Until now, Army Air Force Bases in Nebraska during World War II had never before been presented in a single book (most of the photographed structures are no longer visible). These stories and photographs mostly focus on America's Greatest Generation, which fought and won World War II. Also included are information on and images of the Martin B-26/Martin-Boeing B-29 Superfortress production plant at Fort Crook. One section deals with the building of modified B-29s for the 509th Composite Group, referred to after the war as the "Atomic Bomb Group," which dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan, ending World War II. Also learn about German and Italian Prisoner of War camps, where POWs contributed to agricultural production in Nebraska, helping feed American troops, Allied troops, and civilian populations around the world. Most Americans are not aware of the huge numbers of Axis POWs held in America during the war.

National Bestseller Most travelers only fly over the Great Plains--but Ian Frazier, ever the intrepid and wide-eyed wanderer, is not your average traveler. A hilarious and fascinating look at the great middle of our nation. With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.

An in-depth examination of the effects of World War II on the Great Plains states brings to life the voices and experiences of the residents of the region in recounting the stories of the daily concerns of ordinary people.

As a young adolescent, Hollis Dorion Stabler underwent a Native ceremony in which he was given the new name Na-zhin-thia, Slow to Rise. It was a name that no white person asked to know during Hollis's tour of duty in Anzio, his unacknowledged difference as an Omaha Indian adding to the poignancy of his uneasy fellowship with foreign and American soldiers alike. Stabler?s story?coming of age on the American plains, going to war, facing new estrangement upon coming home?is a universal one, rendered wonderfully strange and personal by Stabler?s uncommon perspective, which embraces two worlds, and by his unique voice. ø Stabler's experiences during World War II?tours of duty in Tunisia and Morocco as well as Italy and France, and the loss of his brother in battle?are at the center of this powerful memoir, which tells of growing up as an Omaha Indian in the small-town Midwest of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma in the 1920s and 1930s. A descendant of the Indians who negotiated with Lewis and Clark on the Missouri River, Stabler describes a childhood that was a curious mixture of progressivism and Indian tradition, and that culminated in his enlisting in the old horse cavalry when war broke out?a path not so very different from that walked by his ancestors. Victoria Smith, of Cherokee-Delaware descent, interweaves historical insight with Stabler?s vivid reminiscences, providing a rich context for this singular life.

"Wishart and the staff of the Center for Great Plains Studies have compiled a wide-ranging (pun intended) encyclopedia of this important region. Their objective was to 'give definition to a region that has traditionally been poorly defined,' and they have

Merriam Press World War 2 History. During World War II the state of Montana gave over 1,000 men to the final sacrifice to defend the United States. Thousands of military personnel trained in the state, before moving onto combat, especially those of four B-17 bomb groups. The state was temporary home to alien detainees and German Prisoners of War. Now, over 75 years from these events, this book is dedicated to these Americans who helped win the two-ocean war the United States fought, 1941-1945. This is truly a look back in time to America�s greatest generation. 304 photos, maps, illustrations.

War Dance at Fort Marion tells the powerful story of Kiowa, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Arapaho chiefs and warriors detained as prisoners of war by the U.S. Army. Held from 1875 until 1878 at Fort Marion in Saint Augustine, Florida, they participated in an educational experiment, initiated by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, as an alternative to standard imprisonment. This book, the first complete account of a unique cohort of Native peoples, brings their collective story to life and pays tribute to their individual talents and achievements. Throughout their incarceration, the Plains Indian leaders followed Pratt’s rules and met his educational demands even as they remained true to their own identities. Their actions spoke volumes about the sophistication of their cultural traditions, as they continued to practice Native dances and ceremonies and also illustrated their history and experiences in the now-famous ledger drawing books. Brad D. Lookingbill’s War Dance at Fort Marion draws on numerous primary documents, especially Native American accounts, to reconstruct the war prisoners’ story. The author shows that what began as Pratt’s effort to end the Indians’ resistance to their imposed exile transformed into a new vision to mold them into model citizens in mainstream American society, though this came at the cost of intense personal suffering and loss for the Indians.

On January 7, 1891, in the immediate aftermath to the assassination of Sitting Bull and the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, an obscure Sioux Indian shot and killed one Lieutenant Casey in cold blood. This is the forgotten story of the civil trials of Plenty Horses for the murder of the last Whiteman to die in the Great Plains War, trials that legally and dramatically agonized over justifying criminal acts committed during warfare. Four decades of continuous conflict--skirmishes, battles, massacres and atrocities committed by both sides--provide the catalyst to this incident, mainly told from an Indian perspective through eyewitness accounts, while detailing aspects of lost Lakota and Cheyenne culture and spirituality. This lone Indian represented the clash between White expansion and continuation of tribal life on the Great Plains, influenced by decades of bloody fighting, broken treaties, loss of hunting lands, deliberate demise of the buffalo, forced assimilation within Indian schools and the despair of reservations and finally belonging to neither world when the crime was committed.

The true story of the US Army’s Comanche Code Talkers, from their recruitment and training to active duty in World War II and postwar life. Among the allied troops that came ashore in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, were thirteen Comanches in the 4th Infantry Division, 4th Signal Company. Under German fire they laid communications lines and began sending messages in a form never before heard in Europe?coded Comanche. For the rest of World War II, the Comanche Code Talkers played a vital role in transmitting orders and messages in a code that was never broken by the Germans. This book tells the full story of the Comanche Code Talkers for the first time. Drawing on interviews with all surviving members of the unit, their original training officer, and fellow soldiers, as well as military records and news accounts, William C. Meadows follows the group from their recruitment and training to their active duty in World War II and on through their postwar lives up to the present. He also provides the first comparison of Native American code talking programs, comparing the Comanche Code Talkers with their better-known Navajo counterparts in the Pacific and with other Native Americans who used their languages, coded or not, for secret communication. Meadows sets this history in a larger discussion of the development of Native American code talking in World Wars I and II, identifying two distinct forms of Native American code talking, examining the attitudes of the American military toward Native American code talkers, and assessing the complex cultural factors that led Comanche and other Native Americans to serve their country in this way. “Of all the books on Native American service in the U.S. armed forces, this is the best. . . . Readers will find the story of the Comanche Code Talkers compelling, humorous, thought-provoking, and inspiring.” —Tom Holm, author of Strong Hearts, Wounded Souls: Native American Veterans of the Vietnam War

Until the last two centuries, the human landscapes of the Great Plains were shaped solely by Native Americans, and since then the region has continued to be defined by the enduring presence of its Indigenous peoples. The Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians offers a sweeping overview, across time and space, of this story in 123 entries drawn from the acclaimed Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, together with 23 new entries focusing on contemporary Plains Indians, and many new photographs. ø Here are the peoples, places, processes, and events that have shaped lives of the Indians of the Great Plains from the beginnings of human habitation to the present?not only yesterday?s wars, treaties, and traditions but also today?s tribal colleges, casinos, and legal battles. In addition to entries on familiar names from the past like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, new entries on contemporary figures such as American Indian Movement spiritual leader Leonard Crow Dog and activists Russell Means and Leonard Peltier are included in the volume. Influential writer Vine Deloria Sr., Crow medicine woman Pretty Shield, Nakota blues-rock band Indigenous, and the Nebraska Indians baseball team are also among the entries in this comprehensive account. Anyone wanting to know about Plains Indians, past and present, will find this an authoritative and fascinating source.