Cheves, Gilbert X. (Gilbert Xavier), 1895-1985

Major General Gilbert Xavier Cheves was born in 1895 in Richwood, Georgia. Cheves lost his father while young and was raised by his mother in Atlanta. He graduated from the University of Georgia Law School in 1917 and shortly afterwards went into the U.S. Army as a private in the Georgia National Guard. During the first World War Cheves served in France with supplies and ports. In the second World War, he helped to organize the United States armored forces at at different times was commanding officer in Cairo, Calcutta, and Korea. During the Malta Conference, he was chief of security. As a major general, Gilbert X. Cheves retired in 1947 and went into the construction business in Atlanta.

Claire Lee Chennault (6 Sept. 1893-27 July 1958) was a military officer and airline executive. Chennault was born in Commerce, Texas, the son of John Stonewall Jackson Chennault, a small-scale cotton grower, and Jessie Lee. In 1930-31 Chennault attended the Air Corps Tactical School at Langley Field in Virginia. After Chennault's graduation in 1931 it moved to Maxwell Field, Montogomery, Alabama, and Chennault remained with the school as pursuit instructor. American National Biography Online - Claire Lee Chennault http://www.anb.org (Retrieved August 12, 2009)

Adna Romanza Chaffee, Jr. (1884-1941) was an army officer born in Junction City, Kansas. He was the son of Adna Romanza Chaffee, an officer who became army chief of staff, and Annie Frances Rockwell. He attended West Point from 1902 to 1906, graduating thirty-first in a class of seventy-eight. Chaffee married Ethel Warren Huff on 15 December 1908. The couple had one son, also named Adna Romanza. Although he remained an enthusiastic horseman, Chaffee recognized that the calvary of the future would ride vehicles, not horses. He came to believe that a properly constituted armored force was capable of delivering decisive blows in battle. Athough more conservative officers disputed Chaffee's claims, he was vindicated when German armored divisions spearheaded the blitzkreig that conquered Poland and France in the early campaigns of World War II. Chaffee is justifiably remembered as the father of the U.S. Army's armored branch. American National Biography Online - Adna Romanza Chaffee, Jr. http://www.anb.org (Retrieved August 12, 2009)

George Smith Patton (1885-1945) was a military officer born in San Gabriel, California. He entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1904. At the academy, Patton had special difficulty with mathematics and did not graduate until 1909, 46th in a class of 103. In 1912 he competed in the Olympic Games in Stockholm in the pentathlon, a competition including steeplechase riding, shooting, fencing, swimming, and a 5,000 meter race. In March 1918 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and named to command the 304th Tank Brigade. American National Biography Online - George Smith Patton http://www.anb.org (Retrieved August 12, 2009)

Joseph Warren Stilwell (1883-1946) was born near Palatka, Florida. Stilwell graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1904. Stilwell quickly grew dissatisfied with the monotonous routine of the peacetime army and in 1920 requested assignment to a new program organized by the Military Intelligence Division to train officers in an Asiatic language. Since the slots in Japanese had already been filled, Stilwell was assigned to the University of California in Berkeley to learn Chinese for a year, after which he continued his studies in Peking (Beijing), China. American National Biography Online - Joseph Warren Stilwell http://www.anb.org (Retrieved August 12, 2009)

Ibn Sa'ud was a tribal and Muslim religious leader who formed the modern state of Saudi Arabia and initiated the exploitation of its oil. Encyclopedia Britannica Online - Ibn Sa'ud http://www.eb.com (Retrieved August 12, 2009)

Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) was the head of the Nationalist government in China from 1928 to 1949 and subsequently head of the Chinese Nationalist government in exile on Taiwan. Encyclopedia Britannica Online - Chiang Kai-shek http://www.eb.com (Retrieved August 12, 2009)

From the description of Major General Gilbert Xavier Cheves collection, 1984. (University of Georgia). WorldCat record id: 440760239