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On May 12, 1944 three transports steamed
out of New York Harbor to join a large convoy headed for Liverpool,
England. The SS Edmund B. Alexanderson, The SS Thomas H. Berry,
and The SS General A.E. Anderson carried the entire 35th Infantry
Division and their equipment – more than 16,000 of us after
three and a half years of training. We were finally in the War.
We had left Durham, North Carolina by train two weeks before for
the overseas staging area at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, having completed
fifteen weeks of retraining and re-equipping at Camp Butner. Within
four weeks after our barracks were vacated, Camp Butner was taken
over by the 89th Division fresh from maneuvers in California and
being converted from a light division to a triangular infantry division.
They were to commence the same overseas processing that we had just
completed. A number of the 89th Division officers were soon to be
pulled out of that division and sent as replacements to Normandy
following the much heavier than expected casualties in the infantry
on and after D-Day, and several of these came to the 35th Division.
The 89th Division arrived later in France in January, 1945, and
was assigned as part of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army.
The 35th Infantry Division moves up in
Normandy.
After an uneventful voyage we arrived in Liverpool
and were led ashore by Gen. Paul W. Baade, a fine
officer from West Point, who had commanded the
35th Division through its training cycles and
would continue to lead us during our entire combat
experience. Off the ships came our Santa Fe men
lugging their loaded duffel bags and on to the
British rail cars who carried us to the Exeter
area in Southwestern England, about 150 miles
West of London. For lack of a single large barracks
area, the division was billeted by units in numerous
quaint little villages. It was a beautiful time
of the year and the next five weeks of conditioning,
training and inspections, interspersed with a
little sight-seeing went all too quickly. A high
point was on June 6th when the D-Day radio reports
and rumors raised tension and concern for the
invasion of France which was taking place a little
more than a hundred miles South of us. There was
a universal relief that the first waves on the
beachhead in Normandy were men from the 1st and
29th Infantry Divisions, not the 35th! The rough
experience of the first troops also began to forewarn
us that the Germans were going to be a lot rougher
than we had hoped. There would be plenty of fighting
for everybody.
A second high point was the inspection visit
to the division by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Allied
Supreme Commander, and his son, John, a Lieutenant
recently graduated from West Point, accompanied
by the famous Gen. George Patton, newly appointed
Commander of the Third Army to which the 35th
Division had been assigned as part of the XV Corps.
The visitation was on June 25th to the 320th infantry
headquarters, to division artillery and special
units. Eisenhower’s quiet confidence, his
ready smile and easy going personal approach was
reassuring, and the troops were particularly amused
at the casual way in which Ike turned to Gen.
Patton and said, “Georgie, where’s
the John? Go and find him for me.” (We thank
Gov. Orval Faubus for this quote from his fascinating
journal of the 320th’s experience, In This
Faraway Land).
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