1st Armored Division

In the closing months of the titanic struggle that drove Germany to its knees, there were countless references to the part played by American armor in the victory drive across Naziland.

Yet, the outfit that probably contributed more than any other to the success of our armor wasn’t even in Germany—it was down in northern Italy slugging it out with the Nazis there.

To the 1st Armored, the “Old Ironsides” Division, rightfully belongs much of the credit for the battle brilliance of American armor. It could just as well be called the “Guinea Pig” Division. For it was one of the first, and for a long time the only, American armored outfit in action. It learned on the battlefields of North Africa and Anzio lessons that were taught its sister units prior to combat, so they didn’t have to learn the hard and bloody way.

In the North African campaign, where it was often on the defensive, the 1st learned the necessity of tank-infantry coopera-tion and coordination, and in every period out of the line it spread that gospel, perfecting teamwork.

The lessons the 1st learned in the classrooms of Oran, Mateur, Faïd Pass, Kasserine Pass, Cassino, and Anzio, became chapters in the textbooks studied at Fort Knox, Kentucky, home of the Armored Center and the Armored Replacement Training Center.

There is scarcely a type of terrain, except jungle, over which the 1st Armored Division has not fought. It swirled through the sand of the Tunisian desert, plowed through the Pontine marshes below Rome, churned through the mountains in the Apennines campaign, and slashed along the plains of the Po Valley.

The 1st Armored sailed for Northern Ireland in April 1941 and trained there for many months under the guidance of British tankmen who had faced the Nazi blitzkrieg in Holland, Belgium, and France. The 1st Armored had its first taste of combat when it went ashore at Oran at the start of the historic North Africa campaign. The Oran plan was a simple one—a pincers movement from both sides to pinch off the city and airfields on the outskirts, while troop-laden destroyers crashed the boom across the harbor to capture the dock area and save port installations from destruction. It was a brief battle, but the 1st Armored made its first down payment in human life. An entire battalion of its Armored Infantry was lost when shore lights spotted the destroyers charging the harbor and shore guns sank them.

Soon afterward, the 1st Armored Division was attached to the famous British Eighth Army, and there was hardly a major engagement in which the men of Old Ironsides failed to take part. They fought at Maknassy, El Guettar, and Faïd Pass, but not as a division. The battle for Tunisia had reached a critics! stage before the 1st got its first chance to operate as a whole. The 1st Armored held Mateur. After what was known as the “Battle of the Mousetrap” the Division, in three days of swift stabbing action slashed clear across to the Mediterranean at Porto Farina. The flying columns of the 1st Armored avenging the mauling it had taken earlier at Kasserine Pass, chopped the opposition to bits and took 23,000 prisoners.

After action before Cassino, the 1st Armored Division was shifted to Anzio in the maneuver that was designed to turn the flank of the Gustav Line and force the Nazis to retire from Cassino. For four months, as the 93-square mile Allied toehold absorbed every bit of punishment that the Germans could throw at it, the 1st Annored was there, a mobile reserve, plugging holes when it seemed the Germans must break through and drive our forces into the sea. When it wasn’t fighting, the Division was in training, preparing for the day of the breakthrough. The 1st's training area was so close to the front lines that the Germans could see the maneuvers through binoculars and plaster the tanks with artillery fire.

When the race for Rome began the 1st Armored Division was in the lead. The men of the 1st Armored swear that it was their reconnaissance squadron that was first into Rome. They have the word of Rome’s chief of police, whom they captured, that there were no other Allied troops in the city when the forward elements of the Division slipped in. The 1st Armored didn’t stay around Rome to enjoy the sights. Five days after the fall of the Eternal City, the division was 200 miles north, chasing remnants of the Hermann Goering Panzers.

Before Bologna, the whole Division left its vehicles and fought on foot as Infantrymen. It took Milan. It split northern Italy in two by racing through to the Swiss border at Como. When the war ended it was headed for Austria.

From Fighting Divisions, Kahn & McLemore, Infantry Journal Press, 1945-1946.