Army Tech 4 Floyd Arnold Kittrell was born in Muscogee, Escambia County, Florida on April 23, 1923, the son of Floyd Weston Kittrell (1889-1957) and Maude Evolyn Arnold (1887-1975). His father supported his family from their Muscogee home as an aircraft mechanic at NAS in 1940. Prior to that he was a machinist for the railroad and before that a machinist at the local sawmill.
His son Floyd Arnold would attend Pensacola High School where he would graduate in the Class of 1942. That same year, he is listed as working as a machinist at the Florida Pulp & Paper Company in Cantonment while still living at home with his parents. However, America's need for soldiers was of a higher priority than many other vocations across the country. Floyd enlisted in the US Army on February 23, 1943 and was sent to Camp Blanding, Florida for processing. After basic training, he was assigned to the 44th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, 11th Cavalry Group (Mechanized). The squadron departed New York on September 29, 1944 and disembarked in England on October 10th. Sadly, Floyd received a letter from his parents that his brother Carl Dane had passed away on November 3, 1944 at the Pensacola hospital at the age of 34-years old. He had been a machinist at NAS and would leave a wife and two children.
Three weeks later on November 26th, Floyd and his squadron landed in France and were placed on the front line in Germany on December 12th in the Roer River sector. The squadron then held a defensive line along the Rhine River near Düsseldorf on March 12, 1945, and crossed the Rhine at Wesel on April 1st before seizing the Ricklingen Bridge over the Leine River. By May 7th, the war was finally over.
Fifteen days later, on May 23, 1945, Floyd boarded a C-46 "Commando" transport plane along with 39 other ill or wounded soldiers heading for the military hospital in Paris. Afterwards, they were to be sent home to the states for further medical treatment or discharge. As they neared the French village of Taillefontaine, one of the plane's engines caught fire just before the plane was seen to plunge to the earth and crash. All forty of the soldiers plus the four-man crew perished. Of the forty, three were from the 11th Cavalry Group; Floyd Arnold Kittrell, Jack M. Garrity (1906-1945), and Edward Max Gronkowski (1913-1945). All three were buried with the other victims in a common grave in the Lorraine Military Cemetery in St. Avold, France.
In November 1948, Floyd's remains were disinterred and brought home to Cantonment, Florida per his family's request and buried in the Latham Chapel Cemetery where his now rests amongst his family.
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