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Regiment Of The Century 397th I.R.


manayunkman
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Very nice group. I guess he received a battlefield commission?

 

An interesting bit of trivia I just ran across, and totally unrelated to this post other than the fact that this is a 100th Division grouping, is that Technical Sergeant Walter L. Bull of Company A, 399th Infantry Regiment earned the Army's first Expert Infantryman Badge.

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20090613231850/...y/army/100d.htm

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That's a great group! I love the photo of him with the nurse...I wonder why he kept it? There had to have been a backstory...only lost due to time...

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What DI's is he wearing ?

 

He is also wearing the 100th ring.

 

The distinctive insignia on the uniform looks like the 175th Infantry Regiment which was part of the 29th Infantry Division during WW2 however he is clearly wearing the 100th Infantry Division shoulder sleeve patch. I don't have access to a unit history for the 175th Infantry Regiment but maybe they were attached to the 100th Infantry Division at some time after the war during the occupation.

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The distinctive insignia on the uniform looks like the 175th Infantry Regiment which was part of the 29th Infantry Division during WW2 however he is clearly wearing the 100th Infantry Division shoulder sleeve patch. I don't have access to a unit history for the 175th Infantry Regiment but maybe they were attached to the 100th Infantry Division at some time after the war during the occupation.

I assumed the picture at the table wearing the DI's and ring was taken before deploying overseas. First, in that picture he is still a First Sergeant while in the picture on the train track he is a Lieutenant. The reference to his Bronze Star shows him as a First Sergeant while the mention of the Silver Star shows him as a 1st Lt. and his dog tags have an officer's serial number, so I assume somewhere along the way he received a battlefield commission. Second, the 100th Division deployed directly to France and into the combat zone after D-Day, so there was probably very little likelihood he would be at a party with a woman in his dress uniform after going overseas. It's also odd that he would be wearing 175th Infantry DI's because the 29th Division, of which the 175th was a part, deployed to England in WWII before the 100th Division was even activated so there would not have been any overlap of service together in the States.

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Okay, based on some information I ran across yesterday, I'm going to make a SWAG about why he is wearing the 100th Division SSI with 175th Infantry Regiment DUI's in this picture. On pages 90-91 of Jonathan Gawne's excellent book "Spearheading D-Day", there is a section referred to as "The Overstrength" that mentions that D-Day assault units were authorized extra men, known as overstrength or residues, some of whom remained behind in England with the units' vehicles and heavy equipment to follow up a few days after the invasion, and some simply to account for the heavy casualties the assualt units were expected to suffer. According to the book, each of the D-Day assualt divisions was authorized 2,500 overtstrength of which 126 officers and 1,725 enlisted men were infantrymen. What caught my attention was a specific reference on page 91 to a mention that a Lt. George Bradbury was transferred from the 100th Infantry Division to the 29th in May 1944 and led a group of 34 overstrength assigned to Company A 116th Infantry Regiment (We all know what happened to that unit!).

 

Is it possible this gentleman was detached from the 100th Division and sent to the 175th Regiment of the 29th Division as an overstregth in preparation for D-Day? That would explain the fact he was still wearing the 100th Division SSI while wearing the 175th Infantry DUI's. A closer look at the picture does make me think the middle ribbon he is wearing is the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign and not the American Campaign as I originally thought. Thus, the picture may have been taken in England shortly before D-Day.

 

Then, after the invasion, when the regular replacement pipeline opended up, maybe he was sent to rejoin the 100th which at the time was still in the U.S. preparing to deploy to France later in 1944 or perhaps even after it arrived in France.

post-1761-0-89627800-1350912319_thumb.jpg

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dogfacedsoldier

He is also wearing a numbered US disc, I can barely make out the "175". Probably taken just as the 100th was being formed, new units in WW11 were always made up of experienced cadre, except in a few cases. I expect he hadn't changed his 175th D,I.'s yet.

 

Jon

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