Statistics:

Silver Star Medals 4,963
Soldier's Medals 121
Bronze Star Medals 17,831
Air Medals 102
Purple Heart Medals 4,375
Army Commendation Ribbons 156
Combat Medic Badges 496
Prisoner of War 19
Combat Losses 4,339

Total Awards 28,053

This book has 535 pages

ISBN 978-1-932891-41-8

ISBN 1-932891-47-1

Library of Congress Control Number 2005-280266

1^st Infantry Division's WWII
Order of Battle

Headquarters Company

16^th Infantry Regiment
18^th Infantry Regiment
26^th Infantry Regiment

Headquarters Battery, 1st Division Artillery
5^th Field Artillery Battalion
7^th Field Artillery Battalion
32^nd Field Artillery Battalion
33^rd Field Artillery Battalion

1^st Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, Mechanized
1^st Engineer Combat Battalion
1^st Medical Battalion
1^st Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment
Headquarters, Special Troops
701^st Ordnance Light Maintenance Company
1^st Quartermaster Battalion later 1^st Quartermaster Company
1^st Signal Company
Military Police Platoon

Units Attached during Combat Operations*:

70^th Tank Battalion
745^th Tank Battalion
634^th Tank Destroyer Battalion
635^th Tank Destroyer Battalion
703^rd Tank Destroyer Battalion
103^rd AAA Auto-Weapons Battalion
*the duration of each attachment varies

WWII Campaigns

Algeria-French Morocco
Tunisia
Sicily
Normandy
Northern France
Rhineland
Ardennes-Alsace
Central Europe

This is the thirty-third in a series of indexes of all the divisions, corps, armies and commands of the US Army during WWII. Others will be published as they are completed.

 This work includes all decorations cited in the general orders of the 1^st Infantry Division.* Please note that many decorations presented to members of the 1^st Infantry Division may have been cited in general orders of other commands. Most awards of the Purple Heart Medal were cited in the general orders of the hospitals that the men were evacuated to and, therefore, are not included in the work. This index does not attempt to list all of the awards of the Bronze Star Medal that were retroactively awarded under Change 13 to Army Regulation 600-45, Department of the Army, 4 November 1947. Most awards of the CIB and CMB were made in general orders of the respective infantry regiments. I have made no attempt to list the unit awards, awards of specific Battle Stars, and Good Conduct Medals.

This index also includes the names from the Adjutant General’s Battle Death Report of the 1^st Infantry Division. This lists all the men from the 1^st Infantry Division who gave their lives in combat.

General Orders #6 of the 1943 series thru General Order #14 of the 1944 series do not contain the recipient’s unit assignment information. The recipient’s branch of service is listed in its place. Please note that some members of tank destroyer battalions were actually members of the field artillery branch; likewise, members of tank battalions are commonly assigned to the infantry or cavalry branch. So the branch of service is only a lead in determining what unit an individual served in.

Many of the general orders issued during 1943 contain the medal numbers awarded to each living recipient. When the medal number was included in the general order, it also appears in this work after the decoration abbreviation and prefixed by the “#” sign. A few of the medal numbers awarded were rescinded in later general orders when the specific medals could not be presented to the recipients, due to the recipients being hospitalized wounds or captured. To eliminate confusion, the rescinded medals numbers are not included in this work. I found at least two instances where two different individuals were awarded the same medal number.

 The number of individual Oak Leaf Clusters awarded to each recipient was not annotated in the general order. Therefore, to determine the total number awarded to each individual, I added each time they were cited for an Oak Leaf Cluster to a particular decoration. This is not a perfect system, as it does not account for Oak Leaf Clusters awarded by other commands to a specific service member. So there is a possibility that the number of Oak Leaf Clusters stated in this work may be less then the actual number awarded. I find the likelihood of this very small, but I must point out the possibility.

General Order Numbers 25 and 26 of the 1944 series were revoked. These general orders awarded Bronze Star Medals to members of the 18^th Infantry Regiment who landed on D-Day. General Order 27 also awards Bronze Star Medal to members of the 1^st Battalion, 18^th Infantry who landed on D-Day. I could not find a general order revoking this general order, but soldiers cited in General Order Number 27 who were later cited for the Bronze Star Medal again were not awarded an Oak Leaf Cluster. Since I could not find a general order revoking General Order 27 and the fact that the vast majority of the 1^st Infantry Division’s general orders are present, I have added an Oak Leaf Cluster to those who were cited in General Order Number 27 and cited again for the Bronze Star Medal. The reader is cautioned that this premise may be proven wrong at a later date.

 Late in 1944 and thru the end of the war in Europe there were platoons or companies of African American soldiers attached to infantry regiments. This is note worthy as this was the first time that the US Army allowed whites and black to serve together. It was not integration as the African Americans were segregated into their own platoons or companies, depending on the policy in the given army area, but it allowed the African American to prove that they were worthy soldiers. I bring this up because some entries in selected general orders note when the recipient was an African American. The official army term used during the era was “Colored.” I have used this term to denote when the recipient was so identified in the general order. My selection of this term is not intended to demean any one, but rather it is the official terminology used when referring to US Army units made up of African Americans. The actual employment of the African American reinforcement varies from division to division. It appears from what I have read in the general orders of the 1^st Infantry Division that an African American platoon was attached to each infantry battalion. These platoons replaced one of the depleted white platoons in a selected line company. Other divisions referred to the African American replacements as “Army Provisional Infantry Company” or lettered them the next letter not used in their current table of organization. These are my observations over the last five years; there is a possibility that some of previous statements may be disproved in certain circumstances. I also feel that it is possible that not every African American cited in the 1^st Infantry Division was noted as being “Colored” in the corresponding general order.

 The 1^st Infantry Division suffered a lot of casualties, which meant that a lot of men passed through the division during combat operations. There are many decorations recipients who appear in more than one general order. On several occasions I found that service members with the same name have vastly different service number. With most other commands that I compile this normally only occurs with common surnames, but I had several persons with unusual surnames in this division as well. It is too time consuming to check each service member who appears in more than one general order to verify service numbers. So as I always recommend, please refer back to the original general order before forming a final conclusion. I feel that I did a good job merging or not merging these service members. But there still are possibilities for errors or omissions

 The assignments listed are the assignments as they appear in the general orders. It is entirely possible that the assignments may be out of order or some assignments may be omitted. The reader is advised to review each general order and check the periods covered for each decoration to get a better grasp of the order in which the recipient served. The possibility for the assignments being out of order is caused by the fact that not every deserving deed was rewarded in the proper chronological order. It is also possible that the assignment listed in the general order may be different from the recipient’s assignment when the decoration was earned.

There is also an issue of enlisted rank reductions. Many people do not realize that until after World War II enlisted ranks belong to the unit and not the individual. So if an enlisted man left his unit he was reduced to a private, unless the receiving unit had a vacancy. This was not an issue for most combat units during WWII. But the 1^st Division fought longer then most others divisions in the ETO. This combined with the high casualty rate means that some non-commissioned officers who were wounded and evacuated were reduced to a lower rank upon their return. As commanders needed a strong command structure, it was necessary to promote deserving men to fill the vacancies caused by attrition.

 *The following general orders were missing from the files at the National Archives:

             * All general orders issued after General Order #4 of the 1947 series are missing

 How to read the sources: (GO#46,1945,1Div) is broken down as “GO” (General Order), “#” (Number 46, 1945), “1Div” (1^st Infantry Division).  Information cited as (1DIVAGOBD) is from the Adjutant General’s 1947 Battle Death Report for the 1^st Infantry Division. Entries that are in italics are men who gave their lives in combat. 

             General Order Number 155, 1945 confirms the awards of Silver Star Medals cited in the 1^st Infantry Division Artillery’s General Orders issued during 1943. These entries will have both the original 1^st Division Artillery General Order Number, (GO#?,1943,1DIVArty) and (GO#155,1945,1DIV).

     Every effort has been made to minimize errors and misspelled names. An error may be attributable to the source document, or may have occurred while transcribing the names/units. Some of the original documents are of very poor print quality, making them difficult to decipher.

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