THE U.S. ARMY'S 106TH INFANTRY "GOLDEN LION" DIVISION -- MORE OF A PUSSYCAT ACTUALLY

GENESIS AND EXODUS

The 106th Infantry Division was activated on March 15, 1943 at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, thus becoming the army’s most junior combat outfit. The newly-designed shoulder patch portrayed a lion’s face, which looked downright timid in comparison to the famous MGM mascot. Its central color seemed more like yellow than gold, against a darkish blue background and a red outer border. Despite whatever imagery might have been intended, ferociousness certainly didn’t come to mind.



Historically speaking, this division may have been the shortest lived ever. After only 63 days in European Theater front-line action during World War II, it was officially deactivated on October 2, 1945, aged two years, six and a half months.



Despite this unusually short life, the 106th became heralded for its defensive stand against the counteroffensive attack launched by German forces in the Ardennes area, which began on December 16, 1944 and essentially ended only a few days later. Some high-ranking military officers praised its performance rather glowingly, and an American newscaster even wrote an extremely complimentary book, published as early as 1945.



Nevertheless, from our direct personal observation, the accolades heaped on the Golden Lion boys appear way overblown. Before elaborating further, more background information seems in order.



Following the Fort Jackson inauguration ceremony, the division’s travel itinerary was limited to Tennessee Maneuvers, then Camp Atterbury, Indiana, Camp Myles Standish, Massachusetts, to England by sea, and finally France, Belgium, and Germany. That last stop proved to be just in time for annihilation by a better trained, albeit inadequately supplied enemy.



During the Camp Atterbury period, which ran from March 28, 1944 until early October of the same year, the unit chiefly became a source for replacements to fill casualty-incurred gaps in combat zones elsewhere. Although the Tennessee Maneuvers experience had hardened the troops to a minor extent, the subsequent decimation process necessitated the thinned-out ranks to be replenished by a flood of fuzzy-cheeked youths, fresh from basic training, which had been subjected to severe curtailment in many instances. One resultant effect was the outfit’s overall average age drop to 22. Consequently, autumn of 1945 found perhaps the greenest infantry organization in U.S. military annals packing up and bundling off toward a waiting battleground.



BATTLE STATIONS

When the very brief so-called training and toughening exercises on English soil had been deemed sufficient, the geniuses who ran the U.S. Army from the upper levels plunked the 106th Division into the Ardennes area, smack in front of the entrenched German forces, and deployed over a geographical range roughly five times the standard width span for a unit of that size. Weather conditions precluded air support, the artillery never became fully oriented with its targets, the terrain was far too hilly for tank operations, and much-needed winter clothing lay in short supply. The critical situation rounded out with the presence of a youth-infested organization which had no prior fighting experience whatsoever.



December 16, 1944 opened with crack enemy forces proceeding to overrun and surround the poorly-geared Americans, repelling any defensive thrust attempts. A steady three-day assault found two entire U.S. regiments obliged to surrender, along with affiliated artillery batteries, engineer battalions, and others.



The division’s casualty statistics appear somewhat skewed in contrast to usual conditions, with 417 killed, 1,275 wounded, and a massive 6,697 taken prisoner. We can’t help but wonder if any other U.S. military organization has ever suffered a record of such relative disproportion.



This Ardennes Counteroffensive quickly earned the label Battle of the Bulge, due to the bubble-shaped image formed on the map as Hitler’s legions broke through the feeble and utterly useless barriers confronting them. We can say with absolute certainty that the actual events barely resembled those shown in the movie of the same name twenty years or so afterward.



Moreover, the ensuing prisoner of war life endured by those 6,697 fellows, with not everyone managing to survive the ordeal, involved absolutely no well-conceived subterfuge and espionage acts as pulled off by Hogan’s Heroes in the popular television series later on. The camps weren’t run by nincompoops like Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz either.



What the 106th actually achieved amounted to simply lying in the enemy’s way, offering pocket resistance to the fullest possible extent, thus altogether causing important delay, instead of the planned more rapid movement. This is the sole reason for the unit’s commendation, with a presidential citation medal being awarded to the division as a whole. For an outfit that did little more than get its proverbial ass resoundingly kicked, such honors seem unwarranted. Nevertheless, the U.S. military has traditionally chosen to bend over backwards in voicing praise of its troops under fire.



THE AFTERMATH

Presumably, most or maybe all division, regiment, or other war machine entities in past or ongoing existence have established “alumni” associations as a commemoration means. The 106th Golden Lions are no exception. Since the minimum World War II participation age in 1944 was 18, and the outfit has only a single battle to reflect upon, any veteran member still around today must be at least 83 years old. As a consequence, a game of last man standing is in force among the surviving troops.



What tends to make matters a mite perplexing is the alleged sanctity attached to a lone combat confrontation, followed by approximately four months’ barbed wire captivity, punctuated with lengthy intercamp forced marches, for thousands of young chaps under near-starvation and inclement weather conditions. If this adds up to glorious battlefield achievement, we have trouble seeing the connection.



Within recent years, this writer happened to stumble upon an exhaustive analysis of the December 16-19 fun and games in the Ardennes, published on the internet. It had been prepared in 1950 by an officer from the same battalion, for training of prospective new lieutenants at Fort Benning, Georgia. Although the material compiled was extremely thorough, due to the author’s having been right on-scene, a few small but significant flaws were readily noted, because we had also been there, immersed in the same bitter fracas.



In a noble effort aimed toward correcting innocently-derived misinformation, we wrote to the training material author, long since retired, pointing out where his text had contained certain inaccuracies, based on personal direct observation while under enemy fire.



Fully expecting a “thanks very much for the enlightenment” reply from yonder end, we received instead a harshly worded admonishment, rife with criticism for challenging poured-in-concrete battle records, along with a retroactive “chewing out”, due to our casual admission of having abandoned a severely broken and useless radio. Our correspondent insisted that replacement parts were always on hand and available. In other words, with shells dropping all around and an enemy virtually behind every tree, we’d merely have needed to visit the nearest supply room and get the mechanism fixed pronto.



Over and above the merciless salvo fired across the email waves, our enraged correspondent disdained addressing any of the points with which we had taken issue. Obviously, our attempt to disrupt the long-dead unit’s combat sanctity was totally forbidden.



Perhaps the lesson thus learned should be to avoid trying to be helpful in matters such as this, because history is history is history, officially documented for posterity, and must forever go unchallenged, even to the remotest degree.



We’ve probably committed a cardinal sin as well by stating earlier that our esteemed 106th Division really got its butt kicked in the Ardennes conflict.