"One morning, my company moved to a barren, frozen hillside with orders to dig defensive positions covering an area about three times larger than we were capable of adequately defending. "Officers knew little more than the GI," Corson said. The fighting was so desperate that the 42nd Division even threw individual rifle companies into the fight whenever they became available. The first week was a frenzied effort to halt the German advance, with companies and battalions moved around the front like firefighters plugging gaps, Corson said. 5.įor three weeks, the three regiments defended, retreated, counterattacked and finally stopped the Germans. German paratroops and panzer forces with tanks and self-propelled guns crossed the Rhine River 12 miles north of Strasbourg and clashed with the thinly stretched Rainbow Division infantry at Gambsheim on Jan. At least that was the information given at a briefing, but someone forgot to tell the enemy," he wrote. "The green, inexperienced troops would occupy a small town named Hatten since the Germans had nothing more than small patrols in the area. Corson commanded Company A in the 1st Battalion, 242nd Infantry. William Corson in a letter to a 42nd Division reunion gathering in 1995. The attack came as a shock to the newly arrived infantrymen, explained Capt. Henning Linden, were committed to battle without the artillery, armor, engineers and logistics support the rest of the division would typically provide. The three regiments, named Task Force Linden after the division's deputy commander, Brig. With a desperate need for infantry troops in Europe, the Soldiers of the 222nd, 232nd and 242nd infantry regiments were pulled out of training and shipped to southern France. In World War II, the division was reactivated but filled with draftee Soldiers. The 42nd Infantry Division had been made up of National Guard troops during World War I and nicknamed "the Rainbow Division" because it contained elements from 26 states. They expected to spend time in a quiet sector to learn the ropes of combat. Three regiments of 42nd Infantry Division Soldiers, rushed to France without the rest of their divisional support units, arrived in Strasbourg just before Christmas 1944. The American and French armies desperately battled to halt the attack and hold onto the city of Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace. Operation Nordwind, sometimes called the other Battle of the Bulge, began on New Year's Eve 1944 in the Alsace region of France. – In the earliest days of 1945, Soldiers of the 42nd Infantry Division, now a part of the New York Army National Guard, fought furiously against German tanks and paratroopers during Hitler's final offensive in Western Europe.
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