[4] Lt. Col. Butler retired from the Army on 14 January 1946 and worked for the phone company for the rest of his career. What was left of the 99ers in and around Rocherath appeared to be doomed, and like the calvary in Western movies, salvation appeared in the forms of infantry from the 2nd Division and incredibly heavy artillery fire that dropped onto the Germans like rain. Unbeknownst to its commanding general at the time, Maj. Gen. Walter E. Lauer, the division would play a strategic role in the war and would gain the honor of having the most decorated platoon of the US army during World War Two. They were tasked with moving 10 miles (16km) behind the German lines and cutting the Autobahn to prevent the withdrawal of the Germans. Sgt. 395th Infantry Regiment Medical Detachment (99th Infantry . It was redesignated with description updated, for the 395th Regiment on 7 June 1999. . The regiment was organized with three battalions, each containing three rifle companies and a weapons company armed with .30 caliber and .50 caliber machine guns. Honor Roll - 99th Infantry Division "They shall not grow old, As we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, Nor the years condemn. Below are the top five veteran research questions, where to go for further resources, and how to begin your search. Peipers right flank had to be secured and the Americans in that region had to be destroyed. 395 th Regiment Constituted 23 July 1918 in the National Army as the 395th Infantry and assigned to the 99th Division Demobilized 30 November 1918 Reconstituted 24 June 1921 in the. . Two months later, when the 99th Division was transferred to VII Corps under Maj. Gen. Walter E. Lauer, the commanding officer of V Corps, Maj. Gen. Clarence R. Huebner, wrote him: The 99th Infantry Division arrived in this theater without previous combat experience early in November 1944. Those who survived the initial onslaught and did not manage to flee, had to eke out a living on a battleground ravaged by incessant bombardment and street fighting. Outnumbered five to one, they inflicted casualties in the ratio of 18 to one. Field Artillery Battalions were the 370th, 371st, 372nd & the 924th. It was organized with the rest of the 99th on 16 November 1942 at Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi. The campaign in North Africa began with a daring Anglo-American commando raid code-named Operation RESERVIST. The statue of the Minute Man, Captain John Parker, (H.H.Kitson, sculptor), stands on the common in Lexington, Massachusetts. So fierce in fact that the German commander pulled his tanks back for fear of running into a superior American force, deciding to hold his positions until the following morning. The division lost about 20% of its effective strength, including 465 killed and 2,524 evacuated due to wounds, injuries, fatigue, or trench foot; German losses were much higher. Cited in the Order of the Day of the Belgian Army for action at Elsenborn Crest. On at least six different occasions the battalion was forced to place artillery concentrations dangerously close to its own positions in order to repulse penetrations and restore its lines . The 99th RSC's mission was to provide base operations functions for the assigned 13-state Northeast Region. The 10 geographically-based RRCs, including the 99th, were inactivated and replaced with four regional base operations commands. Army policy does not allow for the lineage and honors of a TO&E organization, such as an infantry division, to be perpetuated by a TDA organization, such as an RSC. They continued to fight even as the American press trumpeted the rapid crumbling of German resistance. The German assault caught the 99ers off guard initially, due to the heavy artillery bombardment, but the infantrymen and their supporting mortar fire were able to repel the initial assault at a murderously close range due to the proximity of the opposing tree line from where the enemy advanced. The buck's head was used to indicate the allocation of the organization to the mountainous section of Pennsylvania, where deer abound. Images of picturesque Ardennes landscapes before Christmas, conifers with branches drooping from heavy snowfall and beleaguered American forces doggedly defending against a last gasp attack by a defeated enemy all dot the mind when thinking of the Bulge. Told it was the 3rd Battalion, 395th Infantry, he said, "It must have been one of your best formations." At the end of the day, the veterans of the 26th Infantry still held their ground, and looked out on a battlefield strewn with destroyed German armor and scores . The 12th SS pushed through the woods and probed the villages at around 1100 hours. 504-528-1944, Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, Black Volunteer Infantry Platoons in World War II, Kasserine Pass: German Offensive, American Victory, The Top 5 Veteran Research Questions: Where to Go and What to Know, Gallantry against Great Odds: LTC George Marshall and Operation RESERVIST, Prelude to Liberation: Genesis of American Amphibious Assault in the ETO, Black Thursday October 14, 1943: The Second Schweinfurt Bombing Raid, An Exercise in Depravity: The Establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto, Unsung Witnesses of the Battle of Stalingrad. The 393rd, 394th, and 395th Regiments were put on line, each unit protecting approximately 11 kilometres (6.8mi) of front, roughly equivalent to one front-line infantry man every 91 metres (299ft). Plans called for the division to include the 393rd, 394th, 395th, and 396th Infantry Regiments. The inexperienced troops of the division were lodged on the northern shoulder of the Ardennes Offensive on 16 December. Butler said, "The biggest difficulty in carrying out a night attack is control, and having men who can coordinate well as a team in the dark. The 99th RSC continued to support operations in the Balkan Republics while providing refuge to those fleeing Kosovo as they sought temporary recovery in the United States. The shield is silver, the old color of Infantry. The National WWII Museum Digital Collections. commanders. The 5 th Infantry Division was moved from Saarlautern, Luxembourg to the area of south and southwest of Echternach. [2] Historian John S.D. Gen. von Manteuffel, commander of the 5th Panzer Army, stated in the address to his troops prior to the attack that "our ground mission must be continuous; otherwise we will not achieve our goal". The enemy artillery was so intense that communications were generally out. A captured Lt. Bemener, formerly commander of the 5th Company of the 753rd Volksgrenadier Regiment, asked his American interrogator about the unit that had defended Hfen. Battle of the Bulge Not so in the pre-dawn hours of December 16 in the Ardennes Forest. It was credited with destroying "seventy-five percent of three German infantry regiments." The division was reconstituted in the Organized Reserve on 24 June 1921 and assigned to the western half of the state of Pennsylvania. Location of the 99th ID sector (red box) on a map of the Bulge. 18 Dec 44-7 Jan 45 Attached to 2d Infantry Division, Blandford (Longton Long, Dorset Barracks), 370th Field Artillery Battalion (105mm Howitzer), 371st Field Artillery Battalion (105mm Howitzer), 924th Field Artillery Battalion (105mm Howitzer), 372d Field Artillery Battalion (155mm Howitzer). One Wehrmacht officer captured at Hfen asked his interrogators which unit had defended the town. The program never fulfilled its promise, and the large number of "ASTPers" were rapidly integrated into various divisions to make up for personnel shortages in front line units during 1944. This was the most southern area of the Battle of the Bulge. The 395th Infantry had mostly held their lines, and now with the battle hardened 2nd Infantry Division on the way to back them up, the lines of defense near Elsenborn appeared to be significantly harder to pierce. During the Battle of the Bulge, the regimentat times virtually surrounded by Germanswas one of the few units that did not yield ground to the attacking Germans. Accurate estimates of German wounded were not possible, but about 20 percent of the 326th Volksgrenadier Division were lost. By 17 December, German military planners knew that their objectives along the Elsenborn Ridge would not be taken as soon as planned. For four successive days the battalion held this sector against combined German tank and infantry attacks, launched with fanatical determination and supported by heavy artillery. The program was called the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), and it sought to give extra training and special skills to a select group of intelligent and able young men, most of whom were taken from America's colleges. The defense of Rocherath that had been held most of the day by infantry was decided in less than thirty minutes by 5 German tanks. That task fell to the 277th Volksgrenadier Division and the 12th SS Panzer Division. . To make circumstances worse, just beyond the bloodied-but-not-beaten Volksgrenadiers waited the tanks of the 6th Panzer Army. EN. The 395th were moved by train and truck, and finally by foot, to front line positions near the German town of Hfen a few kilometers west of the Siegfried Line and near the Belgium-German border. No reserves were available . [14] If the Germans penetrated Hfen, the U.S. soldiers would have to withdraw several miles to the next defensible position.[10]. The Germans would never take Hfen, nor most of their other ambitious objectives in the Ardennes, due in large part to the soldiers of 3/395 and the 99th ID as a whole. The blue and white are taken from the coat of arms for William Pitt for whom Pittsburgh was named. He returned to Illinois and in 1933 was commissioned a second lieutenant in the National Guard. The 99th Infantry Division, nicknamed Battle Babies and compromised of the 393rd, 394th, 395th Infantry Regiments and supporting units, spent approximately 151 days in combat during World War Two. The 99th battled on to the bridge at Remagen that was taken on March 7th. The three regiments of the 99th IDthe 393rd, 394th, & 395th Infantry Regimentswere thinly spread across this frigid but quiet portion of the front. [5] The 99th boarded ships bound for England on 10 October 1944 and briefly stayed at Camp Marabout, Dorchester, England. The terrain was open and rolling, and over six weeks the 3rd Battalion prepared dug-in positions that possessed good fields of fire. More often than not, the noises thought to have been heard arent anything at all, and the forest resumes its eerie silence. "[9]:79, The battalion dug in, its purpose to hold the line so that other units could attack key dams across the Roer River. A group A 105mm artillery piece from the 2nd Infantry Div. The Germans were operating under a tight timetable, however, and the assaults center of gravitythe 6th Panzer Armyhad only one day to breach the 99th IDs line. Unknown to the Allies, the Germans were preparing a surprise counter-offensive through the Ardennes with the goal of splitting the Allied armies and recapturing the Belgian port city of Antwerp. The 99th Infantry Division, comprising the 393rd, 394th, and the 395th Infantry Regiments, arrived in England on 10 October 1944. The thick forest was tangled with rocky gorges, little streams, and sharp hills. Their success in defending Hfen resulted in the 395th Infantry being repeatedly assigned to other divisions for difficult assignments during the remainder of the war, earning them the sobriquet, Butler's Blue Battlin' Bastards. The 395th Infantry, Organized Reserves, was organized in 1921. 394th Infantry Regiment Medical Detachment (99th Infantry Division), Medical History, December 1944. The 99th RSC's mission was to provide command and control and full-service support for assigned units and facility management. [14] The first town they were tasked with capturing was Bergheim, "the door to the Rhine." The 395th Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment of the United States Army, part of the 99th Infantry Division during World War II.It was organized with the rest of the 99th on 16 November 1942 at Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi. General Eisenhower and his staff chose the Ardennes region, held by the First Army, as an area that could be held by as few troops as possible. Gallagher (1 May 1945 29 September 1945), Organized Reserves redesignated 25 March 1948 as the Organized Reserve Corps; redesignated 9 July 1952 as the Army Reserve, Relieved 29 October 1998 from assignment to the 99th Infantry Division, Redesignated 17 October 1999 as the 395th Regiment and reorganized to consist of the 1st, 2d, and 3d Battalions, elements of the. Just south of Hfen, the lines of the 99th entered this forest, ran through a long belt of timber to the boundary between the V and VIII Corps at the Losheim Gap. It was organized with the rest of the 99th on 16 November 1942 at Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi. In the northern sector opposite the 99th, this included more than 4,000 deaths and the destruction of sixty tanks and big guns.[8]. At the going down of the sun And in the morning We will remember them." 324th Engineer Combat Battalion Albertson Dale W Bass Robert D Brown Edwin C Busk The division first saw action on 9 November, taking over the defense of the sector north of the Roer River between Schmidt and Monschau, a distance of nearly 19 miles. [17]:51, On another day, the 3rd Battalion took 50 Germans prisoner and killed or wounded more than 800 Germans, losing only five dead and seven wounded themselves. Crossing on the 23d, it pushed east on the Koln-Frankfurt highway to Giessen. 99th Infantry Division Historical Society 99th Infantry Division Battle Babies The 99th Infantry Division, nicknamed "Battle Babies" and compromised of the 393rd, 394th, 395th Infantry Regiments and supporting units, spent approximately 151 days in combat during World War Two. The division insignia is a three lined checkerboard design of blue and white squares centered on a black shield. They killed Germans coming at them from the front, flanks and rear. These would later prove instrumental in defending themselves from the attacking Germans and in protecting themselves when their own artillery fired on or just in front of their own positions, which happened at least six times over the next few weeks.

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