Sherman L. Fleek

Sherman L. Fleek is an American military historian. He was born at Hill Air Force Base and raised in Layton, Utah. His work specializes on Mormon military history, particularly the history of the Mormon Battalion during the Mexican–American War. He has also written on topics related to Latter-day Saint (LDS) history that are not always military in nature.

Career

Fleek rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, serving as an aviator, Special Forces officer, and historian in several command and staff positions. His last duty in the Army was chief historian for the National Guard Bureau in Washington D.C., when he retired in 2002. The Army approached him in 2005 while serving as a historian for a Civil War non-profit preservation foundation, to enter federal civil service and become the official command historian for the United States Army reconstruction effort in Iraq. Fleek deployed to Iraq for three months in 2006 as a historian. Fleek served as command historian of Walter Reed Army Medical Center from 2007 to 2009. In May 2009, he assumed the position as historian for the United States Military Academy at West Point. [1][2][3][4]

Fleek received a bachelors degree in English from Brigham Young University in 1982, and a masters degree in history from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs while serving in the Army at Fort Carson. He is a Latter-day Saint and as of April 2009 was serving as a member of the high council of the Winchester Virginia Stake of the Church. He served a LDS mission in the Idaho Pocatello Mission, after having completed four years as an enlisted soldier with the Army, 1973-77, in Germany.

Works

Books by Fleek include History May Be Searched in Vain: A Military History of the Mormon Battalion (414 pages, Arthur H. Clark Company) which won the Utah State History Society Amy Price Military History Award for 2007. He also wrote, Place the Headstones Where They Belong : Thomas Neibaur, WWI Soldier (Logan: Utah State University Press). Fleek has contributed many articles to Military History, America's Civil War, Wild West, Army, and Mormon Heritage Magazine.

Fleek has also recently published two historical fiction novels that focus on the Mormon Battalion and General Stephen Kearny's Army of the West during the Mexican War. The first is Called to War: Dawn of the Mormon Battalion (2010) and a sequel War in the Far West: the March of the Mormon Battalion, (2011).

In November 2011, publisher Greg Kofford Books released Saints of Valor: Mormon Medal of Honor Recipients that details the stories of Latter-day Saints who have received the Medal of Honor.

Bibliography

Non-fiction:

Novels:

See also

Sources

  1. ↑ Johnson, Page (April 25, 2009), "My home base", Church News: 7. This article refers to Fleek as a historian of Reed Medical Center
  2. ↑ This is an article by Fleek about the history of Walter Reed
  3. ↑ Lloyd, R. Scott (November 19, 2011), "Unsung war hero's medal now preserved at Church History Library", Church News
  4. ↑ http://www.ldsmag.com/article/1/6628 The Mormon Battalion: the Most Unusual Military Unit in American History