I want you to picture a resume for a second.
Just imagine you're holding it in your hands.
Like one of those old typed ones. Yeah, exactly.
Maybe it's typed on that really thin onion skin
paper they used to use back in the day. Right.
And you start reading the very top line. And
it says, Gold Troutman Medal for Excellence in
Chemistry. Which honestly sounds like you're
looking at a resume for a lab researcher. Correct.
Or maybe a university professor. Right. It's
very academic, very precise. Then you go to the
next line and it says student body president.
Okay, so he's got some charisma. He can shake
hands and talk to people. Yeah, he's not just
a lab rat. And then the next line says mining
engineer. So now we're picturing a guy in a hard
hat. You know, surveying copper deposits or checking
geological charts. A completely solid industrial
career. Absolutely. But then you keep reading
and the plot just completely falls off the rails.
Suddenly you see Major General Battle of the
Bulge. Yeah, that is quite the pivot. You see
Commander of the Aleutian Campaign. You see Silver
Star with three oak leaf clusters. It really
feels like a contradiction, doesn't it? Completely.
It's like two entirely different people just
sort of inhabiting the exact same body. And that
is exactly why we are here. Welcome to today's
Deep Dive. I'm your host, and I've got our resident
historical expert here with me to help unpack
all of this. Hey, everyone. Glad to be diving
into this one. We are doing a deep dive today
into the life of Major General Frank L. Cullen,
Jr. And honestly, when I first looked at the
stack of sources... There was a lot of material.
There really was. They had historical records,
military biographies, obituary data. And I thought
this was just going to be a straightforward story
about a soldier. But it's not. It's really not.
If you really look at the trajectory of Frank
Collin, it isn't just a story about a career
pivot. Right. It's a case study in how the specific
mind of a scientist and engineer really can be
weaponized. We are going to look at how a guy
who studied dirt and rocks in the Arizona desert
ended up commanding thousands of troops in the
freezing snow of the Ardennes. And that transition
right there. From mining engineer to division
commander. That is what I really want to unpack
for you today. Because on the surface, those
jobs seem miles apart. Oh, they seem completely
unrelated. But you're suggesting they're actually
the same job. Oh, in the context of the 20th
century, yes, absolutely. How so? Because war
became an industrial problem. It became an engineering
problem. And Cullen is the perfect example of...
citizen expert. The citizen expert. I like that
phrase. He's the guy who brings a highly technical
civilian brain to the absolute chaotic problem
of the battlefield. We'll start where the resume
starts. His roots in the desert. Because long
before he was a general, he was basically a desert
rat. He really was. Frank L. Cullen Jr. was actually
born in Seattle in 1892. But his formation, the
real making of the man, happened in the American
Southwest. Because his family moved to Tucson,
Arizona right in 1903. Exactly. And Tucson in
1903 isn't the massive sprawling city you see
today. It's basically the frontier. It is rugged,
but his family wasn't exactly roughing it in
a wooden shack either. His father was a corporate
accountant who later became a school superintendent.
Okay, so Frank grows up in a household that really
values structure in education. Precision, that's
the key word. And he clearly absorbed that. He
goes to Tucson High School and then the University
of Arizona. Like we mentioned at the top, he
wasn't studying military strategy there. No,
he was studying the earth. Mining engineering.
He graduated in 1915, I think. Yep, 1915 with
a Bachelor of Science. And then he went straight
back and got his Master's in 1916. And that gold
Troutman Medal for Chemistry that we mentioned?
Yeah, that's not a participation trophy. No,
it really sounds like top -of -the -class material.
It signifies a very high level of intellect,
but specifically a disciplined intellect. Think
about it. Chemistry allows for zero error. Right.
If you get the formula wrong, things either explode
or they just don't work. Exactly. And mining
engineering is the exact same way. It's all about
geology and structural integrity and heavy logistics.
He was actually working in this field, right?
He was. He worked for the Bureau of Mines. He
worked for the Los Chisos Mining Company in Texas
and the Calumet and Arizona Mining Company in
Bisbee. So by 1916, he is fully embedded in this.
heavy industrial world. He's a guy who solves
problems with a slide rule and a geological survey
map. But and this is the key contradiction we're
talking about. He wasn't just a nerd hiding in
a lab. Right, because he was the student body
president from 1915 to 1916. Which implies he
could talk to people. He wasn't just staring
at rocks. He was actively leading his peers.
And he was the athletic editor of the yearbook,
too. Yeah. The Desert, I think it was called.
Yeah. He was deeply involved in the social fabric
of the university. And crucially, he was part
of the university's Corps of Cadets. Which is
basically the ROTC of its day. Essentially, yeah.
And he rose to the rank of cadet lieutenant colonel.
That's a high rank for a student. It was the
highest rank of students. could possibly achieve
so while his brain was learning how to extract
copper from the earth his character was learning
how to extract performance from people so set
the scene for us here it's 1916 you've got this
brilliant young engineer working in bisbee he's
got a master's degree he has this bright future
in the mining industry why on earth does he throw
it all away to join the army Well, context is
everything right. 1916 wasn't exactly a calm
year. Europe was already burning. The world was
at war, even though the U .S. wasn't officially
in it yet. But closer to home, the border was
on fire. The Pancho Villa expedition. Exactly.
There was a very real sense of urgency in the
Southwest. And the sources mention he applied
for a commission in September of 1916. And this
one statistic really jumped out at me. He applied
in Nogales, Arizona. There were 15 applicants.
And only five were accepted. Just five. That
tells you a lot about the rigor of the process.
The army wasn't just taking anyone who could
hold a rifle. They were actively looking for
leaders. And Cullen obviously made the cut. He
did. He was appointed a second lieutenant of
infantry in November 1916. But his first taste
of service wasn't the trenches of France yet.
No, it was right there on the border. The Pancho
Villa expedition. Which was sort of the training
ground for an entire generation of American officers,
wasn't it? It absolutely was. It's where they
learned how to move men and supplies over really
rough terrain. But for Cullen, that specific
phase was incredibly short. Because the dominoes
were falling in Europe. Right. April 1917, the
U .S. enters World War I. And the timeline here
is just blindingly fast. Walk us through it.
Cullen gets his commission in late 1916. He graduates
from the Army Service School at Fort Leavenworth
in April 1917. He's assigned to the 30th Infantry
Regiment, 3rd Division. And by August 1917, he
is already a captain. That is a meteoric rise.
Less than a year from a civilian engineer to
an army captain. It speaks to the desperate expansion
of the army for sure. But it also speaks volumes
about his competence. And here is where I want
to connect back to that mining engineer idea.
Okay, let's go. Because the sources specify exactly
what he commanded in France. Machine gun company.
Right. Now, when most people hear machine gun,
they tend to think of action movies. Just a guy
spraying bullets everywhere. Exactly. But in
World War I, a machine gun company was a highly
technical unit. So it wasn't just point and shoot.
Far from it. Think about the Maxim gun or the
Browning. These are heavy, complex pieces of
machinery. To use them effectively in trench
warfare, you are dealing with interlocking fields
of fire. Which means what exactly? It means you
have to calculate trajectories. Sometimes you
are dealing with indirect fire where you're shooting
over a hill, almost like artillery. So it's geometry.
It is brutal geometry. You have to understand
the cooling mechanism so the guns don't literally
melt down. Because they were water cooled. Yes.
And you have to manage a supply chain of thousands.
of rounds of heavy ammunition moving through
deep mud you have to survey the land literally
look at the topography to figure out exactly
where to place these guns to deny the enemy the
most space that sounds exactly like what a mining
engineer does you survey the land you calculate
the angles you manage the logistics precisely
The gold Troutman Medal in chemistry and the
mining degree weren't wasted at all. He was applying
that exact same scientific precision to the chaos
of the Ayn Marn and the Meuse -Argonne campaign.
He wasn't panicking. He was just solving an engineering
problem where the variables happened to be bullets
and terrain. And clearly he solved it well. The
sources say he was decorated with the silver
star during this period. And not just once, right?
No, he received the Silver Star and later oak
leaf clusters. We'll get into his total count
later, but for a young captain to be cited for
gallantry in those absolute meat grinder campaigns
tells us a lot. It tells us he wasn't sitting
in a bunker doing math. Exactly. He was out there
ensuring his calculations actually worked in
the mud. So the war ends in 1918. He's a combat
veteran, a captain, a decorated hero. And now
we enter the inner war years. The slow years.
Right. And usually in movies, this is the montage
where the calendar pages just flip by real fast.
Yeah. But for a career officer, you can't just
skip this part. This is where the general is
actually built, isn't it? It is. You don't become
a division commander just by being brave under
fire. You have to learn how to run a massive,
complex organization. And Cohen spent the 1920s
and 30s just grinding it out. It looks like he
did a tour in the Philippines, but then he went
back to the classroom literally. Yeah, he became
the professor of military science for the ROTC
program at the University of Oregon from 1923
to 1927. Which is a really nice callback to his
own start as a cadet in Arizona. It is. Then
he was an advisor to the Connecticut National
Guard. And then the heavy hitting education begins.
He attended the Command and General Staff College
in 1930 and the Army War College in 1940. And
the war college is basically the Ph .D. of the
military, right? It's where they teach you grand
strategy. Yeah. How to move entire armies, not
just squads. Exactly. But amidst all this professional
climbing, there's a personal note in the sources
that I think is really important to mention.
About his brother. Right. In 1925, his brother,
John Harding Cullen, died. I saw that in the
file. John was a Naval Academy grad, a lieutenant
commander, and he died quite young. It's a very
somber reminder that for the Cullen family service
wasn't just a secure career path. It came with
mortal stakes. Yeah. Losing his brother, who
was also a military officer, must have really
solidified Frank's understanding of what it means
to wear the uniform. It adds this layer of gravity
to everything that comes next. And what comes
next is the big one. 1940. He graduates from
the War College. He's a colonel now. The world
is on fire again. World War II. And this is where
the story takes a turn that I honestly did not
see coming. Because when we talk about WWII,
we usually talk about D -Day. We talk about Iwo
Jima. We do not talk about the Aleutians. The
forgotten front. It really is forgotten. At the
start of the war, Cullen is commanding the 32nd
Infantry Regiment. And they get sent to the Battle
of Attu in May 1943. Now we really need to pause
here for a second. Because if you just gloss
over Battle of Attu. You miss the sheer horror
of it. Set the scene for us. Attu is an island
at the very end of the Aleutian chain in Alaska.
It is barely even land. It's basically a volcanic
rock jutting out of the North Pacific. And the
weather there isn't just cold. It's atrocious.
The soldiers face what they called willy -whas.
Willy -whas? Yeah, they're these sudden violent
windstorms that come out of nowhere. They can
rip a canvas tent to shreds or literally knock
a grown man flat on his face. Wow. And the fog
is constant. You can't see 10 feet in front of
you on a good day. So you have Colleen, the boy
from Tucson, the desert rad, leading men in freezing
fog and wind and mud that acts like quicksand.
It is the ultimate test of adaptability. And
remember, this is the only land battle of World
War II fought on incorporated territory of the
United States. That's a crazy fact. The Japanese
were dug in on the high ground. Cullen's men
were fighting hypothermia and trench foot just
as much as they were fighting the enemy. How
does an engineer's mind even handle that kind
of environment? By focusing intensely on logistics
and endurance. You can't just order a heroic
charge up a hill if your men are freezing to
death. Right. They wouldn't make it 10 feet.
You have to figure out how to get hot food up
a mountain in the middle of a blizzard. You have
to keep weapons functioning when the grease inside
them literally freezes solid. It was a miserable
grinding campaign. But he succeeded. He did.
The 32nd Infantry performed exceptionally under
his command. And I really think it was that specific
experience fighting in the bitter cold on impossible
terrain that flagged him for his next major assignment.
Which was the 10th Light Division. Known today
as the 10th Mountain Division, the Alpine Troops.
So the army looks at Cullen and says, hey, you
survived the Aleutians. You clearly know how
to handle snow and rocks. Come help us figure
out how to fight on mountains. Exactly. He was
assigned as deputy commander in July 1943. He
helped organize and train these highly specialized
troops. And again, think of the engineering involved
there. Mountain warfare is all about load -bearing.
It's pulley systems to get heavy artillery up
sheer cliffs. It's calculating exposure to the
elements. It's arguably the most technical kind
of infantry fighting there is. But he didn't
stay there. He was destined for the main event
in Europe. In October 1944, Frank Cullen gets
the promotion to Major General. He takes command
of the 87th Infantry Division. He takes them
to France. And almost immediately, they are thrown
straight into the deep end. The Battle of the
Bulge. The massive German counter -offensive
in the Ardennes Forest. Winter of 1944 to 45,
which happened to be one of the coldest winters
on record in Europe. It really feels like fate,
doesn't it? It does. He trains in the desert.
He cuts his teeth in the mud of WWI. fights in
the Arctic conditions of the Aleutians, he trains
the mountain troops, and then he ends up holding
the line in the snow of the Ardennes. It's the
culmination of literally everything he had learned
in his life. The mining engineer's deep understanding
of terrain, the WWI captain's understanding of
defensive fire, and the Aleutian commander's
understanding of how to keep men alive in the
freezing cold. And they didn't just hold the
line either. They pushed back. They pushed hard.
The citation for his Distinguished Service Medal
specifically covers the period from January to
May 1945. The final push. Yes. It credits him
with exceptionally meritorious and distinguished
services during the final drive into Germany.
His division fought in the Rhineland and Central
Europe campaigns. Didn't they breach the Siegfried
Line? They breached the Siegfried Line. They
crossed the Moselle and the Rhine rivers. And
these are massive, complex river crossings, which
again brings us right back to engineering problems.
Exactly. Crossing the Rhine isn't just about
raw courage. It's about pontoon bridges and water
flow rates and precise timing. It was the final
exam for the engineer general. So VE Day comes.
The war in Europe ends. Cullen has done it all.
He's a two -star general. He's a bona fide hero.
And then the story just stops. It does. And this
is where we need to talk about the cost of all
this. I noticed that in the file, too. He retires
in 1946. That is incredibly soon after the war
ends for someone of his rank. And the reason
listed on his record is disability incurred in
the line of duty. That phrase does a lot of heavy
lifting, doesn't it? It covers a lot of ground.
We obviously don't have his personal medical
turds in front of us. But if you look at the
timeline we just walked you through, the poison
gas and mud of WWI, the sheer stress of command
and the illusions, the freezing cold of the Battle
of the Bulge, the human body keeps the score.
He was in his mid -50s by the end of WWII. He
had pushed himself to the absolute physical limit
for years on end. We often talk about adaptability
like... It's just a mental framework, like you
just decide to be adaptable and then you are.
Right, just a change of mindset. But in Keelan's
case, adaptability meant physically absorbing
the shock of two global wars. It meant sleeping
in a muddy trench when you're 25 and sleeping
in a snowbank when you're 53. Before we get to
the very end, I want to circle back to something
we touched on briefly. The awards. We sometimes
call it chest candy in the business, but Keelan's
rack was just... It was incredibly extensive.
He had the Distinguished Service Medal, the Bronze
Star, the Air Medal. He had foreign awards too.
The Legion of Honor from France and the Croix
de Guerre from both France and Belgium. But the
one that really stopped me in my tracks was the
Silver Star. The source says Silver Star With
three oak leaf clusters. Which means he wasn't
just awarded it once. He was awarded the Silver
Star four separate times. Can we just pause on
how exceptionally rare that is for a major general?
It is almost unheard of. The Silver Star is awarded
for gallantry in action. It's a combat award.
Usually generals are in the command tent, miles
behind the line, moving pins on a map. Exactly.
To earn four silver stars implies that Keelan
was consistently at the front line under active
fire, exposing himself to the exact same risks
as his private's insurgents. It reinforces that
idea of him being a hands -on engineer. He wasn't
managing the mine from the corporate office in
the city. He was down in the shaft with the workers.
That's a perfect analogy. And that continuous
frontline exposure likely contributed heavily
to the disability retirement. You just don't
get four silver stars without taking a severe
physical and mental beating. So he retires to
California, Monterey County, down in Pebble Beach.
Not a bad place to recover, honestly. No, it's
a beautiful country. And he actually went into
real estate sales. Which brings him completely
full circle, dealing with land again. It really
does. And the legacy continued, too. The sources
highlight his family quite a bit. He married
Ella Green Sneed, whom he met way back at the
University of Arizona. A true Wildcat romance
that lasted a lifetime. And their kids seemed
to inherit that exact same mix of public service
and technical skill. Yeah, I saw that. His daughter,
Virginia, became a historian. She documented
the desert in a book called Outpost in the Desert,
I believe. And his son, Frank III, became a civil
engineer, echoing his dad's original degree almost
perfectly. Yeah, his other son. John. He went
to West Point, fought in Vietnam, and then eventually
became a commodity trader. So the pattern just
repeats itself. Engineering, military service,
understanding the earth and markets. It's a very
strong family DNA. So when we step back and look
at the whole picture for you, the listener, Frank
L. Cullen Jr., what's the ultimate takeaway here?
We've got the miner, the machine gunner, the
general. For me, the real takeaway is about the
immense value of the citizen expert. We sometimes
think that to be... truly great at something,
especially something like war, you have to be
born into it or study only that one specific
thing your entire life. Right. The whole stay
in your lane mentality. Exactly. But Cullen proves
the complete opposite. His value as a military
commander came directly from the fact that he
was a mining engineer first. He brought a completely
different toolkit to the battlefield. He understood
the physical world. He understood rocks and earth
and chemicals and weather in a fundamental way
that a standard textbook military tactician might
not have grasped. He didn't succeed despite being
a mining engineer. He succeeded because of it.
Exactly. The precision of the chemist and the
deep practicality of the miner were exactly what
the chaos of the 20th century needed to win those
wars. But we also have to remember the heavy
price tag attached to all of that. We do. And
that's the provocative thought I really want
to leave you all with today. We look at the shiny
medals, we look at the high rank, and it looks
like pure glory. It looks like a heroic movie
poster. But that one little line in his file,
retired for disability. That is the reality check.
The true cost of being that exceptionally adaptable
isn't written anywhere on the metal citation.
No, the cost is written on the body. He solved
the impossible problems. He won the massive battles,
but he paid for it with his health. He gave literally
everything he had until he physically couldn't
give anymore. Well, that is a heavy but very
necessary place to leave it for today. Next time
you're driving past a local cemetery or maybe
scrolling through some old archives online, take
a second to look up the names. You might just
find a mining engineer who helped save the world.
There are hidden figures everywhere if you just
know where to look. Thanks for listening to this
deep dive. We'll catch you on the next one.