December 7, 1941

The day started like any ordinary Sunday. Most married officers, noncommissioned officers and enlisted men of the 3d Infantry Division, then stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, were at home with their families. A large percentage of the remainder of the command was away from the post on pass. There had been no hint of impending hostilities through any official channels, and only by press accounts of events in the Far East, and the apparent lack of success of the Kurusu mission in Washington, was there any suspicion that war against Japan might break out in the immediate future.

Just before noon, all scheduled radio programs went off the air and fantastic accounts of the Jap attack on Pearl Harbor began to come through. Jap bombs had hit many of our warships lying in the harbor; Jap planes had bombed and strafed Hickam and Wheeler fields, damaging United States aircraft, hangars and barracks. Men of the 3d, who for months had been preparing for a theoretical war against a theoretical enemy, were as surprised and stunned as the rest of the western world.

Almost immediately Headquarters IX Army Corps, of which the 3d Infantry Division was a part, sent out instructions for all members of the command to report to their organizations.

From homes, churches, theaters and clubs, the move to the post began. Officers and men entering Fort Lewis by bus and private car found a traffic jam at the gates where military police were inspecting the occupants of all vehicles as they entered. Machine guns were set up at post entrances and at various points about the post for antiaircraft protection. So unexpected was the Pearl Harbor attack that the possibility of an invasion, or at least of raids against the Pacific coast, was uppermost in everyone's mind.

Blackout measures at the post were initiated almost immediately, and from the first day of the war until the Division left Fort Lewis, blackout was normal. For a time the blackout fixtures-tarpaper and shelter halves -could be removed only with difficulty, so office personnel worked by artificial light even during the daytime. Later, removable blackout panels were installed.

Every morning at dawn, observation planes from Gray Field, adjoining the barracks area, roared over the post on routine patrol of pacific waters.

To guard against glider or air-landing attacks, tactical vehicles of the Division were dispersed on the parade ground at night as obstacles to such an enemy attempt. The fact that nearby Gray and McChord fields were not similarly blocked, or that the Division would have experienced great difficulty in sorting out its trucks in the event of an emergency move illustrates the lack of tactical perception which prevailed at that stage of the war.

On Monday, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, combat elements of the Division went into concealed bivouac on the Fort Lewis reservation, partly as a "shakedown" in the event of immediate hostilities and partly to get away from the vulnerable barracks area. As the first week passed and the capabilities and intentions of the enemy became clearer, organizations returned to their permanent quarters in barracks.

The 3d Infantry Division's role in World War I ended in August 1919, when the Division completed its occupational duties at Andernach, on the Rhine, and entrained for Brest, France, where it embarked for the United States. For the following three years the Division was scattered at various posts throughout the country. In September 1922, Division Headquarters moved to Fort Lewis, Washington, and other elements of the command were stationed in the west.

In 1939 and 1940, when the War Department triangularized all infantry divisions, several major changes in the Division's organization occurred.

Infantry and artillery brigade headquarters were disbanded. The 4th and 38th Infantry Regiments, both of which fought with great distinction during the first war, were lost to the Division, and the 15th Infantry, hoary with the tradition of twenty-six years' occupational duty in China, was added. The 18th and 76th Field Artillery Regiments departed; the 10th was broken up into three separate light battalions: the 10th, 39th and 41st; and one battalion of the 9th Field Artillery, redesignated the 9th Field Artillery Battalion, became the Division's medium artillery unit. The 2d Battalion of the 6th Engineer Regiment, renamed the 10th Engineer Battalion, remained with the division. Division Headquarters was reorganized. Medical, signal and quartermaster units were reactivated in the new triangular organization. The old 3d Tank Company was taken away, and a new unit, the 3d Reconnaissance Troop, was organized around a cavalry cadre.

These changes, occurring under the mounting pressure of the international crisis, also saw the Division concentrated at Fort Lewis. At the outbreak of the war, the following units composed the division:

Headquarters and Headquarters and MP Company.

7th Infantry Regiment.

15th Infantry Regiment.

30th Infantry Regiment.

Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 3d Infantry Division Artillery.

9th Field Artillery Battalion.

10th Field Artillery Battalion.

39th Field Artillery Battalion.

41st Field Artillery Battalion.

10th Engineer Battalion.

3d Medical Battalion.

3d Quartermaster Battalion.

3d Reconnaissance Troop.

3d Signal Company.

In addition, the 603d Tank Destroyer Battalion, attached, had been formed from divisional infantry and artillery units and was regarded as part of the division.

Only two changes in the organic composition of the division occurred prior to movement overseas. The 3d Quartermaster Battalion was reduced to company size and the 703d Ordnance Company was added (due to transfer of motor vehicle responsibility from the quartermaster to the ordnance branch; also, the MP platoon was made separate from Headquarters Company, but remained attached to it.

One month before the outbreak of war, the War Department assigned to the 3d Infantry Division the primary mission of training in landing operations. For tactical purposes, the Division was assigned to Amphibious Corps Pacific Fleet, a Navy-Marine headquarters located in San Diego, California.

This new training mission did not alter the Division's basic composition as a triangular infantry division, nor its responsibility for remaining capable of triangular land operations. Amphibious training did, however, consume most of the Division's training time during the remainder of its stay in the United States.

A training-camp area was obtained at Henderson's Inlet, eight miles north of Olympia, Washington on Puget Sound. Here a pier, worksheds, orderly room and mess hall were constructed, and a boat detachment of some 200 officers, noncommissioned officers and enlisted men, drawn from divisional units, was established. Captain Glenn Wood, on special duty from the 15th Infantry, commanded the detachment during its period at Henderson's Inlet, and later on, in California.

Forty Higgins landing craft (LCP's) and a few old type motor sailers, sufficient to embark an entire battalion landing team at one time, were available for training. During November, 1941, the first battalion exercises were held, in which the battalion landing teams traveled to Henderson's Inlet from Fort Lewis (about fourteen miles), loaded into landing boats, proceeded to a rendezvous point, and returned to the pier for unloading.

About December I the exercises were made tactical, with the battalion landing teams traveling from Henderson's Inlet by water to McNeil Island, landing on a steep gravelly beach on the north side of the island, and continuing a few hundred yards inland to a coordinating line. All nine battalion-landing teams of the Division completed this problem.

Training of battalions in actual loading upon and disembarkation from transports began the last week in January, when the lst Battalion Landing Team, 7th Infantry, combat-loaded the USS Zeilin at Tacoma and sailed to San Diego, where the battalion remained two weeks engaged in landing exercises and practice disembarkation's. From San Diego the battalion moved north to Fort Ord, near Monterey, California, to which the Division had received a warning order to move.

Following this training of the 1st Battalion Landing Team, 7th Infantry, other battalions of the Division went to San Diego in numerical order, with the 7th completing training first, followed by battalions of the 15th and 30th Infantry Regiments. Regimental headquarters units and other elements of the RLGs (Regimental Landing Groups) made the journey with one of their battalions and went through the same type of training. This training continued all through the spring and summer, with at least one of the Division's infantry battalions, with its attached amphibious elements, at San Diego at all times.

There was only one interruption of this continuous training program. In mid-February, the 41st Infantry Division, which had been made responsible for security of industrial plants and communications in the Northwestern Sector, as well as for coastal defense of the sector extending from the Canadian border to the Oregon California line, was ordered to prepare for overseas movement. On February 15 the 3d Infantry Division took over these defensive missions, using the 15th Infantry in the area from Seattle northward, and the 30th Infantry on the Olympic Peninsula and southward. This duty continued little more than a week, when the 44th Infantry Division, a former New York-New Jersey National Guard unit, relieved the division.

From the beginning of training in landing operations, in which many personnel of the Division had taken part during the spring of 1940, development of Tables of Organization and Tables of Basic Allowances was continuous. It became apparent that even before a unit could practice loading dummy boats on dry land, some sort of decision had to be made as to the personnel and equipment which would compose the unit. While frequent changes were made in boat assignments and detailed items of equipment and methods of loading, the basic composition of the battalion landing team remained fairly constant, including: battalion headquarters, three rifle companies, heavy weapons company, attached artillery battery, attached engineer platoon, attached medical platoon, attached antitank platoon, and battalion shore party.

The RLG normally contained three battalion landing teams, regimental Headquarters and Headquarters Company, other regimental units, headquarters of the attached artillery battalion, engineer and medical company headquarters, and a regimental shore party.

While no attempt will be made to relate in detail the hundreds of decisions made on organization and equipment, and the reasons for them, the following basic principles became increasingly clear with the advance in training:

1. Combat-loading of transports and landing craft must be 100 per cent; that is, tactical units must be complete on transports and in boat teams, and weapons, vehicles and ammunition must be loaded in the correct priority on the same transports as the using units.

2. Landing-boat crews must be trained in landing and retracting their boats in surf.

3. Individual equipment must be light, and the minimum amount required for the first phases of the operation carried by the individual.

4. Actual practice-loading of transports, preferably those to be used in the operation itself, and the training of personnel in debarkation with equipment and supplies, is vital.

5. Supply must conform to the peculiarity of the operation, bearing in mind the transportation that will be available after the landing is made.

Any veteran of the landings in Sicily, at Anzio and in Southern France will smile as he reads of these things which harassed the best minds of the Division, and which appear to be almost axiomatic in the light of historical retrospect. Yet it must be remembered that the division was then preparing for a hypothetical ship-to-shore operation, in which the whole array of specialized landing craft, developed later, capable of carrying all the Division's transportation and supporting armor, was almost wholly absent. Indeed, the feeling of many junior officers and noncoms, following their first exposure to amphibious training, was that once a soldier had learned to clamber down a cargo net while carrying full kit, he was a trained artist in amphibious warfare.

Some of the larger aspects of amphibious operations, such as the question of command responsibility between the Army and Navy commanders, the determination of the appropriate hour for attack, means of prior reconnaissance of the landing area, and the coordination of naval gunfire and air support, were somewhat beyond the scope of the Division's training at Fort Lewis and Fort Ord, although these questions engaged the constant attention of the Division staff and were frequently discussed by them with Amphibious Corps headquarters at San Diego.

A source of considerable pride to the Division was the boat detachment, previously mentioned, which began its training in the relatively calm waters of Puget Sound but which later made numerous landings in heavy ocean surf and never lost a boat. The consequent insistence by the Division on the proven ability of trained operators to beach a landing craft and retract it even under unfavorable conditions was subject to incredulity on the part of those who had never seen it done successfully. The boat detachment never failed to fulfill its mission in superior fashion in consequence of thorough training.

In order to include larger headquarters in exercises using amphibious organization and equipment, an imaginary "Island" known as Taongi Island was laid out on the Fort Lewis reservation and regimental problems by the 15th and 30th Infantry Regiments were conducted along the "beach line" formed by Muck Creek. The 3d Reconnaissance Troop acted as the defenders. Boat teams were carried in trucks, disembarking on the south side of the creek and crossing on foot with their equipment, except personnel carried in vehicles which would normally be borne ashore in landing craft.

The commander of the Division from the outbreak of the war until March 21, 1942, was Mal. Gen. John P. Lucas, who left on that date to take command of the III Army Corps. Brig. Gen. Jonathan W. Anderson, commanding division artillery, assumed command of the Division and was promoted to major general shortly afterward.

While still at Fort Lewis, the Division staged two simultaneous parades on Army Day, April 6, 1942, in Tacoma and Seattle, with the 30th Infantry combat team marching in Tacoma and the 15th Infantry combat team in Seattle. Demonstrations of weapons and equipment were given in both towns, and luncheons were given honoring the staff officers of the combat teams involved.

On February 16, 1942, the Division was electrified by a warning order to be prepared to move by February 23. The move was first stated by higher headquarters to be a temporary change of station to a staging area at Fort Ord preparatory to going overseas, as the 41st Infantry Division had done. Division personnel immediately started making arrangements to vacate their quarters and move their, household goods. Organizations sold much of their company- and battery-fund property, and a general shakedown of office equipment and supplies took place.

Within a few days it was announced that the move would not take place February 23 and that the change of station would be a permanent one for training purposes, rather than a temporary one prior to overseas movement. Even so, the flurry caused by the sudden preparations for departure was a short sensation in the Fort Lewis area, largely because the Division had been so long established there, and the news of the impending move was an ill-guarded secret.

During March and April the Division stayed at Fort Lewis, awaiting orders to move, while more and more of its units were going to San Diego for training and moving on to Fort Ord to await the remainder of the Division. The entire 7th Infantry and 10th Field Artillery Battalion were concentrated there by the time the Division finally moved, between April 28 and May 5.

The move was made by train and motor vehicle and was over familiar terrain, as the Division had twice been to California in the preceding two years. The 30th Infantry, indeed, had made the move between San Francisco and Fort Lewis several times independently of the Division, as its permanent station had been the Presidio of San Francisco for many years.

The Division had been at Fort Ord only three weeks when the coast-wide alert that preceded the Battle of Midway was sounded. Word from Fourth Army indicated that a large Japanese task force had left Jap bases and was headed eastward, but its mission was not known at that time. Consequently, on the night of May 29-30 the Division moved into dispersed bivouac on the Fort Ord reservation, returning to barracks at noon Memorial Day. Five days later the Battle of Midway began, and the enemy attack on Dutch Harbor, Alaska, took place.

On the Fourth of July the Division participated in two parades, the 7th Infantry combat team marching in San Francisco and elements from other units marching in Monterey.

During July a series of battalion GHQ tests was held, each test being an identical problem for battalion landing teams involving embarkation from the pier at Monterey, and an advance inland to an objective on Grant Ewing Ridge on the Fort Ord reservation. A demonstration of overhead artillery fire with 75mm pack howitzers was part of each problem. These tests, under the direction of Brig. Gen. William W. Eagles, assistant division commander, were given to each of the nine BLT's in the division.

A special phase of amphibious training was undertaken by 3d Reconnaissance Troop, which trained as commandos or raiders. The men, their fatigue suits dyed black and with black felt covering their helmets, wore rubber-soled shoes and carried knives and tommy guns during their many rubber-boat landings. They practiced reaching objectives at night by the most direct overland routes.

Until the first part of August, the Division's amphibi-ous training remained merely a phase of its training as a triangular infantry division. This placed a burden on all personnel because all planning, training and sup-ply had to include not only the normal triangular re-quirements, but also similar requirements for amphibi-ous training, and in many cases the two differed greatly. At one time, for instance, the field artillery battalions were e I quipped with four sets of tubes-the regular 105mm howitzers, 75mm guns, 75mm pack howitzers and 37mm subcaliber guns. Only the 75mm pack how-itzers were amphibious equipment, but they placed an additional maintenance burden on the organizations.

However, in early August, the Division began to feel the tremendous suction of the battlefronts in dead earnest. Until this time it had been assumed that any operation in which the Division might participate would be in the Pacific theater, inasmuch as the Division was assigned to the Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet. A great deal of material in the way of maps and literature on the Pacific Theater and Japanese army had been collected with this in mind. The Division was now told to prepare for a mission in the Atlantic; and to train intensively in amphibious warfare, since the first task in combat would probably be a landing operation.

The work of drawing up the tables by which the Division was to be organized and equipped was speeded up. These tables had existed in tentative form since early spring as a basis for training, but it now became necessary to freeze them, embodying the lessons learned in practice.

The largest exercise conducted on the west coast was a practice operation in which the 7th Regimental Landing Group embarked in three transports at San Francisco August 15, swung out into the Pacific and returned to Monterey Bay for a landing during the morning of August 17. They were preceded ashore by the 3d Reconnaissance Troop landing from a destroyer in rubber boats about midnight. The opposition was represented by 2d Battalion, 30th Infantry, reinforced.

The main landing was made at 1100 and was supported by naval aircraft flown from San Diego. The planes laid a smoke screen and executed simulated strafing missions. Two destroyers accompanied the task force during the maneuver, since the threat of enemy submarines was always present.

Two battalions were landed from transports and the third, initially in reserve, landed behind the first two from the "USS Pier" (the pier in Monterey Bay from which training was ordinarily conducted). The regiment succeeded in establishing its beachhead, and in theoretical cooperation with other elements of the Division, in driving the enemy off the southern end of the "island," which was assumed to be surrounded by water on the inland side.

Other amphibious maneuvers involving the same "island," but with no actual landings except those from the pier, using the boat detachment, were held during the latter part of August. The staff and separate companies received valuable training in division operation, since the Division had not been in the field as a tactical unit since the preceding summer at Fort Lewis.

During August, Major General Anderson and many members of his staff went to Washington, D.C. and to Camp Pickett, Va., where they were given some details of the impending operation, and where they organized Amphibious Corps, Atlantic Fleet. Toward the end of August the Division was ordered to prepare for a move to Camp Pickett, and the move was begun Sunday, September 6. The final order for the move was received two hours before Saturday midnight. The last train left Fort Ord Monday, September 14 and reached Camp Pickett Sunday, September 20. This was a temporary change of station prior to overseas movement.

Camp Pickett was virtually a new post, having been occupied only a few months by the 79th Infantry Division prior to the arrival of the 3d Division. Sidewalks had not been laid and the frequent rains left paths, motor parks and drill areas a sea of mud. Housing facilities in nearby communities were scarce and poor. Nevertheless many families accompanied the Division to Camp Pickett.

The new location was actually a staging area for the Division, which remained there only a month. The only event of importance during this period was a practice loading and landing operation called "Exercise Quick." In this exercise, which began at Norfolk September 29, most of the elements of Sub-Task Force Brushwood (3d Infantry Division reinforced for landing operations) were loaded aboard thirteen transports, proceeded north up Chesapeake Bay, and made a landing in the vicinity of Solomon's Island, using a tactical plan modeled on that projected for the actual operation in North Africa.

The work of preparing the division for a "wet run" in such a short period was of staggering proportions. As an example, consider that the following units, most of which were unknown to the Division, much less included in previous plans and tables, were attached to the sub-task force for the operation:

91/2 platoons, 443d AAA AW Bn

436th AAA AW Bn CA Bn

36th Engr Regt (less 2d Bn and shore parties; plus Det 71st Sig Co)

2d Bn 20th Engrs (less certain elements) (Plus Regt Counterintelligence Group Hq and Serv Co)

204th MP Co

1st Bn LT, 67th Armd Regt, 2d Armd Div

Until this time, the division had planned on the assumption that it would have to organize and equip its own shore parties. Now it was learned that an engineer unit would perform this vital task, which, until the time of Exercise "Quick," was totally strange to the division.

In addition, the following units were attached for overseas movement only:

Det Air Task Force, XII GASC Det 66th Engr Co (Too) Det 1st Armd Sig Bn Det 239th Sig Co (Opr) Det 122d Sig Co (RI) Det 163d Sig Co (Photo) Det 1st Broadcasting Sta (Opr)

Prs Inter Group

Censorship Unit

Cvl Govt Pers

Task Force "A" Hq Elements

Task Force "A" Sig Det

Companies A and C of the 756th Tank Battalion, which had been attached to the Division at Fort Ord, accompanied the Division on the operation, but the 603d Tank Destroyer Battalion did not. The remainder of the tank battalion remained with Group Three (ad-ministrative and other elements of the Division which did not accompany the assault convoy).

A few of the other problems that had to be worked out included the following:

Establishment at Norfolk of an advance detachment for the purpose of supervising loading and the preparation of necessary tables.

Reception of a few hundred replacements, both officers and enlisted men, to bring the division up to authorized strength for the operation. Few, if any of the replacements had had prior amphibious training.

Receipt, processing and loading of a large amount of new or special equipment which came flooding in virtually at the last moment. One weapon, the antitank rocket launcher (also called the "bazooka" or "Buck Rogers" gun) was never fired by any divisional troops prior to embarkation, and it was held such a closely guarded secret that instructions for its use were not made available until after the troops had boarded the transports.

Completion of all necessary administrative processes prior to overseas movement. Combat loading of vessels and the leaving behind of Group Three personnel greatly complicated the normal procedures. Handling of service records, preparation of safe-arrival cards and identification tags, handling of sick and absent personnel, provision for physical examination and immunization were additional problems.

Distribution of tactical plans, intelligence data and maps for all units. The fact that none of this information could be disseminated or studied prior to sailing meant that every item had to be broken down and tallied against the loading plan for every unit, segment and detachment.

Arrangements for all types of supply, and supervision of loading of supplies and equipment to conform to tactical plans. The ammunition problem alone was a major one, and was rendered more difficult by two facts: First, the force which loaded at Norfolk before the 3d Division, had been compelled to load some of the ammunition intended for the Brushwood force, and second, plans for loading several units were changed, with the result that ammunition shipped to certain berths had to be diverted into a common pool and redistributed. The pool system was found to be the only one that would work without too great loss of time.

In consideration of the brief period available for preparation and the newness and complexity of the problems involved, the division's effort to load its own personnel, equipment and supplies, as well as those of many miscellaneous attachments within a specified period was attended by well-deserved success.

The clatter and hum of winches ceased. The great gray transports, mysterious in the subdued glare of essential loading lights, stopped taking on inert cargo as the human shipments arrived by train on the piers: the doughboys of the 3d Infantry Division. Tired, patient, they waited endless hours, sleeping on the concrete with their heads on their packs until it came their turn to have their names checked on the sailing lists, to mount the gangplank, to seek a bunk in the hot, moist troop compartments. The dockworkers watched for a while, then drifted into the night. They were tired too, from a week's steady manhandling of vehicles, ammunition, water cans, medical chests, deadweight of all descriptions. The hawsers slackened, tightened, slackened, tightened.... The last troops were aboard....

Sub-Task Force Brushwood, under command of Major General Anderson, set sail from Norfolk, Va., as part of Naval Task Force 34 on October 24, 1942. Destination: French Morocco.