2008 Schedule of Events

Tonight we had our event planning meeting for 2008, so here is our unit’s new living history schedule for the upcoming year. There will be a few other impromptu events sprinkled in throughout the year but these are the official events that were voted on by the unit membership. Come check us out at an event near you!

2/16/08 - Indoor Drill Event - Strategic Air & Space Museum
3/15/08 – Operation Dragoon Tactical Battle - Great Bend, KS
4/12/08 - Field Training Event - Mondamin, IA
5/10/08 - 2nd I.D. Sponsored Tactical Battle - Mondamin, IA
5/17/08 – Armed Forces Day Display - Strategic Air & Space Museum
6/7/08 – D-Day Display - Strategic Air & Space Museum
6/21/08 – All American Salute to the Troops - Sioux Falls, SD
7/26/08 – Trip to the National World War One Museum - Kansas City, MO
8/5/08 – Unit Field Trip to the Offutt Air Show - Bellevue, NE
9/7/08 – Army Cars USA Fall Party – Spooner, WI
9/13/08 – Fall Training Event and Bivouac - Mondamin, IA
10/12/08 – Tactical Battle - Kinkaid, KS
11/8/08 – Veteran’s Day Timeline Display - Strategic Air & Space Museum
12/6/08 – Unit Christmas Party and Elections - Omaha, NE

The 2nd Division on D-Day

I love discovering new information about different units during World War II and researching some of the lesser known actions that various units participated in. You could say it is one of my favorite aspects of being an amateur historian. This past week I was able to uncover some pretty incredible history on the very unit that my reenacting group portrays, the 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Division. This information was found in my all-time favorite D-Day book, Spearheading D-Day by Jonathan Gawne. What follows is the passage that got me so excited:

"The Special Engineer Task Force was still short of manpower so roughly 150 engineers from the 2nd "Indianhead" Infantry Division were added to the 900 men of the Gap Assault Teams to bring them up to full strength. Along with the 2nd Division engineers were a few infantrymen from the 23rd and 9th Infantry Regiments. Two to five of these 2nd Division men - whose patch they continued to wear on the field jacket - were added to each gap team that landed in the first waves on D-Day. Their contribution and presence in the initial assault has rarely been recognized."

Pretty crazy to think that there were 150+ engineers and as many as 125 infantrymen (there were roughly 27 Gap Assault and Gap Support Teams) who landed at H+3 minutes wearing the Indianhead patch. This new found information has made me even more humble to represent the unit that has always been "Second to None" since World War One!

Neat 2nd Division Cartoon

Here is a swell cartoon drawing from a little post-war publication on the 23rd Infantry Regiment and it's history. I really like the raw inked style of the drawing and it's rather simplistic details. This image is courtesy of www.lonesentry.com.

2nd Infantry Rangers

I learned something pretty exciting last week regarding the 2nd Infantry Division during World War II. I came across this rather simple skull patch on eBay. This is a World War II, wool on wool, hand made 2nd Infantry Division Rangers lower sleeve SKULL patch. It measures 2 inches in diameter with no backing. Needless to say, these patches are EXTREMELY rare! The 2nd Infantry Div. selected personnel from their three Infantry Regiments, Artillery, and Division Engineer units to take the Ranger Battle Training Course at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin from April 12, 1943 to June 5, 1943 to complete intensive Ranger training. For those that successfully completed the course they were presented with a certificate and a striking sleeve emblem of a white skull on a black circular background. The insignias had been made by hand by the wives and other women associated with the Division. Wow!!! Something that is personally very neat for me is that I have twice been to what is now called "Fort McCoy" in Wisconsin for World War II reenactments, the last one in October 2005. We stayed in the barracks there and spent a day fighting on the same ground that these 2nd I.D. Rangers actually trained on. It kind of gives me goosebumps just to think about it!