5^th Armored Division

The 5th Armored Division landed in Normandy in late July 1944 and entered the exploitation that followed the COBRA breakout, its combat commands advancing through Le Mans and sweeping south toward Argentan to help tighten the encirclement of German forces in the Falaise pocket. The pursuit then carried the division east across France and through Belgium into Luxembourg, covering ground that had taken months of fighting to contest in the previous war.

Campaign map image

World War II Campaign Map of the 5th Armored Division. Map courtesy of HistoryShots.

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Near Wallendorf in September 1944, Combat Command R crossed the Our River and entered Germany proper — one of the earliest American crossings of the frontier — establishing a bridgehead before being withdrawn when the supply situation forced a halt. The division then shifted to the Hürtgen Forest sector for the autumn campaign, where dense fir forest, prepared mine barriers, and autumn rain stripped away armored mobility and reduced operations to costly attritional fighting of a kind that negated most of the division's advantages.

After the winter pause and the Ardennes crisis — which the division contained in its sector — it crossed the Rhine at Wesel in March 1945 and drove northeast through the open country of the North German Plain. The pace quickened daily as German resistance became increasingly disorganized. Its combat commands reached the Elbe north of Magdeburg in mid-April and established forward positions on the river's west bank, where they held when Germany surrendered on May 7. The campaign ran from the Falaise encirclement and the first steps into Germany through the Hürtgen's attritional struggle to the final exploitation across the north.