Posted on 05/29/2017 8:46:16 AM PDT by Retain Mike
The Army deployed 65 infantry divisions for the Second World War. Each was a small town with its own equivalents for community services within eight categories of combat arms. Units such as artillery, engineering, and heavy weapons engaged the enemy directly. Yet of all categories, the foot soldier faced the greatest hazard with the least chance of reward.
These civilians become warriors confronted the most dismal fate of all whose duty was uninterrupted by missions completed or a fixed deployment time. The infantryman was enveloped within a most deranged, barbaric, and brittle existence against a resolute enemy where victory often required actions pushing beyond prior limits for impossibility. Except for the Purple Heart and the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge, recognition often eluded these common men become citizen soldiers because so few came through to testify to the valor of the many.
Omar Bradley said, “Previous combat had taught us that casualties are lumped primarily in the rifle platoons. For here are concentrated the handful of troops who must advance under enemy fire. It is upon them that the burden of war falls with greater risk and with less likelihood of survival than any other of the combat arms. An infantry division of WW II consisted of 81 rifle platoons, each with a combat strength of approximately 40 men. Altogether those 81 assault units comprised but 3,240 men in a division of 14,000…..Prior to invasion we had estimated that the infantry would incur 70 percent of the losses of our combat forces. By August we had boosted that figure to 83 percent on the basis of our experience in the Normandy hedgerows.”
Nearly a third of the 65 divisions in the Pacific and European theaters suffered 100% or more casualties. However, their regimental staffs saw frontline units obliterated three to six times over. To deal with this problem there were never enough infantrymen coming from the states, though large numbers were transferred from Army Service Forces and Army Air Forces to Army Ground Forces. Replacement centers overseas continually reassigned artillerymen, machine gunners, cooks, and clerks to infantry duties. The situation in Europe became so severe that rear area units in France and Great Britain were tasked to supply soldiers for retraining as infantrymen. Those suffering battle fatigue came off the line for a few days for clean uniforms, bathing, hot food, and sleep. However, scarcity compelled their repeated return until crippling wounds, mental breakage, death, or victory brought final relief.
For example the 4th and 29th Infantry landed on D-Day and suffered about 500% battle casualties in their rifle platoons during the eleven months until VE-Day. Added to these numbers were half again as many non-battle human wrecks debilitated by trench foot, frost bite, pneumonia, hernia, heart disease, arthritis, etc. Many never returned to duty. In the jungles of the Pacific, non-combat losses often exacted a greater price. But somehow the infantry crossed Europe and the Pacific and always remained in the forefront of attacks.
Ernie Pyle said of them, “The worst experience of all is just the accumulated blur, and the hurting vagueness of being too long in the lines, the everlasting alertness, the noise and fear, the cell-by-cell exhaustion, the thinning of the surrounding ranks as day follows nameless day. And the constant march into the eternity of one’s own small quota of chances for survival. Those are the things that hurt and destroy. But they went back to them because they were good soldiers and they had a duty they could not define.”
Partial bibliography: A Soldier’s Story by Omar N. Bradley Brave Men by Ernie Pyle (the quote named Tommy Clayton, but was generalized here because Ernie Pyle saw him as an example of the infantrymen he loved.) Crusade in Europe by Dwight D. Eisenhower The U.S. Infantryman in World War II by Robert S. Rush Foot Soldier by Roscoe C. Blunt, Jr. Links for Listings of United States Divisions during WW II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_divisions_during_World_War_II http://www.historyshots.com/usarmy/
Army Battle Casualties and Non-battle Deaths in World War II http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/Casualties/index.html
3rd 'Marne' Infantry Division http://www.custermen.com/ItalyWW2/Units/Division3.htm Total casualties greater than 34,000
National 4th Infantry (IVY) Division Association http://www.4thinfantry.org/content/division-history Total casualties of 34,000
29th Infantry Division http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/29th_Infantry_Division_(United_States)
45th Infantry Division http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45th_Infantry_Division_(United_States)
Remembering the Thunderbirds – Oklahoma’s 45th Infantry Division http://www.baptistmessenger.com/remembering-the-thunderbirds-oklahomas-45th-infantry-division/ Total casualties of 62,640 When Gen. George S. Patton described the 45th Infantry Division, he said it was “one of the finest, if not the finest infantry division in this history of modern warfare.”
Men like these, who at the same time are both extraordinary and ordinary, should never be forgotten. The reference and links contain much more information.
My Father was a combat engineer in WWII.
He spoke very highly of the infantry. He also admired the armored divisions.
And just what were the ROE for WWII infantry?
The infantry we have today is just as good. And much better equipped.
And with the right civilian leaders....
Kill Krauts. Kill Japs.
Watch the opening of the movie Patton and you will get a sense of what the rules were.
Very well done. I was not infantry, I was a Headquarters Pog. My dad was not infantry, he commanded an LCT on Utah Beach. He had an Army engineer company, with bulldozers and TNT.
Nice job, Mike, but why exclude mountain, airborne, and armored infantry? You also left out the Mediterranean Theater which had infantry elements.
I’m currently reading ‘Battleground Pacific’, by Sterling Mace. I also like all the books by Robert Leckie.
Mine, too.
I saw on Book TV a few years ago, an author taking highlights out of his book on the organization the processed the effects of dead service personnel.
So, the usual, live munitions, etc, as well as embarrassing stuff from any and all paramours, particularly if the deceased was married, was filtered out.
The book covered the expansion of the facility (in MO, iirc) as the war went on.
It also went into the steady lowering of the physical requirements for a rifleman as the supply was “depleted”.
This is of the 208th Engineer Combat Battalion landing at Utah Beach, June 1944.
This could have been Real Saxophonits's Father's ship.
I too grew up with WW II vets all around. Rarely was the war spoken of by them on an extended basis, but it was often referred to in popular entertainment and figured large in our boys’ games and in our imaginations. To a remarkable degree, we live in a world that remains deeply shaped by America’s sacrifices and victory in WW II. As a Baby Boomer, I know that much of what my generation and those following have enjoyed came from the WW II generation.
Great picture. That’s an LST (Landing Ship, Tank). Dad was on an LCT (Landing Craft, Tank), about 110 feet long.
I hear you, Mike. My own father and uncles are a fine microcosm.....somehow, though, they all served in the Pacific, and none of them were infantry.
My father’s army engineer battalion built airfields across the pacific, from Hawaii starting in Jan 1942 through VJ day on Okinawa. McArthur asked for the battalion for Japanese occupation duty, but didn’t get them, as they had the longest term of overseas duty of any army construction battalion.
My uncles service included a navy fighter pilot, aircraft mechanic, a sailor type, a marine officer (don’t recall his speciality) who received a great deal of ribbing because his name is McArathur.
Then, I had a school teacher who appears in a famous photo from the Korean War. Four marines crouching in the ruins of Seoul after the landing at Inchon, one shooting back at a sniper with an M1 carbine. He said that he was so terrified, could hardly even remember his own name, but kept fighting and advancing because he was a Marine.
Most of the sons of the WW2 and Korea generation in my family have served our own terms in the military. I did 6 years in the USAF. A nephew is currently a foreign service officer, with an office in the US Embassy in Kabul. He, of course, is serving his own time in a war zone. He hears bombs detonating somewhere in town most weeks.
Rinse and repeat.
“100% or more casualties.”
Didn’t know there was more than 100%.
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