90 Infantry Division (USA) arrived in England

By April 9th, the entire Division had arrived in England and was assigned to billets. The main body of troops was stationed generally north and east of the cities of Cardiff and Newport, Wales. The 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 359th Infantry Regiment, however, were attached to the 4th Infantry Division and were located in Devonshire. These two Battalions were known as Group A.

A period of intensive training followed, consisting of mine detection, village fighting, assault on fortified positions, hedgerow fighting, artillery firing problems, road marches and obstacle courses. The rough edges were polished off, and "coordination" between units became more than a word, more than a goal, but an accomplished fact. Through April and May there ran through the world the symptoms of "invasion fever".

D-Day might come at any hour, any day. The course of history hung on the ability of a group of Americans and British to seize a beach, hold it and expand it. In Germany, the Wehrmacht confidently awaited der Tag, knowing full well that they were more than a match for the untried, untested American Army. They pointed their guns at the sea and predicted a dark and desperate fate for whomever dared to storm the ramparts of Festung Europa.

In England, Allied armies waited tensely for the signal. Fully armed and trained, with plans completed and sealed, the doughs and the redlegs and the engineers and the medics, the tankers, the supply troops, the cooks and the wiremen, the airmen and the sailors, the Generals and the Privates, all were alert, all listened and waited. April dragged to its inevitable end, and May stretched out till it fused with June.

And still no word. The Germans declared it was all a gigantic hoax. There was to be no invasion, for our Generals had finally realized how impossible such an attempt would be, how foolhardy and suicidal to brave the armed might of Hitler's Reich. But the troops in England were not taking their orders from Germany in June of '44. Instead they waited impatiently.

photo: Camp Croft Co C Feb 1944