Pvt. Robert McMahan (July 11, 1921 – August 29, 1944)
142nd Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division
by Dennis Young and Elizabeth Klements
Early Life
Robert McMahan was born on July 11, 1921, in St. Clair County, AL.1 His parents, Albert and Dixie Bellah (née Day) McMahan, were born in Tennessee and moved between Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia between 1910 and 1920, before settling down on a farm in St. Clair.2 Robert was one of eight children: James (1912), Cleo (1915), Dora May (1917), L.C. (1918), Georgia Lee (1923), Woodrow (1924), and Bobbie Lou (1927).3 In St. Clair, the McMahans lived next door to Dixie’s parents, Harvey and Mary Day, and her uncle, Ules Day. The two generations lived side-by-side, possibly working on the same farm. Like many in their community, the McMahans were general farmers, raising a wide variety of crops and livestock.4
Between 1930 and 1935, both generations moved to Harney, a rural area in Hillsborough County, FL.5 They became truck farmers, rather than subsistence farmers, meaning they grew specialty crops, such as watermelon, cabbages, tomatoes, or potatoes, and shipped them north, where seasonal changes made this produce unavailable.6 The two families lived in the same area but were no longer next door to each other. Robert went to live with his grandparents and great uncle, likely because they needed an extra hand on their farm. In 1935, Harvey and Mary Day were in their seventies and Ules Day in his late sixties. Robert, a teenager, might have been the perfect age to help them. He left school after third grade, but as part of a farming family, he would have had knowledge and some understanding of what was expected of him as a farm hand.7
In 1938, Robert’s mother Dixie passed away. She was only forty-six.8 By 1942, Robert left the agriculture industry and found employment at the Cypress Sash and Door Factory in Tampa, FL.9 He married Mildred Lee Chesser on June 1, 1942.10 The daughter of Daniel Ira and Emma Elizabeth Chesser, Mildred grew up in Tampa, where her father worked as a crane operator at the Tampa shipyards. At the time of her marriage, she was fifteen, and Robert was twenty-one.11
Military Service
Less than six months after his wedding, Robert was drafted and reported to Camp Blanding, FL, for training on November 13, 1942.12 There, he became a private in Company G, 142nd Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division.13 Robert trained for about a year before his division shipped out and landed in North Africa on April 13, 1943. From April to September, the 36th Division prepared for the Allied invasion of Italy, or Operation Avalanche, by training at the cities of Anzew, Algeria, and Rabat, Morocco.14 Allied troops successfully took the island of Sicily in July 1943, which triggered the downfall of Italy’s fascist leader, Mussolini. The new Italian government surrendered to the Allied forces on September 8, 1943, but the German leaders ordered their troops who were already posted in Italy to continue the fight. The next day, Allied forces, including Robert’s division, landed at the Gulf of Salerno in southern Italy. There, they repulsed heavy counterattacks by the German Army with the support of naval ships and paratroopers, and pushed inland, securing territory across the peninsula.15
During Operation Avalanche, the 36th Division suffered heavy losses and the men who remained became part of reserves for the 5th Army. They got time to rest, resupply and retrain from March to May 1944.16 While most of the division remained in Italy during this rest period, its commanders sent a select group of soldiers, including Robert, to England for further training. Robert was part of a machine gun crew, as described in this article in The Tampa Times. He remained in England from March to August 1944.17 Meanwhile, while Robert was in England, the 36th Division redeployed in late May to help the Allied forces break through strong German resistance at the beaches of Anzio and take the city of Rome on June 5, 1944. While the capture of the capital was a significant feat for the Allied troops, the battle for Italy was not over, as the German troops retreated to a fortified line in northern Italy in order to continue the fight. Allied attention, however, shifted to a new front, that of occupied France.18
After a short rest period, the US Army sent the 36th Division to the southern French coast to participate in Operation Dragoon. The Allied forces planned to liberate occupied France from two fronts: the northern and southern coast. On June 6, 1944, they launched the D-day landings at the beaches of Normandy in northern France, and a month later they launched a second landing along the southern coast, called Operation Dragoon. On August 15, 1944, Robert and the 36th Division landed at a beach half-way between St. Tropez and Cannes and took the town of Saint Raphael before pushing inland with the rest of the Allied troops.19
In response to the invasion, the Germans began to withdraw their troops in southern France to the Vosges mountains near the Franco-German border. The Allied command wanted to block their retreat and sent the 36th Division northward as quickly as possible to the city of Montelimar, a key city on the Germans’ escape route up Highway 7N. The battle at Montelimar raged from August 23 to the 30th, as the US forces struggled to stop an entire army convoy. On August 29, as the fighting died down, the military command sent Robert’s 142nd Regiment to seize Livron, a small town north of Montelimar that sat on Highway 7N.20 During this engagement, enemy fire struck Robert in the leg, and he died of his wounds.21
Legacy
Pvt. Robert McMahan died in battle at the age of twenty-three, for which he received a Purple Heart. He is buried in the Rhone American Cemetery in France.22 He left behind his extended family and his wife, Mildred. The couple had no children together. Widowed at seventeen, Mildred remarried several times throughout her life and passed away in 2009. She is buried at the Fort McCoy Cemetery in Marion County, FL.23
In 1995, the local Federation of the French Forces of the Interior, dedicated to preserving the memory of the French Resistance, created a monument in Mirmande, France, between the cities of Montelimar and Livron. The Miramande monument honors the local Resistance fighters who died for France and the 221 American soldiers, including Robert, who died in combat in the area between August 20 and 30, 1944.24 Like Robert, most of these American soldiers died blocking the German retreat at Montelimar. Although some German battalions got through the blockade, by the end of the battle the US forces almost completely destroyed the German Nineteenth Army, which not only contributed to the liberation of southern France, but also severely weakened the German forces for the battles to come.25
1 “U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 16, 2021), entry for Robert MacMahan. His draft card and enlistment registration state his birthday as 1921, but he is recorded as being half a year old on the 1920 census. It is possible that Robert lied about his age to the military, or that the family simply lost track of his birthyear.
2 “1920 U.S. Census,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 16, 2021), entry for Robert MacMahan, St. Clair, Alabama. For Dixie’s maiden name, see “Obituary: Mrs. Dixie McMahan,” The Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Florida), January 24, 1938, page 2, Newspapers.com.
3 “1930 U.S. Census,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 17, 2021), entry for Robert McMahan, St. Clair, Alabama; “Obituary: Mrs. Dixie McMahan.”
4 “1920 U.S Census;” “1930 U.S. Census.”
5 “1935 Florida State Census,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 17, 2021), entry for Harvey Day and entry for Albert McMahan, Hillsborough county, Florida.
6 “1940 U.S. Census,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 17, 2021), entry for James McMahan, Harney, Hillsborough County, Florida; James L. McCorkle, Jr., “Agricultural Experiment Stations and Southern Truck Farming,” Agricultural History 62, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 234 – 243, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3743296.
7 “1935 U.S. Census;” “1940 U.S. Census.”
8 “Obituary: Mrs. Dixie McMahan.”
9 “With Our Boys On All Fronts,” The Tampa Times (Tampa, Florida), August 3, 1944, page 13, Newspapers.com.
10 “Florida, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1823-1982,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 17, 2021), entry for Mildred Lee Chesser and Robert McMahan.
11 “1930 U.S. Census,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 17, 2021), entry for Mildred Chesser, Hillsborough County, Florida; “1940 U.S. Census,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 17, 2021), entry for Mildred Chesser, Hillsborough County, Florida.
12 “U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 17, 2021), entry for Robert McMahan, serial number 34530352.
13 “U.S, Headstone Inscription and Internment Records,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 18, 2021), entry for Robert Mc Mahan; “36th Infantry Division Roster,” Texas Military Forces Museum, Part 2, p. 75, accessed June 22, 2021, https://secureservercdn.net/50.62.194.59/385.ede.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/36thID-roster-part-2.pdf.
14 “36th Infantry Division – Texas,” US Army Divisions, accessed June 18, 2021, https://www.armydivs.com/36th-infantry-division.
15 “Operation Avalanche, the Battle of Salerno, 9-18 September 1943,” History of War, accessed June 18, 2021, http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/operation_avalanche_salerno.html; “36th Infantry Division – Texas.”
16 Ibid.
17 “With Our Boys On All Fronts.”
18 “36th Infantry Division – Texas;” “Rome – Arno 1944,” The US Army Campaigns of World War II, accessed June 23, 2021, https://history.army.mil/brochures/romar/72-20.htm.
19 “35th Division – Texas;” Bruce L. Brager, “The 36th Infantry Division: From the Alamo to Operation Anvil,” Warfare History Network, accessed June 22, 2021, https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2015/11/17/the-36th-infantry-division-from-the-alamo-to-operation-anvil/.
20 “36th Division in World War II: Montelimar,” Texas Military Forces Museum, accessed June 22, 2021, http://www.texasmilitaryforcesmuseum.org/36division/archives/montelim/montelim.htm.
21 “U.S., WWII Hospital Admission Card Files, 1942-1954,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed June 22, 2021), entry for Robert McMahan, serial number 34530352.
22 “U.S. Headstone Inscription and Internment Records.”
23 “Mildred Lee Chesser Edwards,” Find a Grave, accessed June 23, 2021, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/45854198/mildred-lee-edwards. Her other spouses are Harding Perkins Edwards, Mark Newsome Jr., Bill Newton, Bill Chesser, Al Jordan, and David Bryant.
24 “Mémorial de Mirmande Architecture,” Musée de la Résistance en ligne, accessed June 23, 2021, http://museedelaresistanceenligne.org/media379-MA; “Mirmande FFI Memorial,” American War Memorials Overseas, Inc., accessed June 23, 2021, https://www.uswarmemorials.org/html/site_details.php?SiteID=391.
25 “36th Division in World War II: Montelimar.”