New name for street honors Army hero

Editors Note: In honor of Black History Month, the following article from the February 21, 1980 issue of CCAD’s ‘Aircraftsman’ newspaper, appears below. The next time you travel down 3rd Street in front of CCAD headquarters, it will have a new name.

Next Friday, before lunch, it will be renamed Crecy Street in honor of a WWII war hero, Maj. Warren G.H. Crecy, who was born on Jan. 4,1923 and died Oct. 26, 1976.

He was a native of Corpus and graduated from Solomon M. Coles High School in 1942.

[Crecy] served in the Army Air Corps from December 1942 until October 1952 progressing from enlisted to [the rank of] Major.

Crecy was an original member of the 761st Tank Battalion, one of the first all-Black units formed in WWII. [The] unit was part of General George Patton’s’ [3rd] Armored Division [in 1944].

It was during this time that war correspondent named. T. Anderson wrote, “The ‘baddest’ man in the 761st was a seemingly mild, meek, fuzzy-faced young man, but his bravery inspired his men to follow, without question, wherever he led them into battle.”

“His concentration on getting a destroying the enemy so great, that on many occasions, mounted atop his tank, he personally killed so many of the enemy soldiers that could not be counted, and he had to be pried away from his overheated guns!”

After WWII, the Maj. [Crecy] remained in the Army and was the Prisoner Officer during the Nuremberg Trials.

He was wounded in action in Korea, in October, 1952, being totally disabled after recovering from his wounds. He died in 1976.