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Email Gifford Doxsee at: doxsee@ohio.edu
Fact Sheet of the 106th Infantry Division
COMBAT HIGHLIGHTS: On 11 December 1944, the 106th Infantry Division went into the line in Belgium. It was a quiet sector. Five days later all the hell of modern war broke loose in that sector. The full force of Von Rundstedt’s breakthrough spearhead came up against the 106th. The regiments of the division absorbed all the power which the Germans could deliver at that point. Only a handful of men from the regiments came back, but it could be said of the division as a whole that it went down fighting. The German attack started 16 December 1944. 
The enemy turned its guns on the 422nd and 423rdInfantry Regiments and followed up with infantry and tank assaults. On 23 December the division pulled back to reorganize, but was thrown into the line once again the next day. It finally helped to halt the Germans on the north side of the salient between Stavelot and Manhay. During the gigantic German offensive the 106th suffered 8663 casualties, which included more than 7000 men missing. Before the last big drive into the Reich could gain momentum, the division was pulled back to Rennes, France for rehabilitation. While there it constituted the reserve for American troops investing the St. Nazaire and Lorient pockets. When the Germans began to surrender by the thousands in April and early May 1945, the 106th was rushed east to take over their partly- built prisoner of was cages and to handle the masses of humanity who were milling about in American held territory. The division in June 1945, had a strength of 40,000 men, three times the size of an ordinary Infantry division, because of the gigantic task it had to undertake on caring for prisoners and displaced persons. Late in June the division had headquarters at Bad Ems, and was disposed along a 340 mile front. The division sailed for the US in late September 1945 and was inactivated upon arrival in this country.