That changed when he volunteered for a "History Without Borders" project at the University of North Texas. McQuade, a senior at Carroll Senior High School in Southlake, and five other Carroll students committed 350 community service hours to studying the 112th Cavalry of the Texas National Guard during World War II and preparing a book-length manuscript on the regiment, called "We Ain't No Heroes: The 112th Cavalry in World War II."

No book has told the historical facts about the 112th, which was one of the last horse-mounted units in the U.S. to be sent overseas.

The students were directed by Glenn Johnston, administrative assistant for UNT's Oral History Program, which includes interviews from veterans of the 112th.

After nine months of studying the regiment, the students and Johnston contacted Texas Rep. Vicki Truitt of Southlake to initiate a bill honoring the veterans. Approved by Gov. Rick Perry last summer, "112th Cavalry Day" will be observed Jan. 17 -- the 60th anniversary of the return of the regiment's colors to Texas.

McQuade and the other students have already met the veterans twice at 112th Cavalry reunions in 2004 and 2005.

"We had read their interviews and researched them, but we didn't really understand what they had been through in the war until we met them," McQuade said. "It was a great experience seeing the comradeship they still had. They acted as if they had left each other and the regiment just last week, instead of years ago. Meeting people who were part of history makes you have a real interest in the topic you're learning about."

Johnston said he learned about the 112th while seeking information on Texas World War II veterans to interview for the Oral History Collection. He first sought information on the 124th Cavalry of the Texas National Guard, which fought in Burma from December 1944 to the end of the war.

Finding little information about the 124th, Johnston turned to its sister regiment, the 112th, which had a more organized veterans' organization than the 124th. He conducted his first interview with a 112th veteran in February 2003, and has conducted interviews with 15 more veterans since that time.

"The interviews are a very human insight to a very difficult time," Johnston said.

Formed in North Texas after World War I, the 112th was stationed in Dallas and was often used to enforce martial law in Texas during the 1920s and ‘30s. On Nov. 18, 1940, the regiment was mobilized for active duty.

Known as the "Little Giant of the Pacific," the 112th left the United States in the summer of 1942. It was sent to New Caledonia to protect against a possible Japanese invasion. The regiment invaded New Britain in December 1943, then went on to fight in New Guinea and later in the Philippines on Leyte and Luzon. On Sept. 2, 1945, members of the 112th were on the USS Lavaca in Tokyo Bay as the Japanese surrender was formally signed.

The most famous member of the 112th, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer, fictionalized the 112th's experiences in his novel "The Naked and the Dead." Mailer is included in the Oral History Program's interviews with 112th veterans.

Johnston said he decided to have high school students research the activities of the 112th as part of his dissertation that he is writing for his doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction from UNT's College of Education.

"My objective was to put together an extracurricular project examining a part of history that would be beyond the students' knowledge, and find out to what extent the teens could learn history, given an intense project," he said. "I wanted them to not just learn facts, but to gain an understanding of what historians do and empathy for events that occurred before they were born."

Johnston's son, Craig, recruited five classmates to join him in the project. In addition to reading the Oral History Program interviews with the 112th veterans, the students studied materials from archives at the Texas Military Forces Museum in Austin, Texas A&M University, the National Archives and the Naval Historical Center.

They visited the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, attended living history reenactments and watched movies so they could understand the terms for weapons and other war terms that the veterans described in their interviews. The students compared other sources of information on the 112th -- including memoirs of senior officers -- to the Oral History Program interviews to verify the veterans' stories. They worked with more than 1,600 pages of interviews and more than 3,500 pages of other documents.

"It's not uncommon for veterans' stories to contradict those of senior officers," Johnston said. "None of the students had experience in school of reading multiple contradictory documents and being asked for a way to resolve the issues."

McQuade said the research to find correct facts about the 112th "was the hardest thing we did."

"We're used to looking up everything on the Internet, but the Internet often gives you false facts," he said.

The students' research, Johnston said, proved "that in many instances the veterans were right and the officers' memoirs were incorrect" about certain events.

From their research, the students and Johnston wrote 532 pages about the 112th, with the students choosing topics for their chapters. The chapters included excerpts from the veterans' interviews.

Liz Schmiedel wrote about wounds and diseases faced by the 112th, as well as the equipment each man carried and Leyte and Luzon. She became particularly interested in combat fatigue.

"It affected a large number of troopers, but, at the time, little research had been done on the illness. Unfortunately, it was often not regarded as a disease, but as insanity," she said.

Schmiedel, who is ranked fourth in her graduating class at Carroll, said she decided to volunteer for the project because it "seemed like a great opportunity to learn more about such a big part of this country's history."

"I read and listened to the interviews with the veterans, and as I learned more and more, I was blown away. These guys were amazing. Our responsibility was to do them proper justice. It struck me that this was a big deal when I put on cotton gloves to sift through 60-year-old newspapers and documents," she said.

She said she "got chills" when she met the veterans at the 112th Cavalry reunions.

"They all became legends over the last year, so it was an honor to finally meet them. I didn't know what to say. ‘Thank you' just didn't seem to cut it," Schmiedel said. "I was taken aback when they approached us to express their gratitude for our world. They were so appreciative that we cared enough to devote so much time and effort to ensure that they would not be forgotten."

Johnston said he hopes the students' work about the 112th can be published. They've already presented a commemorative copy of the monograph to the Texas Adjutant General at the Texas Military Forces Museum, who gave the students commendation letters.

"A very important part of the project was identifying actions by individuals that should be noted, then try to get in touch with their families about them. We found copies of orders for Bronze Stars and Silver Stars," Johnston said. "We wanted to return to the families the history that is theirs, as well as give the students an introduction to what historians do and build personal connections to the past. The students now read history through different eyes."

UNT News Service Phone Number: (940) 565-2108
Contact: Nancy Kolsti (940) 565-3509
Email: nkolsti@unt.edu

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