 Hell on wheels. That's us. Second armored division. Now a boss, general plumber. Quite an outfit. Tanks, infantry, artillery, and engineers look pretty sharp. It's our last show in the state. We were alerted a couple of days ago. One of the new men, a joker, put an open letter on the bulletin board. A letter to Uncle Joe. Funny history seems to repeat itself. About ten years ago, there was another dictator named Adolf. He, too, thought he had the world in his pocket. I had just joined the second then at Fort Benning. We were starting to organize. Don't ask me with plot. Our guns were made of wood. When it came to tanks, we had to use our imagination. You couldn't kill a fly with the armor we had. But as supplies started pouring in, it began to look like the real thing. We were really training now. You heard of Georgie Patton? He was our CG. With him around, you just kept going. The brother had looked as if the training would never end. Was he proud of us the way we came through those maneuvers in Louisiana and Carolina? We were a crack outfit now. They called us hell on wheels. Three invasion teams were picked from units of the second then sent to Norfolk, Virginia. We practiced amphibious landings until water ran out of our ears. Soon enough, I found out why. We were going to be in on the African invasion. At 0400 on 8 November 1942, we hit the coast of Africa. Saffy, Fadela, Port Leote. Our mission was to secure these ports and to envelop Casablanca. It looked a lot different from the movie. Nobody invited us to come to the Casbah. Old Georgie, who was the commander of the Western Task Force, ordered us to the French-Spanish-Morocco border in case there should be trouble. Then in April, we folded our tents and moved to Algeria, to a small town near Iran, where we started training for the next jump, Sicily. We were getting used to the water now. In fact, some of the GIs put in for sea pay. Ah, Sicily. The traveler gets a friendly welcome as he arrives at its sunny shores. Sure enough, the Herman-Gering Division sent us a tank battalion as a special welcoming committee. But we knocked the H out of Herman. The 14th and the 78th field did a swell job there. Then we moved on. We advanced steadily over mined mountain roads that were blown off the cliffs, over tank traps, over blown bridges, through a lot of Italian towns that sounded like the menu of a spaghetti joint. Until we reached the end of the road, Palermo, the last dish on that Italian menu. After setting up the administration of the Western part of the island, we took another boat ride. Arriving in England the short time later, the first combat-tested armor to hit Great Britain. There was something in the air. We knew the big show in France was about to pop and we were going to be in it. We could almost smell it because the training was stepped up. Because a lot of big boys came to visit us, even Mr. Great Britain himself. And then one morning in June we were on the water, getting our last-minute briefings. The date was D-Day plus three. Omaha Beach was a lot different from Omaha, Nebraska. I'll take Nebraska any time. On D-Day plus five, we were in it up to our necks, slugging it out with the Germans at Carintham. It was hydro-country. Natural barriers 10, 12 feet high that Jerry thought would stop us dead. Here's one time we threw the book away, used our tanks as battering ramps. This was only the warm-up, the main event. The famous St. Louis breakthrough. Combat Command Day, led by the 66, fought in the vicinity of Tessie-sur-Veer during the left shoulder of the opening. The 67th, meanwhile, spearheaded CCB's drive toward Sorensys, cutting off the withdrawal of the Germans in that area. Old Man Churchill was right. Sweat, blood, cheers. Fighting street by street, out of house, hand to hand. Jerry's reaction to our breakthrough was to cover attack in the more tamed Berenton area. We smashed it. And how? We were picking up speed now. We started chasing Jerry to the same, taking thousands of prisoners. Pursuing him at an even faster pace toward the song, crossing the river at an unexpected point. Here was one time we caught him with his pantsers down. On 2 September 1944, the first allied elements, led by the 82nd recon, rolled over Belgian soil. Driving across to the Dutch border, we bridged the Albert Canal, pushing north on a line through Sitar. Tanks of CCB under General White made the first crossing of Germany's Holy Soil on 18 September at Hillensburg. The holiness of the German Fatherland became even more soiled when we crossed their border for the second time on October 3rd. It was like taking an obstacle course all over again. Only this time it was the real thing and on Jerry's home ground. He was well dug in at the Siegfried Line, the famous impregnable West Wall. We went in after him. We were part of the 9th Army. Combat Command B assisted in capturing Pallenburg-U-Vac, while CCA moved to the south and took a couple of other crowd towns after heavy fighting. The rest of the division pushed southeast, meanwhile, and joined the 1st Army in a ring of steel around Aachen. Late in November, we resumed the offensive, moving further east and south. Town after town fell under the weight of our armor. But Jerry had still another trick up his sleeve. The famous Battle of the Bones began. The last desperate effort of the German war machine, Adolf ordered his boys to do or die. Wasn't much time to lose. They had ripped our lines wide open at the Ardennes. We raced south to Cine in Belgium and tore into their 2nd Panzer Division. Ninety-second fields disfigured out. We cuffed the westernmost prong of their assault wedge to pieces, destroying hundreds of their vehicles, including 81 tanks. Monty of Alamain wrote us a fan letter for this job. In Hoefelies, where the 41st did some of their heaviest fighting in snow and ice, we left a junkyard of the German vehicle. We were sure tired when we met Patton's 3rd Army. Tired, but happy. It meant the western half of the bulge was sealed off. That phase of the campaign was over. After a short period of regrouping, we started the new offensive by crossing the Rohr River. Goldenhausen, Kruppel, Herdingen. We never knew where Jerry was. Was he waiting behind that corner? Wherever he was, we hit him. We kept going until we reached the Rhine on 3 March 1945. That's where the 17th engineers showed their stuff, bridging the river under fire at 7 o'clock. Breaking out of the Rhine Bridgehead, we hit the Autobahn Highway southwest of Beckham, cutting off Jerry's main artery of supply between Berlin and the Rohr. At Lippstadt, we linked up with elements of the 3rd Armored Division, closing the trap on Germany's most vital industrial area. Jerry was losing his cockiness now. The attack rolled on, through the Troideberger Forest to the Waser River under the plains of North Germany. At Immendorf, the Hermann Gehring works fell into our hands. It was the beginning of the end for Jerry. On April 12th, we reached the Elbe. The endstation, as they called it. We had overrun an area of 3,000 square miles, taken 45,000 prisoners, captured some big cities like Magdeburg. But the biggest was yet to come, Berlin. It was quite a feeling to march past the barracks of the Adolf Hitler elite guard. We were the first division in Berlin. Our job was to provide security for the American sector of the city and furnish the honor guard for the Potsdam Conference. When President Truman arrived, we showed him that we were on the ball. From mud and dust, we were back to spit and polish, as if we hadn't done anything but parading these last three years. And then finally came that day in 45, when after two amphibious assaults, seven major campaigns, the outfit started on its way home. The proud possessor of the French forager, the Belgian forager, and 13 distinguished unit citations. Back in the States, we took up our peacetime duties at Fort Hood, Texas. A lot of men got out. New men came in. As the world situation grew tense, it was out of the barracks and into the field again. And now we're ready to go overseas. New weapons, new men, but with a fighting spirit that isn't new for this outfit. Ike sent for us. We always were his first team. Always will be. Hell on wheels.