Index to the General Orders of the 5th Infantry Division, in WWII
Statistics:
Silver Star Medals
1,141
Soldier’s Medals 28
Bronze Star Medals 4,478
Air Medals 241
Purple Heart Medals 2,669
Combat Infantryman Badges 704
Expert Infantryman Badges 17
Battle Losses 2,656
Total Awards 9,178
This book has 157 pages
ISBN 978-1-932891-08-9
ISBN 1-932891-08-0
Library of Congress Control Number 2003-619415
5th Division's WWII Order of Battle
Headquarters Company
2nd Infantry Regiment
10th Infantry Regiment
11th Infantry Regiment
Headquarters Battery, 5th Division
Artillery
19th Field Artillery Battalion
21st Field Artillery Battalion
46th Field Artillery Battalion
50th Field Artillery Battalion
5th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, Mechanized
7th Engineer Combat Battalion
5th Medical Battalion
5th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment
Headquarters, Special Troops
705th Ordnance Light Maintenance Company
5th Quartermaster Company
5th Signal Company
Military Police Platoon
Units attached during combat operations*:
735th Tank Battalion
737th Tank Battalion
654th Tank Destroyer Battalion
774th Tank Destroyer Battalion
803rd Tank Destroyer Battalion
807th Tank Destroyer Battalion
818th Tank Destroyer Battalion
449th AAA Auto-Weapons Battalion
*the time period of each attachment varies
WWII Campaigns
Normandy
Northern France
Rhineland
Ardennes-Alsace
Central Europe
This is the sixteenth in a series of indexes of all the divisions, corps, armies, and commands 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 5th Division.* Please note that some decorations to members of the 5th Division may have been cited in general orders of other commands. Some awards of the Purple Heart Medal are missing as they were cited in the general orders of the hospitals to which the men were evacuated. This index does not attempt to list all 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. This work does list the awards of those specialty badges that were cited in the General Orders of 5th Division. I have made no attempt to list the Unit Awards, awards of specific Battle Stars, and Good Conduct Medals. The 5th Division did issue Expert Infantryman Badges to several 10th Infantry soldiers for service during combat operations. The Expert Infantryman Badge in this respect seemed to have been issued as a junior award to the Combat Infantryman Badge. I have listed these awards of the Expert Infantryman Badge, as they may be convertible into a Bronze Star Medal under the change to Army Regulation 600-45 cited above. The Expert Infantryman Badge is a non-combat proficiency badge; its award by the 5th Division in this context is somewhat unusual.
Most general orders do not give company assignments. Some of the early general orders do not give unit assignments but just a branch of service, which was used in lieu of the unit. Several of the early general orders are of very poor print quality and therefore are barely readable. Several entries of these early general orders are likely misspelled due to the poor print quality of the original document.
This index also includes the names from the Adjutant General’s Battle Death Report of the 5th Division. This lists all the men from the 5th Division who gave their lives while in combat.
How to read the sources: (GO#46,1945,5DIV) is broken down as “GO” (General Order), “#” (Number 46, 1945), “5DIV” (5th Division). Information cited as (5DIVAGOBD) is from the Adjutant General’s 1947 Battle Death Report for the 5th Infantry Division. Entries that are in italics are men who were either Killed in Action or Died of Wounds.
* The following general orders are missing from the 5th Division’s file at the National Archives:
(GO#15,1944,5DIV) (GO#15,1946,5DIV)**
** (GO#15,1946,5DIV) contains information on individual decorations. I have located an extract from this General Order, which awards a Bronze Star Medal. The wording of this extract is such, that there is no doubt other decorations are cited in this general order.
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.