Col. Harry S. Truman, USA

Did you know that President Harry S. Truman fought during World War I?

Truman joined the Missouri National Guard in 1905. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, Capt. Truman commanded Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, part of the 35th Infantry Division. From “The Soldier from Independence: Harry S. Truman and the Great War”:

Truman’s battery was frequently employed well forward. He was detailed to provide fire support for George S. Patton’s tank brigade during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, engaged German field guns and was credited with either wiping out or forcing the permanent abandonment of two complete batteries. When firing on these and other targets, he disobeyed orders and fired “out of sector” against threats to his division’s open flank. Truman’s 35th Division, a National Guard formation made up of units from Missouri and Kansas, suffered grievously in that battle, and the battery of the man who would later order the dropping of the atomic bombs was sited approximately 150 yards forward of where Patton was wounded in an area referred to by one artilleryman as “a cemetery of unburied dead.”

The more I find out about Harry Truman, the more I like him. Truman remained an officer in the Field Artillery Reserve until retiring as a colonel in 1953.