[82], During this time, the U.S. Army underwent a drastic reduction in size. Johann Voss, a machine gunner who had been with the SS since Finland, remembered much the same things as his American counterparts, perhaps in reverse. Sovereign Media, 6731 Whittier Avenue, Suite C-100 McLean, VA 22101, From Tolkien to Hitler: Famous Soldiers of World War I, The Battle for Omaha Beach: The Men of the D-Day Invasion, Napoleon Bonaparte’s Last Campaign: The Battle of Waterloo, Operation Barbarossa: World War II’s Eastern Front, The Battle of Gettysburg: Turning Point of the American Civil War, Battle of Reipertswiller: The 157th Infantry’s Heroic Stand During Operation Nordwind, What Made the German Luger the Most Famous Pistol in Modern Warfare, The Essential Role of Navy PBR Boats in the Vietnam War, P-40 Fighter Pilot: Fighting for His Life, Marine Sergeant Mitchell Paige: Valor on Guadalcanal. The attack went off as scheduled but accomplished nothing, the only tangible result being heavy American casualties. See more ideas about infantry, dachau, wwii. Possibly in the 45th museum? He also directed the gunner to open up with the tank’s long-barreled 76mm main gun. In Voss’s recollection, an American jumped from the second tank and sprinted to the hollow where his wounded fellows lay. By January 1945, he was a 27-year-old lieutenant colonel, having risen on merit to command the regiment’s 3rd Battalion. At any second a burst of fire could cut Sparks down, but for some reason no one shot at him. The remaining platoon leader withdrew his men and the tanks back toward the road to Reipertswiller. [33] For most of the first two weeks while the division moved slowly north, it encountered only light resistance from Italian forces fighting delaying actions. Still, the 157th had the same problems as other RCTs in the winter of 1945. The 179th Infantry and a tank battalion of CCA tried to recapture Aprilia but were repulsed. The Dachau massacre and other reprisal killings of concentration camp guards and trustee inmates. Hiding, they watched it until an American soldier poked his head out from beneath it. Somewhere out there, he knew a few soldiers had been posted along the trail with Panzerfaust antitank weapons, but he couldn’t see them. [39] The Fifth Army was battered and pushed back by German forces until 20 September, when Allied forces were finally able to break out and establish a more secure beachhead. Company B was sent to clear those Germans out but was unable to do so. The mortar unit belongs to 1st Battallion, 180th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Brigade of National Guard and is attached to 10th Mountain Division. All the rest, including the entire platoon from Company E, were lost. [62] The cremation ovens, which were still in operation when the soldiers arrived, contained bodies and skeletons as well. The soldiers who were present were often exhausted and in need of rest periods that were, by necessity, infrequent and short. Still, they held out, refusing to give in and praying for their fellow Thunderbirds to reach them. [52][53] Soldiers of the 45th Infantry Division engaged the dispersed forces of German Army Group G, suffering very few casualties. The young interpreter was lucky. Of the combat casualties, Hitler forced the Allies to fight, [49] The division was allowed a one-month rest, resuming its advance on 25 November, attacking the forts north of Mutzig. The 2nd Battalion, 411th Infantry, 103rd Division was brought in to join in the relief effort. In the end the resistance decided not to attack, fearing reprisals against civilians. Some of the German troops were camp guards; the others were sick and wounded troops from a nearby hospital. [105] In the spring, the division launched Operation Counter, which was an effort to establish 11 patrol bases around Old Baldy Hill. [39] It sent half of its artillery to support the 70th Infantry Division. The 157th Regiment would be reconstituted over the following few weeks. [39] The division captured Munich during the next two days, occupying the city until V-E Day and the surrender of Germany. All too aware of the plight of his soldiers, Colonel O’Brien began planning an airdrop for the next morning; it seemed the only way to get anything through. They took part in intense fighting during the invasion of Sicily and the attack on Salerno in the 1943 Italian Campaign. Sparks continued to Fleming’s men farther along the path. [111], In the division's first few months on the line, Chinese forces conducted three raids in its sector. It was understrength; the replacement pipeline had not kept up with the needs of an army in difficult, grinding action. As the night continued, Sparks reorganized for the next day. [51] The German Army, reeling from the Battle of Normandy, in which it had suffered a major defeat, pulled back after a short fight, part of an overall German withdrawal to the east following the landings. [11], The division's original shoulder sleeve insignia, approved in August 1924,[12] featured a swastika, a common Native American symbol, as a tribute to the Southwestern United States region which had a large population of Native Americans. In the afternoon several men evacuated earlier for exhaustion were reorganized and placed in the line to plug gaps. There were 25 officers among the prisoners, and they were received at the 11th Regiment headquarters with dignity. On January 29, 1945, my late father Felix A. Cizewski was assigned as a replacement to the 45th Signal Company. [15] The division was assigned to VIII Corps with the 2nd Infantry Division and the 36th Infantry Division, camped near Pitkin, Louisiana. An American response didn’t take long. Some of the American survivors later reported the enemy using flamethrowers. The soldiers of the 45th Division who liberated the camp were outraged at the malnourishment and maltreatment of the 32,000 prisoners they liberated, some barely alive, and all victims of the Holocaust. Fleming decided he had to do something personally. On 7 December 1945, the division was inactivated from the active duty force and its members reassigned to other Army units. Despite the murderous rain of steel, the Americans kept moving; by 4 pm Sparks’s riflemen had managed to advance about 1,200 yards. The 180th Regiment had the hardest time, fighting head-on through the city of Epinal. There are moments in military history that forever alter the flow of human events. Company G was reinforced by a platoon of men from Company E, who managed to get through to them. Then the Wehrmacht mule drivers were given shovels and ordered to "dig their own shallow graves". 160th Field Artillery Battalion. Sparks did indeed mount a rescue effort using a pair of M-4 Sherman tanks, which had just arrived at the command post. With him were his driver, Albert Turk, a runner named Carleton Johnson, and a translator, German-born 19-year-old Karl Mann, who had been in a machine-gun crew until being tapped to use his fluency in German. At about the same time, the regiment was ordered to prepare to fall back as part of a larger movement by the U.S. Those who remained prepared for the next day. Over the course of its history, the 45th Infantry Division sustained over 25,000 battle casualties, and its men were awarded ten Medals of Honor, twelve campaign streamers, the Croix de Guerre and the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation. [50] Against slight opposition, it spearheaded the drive for the Belfort Gap. The first major German counterattack came in early February, was against the British 1st Division. Sparks’s battalion was the left flank unit of the division, with Krieger’s men to its right and a battalion of the 79th Division’s 315th Infantry to its left. A patrol from Company B, probing toward Company C’s position, came upon a disheartening sight: a group of three jeeps, shot up in an ambush, dead GIs all around. [94] The division was awarded four campaign streamers and one Presidential Unit Citation. This was most apparent in the infantry; all the 157th’s rifle companies were at two-thirds strength at most. They began pressing the Germans, and Voss feared they might break through. [104], The division remained as a unit of the Oklahoma National Guard, and participated in no major actions throughout the rest of the 1950s save regular weekend and summer training exercises. The breakout would begin at 3:30 pm. All too often, the snow was stained red from the blood of wounded and dead Americans. This wasn’t a vital objective and didn’t require a “last stand.” He consulted with the regimental commander, Colonel Walter O’Brien, and suggested the withdrawal. Later it was redesignated the 6th SS Mountain Division “Nord,” or North. The men who fought there remember it. A trailer was hooked to each tank to carry supplies. Some 100 miles to the south, another German offensive was likewise failing, this one smaller, less well known, but just as furious and bloody. When the Finns dropped out of the war in September 1944, the division was ordered to withdraw through Norway. They saw some prints left by American shoe-pacs (winter footwear) and followed them until they saw a shelter half that appeared to cover a foxhole. It joined with the remnants of Company B outside the encirclement; both units had about 19 soldiers left. Down by the trail the American gunners kept firing, and more of their infantry appeared. He jumped down from the tank and ran over to his men. Five companies of Americans were still trapped in the hills ahead, however. Voss later wrote, “There was no honor to be won by firing upon this death-defying act of comradeship.”. When they heard Fleming’s men firing, they made their way over. The entire group threw themselves flat into the frigid snow as the rockets struck the earth a scant 30 meters in front of them. Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, US Army, Company E, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division. The regiment was an infantry regiment as part of the 40th Infantry Division in World War I. . For the Americans, January 18 started with the loss of Lieutenant Talkington’s tank just after midnight, but the situation only got worse with the dawn. We emplaced our gun under a rocky outcropping and … started digging into the frozen ground.”. Men were unable to get out of their holes, even without enemy infantry in front of them.”. Brand New. When describing his first murder for organized crime, Sheeran recalled: "It was just like when an officer would tell you to take a couple of German prisoners back behind the line and for you to 'hurry back'. However, with the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany, with its infamous swastika symbol, the 45th Division stopped using the insignia. The deadly ambush had killed or captured all but two of the Americans. [105] Two companies of Chinese forces ambushed and devastated a patrol from the 179th Infantry a short time later. By late afternoon Company B was down to 22 effectives in its rifle platoons, and there were only two machine gunners left from the weapons company. Even after the attack stopped, mortar fire kept raining down as Sparks’s men struggled to bring up ammunition. In effect, Sparks’s 3/157 had been wiped out, and the other two battalions had taken grievous casualties. Due to drastic reductions in U.S. military spending following the end of World War II, these divisions were equipped with worn-out or obsolete weaponry and suffered from a shortage of anti-armor weapons capable of penetrating the hulls of the North Korean T-34 tanks. As of 1 August 1950, the division consisted of 698. It was over. [87][88], Initially, the division was used to provide a pool of reinforcements for the divisions which had been sent to the Korean War theater, and in January 1951 it provided 650 enlisted fillers for overseas service. The encircled GIs were slowly being pushed into an ever-shrinking perimeter. It changed the world more than any other single event in history. © One soldier overheard an officer talking about holding a nearby American-occupied position at all costs. All the companies urged headquarters to get to them soon. Two light tanks, M-5 Stuarts, went with them. Arriving as a new lieutenant during training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he had spent the entire war with the 157th except for a short time while wounded. The American position was completely overrun; only 18 men made it to the Company K lines nearby. [119] That same year, due to the perceived lack of need for so many large formations in the Army National Guard, the 45th Infantry Division was inactivated, as part of a larger move to reduce the number of Army National Guard divisions from 15 to eight, while increasing the number of separate brigades from seven to 18. Impressed by this selfless act of bravery by an officer for his men, neither Voss nor his fellow SS men fired at the American, who finished his task and left with the tanks the way he’d come. Furthermore in Oklahoma, C Company, 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, was located on the Chilocco campus. For the Germans it was “a fierce, uphill fight.” American mortars and machine guns swept them as they struggled to advance on January 16, and it didn’t seem much progress was being made. The 45th Division commander, Maj. Gen. Robert T. Frederick, ordered an attack to retake the hills north of Reipertswiller. Headquartered mostly in Oklahoma City, the guardsmen fought in both World War II and the Korean War. If that weren’t enough, a W-shaped pattern of several dozen mines lay across the road, hidden by the snow but now visible upon closer inspection. The jeep’s rear tire was sitting on another mine only an inch from the trigger. With those units in such exposed positions it was harrowing work, but they kept on through the night. Lucas sent famed U.S. Army Ranger leader Colonel William Orlando Darby to assume command of the 157th Infantry, and the Germans were repulsed. They were trapped. O’Brien chose to let the matter pass and allowed Sparks to continue. To this point, 3/157 had lost 118 soldiers over the past three days; a third of the battalion’s strength was dead or wounded. Casualties and attrition had drained the original membership away, so many soldiers were replacements from across the nation. [41] Until 9 January 1944, the division, now under Major General William W. Eagles (replacing Major General Middleton who, struck down with arthritis, was sent to England to command VIII Corps in the Normandy invasion), inched forward into the mountains reaching St. Elia, north of Monte Cassino, before moving to a rest area. Several units were activated to replace the division and carry on its lineage. [38] On 10 September, elements of the division conducted its second landing at Agropoli and Paestum with the 36th Infantry Division, on the southernmost beaches of the attack. In later interviews with Charles Brandt, he divided such massacres into four categories: During World War II, the 45th Division fought in 511 days of combat. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty on 23 May 1944, near Carano, Italy. Sparks had an emotional meeting with General Frederick. 16 Feb 44 ... Battle at Anzio Anzio Campaign CD 1 24 Pages - PDF. It had been a day of frustration and courage, failure and heroism for the Americans. Voss opened fire on them and eventually drove them into cover in a small hollow near the bridge. [37] Against stiff resistance, the 45th pushed to the Calore River after a week of heavy fighting. With their commander out of the fight, the executive officer, Captain John L. McGinnis, took over and got the battalion moving on schedule. [112], In early 1953, North Korean forces launched a large-scale attack against Hill 812, which was then under the control of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 179th Infantry. American casualties were heavy as well. Mann climbed out of the jeep and found a horrifying sight. Before long, however, they were back on the front lines. Sparks’s unit would be the main American combatant in the coming fight at Reipertswiller. Dragoon was originally planned to coincide with the Normandy landings in the north, but was delayed until August because of a shortage of landing craft. It was again an infantry regiment of the 45th Infantry Division during and after World War II. After brief inactivation and subsequent reorganization as a unit restricted to Oklahomans, the division returned to duty in 1951 for the Korean War. History main page Organization Campaigns and battles Medal of … Still, the order stood, and Sparks began trying to relieve his surrounded men.

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