Currently Browsing: This Week in Marne History
August 26 - September 1
Friday, 12 October 2007
1-30 IN Awarded PUC.
Sixty-three years ago this week during the Southern France campaign the 1-30 IN, 3d Infantry Division performed actions in the Besançon, France area that were deemed worthy of the Presidential Unit Citation. For the second time in 10 days a 3ID battalion would earn the PUC.
The Southern France campaign lasted only one month, 15 August-14 September 1944. During that time the Third Infantry Division traveled more than 400 miles in what they later called the “Champagne Campaign” as they went through some of the finest wine-producing areas of France. The last city they took here was Besançon, an industrial city of some 80,000 persons about 100 miles north of Lyon and 60 miles east of Dijon. Situated on both sides of the Doubs River, it was an important communication and road center; its southern industrial area lay in a large loop of the river just outside an arc of hills running from northeast to southwest. Defending the loop entrance were La Citadelle and two other fortresses originally built by Vauban for King Louis XIV in the 1670s and strengthened by the retreating German Army. The 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry was given the job of reducing them.
As its citation says, “…the 1st Battalion jumped off on a night frontal attack [on 6 September]. Pushing forward aggressively against dogged German resistance, the 1st Battalion climbed slippery hills through pouring rain under murderous, grazing machine-gun, machine pistol, mortar, and flak-wagon fire to assault and destroy strong enemy forces entrenched in three rock-walled, supposedly impregnable forts situated on high ground commanding all approaches to the bottlenecked Doubs River loop section of the city. One by one the battalion reduced two lesser forts and finally the mighty Citadelle, employing skillful flanking maneuvers and materfully coordinating the heavy fires of infantry supporting weapons with those of attached armor and artillery. Although it had moved hundred of miles and fought two major engagements during the preceding 22 days and althought it had been moving 36 hours without rest prior to launching the 22-hour attack, the 1st Battalion with aggressive, inspired leadership and outstanding individual heroism, overcame all opposition and seized its objectives. A fresh, reinforced enemy battalion was wiped out, 50 Germans killed, 70 wounded, 328 enlisted men and 8 officers captured, and vast quantities of German matériel, including enough mortars, machine guns, rifles, and pistols to equip a battalion were seized or destroyed during the brillian action. The 1st Battalion’s spectacular achievement…materially assisted the 3d Infantry Division in blocking a vital escape route to German units trapped to the west, and speeded pursuit of remnants of the battered Nineteenth German Army fleeing to the Belfort Gap.” The German Nineteenth Army, which had held all of southern France, including Toulon, Marseille, Avignon, and Lyon a month before, was now reduced to a small pocket in the High Vosges mountains in the northeast corner of France.
