83rd Infantry Division (United States)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or section needs revision: Scrap translation of the English article. - Prüm 09:31, May 13, 2018 (CEST)
Please help to improve it and then remove this marking.

Division shoulder badge

The 83rd Infantry Division ( German  83rd US Infantry Division ) (" Thunderbolt ") was an infantry division of the United States Army in the First and Second World Wars .

First World War

The division, under the command of Major General Edwin F. Glenn , was activated in September 1917 and brought across the Atlantic in June 1918. It was a "depot division" and delivered over 195,000 men (officers and soldiers) as replacements or exchanges in France, but was not used as a complete formation. Some units of the division came into combat, for example the '332nd Infantry Regiment' in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in Italy . The division was deactivated in October 1919.

Second World War

  • Activated: August 15, 1942
  • Displaced overseas: April 6, 1944
  • Missions: Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central Europe
  • 244 days of fighting
  • 7 Distinguished Unit Citations
  • Return to the USA: March 26, 1946
  • Deactivated: April 5, 1946

Calls

The 83rd arrived in England on April 16, 1944. After training in Wales, she landed on June 18 (12 days after D-Day) on Omaha Beach and took part in the battle south of Carentan on June 27 . After long and difficult battles in an area where almost every field is surrounded by hedges, walls and / or ditches (" bocage "), she succeeded on July 25th in the advance on the road from Saint-Lô to Périers ; at the end of Operation Cobra (July 24th - August 4th) she had advanced eight miles against fierce resistance from the Wehrmacht .

After a training period, parts of the division took part in the Battle of Brittany (beginning on August 1, 1944): on August 5, they took Châteauneuf-d'Ille-et-Vilaine and on August 15, Dinard , and came very close fortified area that protected Saint-Malo . About 85 percent of Saint-Malo was destroyed by bombing , as the then fortress commander Colonel Andreas von Aulock refused to surrender.

On August 17th, the citadel fortress of Saint-Servan surrendered .

While parts of the division moved south to protect the north bank of the Loire , the main part of the division was south of Rennes and patrolled there and operated enemy reconnaissance.

Parts fought the garrison on the Ile de Cézembre ; this capitulated on September 2nd.

On September 16, 1944 a rare event occurred: a German major general - Botho Henning Elster - with 18,850 soldiers and 754 officers surrendered to US troops at the Loire Bridge at Beaugency .

The move to Luxembourg ended on September 25th. A month earlier - on August 25 - Paris had capitulated .

The 83rd took Remich on September 28th and patrolled defensively along the Moselle. After conquering Grevenmacher and Echternach on October 7, 1944, it resisted counter-attacks and advanced across the Sauer River to defensive positions on the western wall .

On November 5, 1944, the division took the Stromberg hill near Contz-les-Bains on the Moselle in the Hochmosel department against strong resistance and fought back counterattacks.

From there the 83rd moved from Gressenich in the direction of Hürtgenwald and stayed on the west bank of the Rur . The battle in the Hürtgenwald was a particularly long and bloody battle in very wintry conditions.

In mid-December 1944, began the Wehrmacht surprisingly Bulge (English 'Battle of the Bulge'.); in doing so, she initially made some gains in terrain. On December 20, 1944, she had advanced to Bastogne and besieged this traffic junction for a few days.

Commanders

Allegations

Subordination of the 83rd Infantry Division during World War II
date corps army Army Group
April 8, 1944 VIII. US Corps 3rd US Army (attached to 1st US Army ) ETOUSA
June 25, 1944 3rd US Army
July 1, 1944 VII US Corps 3rd US Army (attached to 1st US Army)
July 15, 1944 VIII. US Corps
August 1, 1944 XV. US Corps 3rd US Army 12th Army Group
August 3, 1944 VIII. US Corps
September 5, 1944 9th U.S. Army
September 10, 1944 -
September 21, 1944 XX. US Corps 3rd US Army
October 11, 1944 VIII. US Corps 9th U.S. Army
October 22, 1944 1st U.S. Army
November 8, 1944 XX. US Corps 3rd US Army
November 11, 1944 VIII. US Corps 1st U.S. Army
December 7, 1944 VII US Corps
December 20, 1944 attached to the 21st Army Group
December 22, 1944 XIX. US Corps 9th U.S. Army 21st Army Group
December 26, 1944 VII US Corps 1st U.S. Army
February 16, 1945 XIX. US Corps 9th U.S. Army 12th Army Group
May 8, 1945 XIII. US Corps

Others

Tony Vaccaro , a private 83rd division, became the official war photographer for the 83rd Division newspaper in 1944 or 1945 . Until 1949 he took photos in many places in Germany and Europe and documented life in the post-war period .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Special Unit Designations . United States Army Center of Military History. April 21, 2010. Retrieved July 9, 2010.
  2. ↑ Order of Battle of the United States Army, World War II, European Theater of Operations on history.army.mil