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Opinion: WWII hero's service didn't stop with combat: ONLY IN OKLAHOMA
By Gene Curtis
Tulsa World
March 4, 2007
Few of the passengers on the shuttle from the parking lot to the door of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Muskogee recognized their driver.
But veterans seeking medical treatment would have been impressed had they known their driver was Jack C. Montgomery, who was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military honor, for action in Italy during World War II.
Montgomery drove that shuttle for several decades beginning in 1972 at the medical facility now named the Jack C. Montgomery VA Medical Center in his honor. And the federal agency he served for so many years as an employee and as a volunteer has been renamed the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Montgomery, a Cherokee who died at age 84 in 2002, was one of five American Indians who received the Medal of Honor during World War II.
The citation accompanying the medal that was awarded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt said Montgomery killed 11 Nazi soldiers, captured 32 and wounded an unknown number of the enemy.
The action started two hours before dawn on Feb. 22, 1944, when a strong force of German soldiers established a position in front of Montgomery's platoon and threatened its position on Anzio Beach.
"Cover me, I'm going forward," he told soldiers as he grabbed his rifle and several grenades and started crawling through the ditch toward where the German soldiers had been reported. He was a first lieutenant commanding a platoon in Oklahoma's 45th Infantry Division.
He fired his rifle and threw his grenades so accurately that he killed eight of the enemy and captured four before returning to his platoon for another rifle and more grenades. At that point he also called for artillery fire on a house where the enemy was firing machine guns. As enemy soldiers fled from the house, he captured more Nazis and sent them back to the rear. Three dead Nazis were found there later.
"I didn't look back," he told a reporter later. "I knew I was going to be covered. We had that kind of confidence in each other."
"I'd been training for it all those months and years," Montgomery said. "I can't tell you what I was thinking about at the time. I wasn't conscious of thinking about anything."
Montgomery, a native of Long in Sequoyah County, attended elementary school in Cushing and high school at Chilocco Indian School. He attended Bacone Junior College for two years and graduated with a degree in education from the University of Redlands, Calif., in 1940.
He joined the National Guard in 1937 and was mobilized when the Guard was called to active duty in 1940 in anticipation of World War II. He received a battlefield commission as a second lieutenant in 1943 when he was cited for bravery.
By the time of his Anzio Beach action, he had been promoted to first lieutenant and had received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart with Cluster and the Military Cross of Valor from the Italian government. He was sent back to the U.S. for treatment of serious wounds he suffered when hit by mortar fragments later that day while helping another platoon.
After his discharge from the Army in 1945, Montgomery went to work for the Veterans Administration in Muskogee, Durant and Bartlesville before re-enlisting in the Army in December 1950, a few months after the beginning of the Korean War. He volunteered for combat but because Medal of Honor recipients are not allowed to return to combat, he was assigned as an infantry instructor at Fort Benning, Ga.
Montgomery returned to the VA in Bartlesville in 1953 but retired in 1972 and began his volunteer job as a shuttle driver for the hospital in Muskogee -- a job he held for several decades.
The hospital was renamed in Montgomery's honor last summer by legislation introduced in Congress by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla. They said they had consulted with veterans across the state before introducing the bill.
"Jack Montgomery was a true Oklahoma hero and embodied the American spirit of service, honor and sacrifice," Coburn said.
"His life and legacy are far-reaching," Boren said.
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