Twenty-Nine, Let’s Go: A History of the 29th Infantry Division in World War II

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Text originally published in 1948 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

29, LET’S GO

A HISTORY OF THE 29TH INFANTRY DIVISION IN WORLD WAR II

BY

JOSEPH H. EWING

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

Maps 5

Foreword 6

Introduction 8

Chapter 1: Fall In 12

Chapter 2: England 31

Chapter 3: Omaha Beach 56

Chapter 4: St. Lô 117

Chapter 5: Pursuit Through Normandy 162

Chapter 6: Brest 186

Chapter 7: On Line In Germany 229

Chapter 8: November Offensive 255

Chapter 9: Watch on the Roer 301

Chapter 10: Jülich 332

Chapter 11: Mission Accomplished 369

Battle Credits 411

The General 412

Roster of the Battle Dead 432

Casualty Tables 445

Command of 29th Infantry Division 450

Detachments 453

Attachments 454

Assignment to Higher Units 455

Distinguished Unit Citations 456

Awards of Croix De Guerre 459

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 461

Maps

1: England and the Route to Normandy

2: Omaha Beach: H-hour to Noon of D-day

3: Omaha Beach: Noon to Midnight of D-day

4: Advance of June 7-8, 1944

5: Advance of June 9-10, 1944

6: Development of Beachheads: June 9-13, 1944

7: St. Lô Campaign: June 13-July 11, 1944

8: Front Lines: July 11-12-13, 1944

9: Martinville Ridge: July 15-16, 1944

10: Fall of St. Lô: July 17-18, 1944

11: Advance in the Vire Area: July 28-August 16, 1944

12: The Falaise Gap: August 9, 1944

13: The Brest Campaign: August 25-September 18, 1944

14: Task Force Sugar: August 26-September 10, 1944

15: The Western Front (North Sector): November 8, 1944

16: Geilenkirchen—Würselen Area: September 30-November 15, 1944

17: November Offensive: November 16-December 8, 1944

18: Siersdorf—Bettendorf: November 16, 1944

19: Siersdorf—Bettendorf: November 16-18, 1944

20: Attack on Setterich: November 17-19, 1944

21: Aldenhoven—Dürboslar—Niedermerz: November 19-21, 1944

22: Bourheim: November 21, 1944

23: The 175th at Bourheim: November 22-26, 1944

24: The 116th at Koslar: November 21-28, 1944

25: Kirchberg: November 27-28, 1944

26: The West Bank of the Roer: December 8, 1944

27: Capture of Jülich: February 23, 1945

28: To München-Gladbach: February 24-28, 1945

29: Operations Across the Rhine (The 116th at the Ruhr Pocket)

30: The Bremen Enclave: May-December 1945

Foreword

IN SEPTEMBER 1945, while the 29th was occupying the Bremen Enclave, a four-man historical committee was assembled at Division Headquarters to prepare a combat history of the Division. Two members of the committee, Lt. James Sharp and Sgt. Robert Ainley, were recent transfers from the 69th Division. Pfc. Jack Krupnick was a machine gunner in Company D, 175th Infantry. I was a rifle platoon leader with Company G of the 175th. How-ever, progress in laying the groundwork of the history was retarded by redeployment, which left me as the sole member of the committee by the time the Division returned to the States. Under the general editorial supervision of Col. William J. Witte, Chief of Staff and former Division G-3, I resumed work on the history at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, later continuing this work at the offices of the Infantry Journal Press in Washington, D.C.

This history was originally envisaged as a less detailed narrative of about half its present length, with special emphasis laid on the pictorial presentation of the story, but when this work was nearly completed it was decided to expand the history into a more comprehensive and detailed work that would serve as a more adequate record of the Division’s combat achievements.

The enlarging of the history involved a process of gradual additions and rewriting, through which an entirely new manuscript evolved. At the same time many pictures were added.

The principal sources of historical material used in compiling this work include the after-action reports of the Division and its component units, the Division telephone journals, G-2 and G-3 periodic reports, Division field orders, newspaper clippings, diaries, the files of 29 Let’s Go (the Division newspaper), the History of the 115th Infantry in World War II, and the yet unpublished history of the 110th Field Artillery Battalion. In addition, considerable material has been derived from the after-battle interviews conducted by officers of the 2d and 4th Information and Historical Services, and by Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, of the War Department Historical Division; also from interviews with veterans of the Normandy and Brest campaigns conducted from the Division Historian’s office, and from conferences with officers of the Division held at St. Magnus-am-Lesum, Germany, in December 1945, and at Baltimore in November 1946.

Maps covering the action on Omaha Beachhead, the action near St. Lô and the action during the November offensive in Germany are based upon maps published by the War Department Historical Division. Other maps were prepared from the 29th Division after-action reports. The record of assignment and attachment is taken from the Order of Battle (ETO) published by the War Department. The staff and command roster and the tables of casualty figures were prepared from Division records. The sources of photographs appearing in this book are listed on page 315.

This book does not attempt to tell the whole story of every unit of the Division. For, just as an army history treats of corps and divisions, so a division history must confine itself to a regimental or battalion level. Because of this limitation thousands of individual exploits and hundreds of small-unit actions have gone unrecorded. It will fall to any subsequent regimental or battalion histories that may appear to tell this story at lower level. However, many important actions are covered here at company level, and even some patrol actions, inasmuch as they can be considered typical, are told in considerable detail, often by men who participated in them.

Grateful acknowledgment is made here to all those persons who have co-operated and assisted in the preparation of this book. Specifically, acknowledgment is made to the members of the War Department Historical Division who assisted in problems of research; to the Commanding General of Fort George G. Meade, for providing office space and equipment in the late winter and spring of 1946; to personnel of the War Photo Library of Life and of the Army Signal Corps Still Photo Library; to Louis Azrael, of the Baltimore News-Post, and Holbrook Bradley, of the Baltimore Sun papers; to Col. Joseph I. Greene, Orville C. Shirey and N. J. Anthony, of the Infantry Journal, and others of its staff, who were generous in their co-operation and assistance; and to those battalion and regimental commanders and other officers of the 29th Division who read and checked the manuscript.

Introduction

THREE MONTHS after America’s entry into World War I the 29th Division was organized at Sea Girt, New Jersey, from National Guard units of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. Under command of Maj.-Gen. Charles G. Morton, the Division was concentrated at Camp McClellan, near Anniston, Alabama, in August 1917, where it trained for ten months before embarking for France. The principal units of the Division were:

57th Infantry Brigade:

113th Infantry Regiment

114th Infantry Regiment

111th Machine-Gun Battalion

58th Infantry Brigade:

115th Infantry Regiment

116th Infantry Regiment

112th Machine-Gun Battalion

54th Field Artillery Brigade:

110th Field Artillery Regiment

111th Field Artillery Regiment

112th Field Artillery Regiment

104th Trench Mortar Battery

Division Troops:

110th Machine-Gun Battalion

104th Field Signal Battalion

104th Engineer Regiment

Headquarters Troop

The Division’s first assignment at the front was occupation of a quiet sector on the German-Swiss border, controlling the Belfort Gap. After holding this position for two months the Blue-and-Gray was sent north, September 22, to participate in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. On October 8 the Division went over the top for the first time and fought in the frontline trenches for twenty-one consecutive days, advancing six miles at a cost of 4,781 casualties. After ten days in a rest area the 29th was ordered back into the line to join in Second Army’s drive against the forts at Metz. The Division was marching up to the front when the report of the Armistice was received.

Following its relief from Federal service after World War I, the Division was reorganized as a part of the National Guard. The 57th Infantry Brigade, consisting of the 113th and 114th Infantry Regiments from New Jersey, was taken from the Division and replaced by a Virginia infantry brigade, the 88th, consisting of the 1st Virginia Infantry (a predecessor of the 176th Infantry) and the 116th Infantry. Two Maryland regiments were then formed into the 58th Infantry Brigade. These were the 1st and 5th Maryland Infantry Regiments, now designated as the 115th and 175th, respectively.

The Division was first assembled following World War I in 1936 for a field maneuver at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, and in 1939 it assembled again to participate in a fifteen-day III Corps maneuver which involved re-enactment of the First Battle of Bull Run, at Manassas, Virginia. In 1940 it took part in First Army’s maneuvers in New York State.

Although the 29th Division, as such, did not exist prior to 1917, the major units which comprise the Division claim a military lineage extending back through our country’s history to Colonial times.

The 176th stemmed from the First Virginia Regiment (1758); the 116th from the Second Virginia Regiment (1760). These regiments themselves had been formed from Colonial militia units, some of which antedated the French and Indian War. Col. George Washington commanded the militia units which became the First Regiment in 1758, and Col. Patrick Henry headed this regiment when it was reorganized in 1775. Both of these regiments fought in the Revolutionary War, achieving their major success at the Battle of Great Bridge which cleared Virginia of British troops.

The 115th Infantry descends from the earliest frontier militia units formed in Western Maryland before the Revolutionary War. These units fought in the Continental Army against the British, the first two companies to leave Maryland in the defense of the Colonies making a 21-day march from Frederick, Maryland, to Boston, in August 1775.

The 175th descends from the first uniformed military company in Maryland, a group of fifty-eight men of Baltimore Town which formed under the leadership of Mordecai Gist, prominent Baltimore citizen, on December 3, 1774. This company became a part of the regiment of Maryland troops created by the Maryland Assembly on January 1, 1776, as the first official contribution of the Province to General Washington’s army. The regiment, named after its commander, Col. William Smallwood, fought in the Battles of Long Island, Harlem Heights, Fort Washington, and White Plains.

In the general regrouping of forces in the Continental Army in December 1776, Smallwood’s regiment was absorbed into the Fifth Regiment of the Maryland Line. This Fifth Regiment—the Dandy Fifth—was a part of the Continental Army for the remainder of the war, fighting at Trenton, Monmouth, Saratoga, Princeton and Brandywine, and in the Carolinas at Eutaw, Camden, Hobkirk Hill and Guilford Court House.

The Fifth Maryland Regiment was the only one of the pre-29th Division units to see battle in the War of 1812. At the Battle of Bladensburg, when the hastily assembled American militia turned in retreat at the approach of British regulars, the well disciplined Fifth Regiment alone held its ground and engaged the enemy in a spirited fight before it was ordered to withdraw in the face of the numerically superior force. Later when the British fleet appeared off Baltimore and put infantry ashore, the Fifth Regiment joined in the successful defense of the city against Wellington’s Invincibles at Godly’s Wood near North Point, in what is now Baltimore County. This was the land battle which was fought the morning after the bombardment of Fort McHenry, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write the words of our National Anthem.

In 1861-65, when war divided the Nation, military ancestors of the 29th Division met as opposing forces on the same battlefield. Maryland, marking the frontier of the warring states, found herself with divided allegiance. This situation left the State with two First Infantry regiments—one Union, one Confederate. These two regiments formed the major part of the forces engaged at the Battle of Front Royal (May 23, 1862) which resulted in a Confederate victory. The First Maryland (Union) in the Army of the Potomac, fought thereafter at Antietam and Cold Harbor, and in the Petersburg and Appomattox campaigns. Most of the members of the old Fifth Maryland Regiment, favoring the Confederate cause, managed to make their way out of Baltimore when Union forces assumed control of the city, and the regiment as such did not participate in the war.

The First Virginia Regiment (from which the 176th descended) was mustered into Confederate service, becoming the First Regiment of Kemper’s Brigade, and serving throughout the war. It was part of Lee’s army which surrendered at Appomattox. The Second Virginia Regiment (from which the 116th descended) was one of the regiments of the Stonewall Brigade, and fought throughout the war in the Confederate Army. It was one of the three regiments commanded by Brig.-Gen. Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson at the First Battle of Bull Run.

[The 29th Infantry Division’s shoulder insignia of blue and gray, adapted from the design of the monad, the Korean symbol of life, shows blue and gray colors forming one into the other, to represent the reintegration of North and South into a harmonious unity.]

During the Spanish-American War ancestor regiments of the 29th Division were in the United States Army, but none of them saw service outside of the continental limits. In 1916-17 troops of these four regiments served on the Mexican border during the period of military tension there.

A long history also attaches to the 111th and 176th Field Artillery Regiments. The 111th traces its earliest ancestry to the Grimes Battery of the Portsmouth Light Artillery, which fought during the War of 1812. The Norfolk Light Artillery Blues, organized in 1828, is another ancestor of the 111th. The 176th Field Artillery Regiment (from Pennsylvania) dates its history from 1831—the Duquesne Grays.

So much for the background. The 29th Infantry Division entered the Army of the United States in 1941, carrying a proud military tradition, and its actions in the battles of World War II have enhanced its record of military achievement. They could always be counted on, the Honorable Robert P. Patterson, former Secretary of War, said of the 29th Division:

...Our country...will never forget the heroism of those soldiers on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. That was the fateful day of the war. On the fortunes of that landing on the Normandy coast hung success or failure in the war against Germany. The troops met the test. The landing was made good, the beach taken, the cliff stormed, the fame of the 29th Infantry Division...handed down to history. Their record in the St. Lô drive, in the break through France, and in the heavy fighting which followed in the fall and winter gave further proof of their soldierly valor. They could always be counted on.

Chapter 1: Fall In

ON FEBRUARY 3, 1941 the Era of the Armory, with its once-a-week evening drills, came to an end for the 29th Infantry Division, and a new life began for the Blue-and-Gray Guardsmen. On that day the men of the 29th entered upon a life of full time military duty under provisions of the Act of Congress inducting into the service of the United States units of the National Guard.

The first days of this new army life continued to center about the same old armory haunts, in cities and towns of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, but these days were to be few—a necessary interval in effecting the sharp transition to active service. Here in the first flush of excitement attending induction, the armories buzzed with a sudden energy. There were physicals, roll calls, interviews, formations, supply-room lines, and then dismounted drill, calisthenics, military courtesy, and all those inevitable classes of early basic training which were to appear on G-3 schedules again and again throughout the Division’s long period of active duty.

On February 13 Maj.-Gen. Milton A. Reckord, Division Commander, from his newly established headquarters at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, signed the order that sounded assembly for the 6,927 enlisted men and 656 officers who comprised the Division. The order instructed them to leave their state armories and convene at Fort Meade.

To the accompaniment of banging carpenter hammers the battalions and regiments moved into their new Army home. Fort Meade, which was in the labors of a great expansion, had no time to dress up for the occasion. It presented a sorry spectacle in its new, incompleted barracks areas, a cold and forbidding sight. The mud was ankle-deep on the unimproved roads and on the footpaths; unpainted buildings, many of them still under construction, stood naked to the winter, some without doors or windows.

There was an atmosphere of eagerness among the men, however, as the formal training program opened in the company areas on February 24—the beginning of preparation for distant battles still three years in the future.

It was not surprising, however, that the men found little connection between this training and the war in Europe. Omaha Beach, St. Lô, Vire, Brest, Jülich—all were unknown names in an unopened European atlas. The United States was not at war, and although the victorious German armies had sprawled over the Continent and the Luftwaffe was bombing London every night, President Roosevelt just three months before had assured the nation that American troops would be used overseas only in case of attack.

In this mental atmosphere the 29th Division settled down to training. This was still a peacetime army, the army of the campaign hat, the soup-plate helmet, blue denims and the black necktie.

Cold, freezing weather blew across the reservation during this winter, and barracks orderlies stoked their fires clumsily in their inexperience, as they cursed the complicated furnace units. But the weather was no complaint of the men, for it meant frozen roads, and less time to spend in cleaning off overshoes, or in pushing the old two-wheel-drive trucks out of the mud, an assignment which became theirs when the temperature moderated.

The 29th, like all other National Guard divisions of this period, was still a square division, with two infantry brigades of two regiments each. The 115th and the 175th formed the 58th Infantry Brigade, commanded by Brig.-Gen. Amos W. W. Woodcock, while the 88th Brigade, under Brig.-Gen. George M. Alexander was made up of the two Virginia regiments, the 116th and 176th.

Brig.-Gen. William H. Sands’ 54th Field Artillery Brigade contained all the Division’s organic supporting artillery. The two light regiments, the 110th and 111th, equipped at the time with 75mm guns, had been training during pre-induction maneuvers in 1939 and 1940 to provide direct support for the infantry brigades of their respective states, the 110th supporting the 58th Infantry Brigade while the 111th was teamed with General Alexander’s 88th Infantry Brigade. The 176th Field Artillery Regiment, armed with 155mm howitzers, was the general support artillery. The 121st Combat Engineer Regiment from Washington, D.C., completed the list of combat units.

Service units included the 104th Medical Regiment, the 104th Quartermaster Regiment, with representation from most of the area covered by the Division, and the Division Special Troops (commanded by Lt.-Col. P. K. Moisan), consisting of the 29th Signal Company, the 104th Ordnance Company, the 29th Military Police Company, and the Division Headquarters and Headquarters Company.

Although the Division was at only half-strength when it was federalized it looked to a rapid reinforcement through the machinery of Selective Service. An additional ten thousand selectees were expected by April 15. Late in March they began to arrive at Fort Meade to enter upon the thirteen-week Mobilization Training Program that would snake them soldiers.

As training progressed the companies spread out over new training grounds the woods by the Pennsylvania Railroad, the post parade ground, and the pine-studded areas off the Jessup Road.

In these early days the 29th conducted its training with much dummy equipment There were shortages in mortars and in .30-and .50-caliber machine guns, and the new regimental antitank companies found it necessary to use drain pipes mounted on truck wheels as dummy antitank guns.

The since discredited 37mm antitank gun, interestingly enough, received respectful treatment in Baltimore newspapers. It was the new 37mm tank killer, the latest weapon to combat mechanized warfare.

By May artillery units of the Division were engaged in firing problems and further training at Indian town Gap, Pennsylvania, and by June regimental combat teams were taking turns visiting the A. P, Hill Military Reservation in Virginia for two weeks’ training in regimental exercises, Officers of the Division were going away to school: staff officers to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; infantry officers to Fort Benning, Georgia; artillerymen to Fort Sill, Oklahoma; engineers to Fort Belvoir, Virginia—all to learn the new tactics and techniques of modern war.

It was a scorching summer for the new soldiers as they tramped, dusty and sweat-stained, over the Fort Meade reservation. While they hunted the shade for their ten-minute breaks they bore a great envy for the Engineers, who had more trees in their area than anybody else.

The men often got away from camp on passes to Odenton, Laurel, Baltimore, Washington, and other towns, but little existed on the post in the way of entertainment in those days. These were the days before the USO shows, but one cold evening Ed Wynn brought his Fire Chief show to Fort Meade for an outdoor performance, and the entire Division was ordered to attend. The men sitting about on the damp grass were not disposed toward entertainment, and watched the show with questionable interest.

CAROLINA MANEUVERS

Throughout August preparation continued for the First Army maneuvers, and on September 13 the Division left by motor convoy on the first leg of the trip to North Carolina, where the war games were to be held. En route it halted at A. P. Hill, there to engage in two weeks of division problems.

The A. P. Hill reservation comprised the biggest part of Caroline County, near Fredericksburg, Virginia. It had been taken over by the War Department in such a sudden move that the crops remained unharvested in the fields when the 29th Division moved in to occupy this vast training ground.

Zealous competition between the Baltimore newspapers provided an unscheduled feature of the 29th’s training in this area, according to Lt. Robert L. Hewitt, of the 110th Field Artillery Battalion:

Both the Sun papers and the News-Post assigned fulltime staff correspondents to the division and followed up by dispatching circulation trucks daily to the maneuver area. Newsboys wandered incongruously through the bivouac area, and soldiers in the small units could usually rely on the newspapers to tell them which side had won the last problem and what they were to do in the next one long before official reports and orders had percolated down the chain of command.

After two weeks the Division set out again on a 240-mile motor march to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, reaching the post on September 27 and going into bivouac on the artillery range there. The men pitched their tents among the scrub oaks, and set up a base camp on ankle-deep sand. Here they awaited the order to move into the Maneuver base camps. It was hot, and very dry, and sentries were posted on roads that ran past the kitchens to slow down passing trucks lest the dust clouds they raised make the meals unfit for eating. The men bathed in a cold swamp stream that ran through the area, slapped at mosquitoes, pulled sandburs from their blankets and worried a little about snakes, for this was snake country, and copperheads and rattlesnakes were seen almost every day during the maneuvers.

While the Division was engaged in the movement to North Carolina the 3d Battalion of the 175th, commanded by Lt.-Col. Christian L. Claypoole, was selected to furnish the infantry element of the Army’s first war show. After days of rehearsals the show was staged at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, for the Military Affairs Committees of Congress and specially invited ambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps. At the conclusion of the show the battalion moved separately to North Carolina and rejoined the Division.

The II Corps field exercises were held from October 6 to October 17 with division versus division as the first phase. Victory over the 28th Division appeared inevitable on October 10, which saw the Baltimore News-Post reporting:

Supported by the 104th Observation Squadron, Maryland’s only air unit, the reinforced 29th Division was slowly driving the Pennsylvania 28th Division into a giant trap...Action in the war between the divisions began early this evening, and the Pennsylvanians, outnumbered, began an early withdrawal. Sensing victory, the 29th was straining at the leash, anxious to come to grips with their friendly enemy and get the war over so they could return to the comparative comfort of their base camp...If General Reckord’s plan of battle succeeds, the dawn will see the Blue and Gray going over the top. The war should be over shortly before noon.

On weekends these little wars ended and the units returned to base camp, from which thousands of men descended upon Charlotte, Wadesboro, Cheraw and other towns in the area for rest and recreation on Saturdays and Sundays. Weekends, incidentally, were discussed by Maj.-Gen. Lloyd R. Fredendall, Commander of II Corps, in one maneuver critique in which he observed that the effects of heavy weekends had impeded the course of maneuvers when Mondays rolled around. October was hot that year as Red and Blue Armies battled each other. The Red (enemy) troops wore cool denims as their prescribed uniform, and assignment to that army was eagerly sought as a relief from the heavy woolen ODs.

Rumors, of course, had vigorous circulation. The most persistent one was that maneuvers would be cut short, and that the divisions would be sent home before December 1 because the Army lacked sufficient funds. A water shortage, which actually did exist, was also a reason.

But Army denied these rumors, and the war games continued into the First Army Maneuver phase, with corps against corps, on October 20. Here the 29th, in Fredendall’s Second Blue Army Corps, found itself on line with the 28th and 44th Divisions, facing elements of both IV and VI Corps. This maneuver was especially significant because the 1st Division had recently been triangularized, and its operation in the field against a square division was being tested for the first time. As the battle line formed for a long combat in the Rocky River basin the heat spell that had baked the men in the fields was finally broken, and it became very cold, especially at night.

Following this maneuver the 29th moved with II Corps to take positions along the muddy Pee Dee River in another two-week maneuver, this time against IV Corps, which included the 1st and 2d Armored Divisions.

All through these maneuvers mobility was stressed. Infantrymen spent half their time on trucks that were borrowed from the artillery and the quartermaster regiment, and even in horse vans borrowed from cavalry units. The artillery especially received frequent calls to lend trucks to the infantry for use in troop-carrying. Since this would often mean they would first have to unload their field ranges and other equipment, the artillerymen would damn the operation and the immobility it placed upon their guns.

The maneuvers were great, sprawling, rapidly moving affairs, with units scattered miles apart in the hills. Chow was frequently late when QM trucks got lost after dropping infantry in some dark remote spot in the woods; the monstrous horse vans invariably bogged down along the wooded trails and the MPs then drew the job of unsnarling the subsequent traffic tie-up. Fast motor movement characterized these maneuvers. Your IP is the crossroads in Cheraw; be sure you cross at 1900. Your trucks will be there at 1800. This was the kind of order issued to the troops during the truck-riding days in Carolina.

Administrative elements of the division—Finance, Judge Advocate and Unit Personnel—were required to follow behind the maneuvering troops. The idea of a division administrative center had not yet been adopted, so the units which would normally spend their time in Division Rear spent five days each week in riding, digging prone shelters, and pitching tents. On weekends when they were freed from field duty, they attacked their piles of accumulated paper work.

Although this peacetime war was being fought in friendly Carolina, the buildings there afforded no shelter, for they were all off limits to the Division, which lived outside all of the time, absorbing the wet and cold of Carolina’s autumn.

As the final, important GHQ phase drew to a close late in November it got bitterly cold. There was ice on the water buckets in the morning, and gasoline and kerosene stoves were used in tents and were even seen in curtain-enclosed command cars.

The First Army war terminated early in December, and the Blue-and-Gray broke camp and headed back to Fort Meade. The Division, moving in two columns, had one element at A. P. Hill and another in bivouac at South Boston, Virginia, on fateful December 7—the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Men, hunching inside their upturned collars, huddled around car and portable radios and listened to the story of the Japanese attack. At once the war in Europe and the Pacific ceased to be remote and foreign, One day later Congress declared war with Japan; four days later we were at war with Germany and Italy.

WARTIME DUTIES

Back in garrison on December 8-9, the Division strengthened its interior guard, installing additional sentries about the motor parks, ordnance shops, and supply dumps. A thousand new soldiers arrived to replace men recently discharged. Men over twenty-eight years of age expecting an early release from the Army under a new War Department ruling resigned themselves to the prospect of continuing military life. However the Christmas furloughs, at first threatened with cancellation, were duly granted, and many of the men spent the holidays at their homes.

Security of vital areas and coastal defenses became the Division’s first wartime assignment. Defense of Chesapeake Bay and a portion of the Atlantic Coast was the mission of the 116th Combat Team. Motor patrols cruised day and night over lonely shore roads, and on the beach at Kittyhawk, North Carolina, near Cape Hatteras, where jeeps could not go, sentries walked a six-mile post along the damp sands. Emplaced 75mm guns pointed their muzzles out to sea, and artillerymen lived with them and watched, while an infantry regiment, completely motorized, stayed at Fort Meade on a 24-hour alert, on call of the headquarters of the Chesapeake Bay Frontier Defense Command at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Later, in February, the 29th was given the mission of mobile reserve for the New York-Philadelphia Coastal Sector.

Those early days of the war were tense days of caution, uncertainty and extra work. An order received New Year’s Eve announced January 1, 1942, as a day of duty and set the tempo for the new war year. Practice blackouts darkened Fort Meade, and there were air-raid precautions, and air-raid personnel, just as in civilian communities. Motor parks were ready to scatter their vehicles at the first warning of enemy aircraft, and each unit had its designated place on the emergency dispersion map.

During January the 115th scattered itself about Pennsylvania and Virginia, guarding factories, railroad yards, bridges, and warehouses. Its 1st Battalion (less B Company) was in Philadelphia, with B Company in Allentown; the 2d Battalion was in Norfolk and Richmond, and the 3d Battalion in Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. The 175th, in the meantime, continued to train, although in January it was relieved of its bayonets and machine guns in an effort to meet the equipment shortage elsewhere. Shortly afterward it took its turn as a security force, relieving the 115th.

On January 12-14 units of the 116th engaged in an anti-invasion exercise, repelling an invasion attempt by units of the 1st Division in a cold amphibious maneuver at Cape Henry, near Virginia Beach.

War Department regulations governing the retirement from field duty of over age officers took General Reckord from the Division early in January. General Reckord, commander of the 115th Infantry in World War I, and an outstanding leader of the National Guard, was placed in command of the Third Service Command, then known as the Third Corps Area, marking the first time that anyone other than a Regular Army officer had been in command of that installation, Subsequently he was sent overseas to become Theater Provost Marshal of the ETO. General Woodcock, senior officer in the Division, held command from the reassignment of General Reckord until February 20, shortly before the arrival of the new Division Commander, Maj.-Gen. Leonard T. Gerow.

REORGANIZATION

General Gerow, who was later to become commander of V Corps and Fifteenth Army, arrived on the eve of a major organizational change that was to triangularize the Division and take the 176th Infantry from it. The 176th was reassigned to Washington, D.C. to do guard duty in the national capital, and later was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, to become demonstration troops at The Infantry School.

The order officially announcing the triangularization of the Division was issued on March 11, 1942. An extract of this order follows:

Further losses in units and personnel followed the triangularization of the Division. All men in the 121st Engineer Battalion left the 29th to become the engineer battalion of the 37th Infantry Division then preparing for shipment to the Pacific Theater, and an entire newly manned battalion had to be organized and trained.

The 2d Battalion of the 175th and C Battery of the 224th Field Artillery Battalion went as a unit to the Army War Show, which, under the direction of Lt.-Col. Edgar T. Fell, executive officer of the 175th, toured the country, giving spectacular demonstrations as part of a campaign to gain public interest in the army, and to stimulate the sale of War Bonds. These units were not to return to the 29th Division, and upon their departure new units were organized.

Late in May, A Battery of the 224th Field Artillery Battalion (D Battery of the old 110th Field Artillery Regiment) was alerted for overseas shipment, and on. June 5 sailed from Hampton Roads, Virginia, for Bermuda, where it became a part of the 214th Field Artillery Battalion. This battalion and the 89th Infantry Regiment formed a task force for the defense of the island. Later, however, the battalion was disbanded, and the members of D Battery returned to the States, going to the Field Artillery Replacement Training Center at Fort Sill, from which station some of the men were sent to the Pacific and the ETO.

New draftees were arriving in the Division to replace these losses, but the Division was now too far advanced in its training to absorb these men directly in the units, and accordingly a separate center for recruits was formed, under command of Lt.-Col. Louis G. Smith, executive officer of the 115th. This little Division IRTC at times exceeded five thousand men, all in various stages of their thirteen-week training, which they had to complete before going to their units.

In March Division Artillery moved to Camp Edwards, Massachusetts to fire in the GHQ tests. In these tests the Blue-and-Gray artillerymen received excellent ratings as they displayed a sample of the accurate gunnery that was later to delight 29th Division infantrymen during the war in Europe.

A. P. HILL

Hardly had the Division become triangularized when it was alerted to leave Fort Meade. The move, ordered so that room could be made for the new 76th Division, began in the middle of April when units of the 29th set out on a foot and motor march to the now familiar A. P. Hill Military Reservation. At A. P. Hill it set up camp and lived under canvas until the second Carolina maneuvers. The old Broaddus Homestead, one of the landmarks of Caroline County, was taken over as Division Headquarters, but it still wasn’t large enough, and the Special Staff overflowed into adjacent tents.

It is a lonely land, the Baltimore Sun reported. All the farmhouses, barns, churches and country stores within the reservation’s boundaries have been vacant since last summer. Blackberries run wild over untilled sweet potato and cucumber patches. Only a few grain fields, hastily harvested last season, have thinly reseeded themselves. Rabbits are thick. Soldiers say they have seen deer and wild turkeys in the deeper woods.

New things went into the training schedules. The men crouched under overhead artillery fire for the first time and looked up at U.S. combat planes in an air show aimed at teaching aircraft identification. The new jeep, with which the Division was now almost fully equipped, was still a novelty, and the drivers liked to test its mobility off the roads and through the pine and underbrush.

The men were receiving a suspiciously large amount of jungle training. The densest underbrush of the reservation was selected for practice patrols, which were a must for all troops, and in May when the fall of Corregidor was reported, 29th Division soldiers were convinced they were training for the Pacific and not the European War.

After two months of this training at A. P. Hill, the Blue-and-Gray broke camp on July 6, and, leaving the Training Center and the 121st Engineers behind to complete their work, headed again into the pines and cotton fields of Carolina, where the VI Corps maneuvers were to take place.

Marking the first large-scale field operations since the entry of the United States into the war, these war games were made as close to combat as maneuvers could be. The men had fewer weekends off, there were less frequent rest periods, and this time there were no base camps. These were more complicated maneuvers than the 1941 games. River-crossing techniques were practiced, and the familiar Pee Dee River usually had considerable influence on the tactical situation. Although it was unknown to the men of the 29th, the approach of the North Africa invasion brought the maneuvers to an earlier conclusion than had been originally planned, as divisions were withdrawn from the area to prepare for shipment overseas.

On August 17 the 29th left North Carolina for Camp Blanding, Florida, where they found the England-bound 1st Division moving out. Here the Blue-and-Gray prepared to settle down to a long period of garrison life. The men lived under roofs again—in wooden hutments—went swimming in a lake on the post, and lay about on the warm sands. This was sheer luxury compared to the discomfort of maneuvers. It was a real good deal, and Jacksonville was only forty miles away by good roads. The 29th soldier was convinced now that he was going to Florida.

But further dismemberment of the Division loomed. All four of the Division’s artillery battalions, and the 1st Battalion of the 175th, were ordered to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for school-troop duty there, while the Division was ordered to ready an infantry regiment for movement to Fort Benning, Georgia to replace the 29th Infantry Regiment as demonstration troops at the Infantry School. It was all plain as day now. The 29th would never see combat. Never! Not this outfit!

OVERSEAS ALERT

Then, without warning, on September 6, General Gerow summoned all of his regimental and battalion commanders to Division Headquarters, where behind locked doors he announced quietly that immediate preparations would be made for movement overseas.

At once the Division commenced the mammoth task of recalling all of its men to Camp Blanding—men on furloughs and leaves and passes, and in some cases even men in the hospitals. Sound trucks rolled through the streets of Jacksonville, calling on all 29th Division men to return immediately, and similar notices were flashed on the screens of moving picture houses throughout the city.

The units ordered to Fort Sill had not yet entrained, but the advance party of the artillery units had already reached the Artillery School. When this group was notified to return to Camp Blanding the commanding general at Fort Sill, displeased over the change in plan, took his case to Second Army Headquarters. Lt.-Gen. Ben Lear promptly forbade Major Sewell S. Watts Jr. and his party to leave the post. This presented the major with an unusually embarrassing problem, for which no school solution had ever been written. Later, however, this order was countermanded and the detachment hurried back.

The 29th Division, in the meantime, had become an administrative madhouse. Major Robert H. Archer Jr. and Capt. Richard C. Hoffman III, remained at their telephones in the Adjutant General’s Office for seventy-two hours, recalling personnel. In the midst of the administrative confusion 161 newly commissioned officers arrived from Fort Benning and reported for duty. Throughout the Division showdown inspections were the order of the day. Every piece of equipment from 105mm howitzers to tent-pins had to be checked. All weapons went into cosmoline and all equipment was crated and packed. Everyone received his last set of inoculation shots, Division patches disappeared from shirts and field jackets, and Division identification was scraped from trucks and footlockers.

It was a civilian—a railroad representative—who finally brought the word to move, although higher headquarters had orders only for an alert. The trains were coming in the morning, he said, and they would be spotted on