b'U . S .M i l i t a r yFemale flight crew member at NAS Corpus Christi during WWIINaval Aviator George H. W. Bush in World War IIA LEGACY OF SERVICETHE RICH MILITARY HISTORY OF THE TEXAS COASTAL BENDCorpus Christis entire existence has been defined by its strategic advantage in military conflict, dating back to its very founding by Colonel Kinney as an illegal supply outpost for the Mexican army, back in 1841. Four years later, famed General Zachary Taylor established an army encampment at Rancho Kinney, in preparation for war with Mexico, months before Texas became one of the United States. Less than two decades after that, Major Alfred Marmaduke Hobby commanded a Confederate battalion that operated and defended the supply depot established at Corpus Christi, and which successfully repelled a Union Navy assault in August 1862 in what would be the most polite and least costly battle of the Civil War.At the end of World War I, an army hospital was established on North Beach, and members of the 37th Infantry Battalion were caught in the 1919 Hurricane in which some were lost, and after which many of them served to assist survivors of the storm that killed almost 1,000 people. Just months before the U. S. Navy Pacific Fleet was attacked at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941, Naval Air Station Corpus Christi was opened as the central training base for Naval aviators.Two years later, at the height of World War II, 18-year-old George H. W. Bush earned his wings at NAS Corpus Christi after enlisting in the Navy the day after he graduat-ed high school. The future president would serve as one the youngest pilots in the military and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for the heroic mission he flew inJohn McCain and his father, a four-star Admiral, at his Chichi Jima at the end of 1944, in which his Avenger torpedo bomber flying from thewinging ceremony at NAS Corpus Christi in June 1960 USS San Jacinto was shot down, and his two crew mates perished.70 THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'