![]() For the 511 days to the end of the war, the Division made amphibious landings, at Massena, Salerno and Anzio, and fought its way through Italy, France and Germany. On July 10, 1943, it participated in the invasion of Sicily. The 45th prepared for war by training in Louisiana and at Fort Sill, Okla., Camp Berkeley, Texas, Fort Devens, Mass., Pine Camp in New York and Camp Pickett in Virginia. Three of the handful of Congressional Medals of Honor that American Indians received in World War II were awarded to soldiers in the 45th: Ernest Childers, Jack Montgomery, an Oklahoma Cherokee and classmate of Childers at Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, and Van T. The 45th was now known as the Thunderbird Division.Īmerican Indian soldiers more than lived up to the name. Army abandoned the shoulder patch in the 1930s and, after a competition, replaced it with another Indian symbol, the Thunderbird. The four-armed yellow insignia on a square background of red had deep roots in the Native southwest, but, in a nasty case of cultural misappropriation, the rising Nazi Party of Germany adopted the symbol for its standard, the swastika. According to the 45th Division history, “For the first 15 years of its existence, members of the 45th Infantry Division proudly wore on their left shoulders an ancient American Indian symbol of good luck,” as recognition of the great number of Natives who proudly served in it. Encompassing many tribal homelands, its ranks included many American Indians, as well as cowboys, and the Division was always conscious of its Native heritage.
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