| Unit Name: | 79th Infantry Division |
| Country: |  United States |
| Type: | Infantry |
| Size: | Division |
| Command Structure: | United States Army Reserve |
| Nickname: | "Cross of Lorraine" (special designation)[1] |
| Battles: | World War I |
| Notable Commanders: | Ira T. Wyche Anthony McAuliffe |
The 79th Infantry Division (formerly known as the 79th Division) was an infantry formation of the United States Army Reserve in World Wars I and II.
Since 2009, it has been active as the 79th Theater Sustainment Command.
Total-6,874 (KIA-1,151 ; WIA-5,723)
The division was first activated at Camp Meade, Maryland in August 1917, composed primarily of draftees from Maryland and Pennsylvania. After a year of training the division sailed overseas in July 1918. The 79th Division saw extensive combat in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive area where it earned the name of "Cross of Lorraine" for their defense of France. The division was inactivated June 1919 and returned to the United States.
Throughout its entire World War I campaign, the division suffered 6,874 casualties with 1,151 killed and 5,723 wounded. Private Henry Gunther, the last American soldier to be killed in action during World War I, served with the 313th Infantry Regiment of the 79th Division.
The 79th Division was reconstituted in the Organized Reserve on 24 June 1921, allotted to the Third Corps Area, and assigned to the XIII Corps. The division was further allotted to the eastern half of Pennsylvania as its home area. The headquarters of the “Lorraine Division” was originally organized on 29 September 1921 at the Schuylkill Arsenal, 2620 Gray’s Ferry Road in Philadelphia. It was later relocated in 1930 to the Gimbal Building at 35 South Ninth Street. It was again relocated in 1935 to the New Custom House Building at Second and Chestnut Streets and remained there until activated for World War II. After activation, the division’s recruiting efforts were such that by 1926, the division was at 85 percent of its authorized strength. To maintain communications with the officers of the division, the division staff published a newsletter, the “79th Division Bulletin.” The newsletter informed the division’s members of such things aswhen and where the inactive training sessions were to be held, what the division’s summer training quotas were, where the camps were to be held, and which units would be assigned to help conduct the Citizens Military Training Camps (CMTC). The designated mobilization and training station for the division was Camp George G. Meade, the location where much of the 79th’s training activities occurred in the interwar years. The division headquarters usually conducted its summer training there, and on a number of occasions, participated in command post exercises there as well. During these camps, the 79th Division headquarters occasionally trained with the staff of the 16th Infantry Brigade, 8th Division. In May 1929, the 79th Division conducted a "contact camp" at Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania, and almost 500 of the division’s officers attended. The highlight of the camp was an aerial demonstration performed by the 99th Division’s 324th Observation Squadron.
The subordinate infantry regiments of the division held their summer training primarily with the units of the 16th Infantry Brigade. Other units, such as the special troops, artillery, engineers, aviation, medical, and quartermaster trained at various posts in the Second and Third Corps Areas usually with units of the 1st Division or the active elements of the 8th Division. For example, the division’s artillery trained with the 16th Field Artillery at Camp Meade; the 304th Engineer Regiment usually trained with the 1st Engineer Regiment at Fort DuPont, Delaware, or the 13th Engineer Regiment at Camp Humphreys, Virginia; the 304th Medical Regiment trained with the 1st Medical Regiment at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; and the 304th Observation Squadron trained with the 99th Observation Squadron at Bolling Field, Washington, D.C. In addition to the unit training camps, the infantry regiments of the division rotated responsibility to conduct the CMTC training held at Camp Meade each year. On a number of occasions, the division participated in Third Corps Area or First Army CPXs in conjunction with other Regular Army, National Guard, and Organized Reserve units. Perhaps the division’s most ambitious CPX was a division-level exercise conducted around the clock for almost 2 weeks from 31 July to 12 August 1938. In January 1940, many officers of the 79th Division headquarters attended a week of additional annual training performed by the 28th Division; the training was part of a War Department-directed effort to increase the readiness of National Guard units that winter. The 79th Division officers voluntarily participated in the training without pay. Unlike Regular Army and National Guard units in the Third Corps Area, the 79th Division did not participate in the Third Corps Area maneuvers and the First Army maneuvers of 1935, 1939, and 1940 as an organized unit due to lack of enlisted personnel and equipment. Instead, the officers and a few enlisted reservists were assigned to Regular and Guard units to fill vacant slots and bring the units up to war strength for the exercises. Additionally, some were assigned duties as umpires or as support personnel.[2]
Before Organized Reserve infantry divisions were ordered into active military service, they were reorganized on paper as "triangular" divisions under the 1940 tables of organization. The headquarters companies of the two infantry brigades were consolidated into the division's cavalry reconnaissance troop, and one infantry regiment was removed by inactivation. The field artillery brigade headquarters and headquarters battery became the headquarters and headquarters battery of the division artillery. Its three field artillery regiments were reorganized into four battalions; one battalion was taken from each of the two 75 mm gun regiments to form two 105 mm howitzer battalions, the brigade's ammunition train was reorganized as the third 105 mm howitzer battalion, and the 155 mm howitzer battalion was formed from the 155 mm howitzer regiment. The engineer, medical, and quartermaster regiments were reorganized into battalions. In 1942, divisional quartermaster battalions were split into ordnance light maintenance companies and quartermaster companies, and the division's headquarters and military police company, which had previously been a combined unit, was split.[3]
The 79th Infantry Division was ordered into active military service at Camp Pickett, Virginia on 15 June 1942. After basic training, it participated in exercises in the Tennessee Maneuver Area, after which it moved to Camp Laguna near Yuma, Arizona, where it trained in the desert. It was then ordered to Camp Phillips, Kansas for training in winter conditions. At the beginning of April 1944, the division reported to the port of embarkation at Camp Myles Standish, Massachusetts.
The division arrived in Liverpool on 17 April and began training in amphibious operations. After training in the United Kingdom from 17 April 1944, the 79th Infantry Division landed on Utah Beach, Normandy, 12–14 June and entered combat 19 June 1944, with an attack on the high ground west and northwest of Valognes and high ground south of Cherbourg Naval Base. The division took Fort du Roule after a heavy engagement and entered Cherbourg, 25 June. It was around this time that Corporal John D. Kelly and First Lieutenant Carlos C. Ogden, both of the 314th Infantry Regiment, were awarded the Medal of Honor.[4] It held a defensive line at the Ollonde River until 2 July 1944 and then returned to the offensive, taking La Haye du Puits in house-to-house fighting, 8 July. On 26 July, the 79th attacked across the Ay River, took Lessay, crossed the Sarthe River and entered Le Mans, 8 August, meeting only light resistance. The advance continued across the Seine, 19 August. Heavy German counterattacks were repelled, 22–27 August, and the division reached the Therain River, 31 August. Moving swiftly to the Franco-Belgian frontier near St. Amand (east of Lille), the division was then moved to XV Corps in eastern France, where it encountered heavy resistance in taking Charmes in street fighting, 12 September. The 79th cut across the Moselle and Meurthe Rivers, 13–23 September, cleared the Forêt de Parroy in a severe engagement, 28 September – 9 October, and attacked to gain high ground east of Emberménil, 14–23 October, when it was relieved, 24 October.
After rest and training at Lunéville, the division returned to combat with an attack from the MignevineMontiguy area, 13 November 1944, which carried it across the Vezouse and Moder Rivers, 18 November – 10 December, through Haguenau in spite of determined enemy resistance, and into the Siegfried Line, 17–20 December. The division held a defensive line along the Lauter River, at Wissembourg from 20 December 1944 until 2 January 1945, when it withdrew to Maginot Line defenses. The German attempt to establish a bridgehead west of the Rhine at Gambsheim resulted in furious fighting. The 79th beat off German attacks at Hatten and Rittershoffen in an 11-day battle before withdrawing to new defensive positions south of Haguenau on the Moder River, 19 January 1945. The division remained on the defensive along the Moder until 6 February 1945. During February and March 1945, the division mopped up German resistance, returned to offensive combat, 24 March 1945, crossed the Rhine, drove across the Rhine-Herne Canal, 7 April, secured the north bank of the Ruhr and took part in clearing the Ruhr Pocket until 13 April. The division then went on occupation duty, in the Dortmund, Sudetenland, and Bavarian areas successively, until its return to the United States and inactivation.
The 79th Infantry Division is now the 79th Sustainment Support Command (SSC) headquartered at Joint Forces Training Base (JFTB) Los Alamitos, California. The 79th SSC was officially activated on 1 December 2009 with the mission of providing trained, ready, cohesive, well-led sustainment units for worldwide deployment to meet the U.S. Army's rotational and contingency mission requirements in support of the National Military Strategy. The 79th SSC is the higher headquarters of over 20,000 U.S. Army Reserve sustainment soldiers organized into over 200 units dispersed throughout the western half of the United States. Major subordinate commands of the 79th SSC include the 4th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) in San Antonio, Texas, the 311th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) in Los Angeles, California, the 364th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) in Marysville, Washington, and the 451st Expeditionary Sustainment Command in Wichita, Kansas. As the operational command posts of a theater sustainment command – the ESCs plan, coordinate synchronize, monitor, and control operational- level sustainment operations for Army service component commands, joint task forces and joint forces commands throughout the world.
As of 2020 the following units are subordinated to the 79th Theater Sustainment Command:[6]
6. The Cross of Lorraine: A Combat History of the 79th Infantry Division, June 1942-December 1945. Army and Navy Publishing Co., 1946. [Official Division history]