Robert Skillings Munn

Last changed on Wed, 12/31/1969 - 16:00

Pre-WSC Life

The eldest of four children of Robert E. Munn, Sr. and Sarah Skillings Munn, (his siblings were all WSC graduates), Robert Jr. was born on July 13, 1922 in Olympia.  He grew up living an active outdoor life on the farmland and coast while attending Lincoln High School in Spring 1940.  He also became keenly interested in the Fort Lewis Dairy, entered WSC in Fall 1940 set on preparing for a career in the dairy industry. 

WSC Experience

Munn was a member of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity and majored in Dairy Manufacturing.  Munn left WSC in Fall 1942 to join the U.S. Army Reserves.

Military Service

Munn did his basic training at Camp Callan, California.  After only two months of specialized training he was deployed as an enlisted man to North Africa in August 1943 with the 435th Antiaircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion.  Munn would serve with this unit in N. Africa and Italy until it was merged with three other anti-aircraft units into the newly formed 473rd Infantry Regiment of the 92nd Infantry Division in January 1945.  This is testimony both to the virtual elimination of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) as a fighting force, and the Americans’ pressing need for infantry soldiers to press the grinding advance up the Italian peninsula. Private First Class Skillings was killed in an assault across open, flat ground at the small town of Massa, a battle zone described by a contemporary journalist as a “suicide courtyard.”  He was killed two weeks before German forces in Italy surrendered on April 29, 1945, ending the war in that sector of the Italian Front.  

Burial, Recognition, and Remembrance

After the war Munn’s body was returned to home, where he was buried at the New Tacoma Cemetery in Tacoma, Washington.

Referenced Content

A native of Olympia, Washington, Robert Skillings Munn attended WSC from 1940-43 before entering the U.S. Army. He was killed in northwestern Italy on April 14, 1945.
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