This Deceased Army Profile is not currently maintained by any Member.
If you would like to take responsibility for researching and maintaining this Deceased profile please click
HERE
Contact Info
Home Town Xenia, Ohio
Last Address Highland, California
Date of Passing Feb 23, 2015
Wall/Plot Coordinates TBD
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Col. Paul L. Green, one of the Tuskegee Airmen â?? the legendary black pilots who escorted U.S. aircraft during World War II â?? has died in a Southern California senior care home. He was 91.
Green died Monday morning at Brightwater Senior Living with Angel Green, his wife of 68 years, at his side, Jennifer Lee, the home's executive director, told the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
Â
The Lees had lived in Highland, a San Bernardino community east of Los Angeles, since 1976. But they moved into Brightwater just over a week ago.
Â
"He (was) a very gentle, loving person, very generous," Lee said.
Green grew up an orphan in Xenia, Ohio. He spent part of his youth in the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Orphans Home. While flying kites there, he would often see planes going overhead from a nearby air base. "I thought it would be a great thing if I could be one of those guys flying a plane," he told the Press-Enterprise in 1999.
Green got his chance after he was drafted into the Army and sent to Tuskegee, Alabama, for pilot training. Green flew 25 combat missions with the 99th Fighter Squadron in Italy, escorting bombers.
The Tuskegee Airmen were considered an experiment at a time when African Americans faced discrimination both within and without the military. They took part in about 1,500 combat missions and earned 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses, according to a January article on the website of the Air Force Historical Research Agency.
"Once you achieve something, you make it easier for everyone," Green said in 2009. "We proved we were not a bunch of dummies; that we could fly airplanes and we were capable of doing whatever everyone else does. Just the color of our skin was different."
After the war, Green joined the Air Force, later served in Vietnam and near the end of a 30-year military career became commander of Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino.
Last week, a city committee voted to name a street in a planned new subdivision "Paul Green Drive," Councilman Sam Racadio told the Press-Enterprise.
Description The European-Mediterranean-Middle East Theater was a major theater of operations during the Second World War (between December 7, 1941, and March 2, 1946). The vast size of Europe, Mediterranean and Middle East theatre saw interconnected naval, land, and air campaigns fought for control of the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. The fighting in this theatre lasted from 10 June 1940, when Italy entered the war on the side of Germany, until 2 May 1945 when all Axis forces in Italy surrendered. However, fighting would continue in Greece – where British troops had been dispatched to aid the Greek government – during the early stages of the Greek Civil War.
The British referred to this theatre as the Mediterranean and Middle East Theatre (so called due to the location of the fighting and the name of the headquarters that controlled the initial fighting: Middle East Command) while the Americans called the theatre of operations the Mediterranean Theatre of War. The German official history of the fighting is dubbed 'The Mediterranean, South-East Europe, and North Africa 1939–1942'. Regardless of the size of the theatre, the various campaigns were not seen as neatly separated areas of operations but part of one vast theatre of war.
Fascist Italy aimed to carve out a new Roman Empire, while British forces aimed initially to retain the status quo. Italy launched various attacks around the Mediterranean, which were largely unsuccessful. With the introduction of German forces, Yugoslavia and Greece were overrun. Allied and Axis forces engaged in back and forth fighting across North Africa, with Axis interference in the Middle East causing fighting to spread there. With confidence high from early gains, German forces planned elaborate attacks to be launched to capture the Middle East and then to possibly attack the southern border of the Soviet Union. However, following three years of fighting, Axis forces were defeated in North Africa and their interference in the Middle East was halted. Allied forces then commenced an invasion of Southern Europe, resulting in the Italians switching sides and deposing Mussolini. A prolonged battle for Italy took place, and as the strategic situation changed in southeast Europe, British troops returned to Greece.
The theatre of war, the longest during the Second World War, resulted in the destruction of the Italian Empire and altered the strategic position of Germany resulting in numerous German divisions being deployed to Africa and Italy and total losses (including those captured upon final surrender) being over half a million. Italian losses, in the theatre, amount to around to 177,000 men with a further several hundred thousand captured during the process of the various campaigns. British losses amount to over 300,000 men killed, wounded, or captured, and total American losses in the region amounted to 130,000.
