100th Training Division


The 100th Training Division is a division of the United States Army headquartered at Fort Knox, Kentucky. It currently serves as a major training command of the United States Army Reserve. It has been known as the "Century Division" owing to its "100th" designation.
Throughout its long history, the division has taken on numerous roles. Serving as the 100th Infantry Division until the 1950s, the division then briefly became the 100th Airborne Division
before becoming the 100th Division . Since this transformation, the division has primarily taken on numerous training roles for other Army units.
It was originally activated in mid-1918, too late to join the fighting in World War I. The division is best known for its exploits during World War II as the 100th Infantry Division. Fighting in the European Theater, the division advanced through France and Germany through the end of the war, fending off heavy German counterattacks along the way. World War II would be the only war the division would see active combat in before taking on a role as a training unit.

History

World War I

On 23 July 1918, the War Department directed the organization of the 100th Division at Camp Bowie, Texas. Plans called for the division to include a headquarters, headquarters troop, the 199th Infantry Brigade, 200th Infantry Brigade, 373rd Machine Gun Battalion, 175th Field Artillery Brigade, 325th Engineers, 625th Field Signal Battalion, and 325th Train Headquarters and Military Police. It was intended that the 199th Infantry Brigade would be organized in France from the 56th and 57th Pioneer Infantry Regiments.
The 25th Trench Mortar Battery was formed at Camp Stanley, Texas, in August 1918 and was assigned to the 175th Field Artillery Brigade, but never ended up joining. The organization of the division began in October with the appointment of Colonel William L. Reed as division chief of staff, but organization never progressed beyond the assignment of the division staff and preliminary preparations for the receipt of Selective Service men. After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the 100th Division was ordered demobilized on 30 November 1918.

Interwar period

The 100th Division was reconstituted in the Organized Reserve on 24 June 1921, allotted to the Fifth Corps Area, and assigned to the XV Corps. The division was further allotted to the states of West Virginia and Kentucky as its home area. The division headquarters was organized on 27 September 1921 at 209 Greenbriar Street in Charleston, West Virginia, but relocated in April 1922 to 815 Quarrier Street and moved again in September 1922 to the Morrison Building in Charleston. On 29 May 1923, the division received its shoulder sleeve insignia. The headquarters was relocated a final time on 30 June 1928 from 1313 Union Bank and Trust Building in Charleston to the Coal Exchange Building in Huntington, and remained there until activated for World War II. To maintain communications with the officers of the division, the division staff published a newsletter titled “The Century,” which alluded to the division's numerical designation. The newsletter informed the division's members of such things as when and where the inactive training sessions were to be held, what the division's summer training quotas were, when and where the camps were to be held, and which units would be assigned to help conduct the Citizens Military Training Camps. As the 1920s gave way to the 1930s and many World War I-experienced Reservists began to retire, the single largest cohort of the division's assigned officers became new ROTC graduates chiefly from West Virginia University in Morgantown, the University of Kentucky in Lexington, or Western Kentucky State Teachers' College in Bowling Green.
The 100th Division headquarters occasionally trained with the staff of the 5th Division's 10th Infantry Brigade at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. The subordinate infantry regiments of the division held their summer training primarily with the units of the 10th Infantry Brigade at Camp Knox or Fort Thomas, Kentucky, or Fort Benjamin Harrison. Some years, the division's 167th and 168th Infantry Brigades and their subordinate units conducted camp at the Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana. Other units, such as the special troops, artillery, engineers, aviation, medical, and quartermaster, trained at various posts in the Fifth Corps Areas, usually with active units of the 5th Division. For example, the division's artillery trained with the 5th Division field artillery units stationed at Camp Knox; the 309th Engineer Regiment usually trained at Fort Benjamin Harrison; the 309th Medical Regiment trained at Camp Knox; and the 309th Observation Squadron trained with the 88th Observation Squadron at Wright Field, Ohio. In addition to the unit training camps, the infantry regiments of the division rotated responsibility for conducting the infantry CMTC training held at Camp Knox and Fort Thomas each year. On a number of occasions, the division participated in Fifth Corps Area and Second Army command post exercises in conjunction with other Regular Army, National Guard, and Organized Reserve units. These training events gave division staff officers’ opportunities to practice the roles they would be expected to perform in the event the division was mobilized. Unlike the Regular and Guard units in the Fifth Corps Area, however, the 100th Division did not participate in the various Fifth Corps Area maneuvers and the Second Army maneuvers of 1936, 1940, and 1941 as an organized unit due to lack of enlisted personnel and equipment. Instead, the officers and a few enlisted reservists were assigned to Regular and Guard units to fill vacant slots and bring the units up to war strength for the exercises. Additionally, some officers were assigned duties as umpires or as support personnel.

World War II

Mobilization

Order of battle

  • Headquarters, 100th Infantry Division
  • 397th Infantry Regiment
  • 398th Infantry Regiment
  • 399th Infantry Regiment
  • Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 100th Infantry Division Artillery
  • * 373rd Field Artillery Battalion
  • * 374th Field Artillery Battalion
  • * 375th Field Artillery Battalion
  • * 925th Field Artillery Battalion
  • 325th Engineer Combat Battalion
  • 325th Medical Battalion
  • 100th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop
  • Headquarters, Special Troops, 100th Infantry Division
  • * Headquarters Company, 100th Infantry Division
  • * 800th Ordnance Light Maintenance Company
  • * 100th Quartermaster Company
  • * 100th Signal Company
  • * Military Police Platoon
  • * Band
  • 100th Counterintelligence Corps Detachment
Before Organized Reserve infantry divisions were ordered into active military service, they were reorganized on paper as "triangular" divisions under the 1940 tables of organization. The headquarters companies of the two infantry brigades were consolidated into the division's cavalry reconnaissance troop, and one infantry regiment was removed by inactivation. The field artillery brigade headquarters and headquarters battery became the headquarters and headquarters battery of the division artillery. Its three field artillery regiments were reorganized into four battalions; one battalion was taken from each of the two 75 mm gun regiments to form two 105 mm howitzer battalions, the brigade's ammunition train was reorganized as the third 105 mm howitzer battalion, and the 155 mm howitzer battalion was formed from the 155 mm howitzer regiment. The engineer, medical, and quartermaster regiments were reorganized into battalions. In 1942, divisional quartermaster battalions were split into ordnance light maintenance companies and quartermaster companies, and the division's headquarters and military police company, which had previously been a combined unit, was split.
On 15 August 1942, the War Department designated Major General Withers A. Burress as division commander, Colonel Maurice L. Miller as assistant division commander, and Colonel Theodore A. Buechler as division artillery commander. Miller and Buechler were later promoted to brigadier general. The officer cadre was designated by the end of August, and was dispatched to training schools to prepare them for their new assignments. In October 1942, they reported to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and were joined by about 400 "filler" officers principally obtained from officer candidate schools. In mid-October, the non-commissioned officer cadre, provided principally by the 76th Infantry Division arrived at Fort Jackson. The 100th Infantry Division was officially ordered into active military service on 15 November 1942. Over 13,000 enlisted fillers, consisting of men from all across the United States, "salesmen from New York; farmers from the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama; mechanics from New Jersey; clerks from the New England states; mill workers from Pennsylvania and Delaware," arrived in short order thereafter. Basic training began on 28 December 1942.
From late 1943 to early 1944, the division trained in the mountains of Tennessee and was subsequently sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for further training. While at Fort Bragg, Technical Sergeant Walter L. Bull earned the first Expert Infantryman's Badge.
Between January 1943 and August 1944, the division sent 14,636 enlisted men and 1,400 officers as cadres or fillers for other units or to overseas replacement depots. The latter transfers were to obey two War Department directives issued in January and February 1944. The first was that the greatest possible proportion of men sent overseas as replacements have at least six months of training. The latter was to prohibit 18 year olds and men with children conceived prior to Pearl Harbor who had less than six months of training from being sent overseas as replacements unless men could be found from other sources. In June 1944, the age rule became even stricter, with no men under 19 shipped as replacements in infantry or armor under any circumstances, and no men under 18 years and 6 months assigned to infantry or armor replacement training centers.
Between April 1944 and September 1944, the 100th Infantry Division lost 125 infantry noncommissioned officers and 3,859 privates. In exchange, the division received men from replacement training centers, the pared-down Army Specialized Training Program, aviation cadets returned to the ground forces, men from disbanded units in other branches of the Army, and men who had volunteered for the infantry from other branches of the Army.
The division sailed to Europe on 6 October of that year. The division arrived at Marseille, France, on 20 October. It was made part of VI Corps of the Seventh United States Army, Sixth United States Army Group.