Company F, 2nd Battalion, 142nd Infantry, 36th Division, Texas National Guard

The Thirty-sixth Division entered federal service on November 25, 1940, trained at Camp Bowie in Brown County and took part in the Louisiana maneuvers of September 1941. After Salerno it fought at San Pietro in December 1943, where John Huston filmed combat for his documentary, and at the Rapido River crossing of January 20-22, 1944, where the T-Patchers lost 143 killed, 663 wounded and 875 missing. In August 1944 the division landed in southern France, and it ended the war on occupation duty in Germany, seventh in casualties among all American divisions.

What the plaque says

Company F, 2nd Battalion, 142nd Infantry, 36th Division, Texas National Guard The 36th Division of the U.S. Army served with distinction in World War II. When mobilized, Company F of the Division's 142nd Infantry consisted primarily of Randall County soldiers, including ten sets of brothers, as well as a father and son. The unit deployed for Italy in 1943 and was among those landing at Salerno. The men actively served in the European theater of operation, spending 400 days in combat, participating in two assault landings and receiving seven campaign streamers. During the war, eight local men lost their lives and two received the Distinguished Service Cross. From 1951 to 1968, when it disbanded, the company trained at a National Guard Armory at this site. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 0.7 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.
• Palo Duro Canyon State Park — 12 mi
  The upper end of the canyon the state bought in 1933, where CCC crews built the road to the floor and the army burned the winter camps of the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne in 1874.
• TEXAS Outdoor Musical — 12 mi
  A summer pageant of Panhandle settler life staged since 1966 in the Pioneer Amphitheater, built into a basin of Palo Duro Canyon below a 600-foot cliff.
• Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  A 1938 Depression-era lake on Tierra Blanca Creek that has gone dry, now 7,664 acres of shortgrass, cottonwood canyon and a prairie dog town on the High Plains south of Umbarger.

More markers nearby

• Site of an Early Barbed Wire Fence in the Panhandle — steps away
• Lucille Nance Jones — 0.2 mi
• Georgia O'Keeffe in Canyon — 0.6 mi
• J. Evetts Haley — 0.6 mi