THE EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS:

As part of the build up for operation Overload, the Normandy invasion, the 2d Infantry Division was transferred from fort Sam Houston to Ireland in October, 1943. There it spent ten months undergoing extensive training. On 7 June, 1944, D-Day + 1, the division stormed ashore at bloody Omaha Beach. While other units were stalled by the determined German resistance to the west, the Indianheads blasted through the hedgerows of Normandy. After fierce, 39-day battle, the 2d Division, fighting in the streets and alleyways, finally took their objective as the vital port city of Brest, which was liberated on 18 September, 1944. Once mop up operations were complete in the Normandy region, the division turned west and plunged headlong across France. From positions around St. Vith, Belgium, the Second was ordered, on 11 December, 1944, to attack and seize the Roer River dams. Having pierced the dreaded Siegfried Line, the division was advancing when Nazi Field Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt unleashed a powerful German offensive in the Ardennes. Throughout this Battle of the Bulge the 2d Infantry Division held fast, preventing the enemy from seizing key roads leading to the cities of Liege and Antwerp.

Resuming the offensive on 6 February, 1945, the division joined the race to annihilate the fleeing Wehrmacht. Transferred from the First Army to Patton’s Third Army, the Indianheads spent their last days of the European War in a dash across Czechoslovakia, finally halting in the town of Pilsen. This city became a meeting point between invading armies from east and from west. It was in Pilsen that the soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Division first met their Soviet allies who represented the forces of communism that they would face so often in the future, no longer as allies.

Division Order of Battle in WW II:

9th Infantry Regiment                           23rd Infantry Regiment 

38th Infantry Regiment 

Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 
2nd Infantry Division Artillery

12th Field Artillery Battalion (155 Mm)      15th Field Artillery Battalion (105 Mm) 

37th Field Artillery Battalion (105 Mm)      38th Field Artillery Battalion (105 Mm) 
2nd Engineer Combat Battalion                2nd Medical Battalion 

Headquarters Special Troops,                 Headquarters Company,          
2nd Infantry Division                        2nd Infantry Division                  

702nd Ordnance Company                       2nd Quartermaster Company                    

2nd Reconnaissance Troop                     2nd Signal Company                                

2nd Military Police Platoon                  2nd Infantry Division Band

Headquarters 2nd Infantry Division

Units Attached Throughout Combat:

612th Tank Destroyer Battalion               741st Tank Battalion
462nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion      2nd Counterintelligence Corps Detachment
Photo Interpretation Team No. 6              Order Of Battle Team No. 8
Military Intelligence Interpreter Team 
No. 415  

Interrogation Prisoner of War Team No. 25
Interrogation Prisoner of War Team No. 27   Interrogation Prisoner of War Team No. 28
Detachment "I", 165th Signal Photo Company  Air Support Party, IX Tactical Air Command 

The division participated in the Normandy, Northern France, the Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, and the Central Europe Campaigns of World War Two. The Division suffered 3,031 killed in action and 12,785 wounded in action during the war.

The Second Infantry Division arrived back home at Ft. Swift, Texas on July 22, 1945.

Note: my father, Staff Sergeant Hanford Maurice Rice, was in Charlie Company (First Battalion) of the U.S. 9th Infantry Regiment (9IR) during World War Two. He wrote a diary of his experiences that I share online as well as some divisional and regimental history that I have copied from the official histories: