Oral History Interview with W. D. Whitson, November 15, 1995

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Transcript of an interview with William D. Whitson, a businessman and an Army Air Corps veteran (442nd Bomb Squadron, 8th Air Force), from Denton, Texas, concerning his experiences as a B-17 pilot in the European Theater during World War II. Whitson discusses flight training, his flight from the U.S. to Grafton-Underwood, England, his personal relationship with Curtis Le May, his missions and German defenses, his nineteenth mission and crash landing, and his twenty-fifth mission.
Date: November 15, 1995
Creator: Marcello, Ronald E. & Whitson, William D.
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke: Volume 3, June 1, 1878-June 22, 1880

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
John Gregory Bourke kept a monumental set of diaries beginning as a young cavalry lieutenant in Arizona in 1872, and ending the evening before his death in 1896. As aide-de-camp to Brigadier General George Crook, he had an insider's view of the early Apache campaigns, the Great Sioux War, the Cheyenne Outbreak, and the Geronimo War. Bourke's writings reveal much about military life on the western frontier, but he also was a noted ethnologist, writing extensive descriptions of American Indian civilization and illustrating his diaries with sketches and photographs. Previously, researchers could consult only a small part of Bourke's diary material in various publications, or else take a research trip to the archive and microfilm housed at West Point. Now, for the first time, the 124 manuscript volumes of the Bourke diaries are being compiled, edited, and annotated by Charles M. Robinson III, in a planned set of eight books easily accessible to the modern researcher. Volume 3 begins in 1878 with a discussion of the Bannock Uprising and a retrospective on Crazy Horse, whose death Bourke called "an event of such importance, and with its attendant circumstances pregnant with so much of good or evil for the settlement between …
Date: October 15, 2007
Creator: Bourke, John Gregory
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Twenty-five Year Century: a South Vietnamese General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
For Victor Hugo, the nineteenth century could be remembered by only its first two years, which established peace in Europe and France's supremacy on the continent. For General Lam Quang Thi, the twentieth century had only twenty-five years: from 1950 to 1975, during which the Republic of Vietnam and its Army grew up and collapsed with the fall of Saigon. This is the story of those twenty-five years. General Thi fought in the Indochina War as a battery commander on the side of the French. When Viet Minh aggression began after the Geneva Accords, he served in the nascent Vietnamese National Army, and his career covers this army's entire lifespan. He was deputy commander of the 7th Infantry Division, and in 1965 he assumed command of the 9th Infantry Division. In 1966, at the age of thirty-three, he became one of the youngest generals in the Vietnamese Army. He participated in the Tet Offensive before being removed from the front lines for political reasons. When North Vietnam launched the 1972 Great Offensive, he was brought back to the field and eventually promoted to commander of an Army Corps Task Force along the Demilitarized Zone. With the fall of Saigon, he …
Date: March 15, 2002
Creator: Thi, Lam Quang
System: The UNT Digital Library

Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940, and the Consequences for World War II

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
In Command Culture, Jörg Muth examines the different paths the United States Army and the German Armed Forces traveled to select, educate, and promote their officers in the crucial time before World War II. Muth demonstrates that the military education system in Germany represented an organized effort where each school and examination provided the stepping stone for the next. But in the United States, there existed no communication about teaching contents or didactical matters among the various schools and academies, and they existed in a self chosen insular environment. American officers who finally made their way through an erratic selection process and past West Point to the important Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, found themselves usually deeply disappointed, because they were faced again with a rather below average faculty who forced them after every exercise to accept the approved “school solution.” Command Culture explores the paradox that in Germany officers came from a closed authoritarian society but received an extremely open minded military education, whereas their counterparts in the United States came from one of the most democratic societies but received an outdated military education that harnessed their minds and limited their initiative. On the other …
Date: June 15, 2011
Creator: Muth, Jörg
System: The UNT Digital Library
Catalog of John Tarleton Agricultural College, 1924-1925 (open access)

Catalog of John Tarleton Agricultural College, 1924-1925

Annual catalog for John Tarleton Agricultural College describing the school, admission requirements, tuition, financial aid, departments, and classes for the 1924-25 school year, with announcements for 1925-26.
Date: April 15, 1925
Creator: Tarleton State College
System: The Portal to Texas History
Catalog of John Tarleton Agricultural College, 1925-26 (open access)

Catalog of John Tarleton Agricultural College, 1925-26

Annual catalog for John Tarleton Agricultural College describing the school, admission requirements, tuition, financial aid, departments, and classes for the 1925-26 school year, with announcements for 1926-27.
Date: March 15, 1926
Creator: Tarleton State College
System: The Portal to Texas History
Catalog of John Tarleton Agricultural College, 1923-24 (open access)

Catalog of John Tarleton Agricultural College, 1923-24

Annual catalog for John Tarleton Agricultural College describing the school, admission requirements, tuition, financial aid, departments, and classes for the 1923-24 school year, with announcements for 1924-25.
Date: February 15, 1924
Creator: Tarleton State College
System: The Portal to Texas History
[National Register of Historic Places Nomination: Avenger Field] (open access)

[National Register of Historic Places Nomination: Avenger Field]

Nomination materials submitted to the National Register of Historic Places regarding Avenger Field near Sweetwater, Texas. The materials include a history of the field, maps, photographs, and other supporting documents, as well as documents about the nomination process and drafted text.
Date: April 15, 1996
Creator: Sweetwater Chamber of Commerce
System: The Portal to Texas History

In Hostile Skies: an American B-24 Pilot in World War II

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
James M. Davis is a retired businessman who lives in Midland, Texas, with his wife of over six decades, Jean. He served on active duty in the U.S. Army Air Forces for more than two and a half years during World War II, and then in the Air Force reserves until 1961. David L. Snead, the editor, is an associate professor of history at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia and is the author of The Gaither Committee, Eisenhower, and the Cold War and George E. Browne: An American Doughboy in World War I.
Date: April 15, 2006
Creator: Davis, James M.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Catalog of John Tarleton Agricultural College, 1922-1923 (open access)

Catalog of John Tarleton Agricultural College, 1922-1923

Annual catalog for John Tarleton Agricultural College describing the school, admission requirements, tuition, financial aid, departments, and classes for the 1922-23 school year, with announcements for 1923-24.
Date: April 15, 1923
Creator: Tarleton State College
System: The Portal to Texas History

Houston Blue: The Story of the Houston Police Department

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Houston Blue offers the first comprehensive history of one of the nation’s largest police forces, the Houston Police Department. Through extensive archival research and more than one hundred interviews with prominent Houston police figures, politicians, news reporters, attorneys, and others, authors Mitchel P. Roth and Tom Kennedy chronicle the development of policing in the Bayou City from its days as a grimy trading post in the 1830s to its current status as the nation’s fourth largest city. Prominent historical figures who have brushed shoulders with Houston’s Finest over the past 175 years include Houdini, Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, O. Henry, former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, hatchet wielding temperance leader Carrie Nation, the Hilton Siamese Twins, blues musician Leadbelly, oilman Silver Dollar Jim West, and many others. The Houston Police Department was one of the first cities in the South to adopt fingerprinting as an identification system and use the polygraph test, and under the leadership of its first African American police chief, Lee Brown, put the theory of neighborhood oriented policing into practice in the 1980s. The force has been embroiled in controversy and high profile criminal cases as well. Among the cases chronicled in the book are …
Date: November 15, 2012
Creator: Roth, Mitchel P.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Warriors and Scholars: a Modern War Reader

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Few works of military history are able to move between the battlefield and academia. But Warriors and Scholars takes the best from both worlds by presenting the viewpoints of senior, eminent military historians on topics of their specialty, alongside veteran accounts for the modern war being discussed. Editors Peter Lane and Ronald Marcello have added helpful contextual and commentary footnotes for student readers. The papers, originally from the University of North Texas's annual Military History Seminar, are organized chronologically from World War II to the present day, making this a modern war reader of great use for the professional and the student. Scholars and topics include David Glantz on the Soviet Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945; Robert Divine on the decision to use the atomic bomb; George Herring on Lyndon Baines Johnson as Commander-in-Chief; and Brian Linn comparing the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq with the 1899-1902 war in the Philippines. Veterans and their topics include flying with the Bloody 100th by John Luckadoo; an enlisted man in the Pacific theater of World War II, by Roy Appleton; a POW in Vietnam, by David Winn; and Cold War duty in Moscow, by Charles Hamm.
Date: August 15, 2005
Creator: Lane, Peter B. & Marcello, Ronald E.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Catalog of John Tarleton Agricultural College, 1926-27 (open access)

Catalog of John Tarleton Agricultural College, 1926-27

Annual catalog for John Tarleton Agricultural College describing the school, admission requirements, tuition, financial aid, departments, and classes for the 1926-27 school year, with announcements for 1927-28.
Date: March 15, 1927
Creator: Tarleton State College
System: The Portal to Texas History

With the Possum and the Eagle: the Memoir of a Navigator's War Over Germany and Japan

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Ralph H. Nutter was the lead navigator for Eighth Air Force raids over Germany when he was assigned as Maj. Gen. Curtis “the Eagle” LeMay’s group navigator. Later, as the strategic air war over Europe was winding down, the ace navigator was transferred to B-29 Superfortress duty with the Twentieth Air Force in the Pacific, where he was picked by Brigadier Gen. Haywood "Possum" Hansell to be his bomber navigator. After LeMay succeeded Hansell as bomber commander, Nutter returned to navigation duty with LeMay. Hansell and LeMay were two of our country’s leading combat commanders in Europe and the Pacific. They pioneered the concepts of strategic airpower and high-altitude daylight precision bombing. With the Possum and the Eagle affords a rare insider’s perspective on aviation leadership and strategic issues, melded with extraordinary accounts of courage under fire.
Date: August 15, 2005
Creator: Nutter, Ralph H.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Both Sides of the Border: A Scattering of Texas Folklore (open access)

Both Sides of the Border: A Scattering of Texas Folklore

Collection of Tex-Mex folklore and related essays, including papers presented at Texas Folklore Society meetings. The book is organized into four topical categories: I. Remembering Our Ancestors, II. Texas-Mexican Folklore, III. Miscellaneous Memorabilia, and IV. The Family Saga (Cont'd).
Date: November 15, 2004
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward & Untiedt, Kenneth L.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Queen of the Confederacy: the Innocent Deceits of Lucy Holcombe Pickens

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
From book jacket: "Submissiveness is not my role, but certain platitudes on certain occasions are among the innocent deceits of the sex." A strong character with a fervent belief in woman's changing place, Lucy Holcombe Pickens (1832-1899) was not content to live the life of a typical nineteenth-century Southern belle. Wife of Francis Wilkinson Pickens, the secessionist governor of South Carolina on the eve of the Civil War, Lucy was determined to make her mark in the world. She married "the right man," feeling that "a woman with wealth or prestige garnered from her husband's position could attain great power." She urged Pickens to accept a diplomatic mission to the court of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, and in St. Petersburg Lucy captivated the Tsar and his retinue with her beauty and charm. Upon returning to the states, she became First Lady of South Carolina just in time to encourage a Confederate unit named in her honor (The Holcombe Legion) off to war. She was the only woman to have her image engraved on Confederacy paper currency, the uncrowned "Queen of the Confederacy."
Date: May 15, 2002
Creator: Lewis, Elizabeth Wittenmyer
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke: Volume 4, July 3, 1880-May 22, 1881

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
John Gregory Bourke kept a monumental set of diaries beginning as a young cavalry lieutenant in Arizona in 1872, and ending the evening before his death in 1896. As aide-de-camp to Brigadier General George Crook, he had an insider's view of the early Apache campaigns, the Great Sioux War, the Cheyenne Outbreak, and the Geronimo War. Bourke's writings reveal much about military life on the western frontier, but he also was a noted ethnologist, writing extensive descriptions of American Indian civilization and illustrating his diaries with sketches and photographs. Previously, researchers could consult only a small part of Bourke’s diary material in various publications, or else take a research trip to the archive and microfilm housed at West Point. Now, for the first time, the 124 manuscript volumes of the Bourke diaries are being compiled, edited, and annotated by Charles M. Robinson III, in a planned set of eight books easily accessible to the modern researcher. Volume 4 chronicles the political and managerial affairs in Crook’s Department of the Platte. A large portion centers on the continuing controversy concerning the forced relocation of the Ponca Indians from their ancient homeland along the Dakota-Nebraska line to a new reservation in the …
Date: May 15, 2009
Creator: Bourke, John Gregory
System: The UNT Digital Library

Risk, Courage, and Women Contemporary Voices in Prose and Poetry

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
This unique collection of narratives, essays, and poems includes an original interview with Maya Angelou and pieces by Naomi Shihab Nye, Pat Mora, Rosemary Catacalos, and many others. Each work relates how women have demonstrated courage by taking a risk that has changed their lives. The Introduction explores courage not as a battlefield quality, but as the result of thoughtful choices demonstrating integrity and self-awareness. Each section opens with a description of its organization and the significance of individual pieces. Themes include sustenance for living, faith in the unknown, the courage of choice, the seams of our lives, and crossing borders. The book begins with a conversation with Dr. Maya Angelou, the embodiment of a courageous woman. She urges readers to "Envision" and concludes the book with the wish "Good morning," inviting all to join her in a new day reflecting "The Power of One." Voices of racial and ethnic diversity speak throughout the work, underscoring both difference and unity in the female experience. Including role models for university audiences and powerful reflections of life experiences for older readers, this work serves many purposes: a textbook in Literature or Women's/Gender Studies classes, a focus for book study groups, and a …
Date: August 15, 2007
Creator: Waldron, Karen A.; Labatt, Laura M. & Brazil, Janice H.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Nancy Love and the Wasp Ferry Pilots of World War II

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
She flew the swift P-51 and the capricious P-38, but the heavy, four-engine B-17 bomber and C-54 transport were her forte. This is the story of Nancy Harkness Love who, early in World War II, recruited and led the first group of twenty-eight women to fly military aircraft for the U.S. Army. Love was hooked on flight at an early age. At sixteen, after just four hours of instruction, she flew solo “a rather broken down Fleet biplane that my barnstorming instructor imported from parts unknown.” The year was 1930: record-setting aviator Jacqueline Cochran (and Love’s future rival) had not yet learned to fly, and the most famous woman pilot of all time, Amelia Earhart, had yet to make her acclaimed solo Atlantic flight. When the United States entered World War II, the Army needed pilots to transport or “ferry” its combat-bound aircraft across the United States for overseas deployment and its trainer airplanes to flight training bases. Most male pilots were assigned to combat preparation, leaving few available for ferrying jobs. Into this vacuum stepped Nancy Love and her civilian Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). Love had advocated using women as ferry pilots as early as 1940. Jackie Cochran …
Date: March 15, 2008
Creator: Rickman, Sarah Byrn
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke: Volume 2, July 29, 1876 - April 7, 1878

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
John Gregory Bourke kept a monumental set of diaries beginning as a young cavalry lieutenant in Arizona in 1872, and ending the evening before his death in 1896. As aide-de-camp to Brigadier General George Crook, he had an insider's view of the early Apache campaigns, the Great Sioux War, the Cheyenne Outbreak, and the Geronimo War. Bourke's writings reveal much about military life on the western frontier, but he also was a noted ethnologist, writing extensive descriptions of American Indian civilization and illustrating his diaries with sketches and photographs. Previously, researchers could consult only a small part of Bourkes diary material in various publications, or else take a research trip to the archive and microfilm housed at West Point. Now, for the first time, the 124 manuscript volumes of the Bourke diaries are being compiled, edited, and annotated by Charles M. Robinson III, in a planned set of six books easily accessible to the modern researcher. This volume opens as Crook prepares for the expedition that would lead to his infamous and devastating Horse Meat March. Although Bourke retains his loyalty to Crook throughout the detailed account, his patience is sorely tried at times. Bourke's description of the march is …
Date: October 15, 2005
Creator: Bourke, John Gregory, 1846-1896 & Robinson, Charles M. III
System: The UNT Digital Library

Minding the Store: A Memoir

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Personal memoir of Stanley Marcus providing anecdotes about his life and family, and also describing his role in the Neiman Marcus department store chain, which was founded by Herbert Marcus (Stanley's father) with his younger sister and her husband, Carrie and Al Neiman. Index starts on page 373.
Date: August 15, 2001
Creator: Marcus, Stanley, 1905-2002
System: The UNT Digital Library