Veteranâ€™s Day: The Magnificent Infantry of WW II

The Army deployed 65 infantry divisions for the Second World War. Each was a small town with its own equivalents for community services plus 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 Infantrymanâ€™s Badge, recognition often eluded them because so few came through to testify to the valor of the many. The infantryman confronted the most dismal fate of all whose duty was uninterrupted by missions completed or a fixed deployment time. They were enveloped within the most chaotic, barbaric, and brittle existence against extraordinary enemies where victory often required actions well beyond prior limits for impossibility.

Omar Bradley said, â€œPrevious 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 14,000â€¦..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.â€

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 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, malaria, arthritis, etc. and most never returned to duty. In the jungles of the Pacific non-combat losses exacted an even greater price. But somehow the infantry crossed Europe and the Pacific and always remained in the forefront of attacks.

Ernie Pyle said of them, â€œThe 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 oneâ€™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.â€

Partial bibliography: A Soldierâ€™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

National 4th Infantry (IVY) Division Association http://www.4thinfantry.org/content/division-history

I wrote this essay to be my annual contribution to Memorial Day and Veteranâ€™s Day as I remember being surrounded by so many extraordinary men. As a young boy though, I saw them as common men who behaved as though they had experienced an ordinary rite of passage. My most often contact with these men started about age nine when my dad began taking me out golfing on the weekends. There was a man who used the first golf cart I ever saw, because as a brigade commander of the 41th infantry in New Guinea he was debilitated by sickness. I remember one fairly good golfer who had kind of a weird back swing, because he was crippled while serving with the Big Red One in Sicily. I often ended up as a dishwasher at Michelbook Country Club. I noticed the chef always limped as he moved around the kitchen. When he saw my puzzled look, he said he got the limp from a wound received when he was with the Rangers at Pointe De Hoc. Those are just a few of the stories I remember among so many others I could tell and have forgotten.

Saluting my Dad, an Infantry Officer with the 81st Infantry Division "The Wildcats".

Made it back safely from the Pacific War.

I was Army Aviation/Vietnam and Field Artillery/Germany.

A Salute to all our Veterans!

I just lost my dad in March. He served as a tail gunner on B25’s and B17’s out of Corsica in WWII. He flew 72 missions on B17’s before being shot down over Italy. He barely escaped because the turret was jammed and he had only a backup chute. Fortunately for my Dad, He was rescued by the Canadians. They were truly the greatest generation of Americans. I served in the Navy during Vietnam on the U.S.S. Coral Sea supporting flight ops off the coast of Vietnam. We came home as lepers. There was no thank you for your service. There was no welcome home. They called us “Baby Killers” not heroes. We were blamed for this war even though it was not of our choosing or making. We were blamed because we served. Imagine if no one served. Who would be there to defend you from the worst among us. It’s ironic that people who have never given anything want to deny my free speech. Quite frankly, IMHO, most Americans no longer deserve being defended. They count for naught to those that gave and those that gave all. To those that do honor Veterans... Thank you.

My Dad, who served in the infantry in the Ardennes and Battle of the Bulge, and crossed the Rhine at Remagen on the first day, always spoke of the record-cold and deep snow of that winter. I’ve seen many similar accounts from his fellow soldiers over the years.

When he was in his mid 80’s, I traveled 200 miles to join him for a ceremony honoring WWII vets planned on a summer day by my home town. He proudly donned his Eisenhower jacket and we walked a long distance to the site. Before we reached our destination, people in front of us turned around and were walking back. The ceremony of honor had been cancelled, due to a light rain. Dad laughed, recounted the winter of ‘45, and sat in the rain at the venue, reminiscing with many other sturdy vets who chose to do the same. The vets were promised a rescheduled event, which never happened.

That said, I honor the Vietnam Vets, whose return home was treated shamefully. MIA flags still hang in my city, when men were knowingly left behind, and the issue covered up under the leadership of our current Sec. of State and senior Senator from Arizona.

As the “Greatest Generation” dwindles, it becomes the duty of their heirs to keep their memory green! However, I use the term “Greatest Generation” in quotes because while WW2 was INDEED the largest and costliest conflict that the USofA has ever fought in, that term diminishes the generations who came before, and that is NOT RIGHT! The Revolutionary War? The American Civil War? WW1? EACH generation has its challenges and if they were not as great as WW2, they were LUCKY by that alone!

For my family it was in 1943, on the Italian battlefield that my father, on this day, received the first and most serious of his 4 battlefield wounds from WW2. As he told the story, it was a rifle shot that went into the groin and took out much of his buttock, making him an ‘OFFICIAL’ half-assed Lieutenant! He came very close to death that day as he almost bled-out before they properly staunched the bleeding. It was only after 2+ months in the hospital that he checked himself out in order to rejoin his outfit, 45th Infantry Division (Thunderbirds) for the Anzio Invasion. A semi-funny aside here is that he was forever furious that the medical record that followed him for the rest of his life, described it as a buttock wound, which could be interpreted as a wound taken while retreating from the enemy. As he would say, no proper Infantryman ever wants such a description!

The 45th Infantry Division (Oklahoma/Colorado/New Mexico National Guard) entered the war with the Sicily Invasion (Operation Husky) and after 4 amphibious Landings, ended the war in Munich, Germany. They ranked 2nd in ETO “days of combat” (511) and 4th in casualties with 20+k.

I left off two of my references for my post. The 45th is one of those divisions I placed into an Excel spreadsheet for further study. Overall the division suffered 150% casualties, but its loss in the rifle platoons I estimated at 486% with 96% of the men killed based on what Omar Bradley said in his book. That was quite an outfit.

45th Infantry Division
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45th_Infantry_Division_(United_States)

Remembering the Thunderbirds â€“ Oklahomaâ€™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 â€œone of the finest, if not the finest infantry division in this history of modern warfare.â€

I remain amazed how certain infantry divisions could be chosen repeatedly for initial assaults where they incurred terrible casualties. The corps and army commanders had favorites and somehow division staffs responded to reconstitute and retrain the rifle platoons every few weeks without losing the quality of the assault forces. It seems other divisions were usually sent to less active sectors, entered combat later in time, or occupied a flank in an attack. Again these were the most ordinary of men, so I keep hearing Aaron Coplandâ€™s Fanfare for the Common Man as I read the narratives for this essay

From my links and the Excel spreadsheet I have done on the divisions, I computed the 84th casualties at 52% overall and 168% in their rifle platoons. They entered the ETO in November 1944 and fought through April 1945. VE day was early May. Those rates of loss place the division among the most heavily involved in the last six months of the war.

My uncle was among that 168% wounded. He was sent as a replacement to the 84th. and arrived in Marche, Belgium on or about December 23,1944. He was wounded outside Soy, Belgium on 1/3/45. That got him out of the line and later reassigned to a transport unit. The 84th. was in the thick of it alright. They were what the Army classified as a ‘’’heavy’’ infantry unit in that they had larger numbers of troops in each regiment, their own ‘’organic’’(or divisional) artillery and a tank destroyer unit assigned to them.

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