7th Infantry Division (United States)

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Distinctive Unit Insignia of the 7th US Infantry Division
Division shoulder badge

The 7th Infantry Division ( German  7th US Infantry Division , nicknamed Bayonet and Hourglass ) is a major unit of the United States Army . First set up in World War I , it fought in the Pacific War , the Korean War and the US invasion of Panama . It was deactivated in 2006. On October 10, 2012, the headquarters of the division (250 men) was reactivated to serve the 1st US Corps as the administrative level for its five combat brigades .

history

First World War

The division was formed on December 6, 1917 in Camp Wheeler , Georgia, and shipped to France in 1918 as part of the American Expeditionary Forces . As a whole, it did not take part in any combat operations, but some of its subordinate units became involved in fighting from October 1918. The division suffered losses of 1988 men. After the war ended, she was used for occupation purposes for a year before returning to the United States in late 1919. Here she was deactivated in September 1921 at Camp George C. Meade, Maryland.

Second World War

On July 1, 1940, the division was reactivated in Fort Ord , California, under the orders of Joseph Stilwell , and was composed as follows:

  • 17th Infantry Regiment
  • 32nd Infantry Regiment
  • 53rd Infantry Regiment
  • 31st Field Artillery Battalion
  • 48th Field Artillery Battalion
  • 49th Field Artillery Battalion
  • 57th Field Artillery Battalion
  • 7th Signal Company
  • 707th Ordnance Company
  • 7th Quartermaster Company
  • 7th Reconnaissance Troop
  • 13th Engineer Battalion
  • 7th Medical Battalion
  • 7th Counter Intelligence Detachment

The division was the III. Corps of the 4th US Army allocated and used at the beginning of the war primarily to building and training purposes. In April 1942 it was converted into a motorized division and undertook exercises in the Mojave Desert in preparation for a transfer to North Africa. In January 1943, however, she was transformed back into a light division and began amphibious landing exercises in preparation for a role in the Pacific theater of war.

Aleutian Islands

General Archibald Vincent Arnold

The division experienced its first war effort when landing on Attu in the western Aleutian Islands on May 11, 1943. In heavy fighting against the 2900 Japanese defenders, it suffered losses of around 550 dead. In August 1943 parts of the division landed together with Canadian troops on Kiska , which, however, had already been evacuated by the Japanese .

Marshall Islands

The division was next transferred to Hawaii and assigned to the V Amphibious Corps, an association of the Marine Corps . On January 22, 1944, the division left Pearl Harbor to be used in the Battle of the Marshall Islands . On February 1, she landed on Kwajalein , where she defeated the Japanese stationed there within a few days in the Battle of Kwajalein . Their losses here amounted to 176 killed and 767 wounded.

Leyte

After another stay in Hawaii, the division was embarked on October 11, 1944 as part of the XXIV Corps of the 6th US Army with destination Leyte . On October 20, she landed at the town of Dulag and successfully took part in the Battle of Leyte , which lasted until February 1945 . She then undertook exercises in preparation for a landing on the Ryūkyū Islands until March .

Okinawa

The division was subordinated to the XXIV Corps of the 10th US Army . The Battle of Okinawa began when it landed on Okinawa on April 1, 1945 along with the 96th Infantry Division and the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions . The 7th Division took the airfield at Kadena on the first day and marched to the east coast of the island. After that she moved south to take Shuri . After 82 days of heavy fighting on Okinawa, the division counted 1,116 dead and around 6,000 wounded. Her next intended use was Operation Downfall , but it was no longer carried out.

During the war, the division won nine Distinguished Unit Citations and four Campaign Streamers . Three soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor .

A few days after VJ-Day , the division landed in Korea to accept the surrender of the Japanese units there . It remained there as an occupation force until it was withdrawn to Japan in 1948 .

Korean War

At the beginning of the Korean War , the already weakened division was thinned to 9,000 men by levies on units shipped to Korea. As a replacement for this, more than 8,600 South Korean soldiers ( KATUSA ) were integrated. Reinforcements from the United States brought her back to a strength of 25,000 men before she was sent into battle.

Together with the 1st Marine Division, the 7th Division carried out Operation Chromite near Incheon in September 1950 and took Seoul . After the North Korean forces in South Korea were cut off and worn out, the division made another landing at Wonsan at the end of October and then marched to Yalu , which it reached on November 21.

An M16 fires at Chinese positions, Korea, March 12, 1951

On November 25th, the Chinese Volunteer Army crossed the border with North Korea and attacked the UN forces . Parts of the division took part in the battle of the Changjin Reservoir . Against the overwhelming superiority of the Chinese, the division's regiments suffered heavy losses of up to 40 percent before they could be evacuated via the port of Hungnam . At the beginning of 1951, the division was pushed back into the front and fought in the UN offensive to regain the 38th parallel. After another refresher, it replaced the 2nd Infantry Division after the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge in October 1951 . Until the end of the war she was repeatedly used in heavy trench warfare. Throughout the war, the division suffered losses of over 15,000 men, including 3,905 dead.

Cold War until 2006

From 1953 to 1971, the division remained deployed to the Demilitarized Zone in Korea and was deactivated on April 2, 1971 in Fort Lewis , Washington. In October 1974 it was reactivated at Fort Ord. In 1985 it was transformed into a light infantry division. Parts of the division took part in Operation Golden Pheasant in Honduras in 1988 and the division as a whole in Operation Just Cause in Panama in 1989. In 1994 the division at Fort Lewis was deactivated. In 1999, the divisional headquarters in Fort Carson , Colorado, was reactivated as the Active Component / Reserve Component division and deactivated again in 2006.

Commanders

  • Brigade General CH Barth (January 1 - February 17, 1918)
  • Brigade General Tiemann N. Horn (February 17-25, 1918)
  • Brigade General CH Barth (February 25 - June 7, 1918)
  • Brigade General Tiemann N. Horn (June 7-21, 1918)
  • Brigade General CH Barth (June 21 - October 24, 1918)
  • Brigade General Lutz Wahl (October 24-28, 1918)
  • Major General Edward Wittenmyer (October 28, 1918 - September 22, 1921)
  • Major General Joseph W. Stillwell (July 1, 1940 - August 1941)
  • Major General CH White (August 1941 - October 1942)
  • Major General AE Brown (October 22, 1942 - April 21, 1943)
  • Major General Eugene M. Landrum (May 1943 - June 1943)
  • Brigade General Archibald Vincent Arnold (July 1943 - September 1943)
  • Major General Charles Harrison Corlett (September 6, 1943 - February 19, 1944)
  • Major General Archibald Vincent Arnold (February 19, 1944 - September 8, 1945)
  • Brigade General JL Ready (September 8, 1945 - January 1946)
  • Brigade General LJ Stewart (January 1946 - March 1946)
  • Major General Andrew D. Bruce (March 1946 - October 1947)
  • Brigade General Harlan N. Hartness (October 1947 - May 1948)

literature

  • Bruce Gardner, Barbara Stahura: Seventh Infantry Division: Serving America for 75 Years. Revised edition, Turner Publishing, 1997. ISBN 1-56311-398-8 .

Web links

Commons : 7th Infantry Division (United States)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 7th ID eyes Pacific, reactivates as Army's 'Stryker Division' on army.mil , accessed on February 16, 2012.
  2. ^ Army Almanac: A Book of Facts Concerning the Army of the United States. United States Government Printing Office 1959.
  3. ↑ Chapter XI: Clearing the Aleutians , in: Stetson Conn, Rose C. Engelman, Byron Fairchild: Guarding the United States and its Outposts , Center of Military History United States Army, Washington DC 2000.
  4. ↑ a b History of the 7th Infantry Division ( Memento from February 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) on carson.army.mil , accessed on April 24, 2010
  5. ^ M. Hamlin Cannon: Leyte: The Return to the Philippines (United States Army in World War II), Office of the Chief of Military History Department of the Army, Washington DC 1993
  6. ↑ Michael J. Varhola: Fire and Ice: The Korean War, 1950-1953. Da Capo Press 2000. ISBN 978-1-882810-44-4 .