Index of the General Orders of the 475th Infantry Regiment, in WWII
Statistics:
Purple
Heart Medals 780
Combat Infantryman Badges 6,258
Combat Medic Badges 141
Expert Infantryman Badges 200
Total Awards 7,379
This book has 159 pages
ISBN 978-1-932891-91-1
Library of Congress Control Number
Pending
WWII Campaigns
Central Burma
India-Burma
This is the fourteenth in a series of indexes of all infantry regiments and independent infantry battalions of the US Army in WWII. Others will be published as they are completed.
This work includes all decorations cited in the general orders of the 475th Infantry Regiment. Please note that some decorations to members of the 475th Infantry Regiment may have been cited in general orders of other commands. This index lists members of the 475th Infantry Regiment that were awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge or the Combat Medic Badge by the 475th Infantry Regiment. Combat Infantryman Badges and Combat Medic Badges are important, since the recipients of these badges are retroactively entitled to a Bronze Star Medal under Change 13 to Army Regulation 600-45, Department of the Army, 4 November 1947. I have made no attempt to list the Unit Awards, awards of specific Battle Stars, or Good Conduct Medals.
General Order #4, 1944, contains the medal numbers awarded. 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.
The 475th Infantry Regiment awarded the Expert Infantryman Badges “for satisfactory conduct in action against the enemy.” The Expert Infantryman Badge in this respect seemed to have been issued as a junior award to the Combat Infantryman Badge. I have listed the awards of the Expert Infantryman Badge, as they may be convertible to a Bronze Star Medal under the change to Army Regulation 600-45 cited above. The Expert Infantryman Badge is a non-combat proficiency badge; the 475th Infantry Regiment use of the Expert Infantryman Badge in this context is unorthodox.
How to read the sources: (GO#12,1945,475INF) is broken down as “GO” (General Order), “#” (Number 12, 1945), “475INF” (475th Infantry Regiment).
The 475th Infantry Regiment was organized on August 10, 1944, from the assets of the 5307th Composite Unit Provisional “Merrill’s Marauders.” The 5307th Composite Unit Provisional also issued general orders; please consult the index to the general orders of that command when researching soldiers who served with the unit prior to August 10, 1944.
The 475th Infantry Regiment’s general orders do not provide
information on the recipient’s unit of assignment. Thus compilation of this
work required the following assumption: It was assumed that any soldier
cited for a decoration prior to August 10, 1944, was assigned to the
5307th
Composite Unit Provisional and served in the 475th Infantry as
well. This may not have always been the case as some members had entered
combat with other units before joining the 5307th Composite Unit
Provisional and/or the 475th Infantry Regiment. Also, I have no
idea which members of the 5307th Composite Unit Provisional were
evacuated prior to August 10, 1944, and never returned to the 475th
Infantry Regiment. Additionally, many of the original members of the
5307th
Composite Unit Provisional may have never served with the 475th
Infantry Regiment.
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. Corrections with
supporting documentation can be sent to D-Day Militaria.