Tag Archives: 69th Infantry Division

Nap Buddies

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Happy National Napping Day!

GIs of the 69th Infantry Division take a well-deserved rest in a bed in Germany, March 1945. Judging from their boots, uniforms (heavy on the coveralls), and prevalence of M3 Grease Guns, they are likely tankers, perhaps of the 69th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop (Mechanized) or the division’s two attached armored units: the 777th Tank Bn or 661st Tank Destroyer Bn.

L-R: Gerald A. Garrson, Donald Meyers, Stuart Brent, Bill McGough, and Alva Goodwin. Time LIFE Archives photo

The “Fighting 69th” was formed on 15 May 1943 at Camp Shelby and arrived in the ETO late in the war. It hit the front in February 1945 and spent 86 days in combat. Nonetheless, on its tear across the Rhineland and Central Europe, the division suffered 1,506 battle casualties. Notably, the Holocaust Museum denotes it as a Liberator Division, having liberated Leipzig-Thekla, a subcamp of Buchenwald, in April 1945.

After several months of occupation duty, they were sent back to the States and were deactivated in September 1945.

A great 100-page period pictorial history of the 69th is free to download online.

New friends in new places

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A STEN-armed Para of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion shakes hands with a greatcoated Soviet officer in the Baltic Sea city of Wismar, Germany, 4 May 1945, about 150 miles Northwest of Berlin.

The surrender of German forces was four days away at this point.

Source: Photo by Charles H. Richer Department of National Defence / National Archives of Canada, PA-150930.

Such link-ups, where the Western Front met the Eastern Front, were increasingly common in the last two weeks of the war in Europe.

The first occurred on 26 April 1945 when the U.S. 69th Infantry Division of the First Army and the 58th Guards Rifle Division of the 5th Soviet Guards Army met along the Elbe at Torgau, southwest of Berlin.