This Military Service Page was created/owned by
MAJ Mark E Cooper
to remember
Cooper, Paul Ray, MSgt USAF(Ret).
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Contact Info
Home Town Russellville
Last Address Little Rock, AR
Date of Passing Nov 12, 1971
Location of Interment Little Rock National Cemetery (VA) - Little Rock, Arkansas
All my father wanted to do was play the trumpet and lead the band. He enlisted in 1934 because he could no longer afford college and was sent to the 4th Infantry Regiment Band at Fort George Wright in Spokane Washington. His enlistment ended in 1938 and he returned home to Arkansas. His National Guard unit was called to active service in 1939 and sent to Alaska. He left Alaska in 1943 and was sent to the 7th Armored Division Band. When the 7th Armored Division was sent into France in 1944, the band was made into a weapons platoon and my father was made the Platoon Sergeant. He made the statement to me once that, "The US Army did not train me to be an infantryman.... The German 1st SS Panzer Army taught me the hard way." Sadly enough, he was wounded badly enough in the Battle of the Bulge that he could never play the trumpet again (severe diaphragm wound). After serving in the Austrian Command from 1946 to 1949, my Dad got out and became a History teacher and Assistant Principal at North Little Rock High School. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1951 as a historian to avoid Infantry service in Korea. He told my mother that he dreamed that he was killed in Korea, which led to his enlistment. He was soon stationed at Sonderstrom, Greenland where was a historian for the 8th Air Force. He held the first radio quiz program north of the Arctic Circle for the servicemen stationed there, which I have tapes of. He retired on Dec 31, 1962, shortly before my 6th Birthday. He had 24 years of active service, 2 years in the ARNG and 2 years in the USAR.
7th Armored Division, US Army
CITED IN THE ORDER OF THE DAY of the Belgian Army, in Decree No. 7253, 13 July 1950, by Charles, Prince of Belgium, Regent of the Kingdom, with the following citation:
During the crucial period of the German offensive of the Ardennes, in 1944, the American 7th Armored Division, attacked by enemy forces estimated at eight divisions, among them 3 SS Panzer and 2 Panzer Divisions, held the important center of Saint Vith, preventing any advance and any exploitation on this main line, thus dooming the German offensive to frustration and, by its sacrifice, permitting the launching of the Allied counteroffensive.
CITED IN THE ORDER OF THE DAY of the Belgian Army, in Decree No. 7253, 13 July 1950, by Charles, Prince of Belgium, Regent of the Kingdom, with the following citation:
Passing over to the attack on 20 January in the Saint Vith sector where it had fought previously, the 7th Armored Division pushed the enemy out of the position that it had been organizing for two weeks, and pushed it without respite seven kilometers beyond the Belgian frontier, inflicting heavy losses on this enemy. During these nine days it captured more than one thousand prisoners.
BELGIAN FOURRAGERE (1940), awarded by Decree No. 7253, 13 July 1950, by Charles, Prince of Belgium, Regent of the Kingdom.
Mary Diemer Cooper
widow of Paul R. Cooper, passed away on 24 May 2010 in Edmond, OK. She was a 1944 graduate of Little Rock High School, attended Little Rock Junior College, and was a 1946 Graduate of Arkansas State Teacher's College. She also did graduate study at the University of Arkansas and the University of Alabama.
Mrs. Cooper was a past President of the Arkansas Authors and Composers Society and was a former member of the Poet's Round-table. She had held positions as a Teacher and Principal in Europe and in several states as she travelled with her husband during his military service. Her first position after college was Principal of Salzburg American High School (Austria) in 1946. She was 19 years old. She was also the Principal and Superintendent of the Arkansas Girl's Training School in Alexander.
Mrs. Cooper began public speaking at the age of 4. Coincidently, she was buried 100 feet from the pavilion in the Little Rock National Cemetery where she read a selection of poetry during the 1937 Memorial Day services. She was 10 years old at the time. At the age of 14, she joined the Civil Air Patrol during WWII.
A member of First Christian Church in Little Rock, she was honored to serve as the teacher of the 78 year-old Whatsoever Class. Mrs. Cooper was a part-time author having articles published in several Christian publications and was the author of "Open House", a book of poetry.
She is survived by her son, MAJ (Ret) Mark Cooper of Fayetteville NC and his wife Joy, daughter Paula Cooper Miller of Edmond, OK and husband Ken Miller,6 grand-children, (soon to be) 7 great grand-children, 4 nieces, and 1 nephew.
A funeral service will be held on 28 May 2010 at 12:30 at Griffin Leggett Healey & Roth Funeral Home in Little Rock. A burial service will follow at the Little Rock National Cemetery at 2 PM. Visitation will be Thursday evening from 6:00 to 8:00 at the funeral home.
World War II
From Month/Year
December / 1941
To Month/Year
December / 1946
Description Overview of World War II
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life.
The War at Home & Abroad
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945.
The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945 after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequences:
1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a rationing system.
2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.
To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project. On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb.
It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded. Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace.
President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power.
The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of people in the United States and around the world.
