Posted on 05/01/2014 7:23:39 PM PDT by Retain Mike
The Army deployed 67 infantry divisions for the Second World War. Each was like a small town with its own equivalents for community services plus the 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. Except for the Purple Heart and the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge, recognition was often missing because so few came through to testify to the valor of many. The infantryman faced the most dismal fate of all whose duty was uninterrupted by missions completed or a fixed deployment time.
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 those 67 divisions suffered 100% or more casualties. However, regimental staffs saw their frontline units obliterated three to six times over. To deal with this problem there were never enough infantrymen coming from the states. Replacement centers continually reassigned artillerymen, machine gunners, cooks, and clerks to infantryman 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.
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 of these men never returned to duty. In the jungles of the Pacific non-combat losses exacted an even greater price. But somehow such assault divisions 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. And good soldiers 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 U.S. Infantryman in World War II by Robert S. Rush 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
National 4th Infantry (IVY) Division Association http://www.4thinfantry.org/content/division-history
Army Battle Casualties and Non-battle Deaths in World War II
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/Casualties/index.html
As a former Infanteer, the only guys I respected more were the combat engineers. Everyone else was wogs (without guts). Those engineers have a tough job too, nothing like prodding for mines with a bayonet under fire.
Very brave men...I think the frontal assault on D-day was crazy though and an awful slaughter of many great men. I understand that Joseph Stalin was pushing hard for that invasion.
Thanks for the write up. A cousin of my Dad’s has an interview (transcript) on the web, from some college kid’s project. He was a scout, and talked about how they had it easy - having vehicles, sleeping in the vehicles, etc. (”Sure, we were behind enemy lines, if anybody really knew where the lines were. But it’s not like we were looking for a fight.”)
He mentioned a few times about how bad he felt for the poor guys in the infantry.
He told of the time when he first got there and always had plenty of food because guys were giving away any rations with pork in them.
Once he got into the fight he realized why - the pigs would feed on the corpses on the side of the roads. He quit eating pork too.
I hope we’re not forgetting the Marine Corps....
Thank you for posting!
I’m a bit skeptical about that. The military was ordered to integrate in 1948, but the Army dragged its feet until the Korean War broke out. There, the Army was so desperate for troops, any troops, that trying to maintain colored and white unit differentiation proved too problematic. If integration was successful six years later, under far more trying and chaotic circumstances, why couldn’t it have been possible in 1944?
Thanks for the article. I recently read an internet article written by a soldier describing his experience in the Battle of the Bulge. I recognized his units, 2nd Infantry Div. and 38th Infantry Regiment, as units that my dad was in. The author mentioned that he fired bazookas and 81 mm mortars, which was my dad’s MOS.
I knew that it was a long shot, but I wondered if maybe, just maybe, he knew my dad. To make a long story short, I was able to find an address for the author, sent him a letter, and received a reply. He knew my dad and gave me the name and address of another man in the same unit who was in the same mortar crew as my dad!
I have since had several phone conversations with the 2 men. The second man sent me a picture in which he is standing right next to my dad. That is the only picture of my dad that I have. The picture was taken in Pilson, Czechoslovakia in 1945. It is a treasure to me since my parents were divorced when I was very young, so I didn’t really know my dad, although I had met him when I went to his home and introduced myself when I received my draft notice. Surprisingly, he knew who I was when he answered the door. I visited him a few times after I got out of the army, but he never discussed his military experiences.
My dad died in 1981 and I was presented the flag that covered his casket for the military funeral. I was so honored. I am very proud of him, and I am proud to be his son.
But what an incredible set of circumstances for me to actually be able to talk to two men who served with, and remembered, my dad. It truly was a long shot.
Perhaps you are thinking of the 28th ID, who got mauled in the hedgerows, again in the Hurtgen Forest and once again buying time for the Airborne to make history at Bastogne?
My dad was a BAR gunner in the 110th Regiment of the 28th. He was proud of what he did, but always said that the official history of the war was written by the same rear echelon types who decided that the Hurtgen Forest was a good place for an attack and the Germans would never come through the Ardennes again, and was thus highly suspect.
patton wanted to keep going and deal with the russians right there. we wouldn’t let him.
I believe you are thinking about the 106th Division, the Golden Lions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/106th_Infantry_Division_%28United_States%29
The 106th was one of the last combat units deployed to Europe, and in December 1944, it was thought they would get some on the job training in the “quiet” Ardennes sector. Two regiments, the 422 and 423 Infantry, were placed in the exposed Schnee Eifel salient, and were surrounded and destroyed in the first few days of the battle. The third regiment, the 424th, was defending St. Vith and suffered heavy casualties. The division was never fully reconstituted and not returned to major combat.
The other division destroyed in the Ardennes was the 28th, a veteran division sent there to recover from heavy losses in the Hurtgen Forest. It was stretched over a very long front. The northern regiment, the 112th, was herded into the St. Vith “Fortified Goose Egg.” The southern regiment, the 109th, was pushed back to the south. The center regiment, the 110th, bore the full brunt of 5th Panzer Army’s attack and was wiped out. 28th Infantry Division also did not fully recover from this mauling.
World War II was a meatgrinder that consumed huge numbers of troops. The difference with World War I is that the combat was more fluid instead of static. But the casualties were even higher. As bad as the casualty rates were for American divisions fighting in the west, they pale in comparison to the casualties of the brutal war in the East between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
In the Battle of the Bulge, the United States Army suffered about 75,000-80,000 casualties, of which about 19,000 were killed. It is considered the largest single land battle fought by the US Army. On the Eastern Front, that was small change. During the “Right Bank Ukraine” Operation from December 1943 to April 1944, the Soviets suffered 1,100,000 casualties, of which 270,000 were KIA. While that was a gigantic offensive, it gives an idea of the sacrifices they demanded to win.
There’s a daily post here posted by FReeper Homer_J_Simpson of the New York Times from 70 years ago. Each day you can read the progress of the global war. In the Russian press releases, they always talk about how many “inhabited places” they have retaken from the Germans. There was a reason for that. Those villages and “inhabited locations” provided the fresh cannon fodder to replace their staggering losses. When the Red Army entered a village, every male between the ages of 16 and 45 was given a scrap of uniform, a weapon, a few hours of training and a vodka ration. Then they were let loose to take their revenge on the Germans. Poorly trained, they suffered horrible losses. But as the Red Army marched forward, it continuously regenerated itself, which was something the Germans could not do.
That’s what war requires. And women have no place in the front lines of this sort of endeavor.
“Sappers” were also the guys who “Probed” the ground looking for Land Mines! ENORMOUS TESTICLES!!!!
Keep this in mind the next time somebody tries to tell you that we should have extended the war by marching on Moscow. As a practical matter our divisions (as well as those of our allies) by the Winter of 1944 were operating far below their authorized strength in the all-important category of infantry.
Raised in California, however.
There were a lot of “Rules of Thumb” developed from experience in WW2. One of them was the idea of “Wastage”. That a division operating “on the line” could expect a certain percentage of casualties PER DAY regardless of the level of combat. Those casualties came from routine patrolling activities and the minor skirmishes associated with enemy probing. If the division went into an offensive, or had to repel a major assault, then those daily casualty figures would of course rise.
Of course all those “wastage” casualties were pretty much infantry or soldiers attached to infantry units.
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