35th Infantry Division (United States)


The 35th Infantry Division is a formation of the Army National Guard, with its headquarters located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The division is primarily composed of Army National Guard units from Missouri and Kansas, though it also includes subordinate units from other states. While the Kansas National Guard provides the headquarters element, the division is federally funded and maintained through the Department of the Army under the Department of Defense.

World War I

Actions during World War I

The 35th Division was originally constituted by the Militia Bureau in early 1917 as the 14th Division, made up of troops from Kansas and Missouri.
On 18 July 1917, over three months after the American entry into World War I, the War Department directed the organization of the unit, now redesignated the 35th Division, and on 5 August, the National Guard was drafted into federal service.
Concentration of divisional troops at Camp Doniphan, near Fort Sill, Oklahoma, began in late August, and training began on 8 September. During October, about 3,000 draftees from Camp Funston, Kansas, most of whom were from Kansas and Missouri, joined the division, and in spring 1918, more men came from Camp Funston, Camp Travis, Texas, and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
On 2 April 1918, the division, commanded from its inception by Major General William M. Wright, moved from Camp Mills, New York, and Camp Merritt, New Jersey, to the Brooklyn, Hoboken, New York, and Philadelphia Ports of Embarkation, where it received approximately 2,000 replacements to bring it up to full strength.
Elements of the division sailed for England and France between 16 April and 8 June, with the elements that landed in England moving shortly to Le Havre, France.
File:111-SC-22362 - NARA - 55204423 .jpg|thumb|left|Group of officers of the 129th Machine Gun Battalion, 35th Division, at Vagney, Vosges, France, August 10, 1918.
The 35th Division served first, an infantry brigade at a time, in the Vosges mountains between 30 June and 13 August. The whole division served in the Gérardmer sector, Alsace, from 14 August to 1 September. Having trained in trench warfare tactics in the United States and experiencing a number of command changes at multiple echelons and arms of service on short notice, the division, now commanded by Major General Peter E. Traub in place of Wright, was committed during the opening stages of the Meuse–Argonne offensive, which would ultimately become the largest and bloodiest battle in American military history, from 26 to 30 September. American historian Robert Hugh Ferrell, in his 2004 book Collapse at Meuse-Argonne: The Failure of the Missouri-Kansas Division, concluded that the division was unprepared for the conventional and combined arms tactics of the Hundred Days Offensive that often eschewed trench-to-trench combat in favor of strongpoints and open battlefields.
Despite making good progress on its first day, 26 September, the division's operations became more and more disorganized over the following days as communications and command difficulties combined with exhaustion and increasingly heavy casualties. For fear of complete collapse, the division was withdrawn from the front on 1 October and replaced with the veteran 1st Division. The division next served in the Sommedieue sector, 15 October to 6 November, but did not participate in any further major combat service before the Armistice with Germany on November 11, 1918, which finally brought an end to hostilities.
During its combat service, the 35th Division spent ninety-two days in quiet sectors and five in active, advanced twelve and one-half kilometers against resistance, captured 781 prisoners, and lost 1,067 men killed in action or missing and a further 6,216 wounded.
The 35th Division had, as an officer, Harry S. Truman, the future 33rd president of the United States, who commanded battery D of the 129th Field Artillery Regiment and served with it through most of the U.S. involvement in the war.

World War I order of battle

Units of the 35th Division during World War I included:
  • Headquarters, 35th Division
  • 69th Infantry Brigade
  • * 137th Infantry Regiment
  • * 138th Infantry Regiment
  • * 129th Machine Gun Battalion
  • 70th Infantry Brigade
  • * 139th Infantry Regiment
  • * 140th Infantry Regiment
  • * 130th Machine Gun Battalion
  • 60th Field Artillery Brigade
  • * 128th Field Artillery Regiment
  • * 129th Field Artillery Regiment
  • * 130th Field Artillery Regiment
  • * 110th Trench Mortar Battery
  • 128th Machine Gun Battalion
  • 110th Engineer Regiment
  • 110th Field Signal Battalion
  • Headquarters Troop, 35th Division
  • 110th Train Headquarters and Military Police
  • * 110th Ammunition Train
  • * 110th Supply Train
  • * 110th Engineer Train
  • * 110th Sanitary Train
  • **137th-140th Ambulance Companies and Field Hospitals

    Commanders

  • Major General William M. Wright
  • * Brigadier General Lucien G. Berry
  • * Brigadier General Lucien G. Berry
  • * Brigadier General Charles I. Martin
  • Brigadier General Nathaniel F. McClure
  • Major General Peter E. Traub
  • * Brigadier General Thomas B. Dugan
  • Brigadier General Thomas B. Dugan
  • * Brigadier General Lucien G. Berry
  • Major General William M. Wright

    Interwar period

The 1920 amendments to the National Defense Act of 1916 set out the postwar National Guard structure. The 35th Division was reconstituted in the National Guard in 1921, allotted to the states of Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska of the Seventh Corps Area, and assigned to the VII Corps. In the postwar reorganization of the Army's infantry divisions, they only had two regiments of horse-drawn 75 mm guns, with truck-drawn 155 mm howitzers initially assigned as corps and army artillery because of the belief that they were too tactically immobile. As early as 1922, the Nebraska National Guard found it impossible to organize the VII Corps' 127th Field Artillery Regiment because of a lack of funding and armory space. When suitable modifications were made to the 155 mm howitzer as part of the Army's motorization of field artillery in the early 1930s to allow for high-speed truck traction, 155 mm howitzer regiments were returned to divisions; the 142nd Field Artillery Regiment, a partially-organized General Headquarters Reserve 75 mm gun unit from Arkansas, was converted to 155 mm howitzers and assigned to the 35th Division on 13 July 1931 in lieu of the 127th Field Artillery.
In the 1920s and 1930s, constituent units of the division performed routine training within their respective states as well as various activities policing labor troubles and effecting disaster relief. Arkansas units trained at Camp Pike, Arkansas, Fort Riley, Kansas, near Junction City, or at Fort Sill; Kansas units trained at Fort Riley; Missouri units at Camp Clark, near Nevada, Missouri; Nebraska units at Camp Ashland, near Ashland, Nebraska. Because of continued disputes between the states allotted for the division, the 35th Division commander and his staff were not organized and federally recognized until 1932-1933. Beginning in the summer of 1933, the division staff assembled at Fort Riley for consolidated staff training and did so for the next two years. In the fall of 1935, the staff participated in the Fourth Army command post exercise at Fort Lewis, Washington, and went to camp at Ashland, Nebraska, the following summer. Due to limited funding, all the units of the 35th Division did not gather together in one place for training until the Seventh Corps Area concentration of the Fourth Army maneuvers at Fort Riley, in 1937. In 1938, 180 Organized Reserve officers of the 89th and 102nd Divisions were also provided with training by the division. The division also concentrated at Camp Ripley, Minnesota, during the Fourth Army maneuvers in 1940.

Peacetime activities

Special Troops, 35th Division

  • 35th Signal Company for communications duty in conjunction with a coal miners' strike in Columbus, Kansas, 17 June-6 August 1935

    35th Division Quartermaster Train

Source:
  • Elements for flood relief duty along the Republican River in south-central Nebraska, 1–4 June 1935
  • Entire train for martial law in conjunction with a streetcar workers' strike in Omaha, Nebraska, 15–21 June 1935

    69th Infantry Brigade

  • Brigade headquarters for command and control in conjunction with a streetcar workers' strike in Omaha, 15–21 June 1935

    70th Infantry Brigade

Source:
Source:
  • 1st Battalion for riot control duty during a coal miners' strike in Pittsburg, 14 December 1921 – 26 February 1922
  • Several batteries for tornado relief duty in Hutchinson, 13–15 January 1923, and Horton, 18–19 June 1923
  • 1st Battalion for flood relief duty in Hutchinson, July 1929

    134th Infantry Regiment

Source:
  • Five companies for riot control duty during a workers' strike at a Nebraska City meat packing plant, January–February 1922
  • Portion of one company for tornado relief duty at Hastings, Nebraska, 9–12 May 1930
  • Two companies for riot control duty during a water rights dispute along the north fork of the Platte River in Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska, 28 August-3 September 1935
  • Entire regiment, less band, for martial law in conjunction with a streetcar workers' strike in Omaha, 15–21 June 1935