102nd Infantry Division (United States)

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102nd Infantry Division
102nd Training Division (Maneuver Support)
102 INF DIV SSI.svg
102nd Infantry Division shoulder sleeve insignia
Active1921–1946
1947–1965
2009–present
CountryFlag of the United States.svg United States
Branch United States Army Reserve
RoleTraining (Maneuver Support)
SizeDivision
Part of80th Training Command
Nickname(s)Ozark (Special Designation) [1]
Motto(s)Distinction, Valor, Marksmanship
GarrisonFort Leonard Wood, Missouri
Engagements
Insignia
Distinctive unit insignia 102 Div DUI.png

The 102nd Infantry Division ("Ozark") [1] was a unit of the United States Army in World War II. The unit is currently active as the 102nd Training Division (Maneuver Support).

Contents

Interwar period

The division was constituted in the Organized Reserve on 24 June 1921, allotted to the Seventh Corps Area, and assigned to the XVII Corps, with Arkansas and Missouri as its home area. The headquarters was organized on 2 September 1921 at 3rd and Olive Streets in St. Louis, and relocated in 1923 to the Old Customhouse. The headquarters remained there until activated for World War II. To encourage esprit de corps, the division adopted the nickname “Ozark” after the mountainous region that ran through both states, and the division staff published a newsletter titled “Ozark.” The division formed rapidly and by November 1922, it had 95 percent of the officers as required by its peacetime tables of organization.

The designated mobilization and training station for the division was Fort Riley, Kansas. The headquarters and staff usually trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The subordinate infantry regiments of the division held their summer training primarily with the 17th Infantry Regiment at Fort Leavenworth. Other units, such as the special troops, artillery, engineers, aviation, medical, and quartermaster, trained at various posts in the Sixth and Seventh Corps Areas, often with the active units of the 7th Division. For example, the division’s artillery trained at Fort Riley; the 327th Engineer Regiment also trained at Fort Riley with Troop A, 9th Engineer Squadron; the 327th Medical Regiment trained at the Medical Corps training camp at Fort Snelling, Minnesota; and the 327th Observation Squadron trained with the 16th Observation Squadron at Marshall Army Airfield, Kansas. In addition to the unit training camps, the infantry regiments of the division rotated responsibility to conduct the Citizens Military Training Camps held at Fort Leavenworth each year. On a number of occasions, the division participated in Seventh Corps Area and Fourth Army command post exercises in conjunction with other Regular Army, National Guard, and Organized Reserve units. Unlike the Regular and Guard units in the Seventh Corps Area, the 102nd Division did not participate in the various Seventh Corps Area maneuvers and the Fourth Army maneuvers of 1937, 1940, and 1941 as an organized unit due to lack of enlisted personnel and equipment. Instead, the officers and a few enlisted reservists were assigned to Regular and Guard units to fill vacant slots and bring the units up to war strength for the exercises. [2]

In the 1920s and 1930s Harry S. Truman, a lieutenant colonel in the Officers' Reserve Corps, commanded the division's 1st Battalion, 379th Field Artillery Regiment. [3] After promotion to colonel, Truman advanced to command of the 379th Field Artillery Regiment. [4]

World War II

Order of battle

Before Organized Reserve infantry divisions were ordered into active military service, they were reorganized on paper as "triangular" divisions under the 1940 tables of organization. The headquarters companies of the two infantry brigades were consolidated into the division's cavalry reconnaissance troop, and one infantry regiment was removed by inactivation. The field artillery brigade headquarters and headquarters battery became the headquarters and headquarters battery of the division artillery. Its three field artillery regiments were reorganized into four battalions; one battalion was taken from each of the two 75 mm gun regiments to form two 105 mm howitzer battalions, the brigade's ammunition train was reorganized as the third 105 mm howitzer battalion, and the 155 mm howitzer battalion was formed from the 155 mm howitzer regiment. The engineer, medical, and quartermaster regiments were reorganized into battalions. In 1942, divisional quartermaster battalions were split into ordnance light maintenance companies and quartermaster companies, and the division's headquarters and military police company, which had previously been a combined unit, was split. [5] The 408th Infantry Regiment was inactivated by relief of remaining Reserve personnel on 6 January 1942, and disbanded on 11 November 1944.

Combat chronicle

The 102nd Infantry Division, under the command of Major General Frank A. Keating, arrived on the Western Front in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) at Cherbourg, France, 23 September 1944, and, after a short period of training near Valognes, moved to the German-Netherlands border. On 26 October, elements attached to other divisions entered combat and on 3 November the division assumed responsibility for the sector from the Wurm to Waurichen. A realignment of sectors and the return of elements placed the 102nd in full control of its units for the first time, 24 November 1944, as it prepared for an attack to the Roer. The attack jumped off, 29 November, and carried the division to the river through Welz, Flossdorf, and Linnich.

Soldiers of B Company, 406th Infantry Regiment, 102nd Division in Uerdingen, Germany. 11 March 1945. SC 336802 - Infantrymen of Company B, 496th Inf. Regt., 102nd Inf. Div., move up the road to their new out position along the Rhine River, outside the city. (52204979904).jpg
Soldiers of B Company, 406th Infantry Regiment, 102nd Division in Uerdingen, Germany. 11 March 1945.

After a period of aggressive patrolling along the Roer, 4–19 December, the division took over the XIII Corps sector from the Wurm River, north of the village of Wurm, to Barmen on the south, and trained for river crossing. On 23 February 1945, the 102d attacked across the Roer (Operation Grenade), advanced toward Lövenich and Erkelenz, bypassed Mönchengladbach, took Krefeld, 3 March, and reached the Rhine. During March the division was on the defensive along the Rhine, its sector extending from Homburg south to Düsseldorf. Crossing the river on 9 April on pontoon bridge, the division attacked in the Wesergebirge, meeting stiff opposition. After 3 days and nights of terrific enemy resistance Wilsede and Hessisch-Oldendorf fell, 12 April 1945, and the 102d pushed on to the Elbe, meeting little resistance. Breitenfeld fell, 15 April, and the division outposted the Elbe River, 48 miles from Berlin, its advance halted on orders. Storkau experienced fighting on the 16th, EHRA on the 21st along with Fallersleben. On 3 May 1945 the 102nd shook hands with the Russian 156th Division just outside Berlin.

Americans Meeting the Soviets OzarkmeetingSoviets.jpg
Americans Meeting the Soviets
The barn set on fire in the Gardelegen Massacre Gardelegen Barn.jpg
The barn set on fire in the Gardelegen Massacre

On 15 April the division discovered a war crime in Gardelegen: the Isenschnibbe Barn Atrocity. About 1,200 prisoners from the Mittelbau-Dora and Hannover-Stöcken concentration camps were forced from a train into an empty barn measuring approximately a hundred by fifty feet on the outskirts of the town. The barn was then set afire, killing those inside. About 1,016 people were killed. However, two men survived, buried under a shield of dead bodies, protecting them from the gunfire and flames. When the first soldiers arrived at the barn, the two came crawling out from under the dead and burning bodies. Major General Keating ordered that the nearby civilian population be forced to view the site and to disinter and rebury the victims in a new cemetery. After digging the graves and burying the bodies, they erected a cross or a Star of David over each grave and enclosed the site with a white fence. [6] Today both the former crime scene and the Cemetery of Honour are parts of the Isenschnibbe Barn Memorial Gardelegen. [7]

The division patrolled and maintained defensive positions until the end of hostilities in Europe, then moved to Gotha for occupation duty.

Casualties

Assignments in the European Theater of Operations

Post-war History (1946–1965)

On 1 June 1959, the division was reorganized as a Pentomic Division. The division's three infantry regiments were inactivated and their elements reorganized into five infantry battle groups. On 1 April 1963, the division was reorganized as a Reorganization Objective Army Division (ROAD). Three Brigade Headquarters were activated and Infantry units were reorganized into battalions:

Two additional Battle Groups were also formed:

The division and subordinate elements were inactivated on 31 December 1965. Later, when the 102d Army Reserve Command was formed as a regional headquarters for Army Reserve units within the same general area where the 102d Infantry Division had been located, the shoulder sleeve insignia was authorized for wear by units of the 102d ARCOM, such as the military police unit stationed at Richards Gebaur AFB near Belton, Missouri. The lineage of the 102d Division is perpetuated by the 102d Training Division. [9]

Subordinate units

The division was reactivated on September 16, 2008 as the 102nd Training Division; with headquarters concurrently activated at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. [10] The division's location was changed on April 1, 2017 to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, [11] As of 2017 the following units are subordinated to the division:

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References

PD-icon.svg This article incorporates public domain material from The Army Almanac: A Book of Facts Concerning the Army of the United States U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950. United States Army Center of Military History.

  1. 1 2 "Special Unit Designations". United States Army Center of Military History. 21 April 2010. Archived from the original on 9 July 2010. Retrieved 9 July 2010.
  2. ↑ Clay, Steven E. (2010). US Army Order of Battle, 1919–1941. Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press. p. 280-280.PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .
  3. ↑ Clay, Steven E. (2010). US Army Order of Battle, 1919–1941. Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press. p. 878.
  4. ↑ Tucker, Frank (1 December 2010). "Army History: Truman, you're too old ...". Gateway Today. St. Louis: Association of the United States Army, St. Louis Chapter. pp. 5–8.
  5. ↑ Wilson, John B. (1998). Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army. pp. 161, 169–70.
  6. ↑ U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "The Year of 1945 Liberation," Washington, D.C., 1945, pp. 69–70
  7. ↑ "Official Website of Isenschnibbe Barn Memorial Gardelegen".
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Army Battle Casualties and Nonbattle Deaths in World War II, Final Report (Statistical and Accounting Branch Office of the Adjutant General, 1 June 1953)
  9. ↑ "About Us". www.usar.army.mil. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
  10. ↑ "Headquarters 3d Brigade, 102d Infantry Division | Lineage and Honors | U.S. Army Center of Military History".
  11. ↑ "Headquarters, 2d Brigade, 102d Training Division | Lineage and Honors | U.S. Army Center of Military History".
  12. ↑ "80th Training Command (TASS)".
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