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Francis Hudson Oxx

Brigadier General, United States Army GENERAL FRANCIS OXX, OCCUPATION AIDE Built World War II Bases

General Oxx graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1920. In World War II he supervised military construction in North Africa, Italy and Greece and was in charge of the ports of Naples and Leghorn.

After the war, as Deputy Allied High Commissioner in Austria, he attended the Foreign Ministers’ conferences in London and Moscow in 1947.

General Oxx arrived in North Africa in the fall of 1942 as a Colonel in charge of construction of base section installations. His speedy dispatch of this work won him the Legion of Merit.

He was named Chief of Staff of the Atlantic Base Section and later was placed in command of the Peninsular Base Section, with responsibility for transportation of its personnel and supplied to Italy.

He brought his command to Italy in October 1943, winning a Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster for his work. It was the first American supply base established on the European mainland in World War II. Part of it landed with its commander, right behind the combat waves.

The section, under General Oxx, subsequently had charge of reconstruction of war damage in Naples, particularly of the wrecked port facilities.

Early in his military career General Oxx (then a junior officer) served for five years as a mathematics instructor at West Point. During the Thirties he was assigned to work on flood control construction along the Ohio River, but in 1936 he returned to West Point as Associate Professor of Mathematics. He next became District Engineer in Kansas City, Missouri, in charge of flood control.

He was of the five Army Engineers who organized the Works Program Administration in this city under General Hugh Johnson. Later he directed the building of bomber assembly plants, airfields, munitions plants and other war installations values at $300,000,000.

General Oxx retired in 1952 after thirty-one years of Army service because of a heart condition. Until recently, he had been administrative manager for the Ralph M. Parsons Company of Los Angeles, which was operating a biological warfare laboratory at highly secretive Fort Detrick near here.