Texas made a remarkable contribution to the American war effort during World War II . Almost 830,000 Texans, including 12,000 women, donned uniforms, and more than 23,000 Texas fighting men died for their country. America's most decorated soldier, Lt. Audie Murphy, and most decorated sailor, submarine commander Sam Dealey, both were Texans. Texas A&M, an all-male military college, placed 20,000 men in the armed forces, of which 14,000 were officers--more than any other school in the nation, including the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied Forces in Europe, was born in Denison in northeast Texas. Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, was born and raised in Texas. Almost 1.5 million soldiers, sailors, and fliers trained at scores of Texas bases. Texas oil fueled the Allied war effort, while Texas shipyards and defense plants provided a flood of war machines and munitions during the war effort.

Texas made a remarkable contribution to the American war effort during World War II . Almost 830,000 Texans, including 12,000 women, donned uniforms, and more than 23,000 Texas fighting men died for their country. America's most decorated soldier, Lt. Audie Murphy, and most decorated sailor, submarine commander Sam Dealey, both were Texans. Texas A&M, an all-male military college, placed 20,000 men in the armed forces, of which 14,000 were officers--more than any other school in the nation, including the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied Forces in Europe, was born in Denison in northeast Texas. Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, was born and raised in Texas. Almost 1.5 million soldiers, sailors, and fliers trained at scores of Texas bases. Texas oil fueled the Allied war effort, while Texas shipyards and defense plants provided a flood of war machines and munitions during the war effort.

With the outbreak of World War II, British RAF officials sought to train aircrews outside of England, safe from enemy attack and poor weather. In the USA, six civilian flight schools dedicated themselves to instructing RAF pilots. Tom Killebrew explores the history of the Terrell Aviation School.

When their country calls, Texas Aggies go to war. From the Spanish-American War and World War I to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Aggies have been in the forefront of America’s armed forces, producing more officers than any other school outside the service academies. More than 20,000 Texas Aggies served in World War II, for instance, including more than 14,000 as commissioned officers. Trained in leadership and the knowledge required for warfare, Aggies have served with distinction in all branches of the military service. In this first-ever compilation of the impressive war record of Texas Aggies, stories of individual soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines are displayed with an abundance of statistics, maps, and tables. These narratives include • First-person accounts of Aggie heroism in battle in all the wars in which A&M former students have fought; • The horrific experiences of some of the eighty-seven Aggies who were stationed at Corregidor and Bataan; • The perils of five Aggies who participated in the raid over Tokyo with Jimmie Doolittle; • The heroics of the seven Medal of Honor recipients from Texas A&M during World War II; • James Earl Rudder’s leadership of the Ranger assault at Normandy on D-Day; • Examples of vigorous support and devotion to duty given by Aggies in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East. Texas Aggies Go to War celebrates the school’s distinctive Corps of Cadets and its military contributions while honoring the individual sacrifices of its members. Those who fought and those who remember them will find here a comprehensive account of the distinguished war record of this school. This book was initiated and sponsored by a group of former students who provided funding through the Texas A&M Foundation. All proceeds from the book will be used to benefit the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets.

Over the course of World War II, Orange, Texas’s easternmost city, went from a sleepy southern town of 7,500 inhabitants to a bustling industrial city of 60,000. The bayou community on the Sabine became one of the nation’s preeminent shipbuilding centers. In They Called It the War Effort, Louis Fairchild details the explosive transformation of his native city in the words of the people who lived through it. Some residents who lived in the town before the war speak of nostalgia for the time when Orange was a small, close-knit community and regret for the loss of social cohesiveness of former days, while others speak of the exciting new opportunities and interesting new people that came. Interviewees tell how newcomers from rural areas in Louisiana and East Texas tried to adjust to a new life in close living quarters and to new amenities–like indoor toilets. People from all walks of life talk of the economic shift from the cash and job shortages of Depression era to a war era when these things were in abundance, but they also tell of how wartime rationing made items like Coca-Cola treasured luxuries. Fairchild deftly draws on a wide array of secondary sources in psychology and history to tie together and broaden the perspectives offered by World War II Orangeites. The second edition of this justly praised book features more interviews with non-white residents of Orange, as Japanese Americans and especially African Americans speak not only of the challenges of wartime economic dislocations, but also of living in a southern town where Jim Crow still reigned. Publication of this book was supported by a generous grant from the Nelda C. and H. J. Lutcher Stark Foundation

Texas made a remarkable contribution to the American war effort during World War II . Almost 830,000 Texans, including 12,000 women, donned uniforms, and more than 23,000 Texas fighting men died for their country. America's most decorated soldier, Lt. Audie Murphy, and most decorated sailor, submarine commander Sam Dealey, both were Texans. Texas A&M, an all-male military college, placed 20,000 men in the armed forces, of which 14,000 were officers--more than any other school in the nation, including the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied Forces in Europe, was born in Denison in northeast Texas. Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, was born and raised in Texas. Almost 1.5 million soldiers, sailors, and fliers trained at scores of Texas bases. Texas oil fueled the Allied war effort, while Texas shipyards and defense plants provided a flood of war machines and munitions during the war effort.

It was 1946. World War II was over. The thieves went to work. They drilled deviated wells from outside the East Texas Oil Field back into the oil that remained after 16 years of production. This was the oil field that supplied the oil needed for an Allied victory in 1945. The deviators continued their nefarious activity until an angry and aggressive attorney general led his posse of lawmen, including the Texas Rangers, into East Texas to stop the theft and administer Texas justice. I tell this story on the basis of 35 years of research and my father's well files. Yes, he drilled six of the nearly 400 deviated wells. I first learned of the so-called Slant-Hole scandal in late spring 1962. That's when colleagues in my research group at the University of California at Berkeley accosted me with the morning's San Francisco Chronicle. They knew my father was an East Texas oilman. One pointed to an article reporting that oilmen in East Texas had drilled "deviated" oil wells from beyond the known productive limits of the East Texas Oil Field to steal oil. "Has your dad been stealing oil?" "Of course, not!" I replied. I had known nothing of the illicit activity until that morning. Then a report in TIME further exposed the East Texas oil scandal that had erupted in my hometown of Longview. Here, then, for the first time, I reveal the story of how a few dozen oilmen stole up to 20 million barrels from the East Texas Oil Field. I am eager to share what I have learned and to tell the truth of the slant-hole scandal--the circumstances that made it inevitable, who did what to whom, and how the matter eventually reached its conclusion. Much of what I reveal in this book has been the tightly guarded secrets of the families of the participants so that grandchildren can be kept from knowledge of granddaddy's scandalous behavior. But most of what I reveal here lies barely hidden in the public record. The slant-hole story is a significant piece of Texas history, and it must be told before no one is left to tell it.