Our Arklahoma Heroes: Soldier from the RedOak area wa among the casualties at the Battle of Hatten on January 11, 1945,
Private John Stallaby of Salonia and Red Oak in Latimer County, Oklahoma, was killed in action on January 11, 1945, at the age of twenty-nine while serving with Company G of the 315th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division, during the Battle of Hatten in Alsace as part of the German Operation Nordwind.
Born on March 4, 1915, he was the son of Dukes Stallaby, who had come from Mississippi in 1889, and Emalie Baker Stallaby, an Oklahoma native born around 1893. H
e grew up as one of fifteen children in the large Stallaby household in the rural community of Salonia,
completing a grammar school education amid the practical routines of southeastern Oklahoma life and carrying Native American roots within the family.
On June 24, 1932, he married Ida Thompson in Latimer County, and the couple raised three sons in the Red Oak area, including John Stallaby Jr., born in 1934, and Calvin Ray Stallaby, born in 1937.
Before entering service, he worked as a laborer on a Works Progress Administration project, and when he registered for the draft on October 16, 1940, in Red Oak he stood five feet eleven inches tall and weighed 155 pounds.
He enlisted on April 21, 1944, under serial number 38697357, joining the 79th Division known as the Cross of Lorraine, which had landed in Normandy the previous June and fought through northern France before the winter battles along the Upper Rhine.
In those frozen engagements, elements of the 315th faced heavy German pressure and periods of encirclement, and it was there that Stallaby fell. According to documentation from the GSA, V was killed from sharpnel associated with a proectile from a gernade launcher.
His remains were returned to Latimer County and buried in Thessolin Cemetery, also known as Salonia Cemetery near Red Oak, where other aCCORFmembers of his family are interred.
He was awarded the Purple Heart along with the World War II Victory Medal, American Campaign Medal, Army Presidential Unit Citation, and Army Good Conduct Medal.
His widow Ida lived until 1998, and his sons remained in the same Oklahoma soil that had shaped his early years.
