[colorado tanker]

Ft. Sill is still home of the Field Artillery School. We were given a little training on how to call in fire missions and adjust fires, but we always had an FA officer attached and that was his primary mission. I don't know if other armies were doing that during WWII, but it struck me as a very effective way of promoting accurate fires.

Ft. Sill began as a Cavalry post during the Indian Wars and was central in the campaigns against the Comanches. After their defeat, Chief Quanah Parker of the Comanches built his home near Sill and became a well to do rancher. His mother was Cynthia Ann Parker, who was abducted at age nine by the Comanches in Eastern Texas in a notorious raid. That, in turn, was the inspiration for the plot of The Searchers. In real life, Cynthia Ann was recaptured as an adult, but always longed for the Comanche life, which was really the only life she remembered.

[henkster]

I read about Quanah Parker in “Empire of the Summer Moon.” Good book.