William M. Miley
American general (1897-1997)
William Maynadier Miley (December 26, 1897 – September 24, 1997) was a major general in the United States Army who commanded the 17th Airborne Division during World War II, leading the division through the Battle of the Bulge and Operation Varsity.
Early life and military career
William M. Miley was born at Fort Mason in California, to Sara Miley and Lieutenant Colonel John D. Miley (for whom Fort Miley Military Reservation was named). His family had a long history of military service, with three generations before him serving in the United States Army. Two great-grandfathers, his grandfather, his father, his great-uncle, his uncle and his son all graduated from the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York.
Miley himself attended the USMA, where he earned a national intercollegiate championship in gymnastics (in the tumbling, rings, and parallel bars events), and graduated in 1918, the year after the American entry into World War I, whereupon he was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Infantry Branch of the United States Army. Immediately after graduation he was sent to the Western Front and served with the 1st Division, part of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) until the end of the war on November 11, 1918.
Between the wars
Following the war, Miley held a series of assignments, including as a professor of military science at what was then Mississippi State College, in Starkville, Mississippi. It was during this time that he met and married his wife, Julia Sudduth. Other assignments included serving as athletic director at West Point, and infantry assignments in Panama, the Philippines, and at Fort Sam Houston.
In 1940, Miley (then holding the rank of major) was ordered to organize and command the United States Army's first paratrooper unit, the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion.
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This entry incorporates text from “William M. Miley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.