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Posted on 05/08/2025 10:30:05 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, and their duty was uninterrupted by missions completed or a fixed deployment time. The infantryman was enveloped within a 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, even 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 Divisions 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, gangrene, 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 through plague, malaria, dengue, scrub typhus, trachoma, hepatitis, dysentery, roundworm, and hookworm. But somehow the infantry crossed Europe and the Pacific and always remained at 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.”
Eighty years ago on May 8, the survivors realized they could go home
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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.”
Churchill, Ike, & The "Epic Human Tragedy" Of The First Wave At Omaha
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-06/churchill-ike-epic-human-tragedy-first-wave-omaha
A D-Day Survivor Story
https://biggeekdad.com/2019/05/a-d-day-survivor-story/
They’re still The Greatest Generation.
At least to me.
“Eighty years ago on May 8, the survivors realized they could go home”
Except those that had just found out they were scheduled to deploy to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan.
Thank you…
My old man, airborne, twice wounded, was one of those who got to come home.
His brothers as well
Three of his cousins were not so lucky.
Despite being informed, you still conflate infantryman with rifleman. Every member of an infantry regiment in WW2 was eligible for the CIB. I haven’t counted them, but I’d bet there were at least 40 different MOS that qualified. Yes, a machine gunner was an infantryman if serving in an infantry unit; yes, a cook was an infantryman if serving in an infantry unit. Do some research and correct your misstatements.
....my late dad was in the Signal Corps stationed in the Pacific during WWII...never really spoke much about his experiences there....he caught some kind of “crud” (what he called it) there and years and years afterward, from time to time it would manifest itself as a rash or something on his arms and legs...could never get rid of it....he hated the idea that Americans were so fond of driving Toyotas, Nissans (formerly Datsuns), Hondas, Subarus, etc....”the Japs really won that war”...he would say....
My uncle, dad’s oldest brother was a marine in the Pacific. On Okinawa, he was pinned under a jeep with broken hips and broken legs, and a Japanese patrol bay, and added him through his throat while he lay there trapped.
He lived amazingly enough. Hated the Japanese for the rest of his life.
Pretty sure he would’ve agreed with your dad.
You missed “Up Front” by Bill Mauldin.
That should have read “bayoneted him”. Damn autocorrect
Thanks for this informative post on V-E day.
Most normies have zero sense of history except from the TV, maybe this will help.
reading this reminded me of the scene in Audie Murphy’s movie To Hell and Back, when his platoon was riding on the back of Sherman tank.
One of infantryman said to the tanker they got it made, and the tanker said back to him that the tank only had 3 inches of armor. The infantryman sarcastically responded, how thick do you think this shirt is!
My dad was combat infantry in WWII and Korea. He hated all Asians with a passion until the day he died.
I had my front tooth knocked out with a baseball bat when I was 12. My dentist, a Hawaiian born of Japanese descent, had to put in temporary tooth about every 6 months as my face would change as I grew and the temp would fall out.
My mom always took me to my appointments, but dad got frustrated and decided to take me. When the dentist came out my dad stood up and said “ a G’damn g@@k! No wonder his tooth won’t stay in! I used to shoot you SOB’s in the war! We left and never went back.
Roy! Roy!
I’ve known that man for 30 years!
Hatred is a tough thing to overcome, especially when it’s based on real personal experiences.
The Pacific War was a racial Clash; the Japs were as much to blamed for that as anyone else.
It’s a shame that entire lives were lived postwar carrying that in their minds, but I guess it’s inevitable.
Except those that had just found out they were scheduled to deploy to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan.
The last episode of Band of Brothers talked about the points system that determined who would go to the Pacific.
I believe I and my brother are alive thanks to the two atomic bombs being dropped on Japan. Our small town, North Dakota dad graduated from high school six months early in order to join the Army Air Corps. Became a weatherman on a B-29 crew, flying through typhoons and atomic bomb blasts in the South Pacific. Had Japan not surrendered, he would have been there in a B-29 until the war ended or he ended.
The other thing dropping Fat Man and Little Boy did, was to prevent the Soviets from occupying at least half of Japan which, no doubt, would have led to a Korea-like Civil War, that we would have been involved in.
How about:
Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany Paperback – September 24, 1998
by Stephen E. Ambrose (Author)
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