LAWTON – Southwest Oklahoma has a large population of military personnel who served in the Vietnam War and Gulf War, up to about three times greater than any other conflict.
Data from the U.S.
Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey shows that Comanche County military personnel who served in the Gulf War is 2.24 times greater than other conflicts and exceeds the national average.
Stephens, Grady, Caddo and Kiowa counties military personnel in the Vietnam War exceeded the national average.
Kiowa County, according to the ACS, has a large population of military personnel who served in Vietnam that is 3.08 times greater than any other conflict. It is also home to the General Tommy Franks Leadership Institute and Museum in Hobart.
Gen. Franks was born in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, and became Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Central Command from July 2000 through July 2003. He made history, according to his memoir book “American Soldier” written with Malcolm McConnell, by leading American and Coalition forces into Afghanistan and Iraq, which were the decisive battles that launched the war on terrorism.
After attending the University of Texas but not graduating, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and entered service as a private in 1965. He went on to graduate from Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill in February 1967. Also in 1967, Franks served with the 5-60th Infantry in South Vietnam and was awarded a Purple Heart. He retired from the military in 2003.
Franks wrote in the prologue of his book that as he was given the order by President George W. Bush to begin the onset of Op eration Iraqi Freedom, “My thoughts cast back to the small towns of the American Southwest where I’d grown up. It was this environment, my family, my friends, and my faith that had formed my values, my character.
It was these elements that had made me who I was, years before I ever put on the uniform of a soldier.”