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Show Historic Rainbow Division Is Born Anew THE RAINBOW ... became the insignia of the 42nd division sent the division into action in the Champagne operation. From the time that he told of seeing the rainbow In the sky from his bivouac in the Baccarat sector, rainbows kept showing up at decisive de-cisive hoars in the division's history, his-tory, as if to justify its selection as the 42nd's talisman. Before long veterans of our regular regu-lar army as well as veteran French and British troops were joining in proclaiming the Kainbow division as one of the hardest fighting outfits in France. Here is its record, as given in a series of articles on "AEF Divisional Divi-sional Insignia," written several years ago by Sergt. Herbert E. Smith for the United States Recruiting Recruit-ing News: First Taste of War. It trained under veteran French soldiers in Lorraine, and elements of the Rainbow division entered the front line trenches for the first time February 21, 1914. This was along the Luneville sector, at a point north of Celles-sur-Plaine, through Neu-viller, Neu-viller, Ancerviller, the eastern edge the 42nd fell the chief burden of the main attack. It was ordered to storm the heights on both sides of Sergy and, in conjunction with the French on the left, to take Hill 184 northwest of Fere-en-Tardenois. A Deadly Hail of Fire. The 168th infantry crossed the stream under a deadly hail of fire, to climb by slow stages to the crest of Hill 212, between Sergy and Cierges. The 167th meanwhile, had made its way down the Rue de la Taverne, crossed the Ourcq, and swept on up the northern slope of the hilly country. New York's "fighting Irish" of the 165th infantry emerged from Villers and secured a precarious lodgment on the slopes on either side of Mercury Mer-cury Farm. Subjected to the same raking fire that had made this push so costly, this fine regiment still carried car-ried on, plunging forward to the sunken road north and west of Sergy. By midafternoon the weary doughboys dough-boys of the 42nd division were battling bat-tling in mortal, hand-to-hand combat with the Germans in the streets of Sergy. The enemy troops were of the 4th Prussian Guard, grim and spirited fighters embittered by recent re-cent German setbacks, veterans all and determined men. Twice the Americans were rushed out of Sergy, but thrice the Yanks returned, and the third time the Americans captured the entire village. vil-lage. Again the men of the Rainbow Rain-bow division had proved to be of heroic mould. In the St. Mihiel drive, launched in mid-September, the 42nd, with the 1st and 2nd, formed the spearhead spear-head of the attack which penetrated deepest into the enemy positions. In the main attack, the 2nd division captured Thiaucourt, the 1st took Nonsard, and the 42nd division drove through to Pannes. Through the thick of the heaviest action of the Meuse-Argonne operation, opera-tion, the Rainbow carried on. It penetrated the Kriemhilde line, swooped up the fire-swept slopes about Romange and Cote Dame Marie; Ma-rie; it seized Cote de Chatillon by skillful infiltration behind its protective protec-tive wire, and early in November, on the extreme left flank of the American attack, it began to fight through Bulson, Thelonne and Ba-zeilles, Ba-zeilles, on the Meuse, to gain the cherished final objective Sedan. The taking of Sedan, for sentimental senti-mental and historic reasons, however, how-ever, was left to the French 9th corps, on the left of the Rainbow. On the night of November 10 the 42nd division was relieved, and assembled as-sembled in the area of Artaise-le-Vivier and Les Petites-Armoises. The Full Tide of Victory. The 42nd thus shared in the full tide of victory, on the morning of November 11, 1918. The American Second army was even then preparing prepar-ing for a general assault in the direction di-rection of Metz, in an offensive with the famous Mangin and 20 French divisions. The Meuse had been crossed, French troops in Sedan in retaliation for the terrible French defeat there in 1870; the Germans were on the run, almost in utter rout. Naturally, the Rainbow was one of the crack divisions of the AEF chosen to be a part of the American Army of Occupation. Concentrating near Stenay, it began the long hike into the Rhineland on November 20. On December 14 it took its station in Germany in the Kreis of Ahrweiler. Training continued there, on the steep hill of the Rhineland, through the winter and spring of 1918-1919, until April 5, when the division began be-gan entraining for Brest. On April 9 the first element to sail for the United States, the 117th Trench Mortar Mor-tar Battery, boarded a transport for an American port By May 12, demobilization had been completely effected at Camps Upton, Dix, Grant and Dodge. "After the storm, the rainbowl" By ELMO SCOTT WATSON Released by Western Newspaper Union. THE other day veterans of the 42nd Division of World War I held their reunion in Tulsa, Okla. Then they went to Camp Gruber near Muskogee, Musko-gee, there to see the reactivation reacti-vation of their tradition-rich outfit, to pass on to the new 42nd Division of World War II their honored battle flags and to gaze proudly upon the shoulder patch adorning the uniform of each man in it the red, yellow and blue striped quarter-circle which was the sign and symbol of a "First-class fightin' man," a member of the "Rainbow" Division. The reactivation took place at midnight the "Champagne hour," ao called because it was the hour when the last great German push of World War I, the Champagne offensive, began. That offensive, which started on July 14, 1918, broke to pieces against the stubborn resistance resist-ance of those fighting Yanks of the Rainbow division and from that day the might of the kaiser's armies ebbed until it reached low tide in a railroad car in Compeigne forest four months later. Two Messages. Before the veterans of the Rainbow division of a quarter century ago adjourned ad-journed their 1943 meeting, they sent two messages to widely separated parts of the world. One was flashed to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, "somewhere "some-where in the Southwest Pacific," because be-cause it was he who had given their division its nickname. The other was the traditional reunion greetings greet-ings to one-armed Gen. Henri Joseph Eugene Gouraud, who commanded the Fourth French army, which included in-cluded the American division, at the historic battle in the Champagne sector July 14 and 15, 1918. The message was sent to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in the European theater of war, to be transmitted to General Gouraud "somewhere in Occupied Oc-cupied France." In the early summer Of 1917 a young colonel named Douglas Mac-Arthur Mac-Arthur was serving as "censor" for news coming out of the war department depart-ment In Washington. Visited by newspaper men one day, he told them of the forthcoming organization organiza-tion of a new division to be composed com-posed of units from 27 states and the District of Columbia. As the Journalists were leaving, MacArthur remarked that the assembling of so many units from so many states into one division was somewhat like making up a rainbow. Struck by the aptness of the expression, the newspaper men used it in their stories sto-ries and the nickname stuck to the division when It was organized on August 1, 1917, and concentrated at Camp Mills on Long Island in New York. While the division was still at Camp Mills, many different kinds of rainbowdesigns were used as divisional divi-sional insignia. They were irregular in size but nearly all were a half circle with the three colors of red, yellow and blue in them. It was not until the division was engaged in a major action in the Meuse-Argonne Meuse-Argonne that the final, official design de-sign was conceived and adopted. CoL William N. Hughes Jr., who had succeeded CoL Douglas MacArthur MacAr-thur as chief of staff of the division, determined the measurements, reduced re-duced the original design ,to a quarter quar-ter circle and telegraphed the description, de-scription, with the approval of Maj. Gen. Charles T. Menoher, then division divi-sion commander, to corps headquarters. headquar-ters. It Is one of the cherished traditions of the 42nd that Gen-: Gen-: eral Menober, acting on an omen of a rainbow in the sky, I 4 Hi J r " ' I m i GEN. HENRI GOURAUD ... to him, each year, a greeting of the Bois Banal, to the eastern and northern edges of the Foret de Parroy. Elements of the 42nd's artillery ar-tillery brigade entered the Dom-basle Dom-basle sector, also on the night of the 21st, to receive their first taste of combat warfare affiliated with the French 41st division. From March 31 to June 21 the division occupied the Baccarat sector sec-tor in Lorraine, moving from there to Chatel-sur-Moselle in the Vosges. Then came July, with its heavy fighting in the Champagne and Champagne-Marne areas. The highlight high-light of the 42nd division's activities at this time would seem to be the battle of La Croix Rouge Farm. This farm was a low, widespread group of stone buildings connected by walls and ditches. The Germans had made an enormous machine gun nest of this natural stronghold, and had defied several earlier determined deter-mined efforts of Allied troops to dislodge dis-lodge them from this key position. The 167th and the 168th infantry regiments, old Alabama and Iowa troops respectively, struggled all day, July 26, against this nest of horrors. It was practically impossible impos-sible to rush this enemy stronghold across the open; endeavors to work around the edges were thrown back by flanking fire; an accurate punishing punish-ing shell fire from the German artillery artil-lery rippeds through the wet underbrush; under-brush; gas, made doubly dangerous by the moisture, swirled about in terrible gusts. At last, two platoons of assembled casuals volunteers, all, from the 167th and 168th led by two lieutenants, lieu-tenants, squirmed their way forward, for-ward, Indian fashion, and closed upon the farm buildings with grenades gre-nades and bayonet The raid, staged at dusk, was successful. The 42nd possessed La Croix Rouge farm at nightfall, but at a fearful cost in dead and wounded. Less than a week later these same regiments, with their sister outfits of the Rainbow, were pressing for- ward toward the Ourcq river. Upon j i...ni..,i.u i.ijpillll II u-...l..ii - " i s 1 I GEN. CHARLES T. MENOHER ... he saw a rainbow on the ve of battle GEN. DOUGLAS Mac ARTHUR ... he named it the "Rainbow" division |