29TH INFANTRY DIVISION

29th Infantry Division

29th Infantry Division

The 29th Infantry Division is an infantry division of the United States Army based in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. It is a formation of the United States Army National Guard and contains units from Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Formed in 1917, the division quickly gained the nickname "Blue and Gray", reflecting on the fact that it comprised soldiers from states on both sides of the American Civil War. Deployed to France as a part of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, the division saw intense combat in the final days of the war, and suffered heavy casualties. At the end of the war, it demobilized, though remained an active National Guard unit. Called up for service again in World War II, the division was sent to England where it trained for two years, before participating in Operation Overlord, the landings in Normandy, France.

Between April and September 1942, the 29th Division conducted training in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, ending up at Fort Blanding, Florida. They then moved secretly by train to a staging area at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for deployment overseas. Most of the Blue and Gray Division left the port of New York aboard the ocean liner Queen Mary on 26 September for an unescorted high-speed run across the Atlantic. The balance followed on the Queen Elizabeth on 5 October. The troops landed in Scotland and were transported to Tidworth Barracks, in southern  England, where an intensive training program began.

While at Tidworth the European Theater of Operations created a provisional unit within the 29th Division, the 29th Ranger Battalion. The Army's lone ranger battalion recently demonstrated its worth in North Africa and planners in London wanted a similar elite group in England to prepare for the invasion of Europe. The picked men learned specialized assault tactics by training with British Commandos and detachments accompanied their instructors on three hit-and-run raids in Norway and in the English Channel. The 29th Rangers also performed well in allied pre-invasion exercises in England. A policy decision by the War Department awarded the ranger mission to others, forcing London to disband the battalion in October 1943. Fortunately for the Blue and Gray, the men returned to their former units and passed on their skills.

In May 1943 the division moved to the Devon-Cornwall peninsula and started conducting simulated attacks against fortified positions. Assault landing practice ...