Edgar Jadwin

Edgar Jadwin, C.E. was a U.S. Army officer who fought in the Spanish-American War and World War I, before serving as Chief of Engineers from 1926 to 1929.

Jadwin served with engineer troops in 1891–1895 and was lieutenant colonel of the 3d U.S. Volunteer Engineers in the Spanish–American War.

After serving as district engineer at the expanding ports of Los Angeles and Galveston, he was selected by General Goethals as an assistant in the construction of the Panama Canal, on which he worked from 1907 to 1911. Jadwin served in 1911-1916 in the Office of the Chief of Engineers focusing on bridge and road matters. Upon the United States’ entry into World War I in 1917, he recruited the 15th Engineers, a railway construction regiment, and led it to France. He directed American construction and forestry work there for a year and received the Distinguished Service Medal.

At the conclusion of the war, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Jadwin to investigate conditions in Poland in 1919. From 1922 to 1924, Jadwin headed the Corps’ Charleston District and Southeast Division. He then served two years as Assistant Chief of Engineers. As Chief of Engineers he sponsored the plan for Mississippi River flood control that was adopted by the United States Congress in May 1928. Jadwin retired as a lieutenant general on August 7, 1929.

He died in Gorgas Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone on March 2, 1931, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

David Jeremiah

David Elmer Jeremiah was a United States Navy admiral who served as Vice Chairman and also acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After his retirement from the Navy in February 1994, he worked in the field of investment banking. He served as partner and president of Technology Strategies & Alliances Corporation, a strategic advisory and investment banking firm engaged primarily in the aerospace, defense, telecommunications, and electronics industries.

During his military career Jeremiah earned a reputation as an authority on strategic planning, financial management and the policy implications of advanced technology.

Edward King

Edward Postell King Jr. was a Major General in the United States Army who gained prominence for leading the defense of the Bataan Peninsula in the Battle of Bataan against the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in World War II.

King applied for and received a commission in the Army in 1908. He served with distinction during World War I, earning the Distinguished Service Medal. On July 9, 1918, the President authorized awarding the Army DSM to Major King, for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services in a duty of great responsibility during World War I. As principal assistant to the chief of field artillery, from March 23, 1918 to November, 11 1918, Major King contributed largely to the successful solution of the difficult problems of expansion, organization, and training which then confronted the Field Artillery.

Between World War I and World War II, King held several important assignments including that of instructor in both the Army and Navy War Colleges. In 1940 he was sent to the Philippines where he was promptly promoted to Brigadier General; he served as General Douglas MacArthur’s second highest ranking ground officer, after General Jonathan Wainwright.

Eli Long

Eli Long was a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Long served in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. At the outset of the war, on May 24, 1861, Long was promoted to captain in the 1st U.S. Cavalry. On August 3, 1861, he was transferred to the 4th U.S. Cavalry Regiment. On December 31, 1862, Long was wounded in the left shoulder at the Battle of Stones River while commanding Company K of the regiment.

On February 23, 1863, Long was appointed colonel of the 4th Ohio Cavalry, a regiment which recently had surrendered to the Confederate raider, Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan. Long improved the morale of the regiment and led it in the Tullahoma Campaign. He commanded the regiment’s brigade, the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, Cavalry Corps of the Department of the Cumberland between March 1863 and August 20, 1864, including service at the Battle of Chickamauga. Long was wounded in the left side at the Battle of Farmington, Tennessee, October 7, 1863. He was distinguished in the Atlanta Campaign where he suffered a head wound at the Battle of Jonesboro, Georgia, August 20, 1864 and wounds in the right arm and right thigh at the Battle of Lovejoy’s Station, Georgia, August 21, 1864. Long received brevet grade appointments as major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel in the Regular Army of the United States for “gallant and meritorious services” at the Battle of Farmington and Battle of Fort Sanders (Knoxville) in Tennessee and Battle of Lovejoy’s Station in Georgia, respectively.

On August 18, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Long a brigadier general in the volunteer army to rank from the same date. The President submitted the nomination to the U.S. Senate on December 12, 1864 and the U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment on February 14, 1865. Between November 16, 1864 and April 2, 1865, Long commanded the 2nd Division of the Cavalry Corps of the Military Division of Mississippi under Major General James H. Wilson. On April 2, 1865, during Wilson’s Raid, Long was severely wounded in the head at the Battle of Selma, Alabama. During that battle he led the 2nd Division in a charge upon the entrenchments that resulted in the capture of that town.

During the Civil War, Long was wounded five times and also cited for gallantry five times. On January 13, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Long for appointment to the brevet grade of major general of volunteers, to rank from March 13, 1865, and the U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment on March 12, 1866.

On April 10, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Long for appointment to the brevet grade of brigadier general in the Regular Army of the United States, to rank from March 13, 1865, for gallantry at the Battle of Selma, and the U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment on May 4, 1866. On July 17, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Long for appointment to the brevet grade of major general in the Regular Army, to rank from March 13, 1865, for his services during the war, and the U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment on July 23, 1866.

William Mann

William Mann served the United States Navy as a rear admiral. He was responsible for adopting many different sets of procedures for treatment of wounded soldiers as well as naval evacuation policies.

Buck Marsh

Buck was born to Malcolm L. Marsh Sr. and Louise Bell Marsh in Florence, Alabama, on May 16, 1923. Malcolm Sr. was a concrete engineer building dams for TVA within the Tennessee Valley region. Buck and his two younger brothers grew up playing baseball and hunting the woods of the Tennessee Valley as their family moved from one project to the next.

While attending Tennessee Tech University, Buck was drafted into the US Army in 1943 and served as an infantry rifleman in the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment, 3rd Armored Division, in World War 2. Buck entered combat with this “Spearhead” unit in Belgium in December 1944, just as they engaged the German Wehrmacht’s massive counterattack, known as the Battle of the Bulge. The battle raged without ceasing from December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945.

US forces suffered 19,000 KIA and 70,300 wounded or MIA. After repelling the Germans, the 3rd Armored Division “Spearhead” advanced through Cologne, Germany, and liberated the Nordhausen Concentration Camp. After serving eight months in the Occupation Forces, Buck sailed for home on the troop transport USS Wakefield in January 1946. He was discharged as a First Sergeant at Ft. McPherson, Georgia; his Eisenhower jacket was adorned with three combat infantry badges and a Purple Heart. Buck lived the rest of his life in honor and memory of the eighty-eight Rifle Company A men killed in action.

After returning home, Buck met Wanda Mitchell on the tennis courts in Florence; they both attended Auburn and married in 1949. They began raising a family in Florence until they moved to Auburn in 1970, where he joined BKW Construction as a project superintendent.

Buck served on the advisory committee at St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church for many years and oversaw an extensive renovation to the church’s gothic revival structure in 1988, the construction of a garden close in 2012, and a columbarium in 2015. Throughout his life, he remained a trusted adviser to his friends on the vestry.

Buck served his college fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, as a house corporation board member for over forty years and sixteen years as president. He made lifelong friendships with generations of Phis, from the men of his class of 1949 to young men who had only recently graduated.

Buck self-published his military service memoirs, Reflections of a WWII Infantryman, in 2011 and is prominently featured in the non-fiction book Spearhead, a 2019 New York Times best-selling account by Adam Makos of a 3rd Armored Division tank commander and the battle for Cologne.

In 2017, Buck was honored as the Gameday Hero at the Auburn vs. Georgia football game.

In 2019, Buck attended the 75th Anniversary Commemoration of the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne, Belgium. He dined with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and King Phillipe of Belgium and made a short speech honoring the service and sacrifice of US forces. A snippet of his speech was broadcast on most national news channels that very evening.

 

John McCain Sr.

John Sidney “Slew” McCain Sr. was a U.S. Navy admiral. He held several command assignments during the Pacific campaign of World War II.

McCain was a pioneer of aircraft carrier operations who in 1942 commanded all land-based air operations in support of the Guadalcanal campaign, and who ultimately in 1944-1945 aggressively led the Fast Carrier Task Force, in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II. His operations off the Philippines and Okinawa, and air strikes against Formosa and the Japanese home islands, caused tremendous destruction of Japanese naval and air forces in the closing period of the war. He died four days after the formal Japanese surrender ceremony.

He was the father of Admiral John S. McCain, Jr.; they became the first father-son pair ever to achieve four star admiral rank in the U.S. Navy. He was the grandfather of U.S. Senator from Arizona and 2008 Republican presidential nominee Navy Captain John S. McCain III and the great-grandfather of John S. McCain IV. All four generations graduated from the United States Naval Academy.

John McKone

John Mckone was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Air Force on July 31, 1954.

During the summer of 1960, John was the navigator on an RB47 reconnaissance aircraft based out of Forbes Field in Topeka, Kansas. He and his fellow air crew were deployed to England, and on one fateful mission his aircraft was shot down by Soviet fighters on July 1, 1960. Earlier that year, Frances Gary Powers had been shot down while flying a U2 cold war reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union, so tensions were high between the United States and the Soviets.

As a Prisoner of War, he and the only other survivor from his aircraft, then Captain Freeman B. Olmstead, spent almost seven months in the infamous Lubyanka prison. Both were released from captivity on January 24, 1961.

In 1962, their ordeal was captured in an account by William Lindsay White, entitled, The Little Toy Dog: The story of the two RB-47 flyers, Captain John R. McKone and Captain Freeman B. Olmstead. He found himself on the cover of Time Magazine, and met with President John F. Kennedy. Upon their return, he and Olmstead were greeted as American heroes.

John was awarded the Silver Star for actions during the Cold War between July 1, 1960-January 24, 1961. Because of the sensitivity of his mission, he did not receive the award until later on in his career.

In addition to the Silver Star, John was the recipient of the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the POW medal.

General Thomas Moorman, Jr.

General Thomas S. Moorman Jr. was vice chief of staff, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington, D.C.

General Moorman was born in Washington, D.C. He was commissioned through the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program as a distinguished military graduate in 1962. The general has served in a variety of intelligence and reconnaissance related positions within the United States and worldwide. While stationed at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., in 1982, he became deeply involved in the planning and organizing for the establishment of Air Force Space Command. During his Pentagon tour in 1987, he also provided program management direction for development and procurement of Air Force surveillance, communications, navigation and weather satellites, space launch vehicles, anti-satellite weapons and ground-based and airborne strategic radars, communications and command centers. He additionally represented the Air Force in the Strategic Defense Initiative program and was authorized to accept SDI program execution responsibilities on behalf of the Air Force. As commander and vice commander of Air Force Space Command, General Moorman was responsible for operating military space systems, ground-based radars and missile warning satellites, the nation’s space launch centers at Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., the worldwide network of space surveillance radars, as well as maintaining the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) force.

Scott O’Grady

Captain O’Grady is a former United States Air Force fighter pilot. On June 2, 1995, he was shot down over Bosnia by an SA-6 mobile SAM launcher and forced to eject from his F-16C into hostile territory. After nearly a week of evading the Serbs he was eventually rescued by Marines. Previously he took part in the Banja Luka incident where he fired upon six enemy aircraft.

The 2001 film Behind Enemy Lines is loosely based upon his experiences