Posted on 05/29/2017 6:51:58 PM 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.
Duplicate posts are bad enough, but duplicate vanities?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3556198/posts
My mother’s brother went in with the 4th Infantry at Utah as a grunt in the 8th Infantry. Made it through the initial landing but was killed ten days or so later in the hedgerows.
Flash ahead 25 years and my first assignment in the Nam was as a rifle platoon leader with the 4th Div in 3/8 Infantry.
My mother was not pleased, but it worked out OK.
Think about it. Almost 10% of WWII casualties occurred in the Hurtgen Forest. 11 x 5 miles.
Double check your math and sources, please. While very high, they weren’t that high.
Hindsight is pretty good.
Quite a few think the Hurtgen battle was unnecessary.
Just watched “Band of Brothers” all day...
That’s a completely separate discussion.
...Duplicate posts are bad enough, but duplicate vanities?...
I missed it the first time around. Im sure I wasn’t the only one.
On Memorial day, it was worth a repeat.
“Just watched “Band of Brothers” all day...”
—
One of the best ever——and I fell in love with the theme song,which I play often.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uTAIpU0sa0
Welcome home...
The Hurtgen Forest campaign was one of the worst battles ever undertaken by the US Army. Eisenhower, Bradley, all of them should have been skinned alive for that debacle.
Watched B.o.B all day long sitting in front of my TV in my PJ’s. The musical theme is hauntingly sad.
33,000 casualties at Hurtgen, 430,000 for the war. pretty close.
The first number is casualties, which is dead and wounded. The second number is KIA only, not casualties. A comparable number to the 33,000 is 1,076,245 US WWII casualties, from here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war
So now we’re at less than 3%, which is bad for a single battle, no doubt, but nothing like 10%.
Thanks. For years there has been a freeper “Deep in the Hurtgen Forest” (I don’t know if he is still here) that made me wonder why I had never heard of it. I kinda had a clue but recently I started reading about it. No wonder it was not widely known. I really read up on it over the last week.
“...it would have saved everybody a lot of time if they had just shot the men as they got off the trucks.” Correspondent Earnest Hemingway.
LOL. Should be a “once a week sticky”...
Yep, I plan to do it twice a day on Veteran’s and Memorial Days to honor these men. It took me a long time to finally realize what a privilege it is to be around them. Now every two weeks I get to have lunch with a 95 year old man who is the oldest living graduate from the Army ROTC program at the U of O. He landed in Italy with the Tenth Mountain Division in December and was the only one of eight officers who made it all the way to the German surrender in April the next year.
That was somewhat confusing. There were eight officers in his machine gun company.
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