Jim Feezel remembers the 12th Armored Division as a green outfit that was forced to grow up fast in World War II.

Betty Shultz of Lindsborg, Kan., remembers it as a group of men and women who were a major part of her late husband's life.

The division opened its 59th reunion at the Crowne Plaza Tulsa on Thursday. The reunion runs through Sunday.

The unofficial host for the reunion is John O. Gallup of Tulsa, who said he is the only Tulsan known to be still alive who served with the division.

Gallup said he was never on the front lines and served as a postal clerk who got mail to the troops as they fought in France, Germany and other areas in the final months of World War II.

"I see a lot of men here who went through a lot more than I did, and I am grateful for them," the Tulsan said.

Having entered the war late, the 12th Armored Division was in battle for only five months.

It was almost wiped out in its first major encounter in January 1945 at Herrlisheim, France, Feezel said.

"We were given orders to take this little town and were told there would only be a dozen or so old Germen men there and a couple of trucks," he recalled.

That defeat, Feezel recalled here Friday, turned the "Hellcats" into a crafty unit that became known for its speed in the sweep across Germany in 1945.

The unit that got hammered at Herrlisheim scored victories at it rolled to the east.

"The Hellcats emerged from the experience a humbled, much wiser, less innocent division and vastly more experienced as a result of the hard lessons of January," one author wrote.

The defeat of Germany was quickened by the speed of the Americans, a German field marshal said.

During the five months of war, the division captured 70,000 Germans, seven times its own strength, and blitzed through 3,000 cities and towns, disrupting airfields, factories, railroads and ammunition and supply dumps.

The 12th Armored Division had sharpened its claws, one account said.

At the end of April 1945, it reached Landsberg, Germany, which was a sub-camp of the concentration camp for Jews at Dachau.

Feezel, who was 19 at the time, said he had came of age in the

More than 4,000 Jews were killed there, and hundreds of their bodies were scattered across the grounds when the 12th Armored Division took Landsberg.

Rather than talk about World War II, Charles Fitts Jr. of Jackson, Miss., said he wanted to give thanks to Tulsans and Oklahomans for help offered to Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina.

"it really devastated our state," said Fitts, whose family was left without electricity for several days.

The reunion, the former insurance salesman said, "is such a wonderful time to get back with people who belong to a very unique fraternity. We fought in a war. We were prisoners of war. And we are still alive, thanks to the Good Lord."

Feezen said many widows are attending the reunion in Tulsa.

Among them is Shultz, whose husband, Clarence, died in May.

"I wanted to come to this reunion. I came this year to sort of have a closure to tell the guys anything they wanted to know about his last days, and to see the women I had met before and to keep the friendships," she said.

The reunion included a memorial service for division members who have died.