Unit History

Post date: Apr 20, 2012 6:41:11 PM

751st Field Artillery Battalion Unit History

Transcribed by Brandon Nickisch from original file found at National Archives College Park, Maryland

The 751st Field Artillery Battalion was activated on 18 January 1943 at Camp Bowie, Texas, with officers and a cadre of enlisted men from the 141st Field Artillery Regiment, Ft. Sill Oklahoma, but it wasn't until after the hectic period of preparation of quarters, beds and supplies that the long trainload of civilians in ODs rolled into the Camp Bowie freight yards and made the battalion a living force. It was the afternoon of the 31st of January these men, 589 of them, straight from New York State and its mid-winter blizzards, stood in the motor pool and shivered in surprise at the bitter Texas winter, while they were sorted into batteries. Some answered eagerly and some answered slowly as their names were called stunned to find themselves so far away from home with the strange prospect of becoming soldiers. That was the real beginning of the 751st Field Artillery Battalion for these men, with newness still in their shoes, were later to become machine gunners, cannoneers, communications men, cooks, drivers, survey and FDC men who made the unit a real working "outfit."

Camp Bowie, Texas

Like iron, a good outfit is malleable. It is shaped by circumstances in the same way that the blows of the sledge shape the metal. As it grows stronger with the change from casting to wrought iron, an outfit improves as it is forced and strained by hard work. At this point the simile breaks down, because an outfit is never a finished product. It is continually being re-shaped by varying forces, but all of them continue the strengthening process. The 751st has been no different from any other good outfit in these respects, and today, it is still being re-worked. If this simile is truthful then the history of the battalion should be an outline of the process of making of a strong useful tool for the fight against the enemy.

Camp Bowie, Texas 1943 (Photo Courtesy of Phil Servedio)

Just as the first ten days of routine restriction were about completed there was an outbreak of spinal meningitis and the entire battalion was placed under a quarantine that lasted 40 days. For these 40 long days it was a continuous cycle of pills to take, sterilization of dishes and medical inspections. No one could come in, and those who went out were on their way to the hospital, and stakes in the crap games go higher and higher. No one was lost through illness however, and at the end of the first thirteen weeks the battalion was able to pass its AGF tests satisfactorily.

By summer, when a majority of them had furloughs, most of the men went home as soldiers, and when they came back, had a chance to prove themselves, for the battalion was ordered to Louisiana for maneuvers on 15 Sept. It was a rigorous two months of living in the field, getting hardened to the weather. The battalion took part in the fast mobile tactics of the Third Army around the Marysville-Leesville area until 17th of November and then returned to Bowie.

Back in the stamping grounds advanced unit training began with field problems and firing practice in Camp Bowie Training Areas - the names have a familiar ring to them - D-8, Indian Creek and Pecan Bayou. Some other names and events, too, stir up pleasant memories for the men of the 751st: Service Club Three and Theater Seven, the first anniversary dance, evenings in Brownwood, passes to Ft. Worth and Dallas, weekends in Eastland, Stephensville and Cisco.

In the spring of 1944 things took on an air of anticipation. Equipment was checked and re-checked, men were hurried through necessary qualifications at the last moment and everything was characterized with the magic symbol - POM (Preparation for Overseas Movement). By 18 July 1944 the last duffle-bag was packed and the last shipping crate ticketed, and that day a toughened ready crew of soldiers returned to the Bowie freight yards where 18 months before they had stood cold and new, apprehensive as to their future. This time there could be little doubt - there was a job to be done and both the old men and the new - for the outfit had changed some - knew it.

The first leg of the long journey was to a "secret base" which turned out to be Camp Myles Standish, Massachusetts in spite of all the speculation on the train trip. The ride was a good last look at America; the great sweeps of farmland in the Midwest, war-booming industries, rest stops at shady home-towns with their neat old fashioned stations, pleasant American folks and pretty American girls all along the way. Then, it was through the Empire state and the towns that were home to many of the men of the battalion and up through the mountains of New England to a late-night arrival at the staging area, Camp Myles Standish.

There the rapid efficiency of final preparation began, directed by a public address system which sounded like the voice of doom as it came out of nowhere in the dimmed-out rail yards. Marching everywhere in a column of three on the left hand side, the battalion got its typhus shots, bond lectures, orientation, its gas proof clothing, inspections and all the final details. Then sweating and straining under heavy packs and horse-shoe rolls, but proudly withal, though few would admit it, the battalion entrained for the short ride to the Boston Port of Embarkation on the 23rd of July. There was a short pause on the pier while the Red Cross served a cooling drink, then, answering the roll the special way they had been taught to do, the men boarded Boat No. 801, SS Mount Vernon known to tourists before the war as the S.S. Washington. Overseas pay had started, and the next morning the rail was crowded to watch the last line cast off.

SS Mount Vernon (a.k.a SS Washington)

It was good weather and the trip was a comfortable one, with plenty of time for card games, reading and just watching the water. Except for a school of porpoises that tagged the ship, the afternoon shoes on the after-deck, and the continuous guessing about the debarkation pint, there wasn't much excitement.

On July 31st the guessing ceased, because that evening the destroyer escort met the ship and brought her between the steep headlands of the Firth of Clyde, Scotland. Activities and strange sights of a busy foreign harbor in wartime held interest, until the battalion was taken off on a barge the next afternoon. The actual landing was at Greenock, Scotland where the Red Cross again boosted the spirits of the weary travelers with doughnuts and hot coffee as they entrained for a long ride through the Scottish and English countryside. The novelty of English trains and blacked-out cities was beginning to wear off when the battalion arrived early the next morning at Abergavveny, Wales.

The month of August, at Camp Court-y-Gollen near Abergavvany was spent in drawing equipment and getting it ready for combat. There was camouflage nets to make, twelve fine new pieces to care for, a complete pool of vehicles to prepare for their particular uses, and then on the 24th of August the alert was given and two days later the battalion was on the road for marshalling area D-7 to await further orders which were not long in coming. On the 28th the battalion was in one of the long lines of vehicles at Hards, Weymouth waiting beneath the sausage-like barrage balloons for transportation on LST's: on the morning of the 29th it was headed out into the English channel. The crews of the LST's less the alert at the anti-aircraft guns on the morning of the 30th as the low, longness of land that was France came up on the horizon. This was the famous Utah Beach; a maze of the super-structures of sunken ships with amphibious Ducks and alligators threading and skipping around while on the shore itself men, bull-dozers and trucks slaved in ant-like activity. At 1200 hours the battalion's tracks and vehicles rolled out of the mouths of the LST's, up over the beach, through the dunes and mine fields, past abandoned equipment and around shell craters, as more than one man tried to picture the hell in this place for the weeks after the 6th of June. Here, like gigantic symbols of America's power in mass production and abundance of what was needed, were great stockpiles of gasoline, ammunition and food, inspiring confidence in the most doubtful. Here was the support and work of the people back home - the power behind the iron fist at the front.

The battalion drove inland along narrow dirt roads between the hedgerows to a bivouac near St. Germain de Varreville. There, that night, the colonel, receiving orders to move, sent an advance detail to contact the 83rd Division. The next morning the battalion set off in convoy, with the destination of Dinard, a French seacoast town in the St. Malo area. Its mission was to hold siege on the Isle de Cezembre, a tiny island two miles off-shore at the mouth of the bay, where a well-provisioned German garrison offered a threat to the port area of St. Malo that had to be eliminated. Going into position at Dinard about noon of the 31st the second section of B Battery fired the battalion's first rounds in the ETO in adjustment on the island. On the first of September the battalion opened fire. The following day everything up to 8 inch artillery and dive-bombing F-38's, pounded the garrison until it surrendered.

(Photos pulled from records of the 751st Field Artillery Battalion located at National Archives, College Park, Maryland)

Bombardment of Isle de Cezembre

(Red Ball Express)

While the trucks and drivers were still on Red Ball, the outfit moved to Henri Chappelle, Belgium just West of Aachen. There was still work to do and details went out several times to work as long as 24 hours in ammo dumps manhandling fluid ammunition supply. The reassuring roar of our own anti-aircraft staving off enemy planes was first experience by the men at Henri Chappelle.

The 751st re-assumed combat status again on the 9th of October near Raath, Holland with the mission of general support of ground troops, counter-battery and interdiction fires. From this position Battery C fired the first of the 751st's rounds to fall on German soil. For the first few days in this position the men were still jumping at the sound of friendly artillery, but it wasn't long before everyone could identify incoming mail accurately. Able's CP at Bastenrath was shelled out and re-established at Hievelberg, Germany. Two ME-109's strafed "B" Battery, but no one was hurt. CSMO came through on the 23rd of October and the battalion pulled back to Oirsbeeck, Holland overnight enroute to Dorff, Germany.

Messerschmitt Bf 109

(Photo courtesy: "Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-487-3066-04, Flugzeug Messerschmitt Me 109" by Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-487-3066-04 / Boyer / CC-BY-SA. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de via Wikimedia Commons)

Dorff was the setting for the battalion's real baptismy by fire. Five days after arrival, FDC which was operating in the cellar of a hilltop house looking down the valley toward Stolberg received three direct hits and was forced to vacate to a position where communications could be better maintained. It was during this shelling the Tec 5 Fred J.Caruso of Hq Battery was wounded in the thigh by a piece of shrapnel. At the same time 1st Lt. Thomas Vaughn was wounded in the shoulder. The firing batteries were under almost nightly harassing fire, and communications were constantly being knocked out. It was for maintaining wire communication under these conditions that SSgt Ernest Winn was recommended for the Bronze Star which he was later awarded. The Kraut was determined to make a slugging match out of it, for he shelled heavily day in, day out; in the first days of November fragments got Pvt. Walter Jones of "A" Battery, Pvt J. Rager and Tec 5 Miner of "B" Battery and R.L. Mason of "C" Battery.

On the 8th of November the infantry called for the destruction of a hedge which was obstructing them. In the process of obliterating the hedge a pill-box behind it was disclosed. Four hits on it, one bursting inside it, destroyed the pill-box. During the firing a machine gun emplacement, a bunker and an armored vehicle was revealed in the immediate vicinity. The emplacement was destroyed, the bunker was penetrated at least twice, and the armored vehicle splintered by fragments. The total expenditure was 31 rounds.

Thus it went until the bitter push of November 16, when it was reported that the Third Armored Division whose fires the Battalion was re-enforcing was gaining its objective, the lines were moving forward and on the 22nd the Battalion took up positions in the eastern outskirts of Stolberg.

Letters from home had worried about Thanksgiving festivities in the ETO. They needn't have, for sometime during that day every man had a mess-kit heaped with real turkey and all the fixings. Perhaps, a man had to think a little hard to find something to be thankful for, but he'd had a good meal and jerry was moving back - slowly, yes - but moving.

The next position came directly from the Hollywood model of a battle-field. The area was shell-marked and cattle lay dead and bloated in ditches near men in the same condition. Of the town itself, there was little left. It had been Bergrath, Germany. The bricks, bed-clothes and knick-knacks that had once made up homes lay in jumbles where a street or houses had once been. The best abodes were cellars and the men made them comfortable quickly. The battalion took positions here on the 29th of Nov. and closed them the 3rd of Dec. to move on to the vicinity of Weisweiler.

The first day in the new position was a good one, although it was on the tip of a salient well into enemy territory, because a couple of good things happened; Marlene Deitrich put on a show in Stolberg and three enemy planes were shot down over the area. Here was the first time the men had seen a mortar in action; the guns were so close to the front that an 81-mm mortar section was firing from behind "C" Battery.

Photo of troops leaving Marlene Deitrich show on Dec. 4th in Stolberg, Germany.

(Original photo found at WWII Letters to Wilma blogspot.com )

So far the weather hasn't been mentioned but it was a large factor in the lives of all who fought through the winter in Germany. Mud and cold and rain had dogged the men almost from the day the battalion entered the Reich. It was getting colder now occasionally cold enough to freeze the mud and give some relief.

Jerry kept up his shelling and the 11th of December he dropped a 2100mm shell on one of "C" Battery's billets killing Sgt. Francis H. Lee, Cpl. Owen F.Powers, Cpl. Julio Almodovar, Pvt. Anthony Miglin and wounding Tec 5 Edward Insky, Pvt. B. Pasquaye and Pvt. Ralph Lumbert. In the same position Cpl. Donald Bonforte broke his leg in a fall from Able's OP.

Up to this time the battalion had piled up a total number of rounds amounting to 15,000, the 15,000th being fired in a battalion TOT on the 8th.

On the 16th of December the 751st moved to Rotgen, Germany where it was attached to the V Corps, 187th FA Group in general support of the 78th Division. Much of the battalion was in the open, in the forests. On the 17th at 0200 in the morning Baker reported enemy paratroops landing in their vicinity and on the 18th enemy planes dropped flares over "C" Battery and bombed their gun positions destroying some ammunition. Paratrooper scares continued; enemy planes were over the area nightly; the men began to tense up. Something was in the wind. These were the early days of the Nazis final and terrible offensive, - the Bulge. Then on Christmas Eve at 1630 all batteries were alerted for a possible attack on the battalion position. It was a beautiful night, cold, still and crystal clear, lighted by a full moon. Men were making little noise, for it was hard work to dig ground defenses in the frozen earth and there was much to prepare. The tenseness that held everyone throughout the night dissolved a little on Christmas day and the Christmas spirit prevailed at the turkey dinners held in all the batteries. Trees had been cut in the woods for almost every section, and decorated with whatever was on hand - radar tinsel, cotton stuffing out of pillows and whatever "Field expedients" a GI could devise.

The situation eased off somewhat after these few days although the First Army notified the battalion to expect an enemy attack on the morning of the 28th. A man couldn't stop looking for a kraut paratrooper behind every tree or a Tiger tank behind every bend in the road. Air activity continued from both sides; on the morning of the 26th planes with friendly markings bombed and strafed the area, failing to recognize colored smoke signals set up by the ground troops. Two or three days later the air-strip was bombed by an enemy planed but no damage was done.

Cold-bitten cannoneers pulled the lanyard on the 25,000th round from snowed-in gun positions at 0400 hours on the morning of the 29th. It fell on a bridge over the Ruhr.

Aside from a few enemy air-raids over the area things went almost quietly for a couple of weeks after the new year. On the 13th Lt. Cary, whose plane had been forced down the day before just behind the frontlines, Lt. Dugas and Lt. Ball were awarded the Air Medal. On the 18th the battalion took note of its second anniversary but conditions were hardly favorable to staging any celebrations.

It was snowing and extremely cold on the night of the 24th and on that night a faulty lighting generator set fire to the house were FDC was located forcing them to halt operations while they moved to a new location. The house was completely destroyed but no equipment lost except for the generator.

The battalion moved south into Nidrum, Belgium on the 26th of January to reinforce the fires of the Second Division. The weather was still cold and snowy, and the enemy sufficiently active to shell the battalion area lightly, but daily. Two men slightly wounded and received the Purple Heart: S/Sgt. Fran Quigley of C Battery and T/5 Arthur Werne of Baker.

On the first of February the battalion was re-assigned to the Ninth Army and attached to the Thirtieth Division as general support, then waited several days for movement orders.

Moving northward again under the new set-up the battalion established its CP at Lohn, Germany, a shattered and deserted little town near the Roer River. The thaw had come just as the move was made and the weather was now unseasonably mild. It was a period of quiet waiting as American forces gathered strength and hoped for more ideal conditions to attack across the Roer, a tiny yet somehow formidable water barrier. The Kraut was set, ready with everything he had and he knew or sensed our forces tightening up for the struggle that would finally break the ice of the long winter's campaign. There were several heavy enemy bombings and shelling in and around the battalion's area.

By the 21st of February the waters of the Roer had receded and in the early hours of the morning the battalion took part in a great artillery preparation. The heat was on: it was to be a time of feverish activity until the Rhine was reached. On the 23rd the battalion took positions in the completely destroyed town of Pier on the west bank of the Roer. Catching a little sleep in the cellars of Pier, and firing continuously despite enemy shellings of the area the battalion prepared to cross the river. There was a good deal of disparaging comment on the size of the Roer as the convoy crossed: it was then only a couple of streams twenty feet wide, but as they moved on to the town of Daubenrath the men could see the signs of a vicious struggle, evidence of how hard jerry held on.

The 751st played one night stands from Daubenrath to the Rhine, but not for applause. At Daubenrath kraut planes chased our air-observers home just over the fences, and made repeated unsuccessful bombing runs on the pontoon bridges. At Gusten a man could see friendly artillery bursting just over the town ahead. At Grottenherden the battalion ran into the first German civilians it had encountered on a battlefield and the first of Germany's foreign slave laborers. Here the Thirtieth was pinched out and the battalion went into general support of the Eighty-Third Division. At Rockrath jerry prisoners began to troop in: Wehrmacht, Volkssturm, and the Dusseldorf police force. On this last move the battalion had fired ten volleys, CSMO'ed and passed within sight of the target area. Also, it was here that several Tiger tanks which had been pocketed about 2,000 behind the position attempted to break out and cut off the town.

Tiger I Tank Northern France 1944 (Tiger I)

(Photo Courtesy: "Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-299-1805-16, Nordfrankreich, Panzer VI (Tiger I).2" by Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-299-1805-16 / Scheck / CC-BY-SA. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de via Wikimedia Commons)

Tiger Tank II (Tiger II)

(Photo Courtesy: http://www.wwii-photos-maps.com/)

The final move of the drive brought the battalion to Neuss, an industrial suburb of Dusseldorf on the west side of the Rhine. Here it stopped for a week. It was a memorable position for the wine-cellar where the raw red wine was running ankle deep on the floor. It was a rest and it was needed. The problem of civilians had really become serious and it was necessary to patrol the area and maintain roadblocks to keep them under control. The only booby-trap casualties in the battalion at any time were suffered in Neuss when T/5 John Marks and Pfc. E. Matthews were severely burned by an acid grenade.

Released from the Eighty-third and attached to the Thirtieth again the battalion pulled back 65 miles to a rest area at Heinsberg, Germany near the Holland border. Four days were spent here in cleaning equipment and some of the men got to Holland on 12 hour passes. The special Service officer arranged a dance at Heerlen with English-speaking Dutch girls supplying the local color: it was a success because of, or in spite of, the combat-weariness that soldiers always complain of.

(Windmill in Heinsberg, Germany, Feb '45. - Photo Courtesy Phil Servedio)

Hiltler's heart was no blacker than the night of the 16th of March; the night the battalion made a black-out march 66 miles to Casenburg, near the Rhine. The heavy column arrived at daylight and the guns had to be moved into position one at a time after the nets had been put up, to lessen the chances of enemy observation.

It was a paradoxical situation common to war. The weather was mild and lovely, the countryside which was little harmed by the war, was turning freshly green and in the midst of this loveliness, shells were falling and killing men. Watchful preparation was the phrase to characterize the time. Troops and artillery were moving into a crowded area in preparation for the last big jump, across the Rhine to wipe out the vestiges of Hitlerism.

The Krauts kept up a light bombardment with rockets and artillery: they concentrated on a road about a quarter mile east of the battalion CP. Travelers were notified of the fact with a sign as bright and casual as a "Pause that Refreshes" sign at home. They found out B Battery's CP, too, and one of their shells slightly wounded Cpl. Sharp. T/5 Robert Poole was also wounded, here.

At 1330 hours on the 23rd the battalion commander reported to divarty headquarters and brought back the orders that gave the 751st a part in the greatest artillery barrage any American force has ever poured into its enemies. At 0100 on the 24th American munitions let go with a full-throated roar that continued unceasingly until daylight. By 0300 gunsmoke was hanging as thick as fog on the western bank of the Rhine. Early that afternoon the colonel went forward with his party on reconnaissance across Germany's final barrier, and the battalion prepared to move early that evening, but just as those things always happen, the crossing wasn't made until around 0300 hours the morning of the 25th. It was a harrowing trip: several times the convoy was stopped on the road and on the bridge. It was like being in a half-world to stay on the bridge, which was under a security smoke screen, knowing that the heinies might get the range any minute, that the bridge was flimsy thing at best, and that the lone engineer whose job it was to shoot at anything floating on the river, might hit a mine or miss it.

The new CP was established at Spellen, where a few civilians had refused to be evacuated: they were dull from shock, exhibiting almost no reaction to the arrival of Americans. Undisturbed by the pasting it had probably received the night before jerry artillery slammed 50 rounds of medium stuff in the area of A and B Battery, injuring 1st Sgt Harry Marchedie and Pvt. Milford Shaw.

By noon the forward party had left again, and in the following ten days the battalion established many new positions. There was Vorde, Bruckhause, where A Battery captured four prisoners and Headquarters seven: Hunxe, where the kraut shelled the woods and road in search of American armor wounding Pvt. Lloyd Richards and Capt. Emil Zidek and where the battalion was relieved from the Thirtieth and attached to the Seventy-fifth Division: There was Dorsten, Marl, where the battalion was billeted in luxurious apartment houses with electric lights and phones still working, near a huge L.G. Farben synthetics plant that was thoroughly camouflaged: there was Drewer Nord, Empter/Datteln and finally Waltrop. Waltrop was reached on the 5th of April and the breakneck pace slowed. Here the battalion left the 75th Division and joined the 219th Group. It was also in this position that Lt. Col. Errington was awarded the Bronze Star. By this time the problem of "displaced persons", as they were called, was growing troublesome, especially at the kitchens where they came to beg food. Most of the batteries solved the problem by taking on two or three of them, Italians, Russians or Lithuanines, as extra help in the kitchen and letting them work for their food. They were glad to get the chance: KP was nothing to them, after they had worked for so long for the German slavemasters.

German resistance was crumbling everywhere. The battalion was working on the remains of the Ruhr pocket squeezing it into a lump of wearied and beaten soldiers and civilians. It was a rich bag of prisoners and industry far behind the mainlines of our rapid advance in the east. On the 13th the battalion moved on to Brambauer. The country was beautiful, now, not damaged except for industrial areas, and the weather fine and sunny. Here, though it was not suspected at the time, the battalion's final rounds in combat were fired at noon in a battalion concentration, counter battery, on the 12th of April bringing the total to 57, 284. Operations, however, continued about three days longer. Leaving Brambauer on the 14th, the battalion, made one false occupation of position at Dudenrath, where it had been halted for an hour when news was received that the remains of the Ruhr pocket had surrendered, moved overnight to Recklinghausen, and then to Oer Erkenschwick the next morning.

There, four days were spent in the cleaning and checking of equipment, and trading suspicious stares with the civilians, who were becoming dead-eye snipers: they would get a cigarette butt before it hit the ground.

On the 18th of April the battalion given a mission entirely new to it - the occupation and security of a German area. On that day, it moved south to the area of Bad Lippspringe, where according to the ever-present rumors there had been nothing but an American patrol since our forces had passed it. It was evident that, at least, not many American soldiers had been there. There was a German MP on duty in front of a hospital full of PW's staffed by Germans. Groups of recuperating German soldiers in the charge of German medics wandered about the town. Foreign labor camps were in a state of chaos, and the inmates wandering about looting and violently enjoying their new freedom.

(Bad Lippespringe in Nordrhein-Westfalen District, April '45 - Photo Phil Servedio)

To accomplish the assigned task of security, control and segregation of displaced persons and prisoners of war, road blocks and patrols were immediately instituted, as well as a systematic reconnaissance and search of the area. The unit journal states cryptically the kind of clean up job that had to be done: April 20th "located small arms plant", "road block thrown across the road by explosives. Investigation negative."; April 22nd, "Located tank proving ground. Contains pilot models of 120 ton tank E100; SP 21 Cm Gun How. that can be fired from vehicles or removed and fired from the ground";

Captured E100 Panzerkampfwagen

April 23, "Hitler Youth camp located. Occupied by 100 German civilians. Further investigation.", "Shot fired near guard on post at Ammo Dump."; "Four cases of SS uniforms and papers found buried in yard of Fran Shaver Born. Born arrested and turned over to CIC."; April 24: "51 DP's collected for screening"; April 25: "Special search of tank proving ground for steel box containing secret documents and specifications for new German heavy tanks, was successful, tuner over to Ordinance Intelligence Service, ETOUSA"; April 27: "SA and NSDDP documents unburied at (secret) coordinates and turned over to CIC", "1419 Russian PW's entered from other camps. 481 DP's entered from other camps, 9 enemy PW's evacuated to PWE"; April 28: "Paul Bockhaus picked up as former Major General German Army, evacuated to PWE." So it went throughout the month.

Perhaps, the most interesting story to come out of the pre-occupation job was that of Baker Battery's work at the camp of Russian DP's at Augustdorf. When the battery arrived at the camp it was occupied by 8000 Russians and 2000 Poles, commanded by a Polish officer who split the rations 50-50 between the two groups. There was enough food on hand for one meal. Unprepared though they were to handle such situations the officers and men took over under the direction of Major Pokigo and restored order, established a regular ration supply, cleaned up the camps and personnel and separated the Russians and the Poles to eliminate ill feelings and in short time had the camp under orderly control.

By May the area had been fairly well cleaned up so that the battalion was able to settle into a regular rotation of guard duty and security patrols. During this time many of the awards won in combat came through. Lt. Thomas F. Dugas received the second cluster to his air medal, Sgts. Berger, Cerbone, and Crivelli received the Bronze Star, SSGt Corsale, the Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster and Service Battery, the Meritorious Service Unit Plaque. Toward the end of the month the areas was taken over by the British occupation forces, and the battalion departed again to the south to occupy the area around Fulde.

This new area which is the present location of the battalion, is in the heart of a beautiful farming region of rolling hills and peasant villages, encompassing also, a good deal of Antique historic interest. The mission remains the same, occupation and security, although the battalion was, on June 15th, released from assignment to the Ninth Army and assigned to the Seventh.

Official headquarters are in Neuhof, but the battalion is spread over a large area. Here, on July 23rd the battalion celebrated its completion of a year overseas, with a feeling of modest pride in a job well done. Eight months of combat, which won four campaign stars and numerous individual decorations and commendations, more time in yeoman service as supply troops and in the difficult task of clearing the human debris left behind by the war, have left their mark on the battalion and its men. Some have given their lives, and some their health, all have made sacrifices. If the foulness of war has taught anything, it has taught increased tolerance and respect for fellow soldiers and it has been learned by the men of the 751st. As well, it has increased a man's respect for his own resources. If anyone at home is worried about the lustful killers who are about to descend on them from the army they should remember that killing and fighting is the smallest part of the war, that the trial and hardship which are by far the greatest part have always strengthened what's the best in a man. One man won't admit this to another, in this battalion, but that's the way it is. In the same way, a cannoneer will declaim the outfit to all comers, but woe be unto the outsider who ventures abuse on it.

The future for the battalion holds as many images as a double mirror. Everyone's ear is finely tuned to the slightest hint of a rumor; none is forthcoming. Perhaps the most probable one was pointed up in "the Lanyard", the battalion paper, which ran a facetious ad publicizing "Errington's tours of the fabulous east". Whatever is in store there can be no doubt about the kind of job the officers and men of the 751st can and will do.

Unit History Appendixes:

Report of Fire Isle de Cezembre

November 1944

December 1944

January 1945

February 1945

March 1945

April 1945

May 1945

June 1945

July 1945

August 1945

September 1945