Tan Service uniform
Commander 2nd Infantry Division
82nd Airborne WW II - Distinguished Service Cross Winner

Major General Charles Billingslea was born in Chicago, IL May 16, 1914.  He was a 1936 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and served as a paratrooper in World War II, where he took part in assault landings with American Forces at Algiers and joined a British unit in airborne operations in Tunisia.

He was the executive officer with the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, 82d Airborne Division from 1944-1946; his units made jumps into Sicily and Salerno and were involved in fighting at Naples, Volturno, Cassino and Anzio and later in operation in the Netherlands.

After the war, he taught at the Command and Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and later was with the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers in Europe.

After an assignment at the Pentagon, he became the Chief of Staff of the United States Eighth Army in Korea. In 1962 he took command of the 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., and in late September of that year he was ordered to mobilize Army units and federalized Mississippi National Guardsmen in Oxford Miss., as efforts were made to enforce desegregation at the University of Mississippi and enroll James H. Meredith as a student.

In May 1963 he was sent to Birmingham Ala., where troops were stationed as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led weeks of demonstrations to end segregation. General Billingslea retired from the Army in 1966.

MG Billingslea was decorated twice with the Distinguished Service Cross for valor.

Major General Charles Billingslea died of pneumonia Tuesday March 18, 1989 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He was 74 years old and lived in Oxford, Md.