Index to the General Order of the 7th Armored Division, in World War II
Statistics:
Silver
Star Medals 513
Soldier’s Medal 5
Bronze Star Medals 2,787
Air Medals 81
Purple Heart Medals 2,855
Combat Infantryman Badges 5,003
Combat Medic Badges 167
Battle Losses 1,251
Total Awards 11,411
This book has 304 pages
ISBN 978-1-932891-65-2
Library of Congress Control Number Pending
7th Armored Division's WWII Order of Battle
Headquarters Company
Headquarters Company, Combat Command A
Headquarters Company, Combat Command B
Headquarters Company, Reserve Command
17th Tank Battalion
31st Tank Battalion
40th Tank Battalion
23rd Armored Infantry Battalion
38th Armored Infantry Battalion
48th Armored Infantry Battalion
Headquarters Battery, 7th Armored Division
Artillery
434th Armored Field Artillery Battalion
440th Armored Field Artillery Battalion
489th Armored Field Artillery Battalion
87th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, Mechanized
33rd Armored Engineer Combat Battalion
77th Armored Medical Battalion
507th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment
Headquarters, Trains
129th Armored Ordnance Maintenance Battalion
147th Armored Signal Company
Military Police Platoon
Units attached during combat operations*:
814th Tank Destroyer Battalion
820th Tank Destroyer Battalion
203rd AAA Auto-Weapons Battalion
*the time period of each attachment varies
WWII Campaigns
Northern France
Rhineland
Ardennes-Alsace
Central Europe
This is the sixty-fifth 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 7th Armored Division.* Please note that many decorations presented to members of the 7th Armored Division were 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. I have made no attempt to list the unit awards, awards of specific Battle Stars, and Good Conduct Medals.
Many of the 7th Armored Division’s general orders issued during 1944 do not contain the recipient’s unit assignment. These early general orders list the recipient’s branch of service in lieu of the unit of assignment.
The 7th Armored Division awarded the Expert Infantryman Badges “for satisfactory performance of duty 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 7th Armored Division’s use of the Expert Infantryman Badge in this context is unorthodox.
The number of individual Oak Leaf Clusters awarded to each recipient was not annotated in the general order. Each Oak Leaf Cluster awarded to an individual’s decoration was counted and recorded. 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 understated. I find the likelihood of this very small, but I must point out the possibility.
How to read the sources: (GO#46,1945,7ARMDIV) is broken down as “GO” (General Order), “#” (Number 46, 1945), “7ARMDIV” (7th Armored Division). Information cited as (7ARMDIVAGOBD) is from the Adjutant General’s 1947 Battle Death Report for the 7th Armored 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.