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Like many professional soldiers, my father seldom told “war stories,” and when he did, they were usually anecdotal in nature. There was the morning in London, during the V-2 bombings, when he was sitting in a small restaurant, one wall of which had been blown away the previous night. The place was a wreck: with bricks, boards, glass, dust and other debris piled on most of the tables and other furnishings. Nonetheless, breakfast was still being served that morning, and the head waiter still stood in the doorway, ready to seat the customers. A short London businessman soon entered the establishment, dressed in a typically conservative dark suit, bowler and umbrella. He looked at the wreckage, then at the head waiter, and then politely inquired, “No marmalade, of course?”</p>
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My father was born 15 February 1908, in the Philippine Islands, the son of Major O. C. Troxel, Sr., and Janie Dee Jones. His childhood was spent in typical military fashion, moving from station to station, around the world. He remembered especially enjoying the period when his father served in Japan, his family having acquired many Oriental furnishings, art works, and other items while they were there. His father died in 1917, following the Army’s campaign into Mexico after Pancho Villa, so he then moved with his mother and two sisters to Washington, DC—which he always thereafter considered his “hometown.” Graduating from Western High School in 1926, he entered West Point after a year at Columbia Preparatory School.</p>
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Graduating from USMA in 1931, with a commission in the Field Artillery, he was first assigned to Fort Sam Houston, Texas. It was there that he met and married Lucy Reynolds. She was also from an Army family and, coincidentally, was also born in the Philippines. Following the tour of duty at “Fort Sam,” he and his new wife went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where, in addition to his regular duties, he acquired considerable skill in horsemanship and polo. (Possessing a natural fondness for the cavalry, he often recalled his father’s tour of duty at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. By the 1930’s, however, the cavalry was all but defunct.)</p>
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He considered the years up to 1939 his “graduate school,” in which he began to show a talent for logistics and planning. Since I hadn’t been born yet, he could devote his spare hours to learning what was called “the big picture.” Although the Artillery was his chosen branch, he soon became interested in how the other branches of the Army functioned with each other: “communications” was the link between the branches. His theories impressed one Fred Wallace, who was then commanding general of the 4th Division, and who made him his aide-de-camp.</p>
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My father was to remain with the 4th Division until the decisive landing on Utah Beach. Under General Wallace, the division trained at Forts Benning, Leavenworth, Gordon, and Dix. By 1940 war with Germany and its allies had become an inevitability. At Fort Dix, New Jersey, General Wallace was replaced by General Raymond O. Barton, and my father became G-3 of the division. In September of 1943, the unit began its departure for England.</p>
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The next six months were spent preparing the division for the mammoth assault on the Normandy beaches. My father received a wartime promotion to full colonel and was heavily engaged in training the newly-drafted troops. He still had time to theorize, however, particularly in the area of liaison and communications between ground troops and air support. He also met J. Lawton Collins, commanding general of the VII Corps, of which the 4th Division was a part. Then, on April Fool’s Day of 1944, he received word that his son, myself, was born.</p>
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The beaches of Normandy were not the only important battleground of World War II, but they were certainly the great turning point of the war: the first decisive rip in the side of the raging Nazi mammoth. When he would talk about it, my father would stress that the invasion was really the work of hundreds of thousands of individuals, not just a handful. D-Day was the result of thousands of man-hours of planning, training, and mapping, “down to the last grain of sand, if necessary.” He knew, as do all professional soldiers, that no one person is really more important than his organization, and that no organization is more important than its mission, especially as far as the Normandy invasion went. The weather, the tides, and even the phases of the moon all played a role.</p>
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Fatalities on Utah Beach amounted to a few dozen, possibly due to a sudden change to better weather, or possibly due to the 4th Division’s G-3 section. A total of 20,000 troops and 1700 vehicles were landed there on 6 June. Following the landing, my father became G-3 of the VII Corps, under General Collins, and it was this experience that formed the basis of his later military career. It also molded his personal life as well, for from those years on, he was a plotter and planner, by second nature—whether it meant buying a car, making a shopping list, or thinking about his next stroke on the golf course.</p>
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Since my father’s personal life was inseparable from the movements of the VII Corps across France and Belgium toward the Siegfried Line that girdled Germany, it is with considerable pride that I mention the battles in which he participated: the Normandy Breakout (Operation Cobra), Aachen, the Huertgen Forest, the Roer River Dams, Diiren, Cologne, the Ruhr encirclement, the Remagen Bridge, and the meeting with the Russians on the Elbe. I learned of these only after his death in 1984, when I found, locked in a trunk in the basement of his condominium, three volumes of VII Corps memorandums. These volumes also included directives regarding the Ardennes Forest defensive positions (“Battle of the Bulge”), and the discovery of the underground missile factory at Nordhausen, with its notorious slave-labor camp.</p>
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For his participation in the war effort, my father earned a number of decorations, including three Legions of Merit, two Bronze Star medals, and the Belgian Order of Leopold. Prior to accepting the French Croix de Guerre, he and the other American troops were advised that, upon receiving it, they would be kissed on both cheeks, and were to offer “neither resistance nor encouragement.”</p>
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The exuberant Russians on the Elbe presented him and the rest of the VII Corps with the Medal of the Fatherland War. Along with much singing, dancing, and drinking, it was acknowledged that, had Russia’s people not held off the Nazis along the Eastern Front, the Normandy invasion might not have been possible. Such camaraderie lasted for less than a year, however.</p>
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From 1945 to 1953, most of my father’s activities were concerned with the instruction and training of troops, as well as attending a number of military schools as a student: the Armed Forces Information School at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth; and the National War College in Washington, DC.</p>
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In 1953, following his promotion to brigadier general, he assumed command of the 1st Cavalry Division Artillery in Hokkaido, Japan, and following his promotion to major general, the entire division itself. Having lived in Japan as a child, he was eager to acquaint me with that country and its people. My mother and I arrived in Hokkaido in the fall of 1953.</p>
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The weather on Hokkaido was extremely cold, with snow beginning to fall in October and not leaving until May. The housing was mostly quonset huts, and it was a truly thrilling existence for a nine-year-old boy.</p>
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In 1956, we moved to Tokyo, which was beginning to look more like an American city than the more typically Japanese towns further north. The Japanese were still far from microchip computers, however. Their home electricity was supplied by a generator that was activated by pedaling a bicycle very rapidly.</p>
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The family returned to Washington in April of 1956, when my father was assigned to the Pentagon as Chief of Psychological Warfare, and then with the early US Army Special Forces. In 1959, he had a year’s tour of duty in Korea in charge of the provisional headquarters of the Korean Military Advisory Group. From January 1961 to March 1963, he commanded the US Infantry Training Center at Fort Ord, California. His last year in the Army was spent at Fort Meade, Maryland, as deputy commanding general, Second US Army.</p>
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Following his retirement, he received the Distinguished Service Medal, settled permanently in Washington, and began working with Research Analysis Corporation as a military consultant. He spent eight years with RAC, working mostly with computers, applying the principles he had learned throughout his career to the tactics and strategy of future wars and other possible military operations.</p>
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He was a member of the Army-Navy Country Club, a volunteer at Army Distaff Hall, and for five years, president of the West Point Class of 1931 Association. Other interests included golf, sketching, travel, and, of course, a fondness for socializing, martinis, cocker spaniels, and the Washington Redskins. Survivors include his wife, Lucy, of Falls Church, Virginia; his sister, Mrs. Francis T. Kirk; and niece, Mrs. Jane Kernaghan, both of San Antonio; a nephew, Mahlon T. Kirk (USMA 1958) of Portage, Wisconsin; and myself, his son.</p>
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His West Point roommate, Ben Turpin, remarked that, “Trox was a strong and polished gentleman with high ideals… definitely outgoing, with a remarkably well-tuned sense of humor. He was artistically able in a number of interesting ways: he could quickly and accurately sketch out on paper just what he saw. With soldiering, and when faced with communicating information to others, this is a convenient talent to have.</p>
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“He had great admiration for his father (USMA 1901), whom he had known for too few years. He aspired to be a soldier like him and thus he understood exactly why he was at West Point.”</p>
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<em>—Roy Troxel </em>Arlington, VA</p>
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