Nebraska WWII hero's family sees new Army combat vehicle named in his honor (2024)

Pvt. Robert D. Booker’s World War II commanding officer wanted his loved ones back home in Callaway, Nebraska, to know one thing: that the infantryman’s death on a battlefield in North Africa wouldn’t be forgotten.

In the heat of battle on April 9, 1943, Booker, 22, had surged across 200 yards of open fields carrying a light machine gun and ammunition near Fondouk, Tunisia, even as German machine guns and mortars trained their fire on him.

Still, he silenced one enemy gun and opened up on another. He continued to fight and direct other soldiers even after he fell, mortally wounded.

“His actions were so outstandingly heroic that they will long live in our memory,” Capt. A.B. Churchill wrote 10 days later in a letter to Booker’s widow, Marie, that was published in a local newspaper called the Loup Valley Queen.

A year later, his parents and siblings attended a somber ceremony awarding Robert Booker the Medal of Honor. He was one of only 11 Nebraskans to receive the nation’s highest award for valor in World War II.

Last week, another generation of Booker’s relatives watched as the Army further cemented his heroic legacy with an even rarer honor: by attaching his name to a brand-new class of armored combat vehicles.

Fifteen of Bookers relatives — including Rosella “Rose” Hirsch, 91, of Broken Bow, his sister and only surviving sibling — traveled from Nebraska to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, for the April 18 christening of the M10 Booker, at the base where some early models are being tested.

Michael Booker of Broken Bow, the soldier’s nephew, smashed a bottle of champagne over the front armor of the 42-ton vehicle. Minutes later, the contingent watched an M10 blast three rounds from its 105mm cannon at targets on the firing range.

“The Army has treated us like royalty,” said Darrell Hirsch, Rose’s son.

Two soldiers ‘joined by a common name and valor’

They shared the honor, and the royal treatment, with the extended family of another Army war hero who shares the same surname but comes from a different generation. The M10 Booker is named for both of them.

“We recognize two soldiers, divided by time but joined by a common name and valor,” said Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman, director of the Army’s Next Generation Combat Vehicle Cross Functional Team.

Staff Sgt. Stevon Booker of Apollo, Pennsylvania, was a 3rd Infantry Division tank commander who died April 5, 2003, during the “Thunder Run” to Baghdad, in the first days of the Iraq War.

Stevon Booker enlisted in the Army right out of high school in 1988, in time to fight in the first Gulf War. By 2003, he was a seasoned veteran in one of the first units sent to Kuwait ahead of the pending invasion of Iraq.

Speaking at the ceremony, retired Brig. Gen. Andy Hilmes, his company commander in Iraq, described Booker as a “man on fire” who “looked, acted and sounded like the Abrams tank he commanded.”

On the day Stevon Booker died, he was leading a tank platoon down a highway near Baghdad International Airport when the guns on his M1A1 Abrams tank failed.

So Booker crawled out and laid down on the turret, fully exposed, firing his M-4 carbine at enemy vehicles until he was mortally wounded.

“Like a good piece of armor, he protected his crew,” Hilmes said.

Stevon Booker was initially awarded a Silver Star, the Army’s third-highest award for valor, which in 2019 was upgraded to a Distinguished Service Cross.

A Nebraska farm kid who loved to build things

Robert Booker probably never rode in a tank. He grew up on a farm 12 miles south of Callaway, the fourth-oldest of eight children. Rose was sixth in line, 10 years younger.

She recalls how much Robert loved to build things. Once he built a cart for a pet goat to lead around.

“I remember when he cleaned out a grain shed for my sister and me to have a playhouse,” Rose said. “Then one day, he came in and threw a bucket of water on our heads.”

Robert Booker married his sweetheart, Marie, in late November 1941, barely a week before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II.

Six months later, he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the 133rd Infantry Regiment of the 34th Infantry Division, a federalized National Guard unit then headquartered in Council Bluffs and composed largely of soldiers from the upper Midwest. It was the first Army division to invade North Africa on Nov. 8, 1942.

The news of Robert’s death the following April stunned the Booker family, Rose said.

“It was a sad time. It was very hard on me,” she said, shedding tears again at the memory. The familiy held a memorial service at the same country church where Robert and Marie had been married a year and half earlier.

But the family’s losses were not over. Army Pfc. Glenn Booker, 29, Robert’s older brother, was killed in action at Saipan, in the Pacific, just 15 months after his brother’s death.

After the war, Robert Booker’s name was attached to the American Legion post in Callaway and an Army Reserve center at Fort Omaha, on what is now a Metropolitan Community College campus. Today the Booker Building serves as MCC’s police headquarters.

The Booker name was selected for the Army’s first new combat vehicle in 20 years because the two soldiers, from different backgrounds and different eras, represent the same partnership of armor and infantry as the new M10, said Douglas Bush, assistant Army secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology.

“It is named for two gallant patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for our nation,” Bush said. “Like both of these heroes, it will be right there in combat, lending potent firepower to protect soldiers.”

The M10 Booker is slated to be part of the service’s armored fleet for at least the next three decades, filling a gap between the larger M1A1 Abrams tank and the lighter M1126 Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle. The Army expects to spend about $6 billion to buy 504 M10 Bookers through 2035, according to the military newspaper Defense News.

Next year, the 82nd Airborne Division will stand up the first Booker battalion at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, said Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s executive officer for ground combat systems.

Robert Booker’s relatives learned about the naming decision just after Memorial Day last year, when Michael Booker got an unexpected phone call from Arlington, Virginia.

“It came out of nowhere,” he said. “It still amazes me.”

Darrell Hirsch said the Robert Booker relatives from Nebraska bonded with Stevon Booker family from Pennsylvania, all of them sharing a dinner together Thursday night after the ceremony.

“I think we’re going to be Facebook friends,” he said.

Rose connected especially with Stevon Booker’s mother, Freddie Jackson. Both were presented with the Silver Medallion of the Order of St. George, an honor typically accorded to armor officers of high achievement.

“They were kind of partners in this dedication,” Darrell Hirsch said. “When they met, Freddie told her, ‘We’re going to get through this aren’t we?”

The Nebraska Bookers returned home on Friday, overwhelmed by the experience of seeing their fallen relative honored.

“It’s been quite the deal,” Mike Booker said. “We all agreed that it was unreal.”