| 65th Infantry Division | |
|---|---|
 65th Infantry Division shoulder sleeve insignia | |
| Active | 16 August 1943–31 August 1945 |
| Country |  United States |
| Branch |  United States Army |
| Type | Infantry |
| Size | Division |
| Nickname(s) | "Battle-Axe" |
| Engagements | World War II |
| US Infantry Divisions | ||||
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The65th Infantry Division—nicknamed the "Battle-Axe Division"—was an infantrydivision of theUnited States Army that served inWorld War II. Its shoulder patch is a whitehalberd on a blue shield.
The entire length ofPennsylvania Route 65 is named the65th Infantry Division Memorial Highway in its honor.
The home arena for theUnited States Military Academy at West Point's men's and women's basketball teams is namedChristl Arena in honor of First Lieutenant Edward C. Christl, who served with the division during World War II and was killed in action in Austria on May 4, 1945.[1]
The 65th Infantry Division was activated on 16 August 1943 at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, under the command of Major General Stanley E. Reinhart. As mobilization requirements were outpacing the induction rate, the complete quota of enlisted fillers for the division was not received until the end of the year, delaying the start of basic training until early January 1944. Unit training began on schedule in the spring, but in late May, the division received orders to begin processing infantry privates for shipment as overseas replacements. By July, the 65th Infantry Division had lost about 7,000 men, with officer losses from April to July exceeding one-third, or about 250, particularly lieutenants and captains. When theArmy Specialized Training Program was heavily reduced in March 1944, the division was overstrength, so it did not receive any of these high-quality personnel. Replacements for outgoing enlisted men first arrived in May, in the form of 1,100 reassignedAir Corps cadets. In June and July, this was followed by a steady trickle of about 3,000 men from miscellaneous sources such as men returned from overseas (about 700), reassigned from disbanded antiaircraft and tank destroyer units, or men who volunteered for the infantry from other branches of the Army. In July, the division sent about 1,000 men aged nineteen or over to overseas replacement depots, from which it received a roughly equal number of eighteen year old graduates of replacement training centers.
In late July. major withdrawals ended and a program of modified unit retraining was begun, but a steady trickle of men continued to leave; losses in August aggregated 1,173. In late September, the division was alerted for overseas movement to occur in mid-January 1945, a "bombshell," as training had been predicated on the fact that movement was not to be expected before mid-1945. Roughly 1,000 men unqualified for overseas service were dropped, and the division received 2,000 new men in the three months subsequent to being alerted. In mid-October, another startling communication was received, as the movement date for the infantry regiments had been pushed up to 13 November with their equipment to be packed by 28 October. This disrupted the beginning of a program of modified combined training, but the personnel readiness date was shortly pushed back to 24 December and the equipment date to 10 December. After an abbreviated program of combined training using a large amount of equipment borrowed from other units, the last elements of the division departed Camp Shelby on New Year's Eve 1944.
The 65th Infantry Division landed atLe Havre, France, 21 January 1945, and proceeded to Camp Lucky Strike, where training continued until 1 March, when the division moved forward to relieve the26th Infantry Division. First elements entered the line, 5 March 1945, and the division as a whole took over aggressive defense of the sector along the Saar, from Orscholz to Wadgassen, on 8 March 1945. On 17 March, the division attacked across the Saar, crossing the river at Dillingen and captured Saarlautern, 19 March, asSiegfried Line defenses cracked. Capturing Neunkirchen, 21 March 1945, the division raced to the Rhine, crossed the river at Oppenheim, 30 March, and ran into heavy German resistance and counterattacks.Langensalza fell on 5 April, Struth on the 7th, and Neumarkt on the 22nd.
Continuing its advance against crumbling German opposition, the division crossed theDanube 4 miles belowRegensburg, 26 April, took the city, 27 April, seizedPassau, cross the Inn River, 4 May, and occupiedLinz, Austria, on the 5th. Germans surrendered en masse. On 9 May, as hostilities officially ended in Europe, the troops of the 65th made contact with the Russians atErlauf.[2]
Source: Order of Battle: U.S. Army World War II by Shelby Stanton.
