Preface

 

“The division trained at Camp Forrest Tennessee, from 15 July 1942 to August 1943. While at Camp Forrest, the division participated in the 2nd Army Maneuvers against the Ohio National Guard 83rd Division. In September of 1943, it moved to Camp Phillips, Kansas and stayed there until moving in November to participate in the California-Arizona Maneuvers under the Pacific Defense Command and camped at Camp Laguna, Arizona in the Mohave Dessert.

 

After a short stay, the division left in March 1944 for Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. Here the division was trained in ship evacuation, and started boarding on 28 June 1944, the Queen Mary for the ETO, landing at Firth of Clyde Scotland 7 July 1944.  After a long train ride, the division was staged at various locations around Manchester, England, to further hone the skills the men had been taught. The end of July 1944 found the division moving to Southampton to a staging area to board LST and Liberty Ships which embarked from the channel ports of Southampton and Portland, and vicinity to transport the troops across the English Channel to the shores of France.

 

The advance party landed on 3 August 1944, and the first troops landing at Omaha and Utah Beaches on 5 August 1944. The 317th Regiment being the first to disembark at 1400, followed by the 318th Regiment at 2000 and being transported in sections for a short motor march of approximately twenty-three miles, into a tactical bivouac area in the vicinity of St. Germain De Varreville and Coigny, France, on 6 August 1944.

 

Throughout the night the division continued to arrive. At 0100, the Divisional Artillery disembarked and moved to a bivouac area in the vicinity of St. Jores, at which place the Division's Forward Command Post was opened. The Divisional Artillery followed by the 319th Infantry which also had bivouacked in the vicinity, the 780th Ordinance Company, the 80th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop which had assembled at St. Germain De Lanier, and the 305th Combat Engineer Battalion which also had assembled in the vicinity of St. Jores.

 

The following day 6 August the 305th Medical Battalion, Special Troops, and the Quartermaster Company along with the 702nd Tank Battalion, which had been attached to the 80th Infantry Division, disembarked and moved to Fretout. Immediately upon entering the bivouac areas, the men were busied with general shakedowns, cleaning and adjusting equipment, and zealously preparing themselves for that which was shortly to come. But at the same time the men contributed to the general improvement of the tactical bivouac areas.

 

While the 80th Infantry Division had been staging in France, the rapidity and strength of the breakthrough at Avranches by the Third Army's newly assigned VIII Corps, and the success of the attack on the Brittany Peninsula, had temporarily thrown the Germans on this front, into utter confusion. The enemy at this time had committed approximately forty-five divisions on the Normandy front and had managed to build up a mobile reserve of five panzer divisions. This reserve, together with remnants of the units swept aside at Avranches, as soon as they could muster enough strength, counterattacked to cut the Third United States Army's rather weak supply line in the vicinity of Avranches, and separate a potent portion of the Third United States Army from the remainder of the Allied Forces. It was to meet this great threat that the 80th Infantry Division received its first combat orders.”

 

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The Book Contains Much More Of The Stories Of The Men

Of The 80th Infantry Division World War Two

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