-Winning No Ordinary Time (1), pp 436-7: “It had been a long struggle

for the Allies, longer than expected. After the first flush of victory in French North Africa,

the Allied drive on Tunis had come up against the fierce resistance of reinforced German

forces under the leadership of the great “Desert Fox”, German General Erwin Rommel.

On February 20, at Kasserine Pass, inexperienced American forces had encountered their

first blitzkrieg attack by German tanks, artillery, and dive-bombers. Though the Americans

fought bravely, they were outmaneuvered by the seasoned German troops: their defense

of the pass was ill-conceived, their tanks were under-armed, their equipment was inferior,

their training for the removal of mines was inadequate, and their air-ground communications

were faulty. The Germans broke through the pass, destroyed a large cache of weapons,

and took thousands of American prisoners.

Two weeks after the battle of Kasserine Pass, a telegram addressed to Mrs. Mae Stifle on

Corning Street arrived at the Western Union Station in the small town of Red Oak, Iowa,

population six thousand. “The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret that

your son Daniel Stifle…is missing in action.” Fifteen minutes later, a second telegram arrived,

telling Mrs. Stifle that her second son, Frank, was also missing in action. A few minutes later,

Mrs. Stifle’s daughter, Marie, received word that she had lost her husband, Daniel Wolfe.

As the evening wore on, the telegrams kept coming until there were twenty-seven.

The Gillespies on Second Street had lost two boys – Charles, twenty-two, and Frank twenty.

Duane Dodd and his cousins, the two Halbert boys, were missing.

The families gathered in the lobby of the Hotel Johnson, next door to the Western Union Station,

and tried to make sense of what was happening. Someone recalled seeing something in the

papers about a difficult engagement at a place called Kasserine Pass, but it would take weeks

for the people of this small town to come to understand that their entire National Guard unit

had been destroyed in a single battle. Red Oak had suffered a disproportionate loss, greater

than any other town in the United States. Only two years earlier, the members of Company M

had marched side by side through the streets on their way to war; now their names were listed

side by side on the official casualty list.

Red Oak, Iowa, was the “hometown we dreamed of overseas,” one serviceman wrote

after the war, “rich and contented, with chicken and blueberry pies on Sundays, for

whose sake, some said, we were fighting the war.” Looking up main street, one could

see the newly painted store fronts of J. C. Penney and Montgomery Ward, the sandstone

structure of the Hudson State Park, and across the way, the Green Parrot, an ice-cream

parlor full of young people. On the road into Red Oak was the Grand Theater, where

farmers from surrounding towns brought their children on Saturdays for a double feature.

Everyone in this small town knew someone on the list.

By March, the Americans had recovered from their reversal at Kasserine Pass and

were pushing forward aggressively. By April, with General Patton in command,

American troops has finally joined up with General Montgomery’s Eighth Army,

having started two thousand miles apart. The Axis forces were driven eastward and

trapped in the Tunisian tip, where they surrendered. Nearly a quarter-million Germans

and Italians were taken prisoner. The Allied victory in Africa was complete.”

“Red Oak waits – waits for its youth to come back” (LIFE Magazine, 13 SEP 1943):

“The town of Red Oak, Iowa, seat of Montgomery county, sits comfortably on one of the

Missouri’s tributaries – the East Nishnabotna. It is one of those larger, softer reproductions

of a New England village that the pioneers left behind them all across the continent… In

Red Oak today there are only older people and children. When the war came the young men

enlisted. They did not wait to be drafted. They distressed the urban intellectuals by their

seeming unconcern with war aims and idealogies. But idealogies do not need to carry brand

labels or be formidably unintelligible. These boys had a system of beliefs – not simple

indeed, but very old and deep-lying, which require them to fight, as their fathers and grandfathers

did, as soon as it becomes clear to them that trouble is rolling down their land.

Their war aims are to stamp out that trouble, to see for themselves Berlin and Tokyo as captured

capitals – and then come home…Meanwhile Red Oak waits – waits for its youth to come back.

“Return to normalcy” is not a suspect phrase there. It means simply when the young men and

women are home again, and the stores that the draft and the shortages have closed reopen, and

the children go to bed in their parents’ new small houses, and early evening is a bustle of shopping

and young laughter. Evenings are quiet now. The grandparents’ tend to drift to the green near the

courthouse. It is a pleasant place for talk or a game of checkers, in summer. And big in the center,

much bigger than the plaque which lists the dead of 1917-18, stands the boards that give the names

of the Red Oak men in the service. The dead are marked plainly, but every father and mother in

Red Oak can tell you too just who has been wounded or taken prisoner.”

“World War II & the American Home Front”, A National Historic Landmarks Theme Study,

National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, OCT 2007, pp 76-77:

“Despite nearly unanimous support for the war effort, government leaders worried that public

willingness to sacrifice might lag in a long war. In 1942 President Roosevelt established the

Office of War Information (OWI), which took charge of domestic propaganda and worked with

Hollywood filmmakers and New York copywriters to sell the war at home…The messages were

simplistic…A description of a small town in Iowa, written shortly after the war [ Red Oak Hasn’t

Forgotten by Milton Lehman in the Saturday Evening Post, 17 AUG 1946, p 14 ]…reflects one

of those myths: “the home town we dreamed of overseas; rich and contented, with chicken and

blueberry on Sundays, for whose sake some said we were fighting the war.”.”

Courtesy of Iowa Public TV, WWII stories from the war front and home front:

http://www.iptv.org/iowastories/detail.cfm/wwii/

The “Red Bull” continues to carry-on a proud legacy of

commitment, sacrifice, and the warrior spirit.

Click on the following selections to read about present-day personnel,

families, deployments, and activities, plus histories of the

34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division, including the 168th Infantry Regiment.

News about present-day “Red Bull” soldiers and their deployments, including photos and videos:

http://www.theredbulls.net/

http://www.redbullrising.com/

http://www.facebook.com/IowaRedBulls?v=wall

http://www.dvidshub.net/units/2-34IBCT

http://iowaredbulls.armylive.dodlive.mil/

“Again, Red Oak says goodbye to soldiers” ( Company F, 334th Brigade Support Battalion,

2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division, dispatched to Afghanistan, 2010 ):

http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2010/08/02/again-red-oak-says-goodbye-to-soldiers/

The34th“Red Bull” Infantry Division unites generations of Iowa soldiers in time of war:

http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2010/07/25/red-bull-unites-generations-of-iowa-soldiers-in-time-of-war/

The 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division Association:

http://34infdiv.org/

How the 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division assists in addressing global security challenges:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/34id.htm/

Click on these additional Military Resources:

“From Iowa To The Philippines, A History of Company M, Fifty-First Iowa Infantry Volunteers”

by Joseph I. Markey, published by the Thomas D. Murphy Company, Red Oak Iowa, 1900.

An account (320 pages) of the experiences of soldiers in Company M (Red Oak Iowa),

and Company B (Villisca Iowa and other communities), during the Spanish-American War.

Click on the following link to access the Table of Contents, then read the entire book online:

http://friendsofallencounty.org/military/philippines/search_iowaphilippines.php

Montgomery County Iowa military research website:

http://iagenweb.org/montgomery/militarycenter.htm/

Montgomery County Iowa Veterans Memorial Court of Honor

“Support our Troops, Remember our Veterans”

http://www.mccourtofhonor.com/

The Iowa Gold Star Military Museum at Camp Dodge Iowa, honors, preserves, and depicts the

military experience of Iowa citizens in all wars:

http://www.iowanationalguard.com/Museum/Museum.htm

The National Military Heritage Museum, in St Joseph Missouri, honors, preserves, and depicts the

history of all military service branches, abroad and at home, both during war and between wars.

http://www.nationalmilitaryheritagemuseum.com/

The Veterans Memorial Museum in Branson, Missouri is a national tribute to the

brave men and women who defended our liberties during the 20th Century.

http://www.veteransmemorialbranson.com/

Stories and interviews by WWII veterans are at tankbooks,

including oral history audiobooks, and books for sale:

http://www.tankbooks.com/

History of Memorial Day

http://www1.va.gov/opa/speceven/memday/history.asp

History of Veterans Day

http://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp

RAILROADS

The Burlington & Missouri River Railroad: http://depothill.net/depot05.html

The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad: http://www.burlingtonroute.com/cbq.html

Click on these additional Railroad Resources:

Midwest Central Railroad in Mt Pleasant Iowa brings the excitement of rail travel 100 years ago to

life behind authentic steam powered trains. Experience live action of train engines and rolling stock

as well as educational displays and tours of the operation. Click on http://www.mcrr.org/

RailsWest Railroad Museum in Council Bluffs Iowa: http://thehistoricalsociety.org/depot.htm

1899 Chicago Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Passenger Depot, including Historic Railcars

and working HO Scale Model Railroad. Also, railroad artifacts, exhibits, and gift shop.

The Milwaukee Railroad Shops in Sioux City Iowa: http://www.milwaukeerailroadshops.org

The complex was built in 1917 by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railway Company

(“The Milwaukee Road”). It was the 2nd largest shop complex in the Milwaukee's system

Railroad museums and attractions throughout Iowa: http://www.iowadot.gov/iowarail/history/attractions.htm

Railroad Station Historical Society - to encourage the preservation and growth of historical knowledge of

railroad stations/depots and other railroad/railway structures worldwide: http://rrshs.org/

RED OAK IOWA

Historic auto trail - U.S. Highway 34 within Iowa - The 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division Highway:

http://www.iowadot.gov/autotrails/bridges.aspx?34th%20Infantry%20Division%20Highway/

Red Oak Iowa websites of the Chamber and Industry Association, Montgomery County Memorial Hospital,

and Red Oak Iowa Community Schools: http://redoakiowa.com/

Red Coach Inn & Restaurant ( located on U.S. Highway 34 “Red Bull Highway” ):

http://redcoachredoak.com/