Index to the General Order of the 44th Infantry Division, in WWII
Statistics:
Silver Star Medals 418
Soldier’s Medals 9
Bronze Star Medals 3,589
Air Medals 103
Purple Heart Medals 2,895
Combat Infantryman Badge 3
Army Commendation Ribbons 2
Letters of Commendation 52
Battle Losses 1,105
Total Awards 7,071
This book has 144 pages
ISBN 978-1-932891-24-9
ISBN 1-932891-24-2
Library of Congress Control Number 2005-273397
44th Division's WWII Order of Battle
Headquarters Company
71st Infantry Regiment
114th Infantry Regiment
324th Infantry Regiment
Headquarters Battery, 44th Division
Artillery
156th Field Artillery Battalion
157th Field Artillery Battalion
217th Field Artillery Battalion
220th Field Artillery Battalion
44th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, Mechanized
63rd Engineer Combat Battalion
119th Medical Battalion
44th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment
Headquarters, Special Troops
744th Ordnance Light Maintenance Company
44th Quartermaster Company
44th Signal Company
Military Police Platoon
Units attached during combat operations*:
749th Tank Battalion
772nd Tank Battalion
776th Tank Destroyer Battalion
813th Tank Destroyer Battalion
398th AAA Auto-Weapons Battalion
895th AAA Auto-Weapons Battalion
*the time period of each attachment varies
WWII Campaigns
Northern France
Rhineland
Central Europe
This is the thirtieth 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 44th Infantry Division.* Please note that many decorations presented to members of the 44th 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 44th Infantry Division. This lists all the men from the 44th Infantry Division who gave their lives in combat.
Some of the earlier general orders of the 44th Infantry Division do not give unit assignments. Awards of decorations have the numerical designation of the regiment or separate battalion expunged. It is assumed that most decoration recipients were assigned to the 44th Division, unless they are listed in a branch of service that was not organic to this division. (Example: Tank Destroyer Battalion, etc.)
This command did not place the general order number on each page of the general orders issued before General Order #64 of the 1945 Series; therefore it is possible that a page or pages may be out of order. I have made every effort to assure that this did not occur, but it is still a possibility.
The 44th Division published a number of Letters of Commendation in its general orders after December 7, 1941, for service prior to that date. Because of this rather unique situation, I’m not certain if the Department of the Army would convert these commendations to Army Commendation Medals. I have, therefore listed them as Letter of Commendations rather than Army Commendation Ribbons. I’m inclined to believe that these commendations would not warrant conversion; but I have included them since there is no definitive answer at this time.
*The following general orders were missing from the files at the National Archives:
(GO#178,1945,44DIV)
(GO#276,1945,44DIV)
(GO#298,1945,44DIV)
How to read the sources: (GO#46,1945,44Div) is broken down as “GO” (General Order), “#” (Number 46, 1945), “44Div” (44th Division). Information cited as (44DIVAGOBD) is from the Adjutant General’s 1947 Battle Death Report for the 44th Division. Entries that are in italics are men who were either Killed in Action or Died of Wounds.
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.