Oklahoma Army National Guard’s 45th Infantry Division Museum unveils soldier’s statue
Man earned Medal of Honor
BY JOHN ESTUS
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Published: September 26, 2009
Injured and surrounded by Nazis, 2nd Lt. Ernest Childers got angry.
What happened next is a big reason the
Oklahoma soldier’s statue was unveiled Friday at the
Oklahoma Army National Guard’s
45th Infantry Division Museum.
Childers had broken his ankle dodging Nazi gunfire during World War II, but he still had to lead the eight 45th Infantry Division soldiers under his command on Sept. 22, 1943, in
Italy.
"I crawled back and told my men to lay down a base of fire over me,” Childers, a member of the
Creek Nation from
Broken Arrow, later told an interviewer, according to Oklahoma Army National Guard records.
Then Childers crawled, as fast as he could, toward a Nazi machine gun nest. He shot the Germans dead before they could turn their fire on him.
He spotted more Germans in the distance. Still crawling and lacking grenades, Childers threw rocks at them.
"I assume they thought it was a hand grenade, because nobody throws rocks,” Childers told the interviewer.
Fearing a grenade blast, the Nazis scrambled. Childers and another solider shot and killed them.
Childers continued his crawl forward, single-handedly capturing an enemy mortar observer in the process.
Later, another Nazi walked toward the crawling Childers, who was out of bullets.
"My body was wet with sweat since the German was fully armed, and I was holding an empty rifle on him,” Childers told the interviewer.
The German, apparently assuming the gun was loaded, did not attack.
Because of his actions that day, Childers became the division’s first
Congressional Medal of Honor winner. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1965 and remained active in group until his death in 2005.
"He was a figure that we all looked up to and honored in the 45th,”
Maj. Gen. Myles Deering said Friday at a dedication ceremony for Childers’ statue.
The statue was commissioned by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and sculpted by
Oklahoma City artist
Sandra Van Zandt. It shows Childers standing strong in his infantry uniform with the Medal of Honor draped around his neck.
"When we were little, it was just Dad,” said his daughter,
Yolanda Elaine Childers, of
Tulsa, as she admired her father’s statue. "As we grew older, we are fully aware that my father was one of the great men, not just of this century or the last century, but of the millennium. I firmly believe that.”
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