#29th division

US Soldiers with the 29th Infantry Division cross a small pontoon bridge over the Roer / Rur River near Jülich Germany - February 23, 1945

My first post is dedicated to the fighting men of Item Company, 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division.

These men from Northern Virginia would land on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6th, 1944, and would continue to push the German army back through difficult and bloody hedgerow fighting until finally capturing the city of St. Lo on July 18th. August would see these men fighting through Brittany during the attack on Brest, eventually opening the port of Brest for future supply chains to fuel the push east into Germany. They would spend the winter of 1944-45 pushing through the Rhineland, until the war in Europe concluded in the spring of 1945.

The 116th is very near and dear to me, as local veterans are buried near all over Northern Virginia, and whose lives were irrevocably changed by this momentous war.

1944: Major-General Charles Gerhardt, commander of the American 29th Division, was a stickler for discipline. Amid the carnage and destruction of Omaha beach on D-Day – mangled corpses, smashed landing craft, burned-out vehicles and discarded weapons – he yelled at a soldier for dropping orange peel.

Source: Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (2009), p. 153

© Serge Philippe Lecourt, Le vétéran américain Harold Baumgarten de la 29e Division, Vire, commémorations du 6 juin en 2014.

Harold Baumgarten, Américain né en 1925, était un soldat de la 29e Division Américaine, débarqué à Omaha Beach le 6 juin 1944 en Normandie. Il est blessé pendant les opérations mais survit à la guerre et devient ensuite médecin (sur le côté droit de son calot était inscrit la mention “National surgeon”).

Présent avec enthousiasme pendant les commémorations du 50e (en 1994) et du 70e anniversaire (2014) du Débarquement à Vire, il est décédé le jour de Noël 2016.

In 1944, members of the 29th Division entered the recently fallen St. Lo, France. St. Lo had just lost a bloody eight-day battle with Germany, and much of the town was reduced to debris. The 29th Division was the only National Guard division represented at the D-Day landings and was made up of individuals from Maryland and Virginia. (Baltimore Sun file photo)

1918: Nelson Mandela, the South African nationalist who ascended to his nation’s presidency after the end of apartheid, was born in Umtata, South Africa.

1932: The United States and Canada signed a treaty to develop the St. Lawrence Seaway.

1936: The Spanish Civil War began.

1986: The world got its first look at the remains of the Titanic as videotapes of the British luxury liner, which sank in 1912, were released by researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.