John Coxe was born in August 1921 in Walker, Louisiana. He was one of seven children, four of whom were members of the armed forces; three of those attended Louisiana State University [Annotator's Note: in Baton Rouge, Louisiana] and commissioned as officers. Their father worked as a grocer, operated a cotton gin, a sawmill, and a farm. During the Great Depression he cultivated strawberries, and was quite successful. Coxe was in the ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] at LSU when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He remembers that he and his fellow students "went berserk" at the news. The shock brought them to the realization that their near future included active duty. When the order for additional lieutenants came down to LSU, his whole ROTC class was called up. The students who were close to graduating were allowed to test out of classes and in that way Coxe passed his six remaining credit hours, graduating with a degree in agriculture from the College of Education at about the same time he got his commission from Fort Benning, Georgia. The three months of basic training there was as close to real thing as you could get, according to Coxe. Just two weeks before completing training, Coxe fell into a dry ditch and had to be hospitalized for several weeks, missing his unit's departure for overseas. After leaving the hospital, he went to Camp Van Dorn, near Centreville, Mississippi and served as an aide to the general. Following several more months of training, his 63rd Infantry Division moved out by troop train to New York. He left New York harbor on a transport ship for a 13 day trip to Marseilles, France.

Describing his journey to Marseilles, France, John Coxe said his transport ship traveled in convoy with destroyers and submarines, and went into the Mediterranean. Landing in late 1944, his division [Annotator's Note: 63rd Infantry Division] "went on defensive," and Coxe was thankful that he was traveling around the countryside as a general's aid [Annotator's Note: for US Army Brigadier General Frederick M. Harris] and didn't have to sleep in foxholes with ice and snow and sleet. He and the general were headquartered in a house in Sarreguemines, France where Coxe took his rest in a relatively comfortable cot and had plenty of good food to eat. His first experience with combat happened while he was accompanying his general for an inspection of the troops. The immediate area came under artillery fire, and after finding a foxhole for the general Coxe jumped into a slit trench to protect himself. After a short time, Coxe persuaded the general to leave the scene, and while they were withdrawing in their jeep, Coxe said it seemed like the shells were following them. The hill they left was decimated. Coxe said it was his only close call.

In the spring of 1945, John Coxe's 63rd Infantry Division went on the offensive, and his superior, Brigadier General Fred Harris [Annotator's Note: US Army Brigadier General Frederick M. Harris], made him liaison with the adjoining divisions and equipped him with a little Cub plane [Annotator's Note: Piper J-3 Cub, also known as the L-4 Grasshopper, light observation aircraft] and a pilot at his disposal. Traveling by jeep over the battered landscape, on their retreat the Germans were blowing up everything, was perilous. The Army went on to break the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: a series of defensive fortifications built by the Germans in the 1930s] at three locations, and the 63rd Infantry Division chased the enemy across the Rhine River. Coxe said he crossed on a platoon [Annotator's Note: pontoon] bridge and he marveled at the engineering feat. The Germans were retreating in such haste that they were leaving behind some of their dead, Coxe said. He remembers looking to the sky and marveling at the rows and rows of B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] paving the way for them to move without excessive fighting. The division pursued the enemy through the countryside of Germany, mostly avoiding the demolished towns, to the border of Austria, and halted at the Danube River. At that point, the war in Europe ended, and only afterward did Coxe see the destruction the bombers had done to the urban areas. Coxe and his general set up headquarters in a beautiful hotel on a hill in the resort town of Mergentheir, close to Heidelberg, Germany. There was a rest period of about a month, complete with games and dances. Coxe got leave during this time to visit his brother and cousin in Munich. Ordered back to the United States, Coxe's division left from a port in France for a sea voyage that took eight days. There was considerable concern that the Division would have to deploy to the Pacific, and Coxe dreaded the idea of fighting in the jungles. Although he carried a pistol on his hip and had a carbine [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine] available, the only time he had fired a gun was during an inspection. He didn't have to go to the Pacific, and overall, considered himself very fortunate.

Back in the United States, John Coxe went home on a pass and married his girlfriend of seven years. Then he was stationed at Fort McClellan, Alabama, and made captain. He worked as a company training aide, liked the military life and considered making it his career. But his wife, who had accompanied him to Alabama, didn't agree; and in 1945 Coxe put in for a discharge. After he got out of the Army, Coxe became supervisor for the government subsidized veterans' farm training program and taught agriculture in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. When the Korean War started, Coxe got orders to report for a physical, but before the date he was to appear, he got notice to disregard the call. Coxe enjoyed his visit to The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, and thinks it "a wonderful place" to see the events of the war portrayed. He wonders if today's generation understands what the war was all about and the sacrifices that were made.