Officer George Booker Mogle
(Aug. 31, 1900 -- Aug. 7, 1946)

During World War II, from 1939 to 1945, more than 16 million U.S. troops served their country, and they served an average of nearly three years. Others served the war effort at home, working in defense and munitions factories. Of the total who fought in combat overseas, more than 400,000 were killed, and nearly 700,000 were wounded. Nearly three out of four served overseas.

Of course, the troops and their families made the greatest sacrifice. But so many young men off fighting a war also had a major impact on nearly every business and industry in the country, from factories and farms, to professional baseball, to the Los Angeles Police Department.

While women replaced some of the men in the factories and on the farms, the LAPD scrambled to find replacement officers and get them on the streets. At the Police Academy, training was cut from three months to six weeks, and the department hired special "War Emergency" officers. In some cases, the emergency officers eventually made the transition to become regular members of the department.

One of the LAPD's "War Emergency Officers," later known as "Reserve Officers" was George Booker Mogle.

Mogle was born Aug. 31, 1900, in Norwich, Kansas, a tiny town in the south-central part of the state, about 40 miles southwest of Wichita, the first child of William Arley Mogle, a farmer, and Daisy May Fearey Mogle. He was named after his father's younger brother, George Booker Mogle, who died four years earlier, on Aug. 16, 1896, at the age of 23 when he drowned in the Walnut River near Douglass, Kansas.

Shortly after Mogle's birth, the family moved to Washington, where Ernest Basil Mogle was born Jan. 5, 1903; and Clifford Mogle was born Aug. 29. 1905. The family then moved to Fresno, California, where William worked as a truck driver, and their fourth child and first daughter, Dortha Mogle, was born Nov. 25, 1909.

By 1914, the Mogles were back in Kansas and living in Wichita, where William worked as a driver for Vertical Mills and Gorvin Flour & Grain Company.

When Daisy May Mogle died on Feb. 24, 1919, at the age of 35, the widowed William Mogle and his three youngest children moved to Los Angeles, where they lived with William's parents, Andrew and Nancy Mogle, at their home at 784 E. 41st St.

George Mogle, 18, remained briefly in Wichita after his mother's death, living with an aunt and uncle and working as a mechanic for the Liberty Auto Co., before he joined his father and siblings in Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, Mogle continued to work as an auto mechanic, and married Ida Viola Duncan, a native of Colorado, on May 29, 1922. The Mogles had two children -- George Ervin Mogle, born June 6, 1923, and Ida Luella Mogle, born Jan. 22, 1925. The family lived at 1418 W. 65th St.

Mogle's younger brother, Clifford, also moved to Los Angeles, and he worked as the personal bodyguard and chauffeur for actress Janet Gaynor -- the first Oscar-winner as Best Actress in 1929 for "Street Angel," "Seventh Heaven" and "Sunrise."

When the United States entered World War II in late 1941, 41-year-old George and 39-year-old Ida both answered their nation's call to serve. Although George registered for military service, he wasn't called to duty. Instead, George was one of the first volunteers to join the LAPD as a war emergency officer, and Ida went to work at the Douglas Aircraft Company, helping to assemble planes for the war effort.

Their son, George Ervin Mogle, registered for military service in the Army on June 30, 1942, just after his 19th birthday. And, in 1943, the Mogles' 18-year-old daughter, Ida Luella Mogle, had met and fallen in love with 21-year-old William Nelson Tralle, who lived a few miles away from the Mogle home on South Hoover Street, and worked at the Consolidated Steel Corp. in Wilmington, Calif. The young couple planned to marry.

But Ida's father was strongly opposed to the marriage. Not because he had anything against Tralle, but because the country was at war, and Tralle had recently enlisted in the Army -- on the same day as Mogle's son, June 30, 1942. (It's not confirmed, but it's likely that young Mogle went to the enlistment office with his sister's boyfriend. Both registered at the same office, and both applications were signed by the same Army registrar.)

Mogle knew the dangers, and he didn't want his daughter to become a war widow.

Although Ida Luella later described her father as "big-hearted, but somewhat stubborn," she was equally stubborn. And so her father proudly walked her down the aisle on Aug. 25, 1943, when she married Army Pfc. William Tralle.

Shortly after the end of the war, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, July 31, 1946, Mogle and his partner, Officer Frank Sturdy, both assigned to the 77th Patrol Division, spotted a suspicious pedestrian on 60th Street, between Vermont and Kansas avenues -- less than a mile from Mogle's home. Mogle and Sturdy were in the area after numerous residents reported seeing prowlers.

The pedestrian had been running between homes, and Mogle and Sturdy stopped to question him.

"We're police officers," Mogle said to the suspect. "What are you doing here?"

"What's it to you?," the man replied, according to Mogle. The man then pulled out a .25-caliber revolver, shot Mogle in the stomach, and ran off. Mogle and his partner fired at least three shots at the fleeing assailant, but they all missed.

Mogle was taken to the Georgia Street Receiving Hospital, where he was visited by his wife and daughter. The bullet was lodged near Mogle's lungs, and doctors were unable to remove it. Mogle was transferred to L.A.'s General Hospital, were he died a week later, on Aug. 7, 1946.

Mogle was the second LAPD war emergency officer to be killed in the line of duty, after Officer Norbert J. "Bert" Husemen was shot and killed seven months earlier, on Dec. 31, 1945, when he responded to argument between two men over the ownership of a baby carriage.

In Mogle's case, aside from a general physical description of the shooter, the only clue, other than the description of Mogle's killer as "squinty-eyed," was a bent piece of wire found at the scene and believed to have been dropped by the shooter.

At the September 1946 monthly meeting of the LAPD Reserve Corp, Police Chief Clemence Brooks Horrell presented Mogle's widow with her husband's badge.

Officer Mogle, who was 45 when he died, was buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery. He was eventually joined there by his wife, Ida, who died in March 1996, at the age of 94. They were married for slightly more than 24 years; she was a widow for nearly 50 years.

There was an extensive LAPD investigation into Mogle's death, and least two arrests -- including a recent parolee from San Quentin State Prison who had been serving a sentence for robbery. He was picked up by police about a month later and about three miles from the Mogle shooting, with a hacksaw blade strapped to his leg and a piece of wire similar to the wire dropped at the scene of the Mogle shooting. After questioning, he was released.

No one was ever charged with Mogle's murder. There were no additional arrests and no leads for police to follow. Newspapers stopped covering the case.

Mogle's homicide remains officially unsolved, one of seven unsolved murders of LAPD officers.

Mogle's son, George Ervin Mogle, and William Tralle, his son-in-law, both survived World Was II, although young Mogle, who served as a staff sergeant in the Army Air Force, was shot down during a bombing run over Germany and was held as a prisoner of war.

After the war, both Mogle and Tralle returned to Los Angeles and both joined the LAPD, following in the service of their father and father-in-law. Tralle retired from the department as a sergeant, while young Mogle joined the LAPD in 1947 -- a year after his father's death -- and served for 20 years, retiring in 1967 with the rank of sergeant.

After his death, Mogle was largely forgotten by the LAPD. His name wasn't included on the Police Memorial Monument in front of LAPD's Parker Center because, at the time, the memorial didn't include war emergency or reserve officers (even though only two had been killed in the line of duty).

Fifty years after he was fatally shot, on July 31, 1996, Mogle finally got some of the recognition he deserved, and his name was added to the memorial monument at Parker Center. His son, retired LAPD Sgt. George Ervin Mogle, and daughter, Luella Tralle, were both present for the memorial service. (Tralle's husband, retired LAPD Sgt. William Tralle, died in 1989. Mogle's widow died less than five months before the ceremony.)

"I feel like, at last, he got the honor he deserved," said Mogle's son.

In 2013, 67 years after his death, Mogle was awarded the LAPD's Purple Heart, which is presented to officers -- sometimes posthumously -- "who have demonstrated exceptional bravery and heroism in the line of duty."

And in June 2021, the LAPD unveiled a new memorial at the Police Academy, in recognition of the department's reserve officers and police volunteers, and in honor of the war emergency and reserve officers who gave their lives in the line of duty. The memorial currently lists the names of three officers who made the ultimate sacrifice -- Officers Norbert J. "Bert" Huseman, George Booker Mogle, and Stuart Shigeru Taira.

Officer Mogle's memorial sign is located at the southwest corner of Slauson and Buckler avenues -- about four miles from the scene of the shooting.

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