Canine, Ralph Julian, born on 09-11-1895 in Flora, Indiana,

one of two children of the local superintendent of schools. When he left home, he was intent on being a doctor, and had completed pre-med studies at Northwestern University when he entered the United States Army during World War I. Ralph entered World War I as an Army second lieutenant. He knew immediately that the Army would be his life and never had a second thought about a medical career. He served in various combat posts in France and elected to stay in the Army after the armistice was signed in 1918. When World War II broke out, Canine became the Chief of Staff for the XII Corps, which served in
George Smith Patton‘s

Third Army, nickname “Patton’s Own”

during its historic race across France in 1944. Third Army After Action reports state that the Third Army captured 765.483 prisoners of war, with an additional 515.205 of the enemy already held in corps and divisional level POW cages processed between 9 May and 13-05-1945, for a total of 1.280.688 POWs, and that, additionally, Third Army forces killed 144.500 enemy soldiers and wounded 386.200, for a total of 1.811.388 in enemy losses. Fuller’s review of Third Army records differs only in the number of enemy killed and wounded, stating that between 01-08-1944 and 09-05-1945, 47.500 of the enemy were killed, 115.700 wounded, and 1.280.688 captured. Fuller’s combined total of enemy losses is 1.443.888 enemy killed, wounded, or captured by the Third Army. The Third Army suffered 16.596 killed, 96.241 wounded, and 26.809 missing in action for a total of 139.646 casualties. Between June 1941 and December 1944, Germany lost 202.000 killed fighting the Americans and British in North Africa, Italy and north-west Europe together, against 2.4 million battlefield dead on the Eastern Front. Patton’s Army liberated surrounded Bastogne after the Battle of the Bulge, defended by the 101
st Airborne Para’s, nickname “The Screaming Eagles”

under
Anthony McAuliffe
Dick Winters

. The Battle of the Bulge involved about 610.000 American men, of whom some 89.000 were casualties, including 19.000 killed. It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in World War II. During World War II, most U.S. black soldiers still served only as truck drivers and as stevedores, except for some separate tank, tank destroyer, and artillery battalions as well as in Army Air Force

fighter units. In the midst of the Battle of the Bulge, General
Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower 
was severely short of replacement troops for existing military units which were totally white in composition. Consequently, he made the decision to allow African American soldiers to pick up a weapon and join the white military units to fight in combat for the first time. More than 2.000 black soldiers had volunteered to go to the front. This was an important step toward a desegregated United States military. A total of 708 African Americans were killed in combat during World War II. For their efforts during World War II, the 101
st Airborne Division “The Screaming Eagles”

was awarded four campaign streamers and two Presidential Unit Citations. The division suffered 1.766 killed in action; 6.388 wounded in action; and 324 died of wounds during World War II. After the war Canine was rewarded with command of the First Infantry Division, nickname “The Big Red One”

, one of the most prestigious of Army jobs. Casualties during the European campaign, 4.411 killed in action, 7.201 wounded in action, 1.056 missing or died of wounds. By the end of the war, the division had suffered 22.668 casualties and boasted five Medal of Honor recipients. Lieutenant General Ralph Julian Canine, NSA’s first director, is known today as the Great Unifier – the man who, almost single-handedly, forced crypto logic unification on the Services. His term at NSA, from 1952 to 1956, became the crucible for crypto logic centralization. He departed the Army and NSA a figure of mythic stature. Had Canine not been the director, NSA might not have survived the end of the decade.
Death and burial ground of Canine, Ralph Julian.

After an illness of varying severity of several weeks, during which time he was able on occasions to be about the city, Ralph Julian Canine died suddenly at the age of 74, on 08-03-1969 at 7:43 o’clock, at 118 West Seventy-sixth Street. The immediate cause of death was an effusion of blood and foreign matter into the lungs, causing suffocation. Canine is buried with his wife Ruth, born Wiscomb, who died very old age 90 on 08-01-1988, on Arlington National Cemetery, Section 12.
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