THE EIGHTH IN ACTION
From Melville J. Batt's copy of the "Blue Book" By the 28th Infantry Regiment, 8th Infantry Division, Louisiana: Army & Navy Publishing Company, 1946.
[These pages were originally
typeset in two columns. They have been transcribed and appear as a single
column for readability purposes.] – Editor
Failure to get into action
during World War I was no fault of the Eighth Infantry Division. It was simply a question of being
beaten to the punch by the arrival of the Armistice. As a consequence, the Eighth Division was, prior to Normandy
D-Day, young in both experience and point of service. It was young in service for it had been activated in first
in January 1918. It was young in point of experience because it was just
preparing to move out of its training camps in France and up to the front lines
when that November morning in 1918 occurred.
To offset this dual handicap,
the Eighth took into its re-activated organization, 1 July 1940, units which
had impressive histories of long and meritorious service. In some cases this service dated as far
back as the beginnings of our constitutional government,
None of the units which now
comprise the Eighth Division was to be found in the original organization: 13th,
28th and 121st Infantry Regiments, Special Troops Units
and Division Artillery Battalions.
So it was that, although the
Division, as such, was untried, it hit Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, on 4 July
1944, with units of highly colorful tradition.
Here, as a member of the VIII
Corps, which had gained the barest of footholds on the enemy’s shore, the
Eighth Division had only to wait four days before attacking to the south in the
La Haye Du Puits sector. For the
first five grueling days of combat experience for the young, untried Division,
it advanced rapidly against stiff, well-organized resistance, until, on 13
July, it reached the hard-earned north bank of the Ay River. The Division dug in and held on until
26 July, when it effected a difficult crossing of the Ay to establish the
bridgehead whyich was to enable the remaining units of the VIII Corps and the
Fourth and Sixth Armored Divisions to rupture the wall of resistance and spill
over into Brittany and Northern France.
Racing closely behind these
pile-driving units, the Eighth Division rolled up impressive advances, moving
rapidly through Coutances, Granville and Avranches, against a German Army which
was showing the strain by becoming increasingly disorganized.
[SCAN MAP OF NORTHERN FRANCE
ON PAGE 4 AND PLACE HERE]
Driving relentlesslysouth
from Avranches, the Division had seized the key communications city of Rennes
by nightfall of 3 August. Here, for the next ten days, the Division dug in for
the valiant defense of this nerve center which was so vitally important to the
success of the Allied offensive.
While they were still carrying out this tremendous mission, the
Division’s 121st Infantry Regiment was temporarily attached to the
83rd Division to take part in thye fiercely bitter fighting then
going on in the St. Malo area. In
the course of this fighting, the 121st took Dinard by storm on 14
August, sweeping aside the stubbornly resisting German garrison.
From Rennes, the Division,
preceded by a task force of 28th Infantrymen, then made another
rapid move to Brest, this time by motor.
Shortly after noon of 25
August the Division, together with other chosen units of the VIII Corps, began
the battle for this iron-bound,
seemingly impregnable French port which, with its excellent harbor and docking
facilities, was to prove to be one of the strongest links in the chain that was
ultimately to bind the muscles of the arrogant monster, Germany. Itw as among the bitterest of fighting
the Division was to experience.
And the Division gave an examplary account of itself, trading blow for
blow with the German garrison of 50,000 until just a week before the port
finally fell.
Ordered out of its positions
around Brest, the Division now moved to the Crozon peninsula, a
strongly-fortified finger of war-pocked land that continued to menace Brest
from the south. In one of its most
sparkling engagements, the Division over-ran the rugged enemy defenses in short
time, completely routing the de-moralized and disorganized Germans. In just four days of brilliant
in-fighting and team-work, the Division cleared the stubborn peninsula, bagging
a total of more than 7,000 prisoners.
Dusting off its hands, the
division moved September 30, on to the Duchy of Luxembourg, where it assumed
the task of holding a 23-mile sector of the Our River front.
Several weeks later, on 16
November, certain elements of the Division began to relieve comparable units of
the 28th Division in the sector southeast of Aachen, Germany. From here, on 21 November, the Division
began a hard drive through dense, forbidding forests, clinging mud and
ever-present mines to seize the town of Hurtgen. Many casualties and exhausting difficulties were sufferd in
the Hurtgen Forest, for seven difficult days. After one more day of slow,
bloody and torturous street fighting, the town was captured on 28 November,
paving the way for the next offensive: against the town of Kleinhau, which was
summarily taken the next day.
[EDITOR: Note how only a tiny
paragraph is devoted to Hurtgen Forest.
This was the singular bloodiest battle of the war. The US Army lost more
men here than the Marines lost in Iwo Jima. It was a tactical disaster and
failures of communication between the Generals and their subordinates resulted
in the wasting of thousands of American lives. If it were not for the pivotal
Battle of the Bulge which occurred a week or so later, the Hurtgen Forest would
be remembered as the most significant conflict in the entire European Theater
of Operations. The Hurtgen
offensive was covered up hastily after the war ended, and many of the documents
pertaining to it were deemed classified. To this day, it is a battle that the
US Army would like to forget.
America had no idea what happened in Hurtgen Forest until the last ten
years, when surviving veterans started to come forward and talk about it. Since then books have been published
and movies made to commemorate America’s bloodiest battle on foreign soil. It has been described as seven days in
Hell. Entire regiments and battalions were wiped out with 100% casualties. There was much confusion as to who
belonged to which unit, with so many replacements coming in to compensate for
massive and devastating casualties. There was a 28th Infantry
Regiment and a 28th Infantry Division which fought alongside each
other, and when they met they couldn’t tell each other apart. There was also an 8th
infantry regiment and an 8th infantry Division, only adding to the
confusion. NCO’s and commanders
were routinely fired and replaced by new officers who had no tactical
experience, who sent in group after group of replacement soldiers to be
killed. The Germans later even
admitted that the US Army could have gone around the Forest rather than trying
to fight their way through it, and avoided the entire engagement altogether. The Germans were deeply dug in, camouflaged
and well-supplied and well-defended, and the Americans were starving,
underarmed and huddled in trenches.
It has been compared to the bloody, cold, wet, miserable conditions of
Passchendale in World War I. The 8th
Division relieved the exhausted and war-fatigued 28th Division, who
had slogged through mud and trenches full of water, to meet the harsh winter of
November 1944 which saw temperatures of 40 degrees below zero and ground frozen
so solid that foxholes had to be chiseled with bayonets and blown out with
grenades. If my grandfather fought in this battle or was involved with it
tactically in any way, no wonder he never spoke about it, was not proud of his
rank and hated the US Army. Personally, I don’t blame him.]
In rapid succession, Brandenburg
fell on 3 December and Bergstein on 5 December. Other foot troops of the
Division fought their way through heavily mined woods and dug-in bunkers of
concrete and logs to reach the Roer River along a six-mile stretch, east of
Bergstein.
Building efficient all-around
defenses, the Division held its positions firmly during the powerful German
counter-drive in mid-December. On 21 December, with a bleak Christmas in the
offing, elements of the Division began a limited offensive, seizing the Roer
River town of Obermaubach and the remaining enemy-held territory in the
Division sector west of the Roer.
Well after a New Year’s that
had been as bleak as Christmas, the Division continued to hold. Not until early February did it move
slightly north to take over a Roer River front opposite Duren and Niederau, on
23 February, the Division crossed the flood-swollen Roer, at the south flank of
the great First and Ninth US Army combined offensive. Troops of the Eighth Division cleared the stubborn south
half of Duren on 25 February and drove to the Rhine in a brief ten days, taking
approximately 50 German towns, more than 10,000 prisoners; and destroying tons
of equipment that the enemy could ill afford to lose.
The Division’s 13th
Infantry was attached to the Third Armored Division, cutting another wide,
bleeding swath to the Rhine, and seizing the northern third of the key city of
Cologne.
Still involved in the Cologne
offensive, the Division, after six days in Corps Reserve, took over the
Cologne-Bonn sector of the west bank of the Rhine, where it fought and held
until the early days of the Remagen bridgehead. Then, on 28 March, troops of the Division began the move
across the Rhine in the Remagen area.
On the following day, the entire Division began its attack north of the
Siegen area. As a result of this,
Division elements crossed the Sieg River on 1 April. After three days of fierce, determined enemy resistance, the
city of Siegen fell.
Two days later, the Division,
now integrated into the team of the XVIII Corps, began the drive which was to
result in the entrapment or annihilation of more than 350,000 German
troops. In a mere ten days, the
Division rolled up a satisfying advance of more than sixty miles, siezing a
total of nearly 200 towns and villages and capturing well over 48,000
completely beaten Wehrmacht veterans.
With this outstanding successful completion of its mission, the Division
next received orders to occupy and govern the Dusseldorf-Wuppertal-Wissen-Mulheim
area.
Once again shifting to new
commanders, the Division was ordered under the control of the British Second
Army, with which organization it crossed the Elbe River, early on the morning
of 1 May, at Bleckelde, which then marked the extreme northwest sector of the
Allied front. A lightning stab
toward the Baltic Sea netted more than a hundred German towns before the
Division reached Schwerin at noon of 2 May. Here, at the capital city of the province of Mecklenberg,
the Division halted and stepped aside to permit the British troops to sweep on
to the Baltic.
By now, the disorganization
and demoralization of the enemy were rushing toward a feverish climax, as was
evidenced by the large bodies of German troops which marched up to surrender
all along the roads of advance. So
great was the enemy’s desire to capitulate that, by 4 May, when the final
announcement of the surrender of all German troops in the north came, the
Division’s bag of prisoners reached a grand total in excess of a quarter
million men.
By 3 May, elements of the
Division had made triumphant and joyous contact with the Russians, thus marking
the end of the long and arduous struggle to convince the hard-headed adversary
that he was beaten.
And so, with the complete and
ignominous capitulation of all German land, air and sea forces, the combat
record of the Division in World War II was completed.
The Eighth Infantry Division
had come of age in service and experience.
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