Index to the General Order of the 79th Infantry Division, in WWII
Statistics:
Silver
Star Medals 868
Soldier’s Medals 19
Bronze Star Medals 4,436
Air Medals 72
Purple Heart Medals 7,672
Combat Infantryman Badge 3
Combat Medic Badge 306
Battle Losses 2,956
Total Awards 13,376
This book has 240 pages
ISBN 978-1-932891-71-3
Library of Congress Control Number Pending
79th Division's WWII Order of Battle
Headquarters Company
313th Infantry Regiment
314th Infantry Regiment
315th Infantry Regiment
Headquarters Battery, 79th Division
Artillery
310th Field Artillery Battalion
311th Field Artillery Battalion
312th Field Artillery Battalion
904th Field Artillery Battalion
79th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, Mechanized
304th Engineer Combat Battalion
304th Medical Battalion
79th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment
Headquarters, Special Troops
779th Ordnance Light Maintenance Company
79th Quartermaster Company
79th Signal Company
Military Police Platoon
Units attached during combat operations*:
191st Tank Battalion
717th Tank Battalion
744th Tank Battalion
749th Tank Battalion
761st Tank Battalion
781st Tank Battalion
605th Tank Destroyer Battalion
773rd Tank Destroyer Battalion
809th Tank Destroyer Battalion
813th Tank Destroyer Battalion
463rd AAA Auto-Weapons Battalion
*the time period of each attachment varies
WWII Campaigns
Normandy
Northern France
Rhineland
Ardennes-Alsace
Central Europe
This is the fiftieth 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 79th Infantry Division.* Please note that many decorations presented to members of the 79th 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 79th Infantry Division. This lists the names of men from the 79th Infantry Division who gave their lives in combat. For reason unknown to me this report omitted men from the 304th Medical Battalion. I consulted the Battle Monument Commission’s website in the attempt to include some of the battle death suffered by the 304th Medical Battalion. This is not a complete listing the 304th Medical Battalion’s combat losses as the Battle Monument Commission only lists service members buried in its cemeteries.
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 up 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 this the likelihood of this very small, but I must point out the possibility anyway.
*The following general order was
missing from the files at the National Archives:
(GO#53,1943,79DIV)
General Orders 202 and 205 of the series are identical and even dated the same date. It is not known if one was in error or if another general order was issued to replace the duplicate. If General Order #205 was reissued, then it is missing as well.
How to read the sources: (GO#46,1945,79Div) is broken down as “GO” (General
Order), “#” (Number 46, 1945), “79Div” (79th Infantry Division).
Information cited as (79DivAGOBD) is from the Adjutant General’s 1947 Battle
Death Report for the 79th Division. Entries that are in italics
are men who were either Killed in Action or Died of Wounds. Information
cited as (BMC) is from the Battle Monument Commission’s website.
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.