Francis Hudson Oxx – Brigadier General, United States Army

GENERAL FRANCIS OXX, OCCUPATION AIDE
Ex-Deputy Commissioner In Austria Dies At 57 – Built World War II Bases

FREDERICK, Maryland – February 16, 1956 – Brigadier General Francis H. Oxx, U.S.A., retired, former Allied Deputy High Commissioner in Austria, died at his home here yesterday, apparently of a heart attack.  His age was 57.

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.

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.

OXX, FRANCIS HUDSON
B GEN USA

• DATE OF BIRTH: 09/13/1898
• DATE OF DEATH: 02/15/1956
• BURIED AT: SECTION 30  SITE 914 RH
  ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

Michael Robert Patterson

Michael Robert Patterson was born in Arlington and is the son of a former officer of the US Army. So it was no wonder that sooner or later his interests drew him to American history and especially to American military history. Many of his articles can be found on renowned portals like the New York Times, Washingtonpost or Wikipedia.

Reviewed by: Michael Howard