Where a highway and a legendary Army division cross paths

Sign on Route 29 honors the ‘citizen soldiers’ of an infantry unit defined by D-Day

Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Charlie Shoemaker⁄The Gazette In his office at the White Oak Armory, Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a platoon sergeant for Bravo Company 1st Battalion of the 175th Infantry, formerly the 115th Infantry, talks about his connection to the 29th Infantry Division.

Thompson spent a year in Iraq and was one of the last soldiers to fight as a member of the 29th Infantry Division. ‘‘It’s a part of your life you’ll never forget,” he said. ‘‘No matter what other unit you’re in, no matter what other association you have, you’ll always be part of the 29th.”

The 29th, an Army unit of local soldiers past and present, was randomly assigned its number when it was formed at the onset of World War I, several years before U.S. Route 29 was randomly given the same numeric designation. The two 29s remained joined in number only until a dozen years ago, when they became forever intersected by a stone-and-wood sign near Ellicott City in Maryland.

‘‘I don’t think you’ll ever find a military or National Guard unit that symbolizes the citizen-soldier like the 29th does,” Thompson said.

A platoon sergeant for Bravo Company 1st Battalion of the 175th Infantry, formerly the 115th Infantry, Thompson wears the 29th’s patch on the right sleeve of his fatigues, indicating former wartime service. He chose the 29th’s patch among many he accumulated while serving in Iraq that are now displayed behind his desk in his office at the Maj. Gen. George M. Gelston Armory in White Oak. ‘‘To know I’m probably one of the last combat veterans that the 29th is going to produce is an honor and to me it’s kind of humbling,” Thompson said.

A proud history begins

The Maryland Center for Military History sits at one end of the cavernous Fifth Regiment Armory in Baltimore, the headquarters of the Maryland National Guard. At its entrance is a Jeep used by Gen. Charles Gerhardt, commander of the 29th during World War II. The names of 20 or so cities the 29th stopped in during its time in Europe are written on the windshield. The Jeep’s first destination: Omaha Beach.

While the 29th is most famous for its participation in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the division’s history goes back to World War I, said Joe Balkoski, command historian for the Maryland National Guard and author of four books about the 29th.

In 1917, as the United States prepared to enter ‘‘The Great War,” the Department of War formed National Guards, with divisions of 20,000 men each, to supplement the regular Army.

When it came time to label divisions, the government started in the Northeast and snaked its way through the country, randomly assigning numbers. With one through 25 reserved for professional active forces, Balkoski said, New England was given the first available number, 26. New York was given 27, Pennsylvania, 28, and Maryland’s division, 29.

Each division then had to come up with a patch, a symbol worn to demonstrate ‘‘unit pride,” Balkoski said. In the 29th, members from Virginia and Maryland had family — some still living at the time — that fought on opposite sides of the Civil War. For its patch, the 29th used a ‘‘Taijitu,” more commonly known as a Yin Yang, with a blue half representing the Union and gray half representing the Confederacy. ‘‘It was supposed to symbolize unity in a post-Civil War period between soldiers whose ancestors had been opponents at one time,” Balkoski said.

The 29th sent 22,000 men off to Europe in World War I, most notably fighting in Alsace and Meuse-Argonne, an intense Allied offensive that ended on Armistice Day in 1918.

The unit was deactivated after World War I, but was reformed again in 1920 for National Guard members. The citizen-soldiers remained on duty with the Guard one night a week, two weeks a year, for the next 20 years.

A division defined on D-Day

Every year, 29ers acknowledge Feb. 3. On that day in 1941, the soldiers of the 29th became full-time members of the U.S. Army, Balkoski said. The unit trained for the following 10 months, and because the country was not at war, the soldiers believed they would soon be back to civilian life.

They returned from maneuvers in North Carolina a few weeks before Christmas, excited to go home for the holidays, Balkoski said. Then they flipped on their radios and heard the news.

It was Dec. 7. The Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor. ‘‘Everyone agreed that they wouldn’t be going home any time soon,” Balkoski said.

The 29th shipped out to England in the fall of 1942. For a year-and-a-half, the soldiers trained. In early 1944, the 29th was officially told of its role in the invasion, Balkoski said, but many active-duty soldiers, including Gens. Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George Patton, were skeptical about a National Guard unit’s involvement in such a mission.

‘‘It was a burden the division had to bear,” Balkoski said, ‘‘the constant feeling that ‘we represent more than ourselves, we’re representing the whole concept of the National Guard and whether we’re good or not.’ They went on to prove that they were just as good, if not better, than anybody else.”

One of the first divisions to land on Omaha Beach on June 6, the 29th division suffered 2,000 casualties in just 18 hours, Balkoski said.

Silver Spring resident Donald McKee trained as an infantry medic and by ‘‘happenstance” was assigned to join the 29th in Britain in early 1944, he said. He remembers the ‘‘complete chaos” of D-Day, the mines set up by the Germans that poked out of the sand during low tide like giant children’s jacks and the burned-out ships on the beach that prevented his unit from setting foot on land until June 7.

‘‘As soon as you got on the beach, it didn’t matter what division you were in,” McKee said, wearing a bolo tie with the 29th’s logo.

Following D-Day, the division spent two months in Normandy, slowly pushing back German soldiers off the beach’s embankments. While the war moved east, the 29th was sent north to Brittany, where German soldiers were still putting up a fight in what was now enemy territory. The soldiers in the 29th were excited because they thought the war would soon be over, Balkoski said.

Instead, the unit suffered 3,500 casualties in one month. ‘‘It was incredibly tragic because it was so unexpected,” Balkoski said. In the division’s first six weeks of fighting 1,800 men were killed and another 6,200 wounded, including McKee, who would be wounded once more in late August and eventually receive two Purple Hearts for his service.

All told, the 29th division suffered 20,000 casualties in 10 months of fighting during World War II, including 7,500 deaths, a ‘‘tremendous rate of loss” because the division only had 14,000 soldiers at any given time, Balkoski said.

For the survivors, who grimly joked the only way out was by stretcher or in a grave, the crucible of war forged friendships that last even to this day, Balkoski said. ‘‘There’s a beautiful camaraderie, even though they are 80 or 90 [years old],” said Balkoski, who has interviewed hundreds of veterans from the 29th. ‘‘These very diverse people came together, and 66 years later, they’d still die for each other. It’s so impressive.”

Following World War II, members of the 29th Infantry Division went to the one-weekend-a-month and two-weeks-a-year commitment required by the National Guard to this day. The unit was put on warning for the Korean War but never went overseas, Balkoski said. The 29th was never again called up in its entirety. Since the 1990s, elements of the 29th have gone to Bosnia, Kosovo, Sinai and, more recently, Afghanistan and Iraq.

An honor they wear on their sleeves

Earlier this year, the Army reorganized, removing combat troops from divisions and into self-sustaining ‘‘combat brigades.” Combat troops in Maryland became part of the 58th Infantry Brigade, and the ‘‘29th Infantry Division” is now only a headquarters capable of housing any brigade in the country.

As a result, very few soldiers today wear the 29th’s patch on their left sleeve, which indicates a soldier’s current unit.

But Thompson and the 130 soldiers in his battalion successfully lobbied to wear the 29th’s patch on their left sleeve when they left Maryland for a year in Iraq beginning in May 2005. ‘‘It was just an honor for us,” Thompson said.

A career soldier and self-professed history buff, Thompson had read and heard about the 29th before joining the 115th Infantry in 1993. ‘‘There are always units that perform better than others, but I’ve never seen anything negative about the 29th, past or present,” said Thompson, sipping coffee out of a mug emblazoned with the 29th’s patch. ‘‘You can’t go in history and find a time where they didn’t do their job.”

Before Thompson’s battalion went off to Iraq to do its job, veterans of the 29th spoke with his unit. The 29th Division Association’s historian gave the unit a book, ‘‘Clay Pigeons,” about the 115th’s time in St. Lo, France, during World War II. Thompson and others read the book while in the combat zone. ‘‘It gives you a whole new admiration and respect for what those guys did and it makes you feel closer to them,” he said.

Thompson’s battalion spent six months in Saba al-Bore, where it took over an Iraqi police station — which it nicknamed ‘‘The Alamo” — and performed raids, searches and patrols. His unit then went to Ramadi in western Iraq, doing convoy security and route clearance.

Thompson is quick to play down his time in Iraq compared to what ‘‘29ers” did in World War II. While those soldiers were overseas for what was an indefinite war at the time, Thompson’s battalion knew before leaving the exact date it would be going home, a ‘‘psychological advantage,” he said. While in Iraq, Thompson was at base camp two days a week, enjoying some comforts of home soldiers in World War II could only dream of. ‘‘Four days at ‘The Alamo’ may be a long time ... but any place that has a Baskin-Robbins can’t be that bad, whereas these guys were lucky to get a hot shower or hot meal for days on end,” he said.

Before his mission to Iraq, Thompson sat with veterans of the 29th and listened to their stories. Now that he has fought as a member of the 29th, he feels closer to them than ever.

To illustrate his point, Thompson talked of another 29th patch, this one given to him years ago by a World War II veteran. The patch had been sitting in Thompson’s dresser as he tried to figure out what to do with it. But when he returned from Iraq, Thompson knew exactly where it belonged. Today, that patch is part of his military dress uniform. ‘‘I can somewhat say that I have a bond with them,” he said. ‘‘I feel like I’m more one of them than I was a year-and-a-half ago.”

McKee, a former national commander of the 29th Division Association who now lives in the Burnt Mills neighborhood just off Route 29, said the relationships between soldiers and veterans in the 29th have always been strong. The association has held a convention every year for the past 88 years, he said, and the four current national officers are all National Guard members that served after World War II.

To McKee, the 29th Division sign on Route 29 symbolizes the connection between generations of soldiers. ‘‘It lets people ... recognize that their family members have excelled as citizen soldiers,” he said. ‘‘And it continues.”