US Army LTC Ernest Childers: WWII Medal of Honor Recipient

Welcome back everyone.  On today’s episode of Duty & Valor, you’ll hear the story of a man whose personal hardship shaped the soldier he would become.  A man who showed leadership on multiple occasions leading to his battlefield commission.  A man who, though wounded, led an assault that allowed his regiment to continue their advance.  This is the story of Medal of Honor Recipient US Army Lt. Col. Ernest Childres.

Ernest was born in Broken Arrow, OK on February 1, 1918 to parents Ellis and Tennie Childers.  The Childers family, who had five boys, were part of the Muscogee Creek Tribe, where the patriarch, Ellis, was an attorney for the Creek Nation.  When Ernest was 12, his father died.  This left his widowed mother to care for all five boys at a time where poverty was common throughout Oklahoma, especially during the Dust Bowl. 

As the family was unable to buy meat for the dinner table, it fell on Ernest to do so.  He often told the story about how he would have to go out everyday and shoot rabbits in order to feed the family.  In some accounts, it says that he was given one bullet a day to do this, which forced him to become a good shot.   

Ernest attended the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, which was a boarding school aimed at assimilating American Indians into society.   After graduating in 1937, Ernest enlisted in the Oklahoma National Guard and was assigned to the 45th Division.  When the 45th was called into active duty in 1940 as the 45th Infantry Division, Ernest had been promoted to sergeant and was part of Charley Company, 180th Infantry Regiment.

Prior to 1939, the 45th Division’s insignia was a yellow swastika on a red background.  Though the swastika was a common symbol in Native American culture, it was changed due to the Nazi party’s adoption of it as a symbol of their movement.  The Oklahoma National Guard changed the insignia to that of a thunderbird, which gave the 45th its nickname as the Thunderbird Division.  

Sgt. Childers and the men of the 45th trained for their eventual invasion of Italy at bases in Texas, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, where on June 3, 1943, they set sail for the Mediterranean. 

The 45th was part of the Invasion of Sicily and Sgt. Childers was recognized multiple times for his valor in combat, eventually receiving a battlefield commission as a 2LT.  

By September, allied forces had landed on mainland Italy and were making slow progress North.  By the 22nd of the month, Lt. Childers and his unit were on the outskirts of the Italian city of Oliveto, where they were fighting well defended German forces.  Early that morning, they came under heavy fire from the Germans.  Lt. Childers sought cover but fell into a shell crater, fracturing his foot.  Under excruciating pain, he made his way to an aid station for treatment.  Not long after arriving, a German shell destroyed the aid station, killing an Army doctor.  

With his unit pinned down, Lt. Childers knew he had to get them moving or they would be annihilated by the Germans firing down on their position from above.  He put his pain aside and took action.  Lt. Childers put together a team composed of himself and eight enlisted men with the ultimate goal of silencing German machine gun nests.  The men made their way up the steep terrain, while under heavy fire.  

They eventually found some cover behind a rock wall overlooking a cornfield.  German forces were positioned in nearby houses, so they had to eliminate them before they could advance.  Lt. Childers ordered his men to lay down suppressing fire as he crawled forward.  His movements were identified and he was being shot at by two German snipers.  Thanks to his marksman skill with his carbine, he was able to engage and eliminate both snipers.     

Lt. Childers continued his advance and was able to engage a machine gun nest from behind.  Acting quickly and decisively, he was able to kill all of the men at that position, before setting sight on the next machine gun.  With his men trailing not too far behind, he moved behind a house and made it near a second machine gun nest, seemingly undetected.  The Germans there were hiding behind cover so he had no clear shot at any of them.  To change this, Lt. Childers grabbed some nearby rocks and began hurling them into the machine gun emplacement.  This had its intended effect when two curious Germans raised their heads to see what was causing the noise, thinking it might have been grenades.  When they did, Lt. Childers took aim and killed one man, while the other was eliminated by one of his men.

With the second machine gun silenced, Lt. Childers continued up the hill.  As he approached a house, a German mortar observer, who must have seen the action, decided to come out and surrender to Lt. Childers.  What the armed German didn’t know was that Lt. Childers was completely out of ammunition and the carbine trained on him was harmless from that distance.

After the engagement at Oliveto, Lt. Childers recovered from his fractured foot before rejoining his men.  They fought during the bloody Battle of Anzio, where Lt. Childers was again wounded.  When was recovering at a military hospital in Naples on April 22, 1944, he was presented the Medal of Honor for his actions at Oliveto.  He was the first Native American to be awarded the medal during the war, and the first since the Indian Wars.

After WWII, Childers remained in the Army until 1965, retiring as a Lt. Colonel.  In addition to the Medal of Honor, he was presented a Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and the Italian Cross of Valor, among other awards for his service in WWII. 

On March 17, 2005 Lt. Col. Ernest Childers passed away at the age of 87, and he is buried at the Floral Haven Memorial Gardens in his hometown of Broken Arrow, OK. 

Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Childers stands as a beacon of courage, resilience, and unwavering commitment to duty. Through adversity and danger, he led by example, fearlessly charging forward to confront the enemy. His selfless actions, culminating in the Medal of Honor, inspire generations to embrace the noblest ideals of service and sacrifice.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Duty & Valor.  To read more about this week’s hero, check out the sources used in today's episode in our show notes and at dutyandvalor.com.  

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