The 263rd Infantry Regiment was activated at Camp Blanding on April 15, 1943, with the 66th Infantry Division. After training at Camp Joseph T. Robinson and Camp Rucker, it staged through Camp Shanks, departed New York in November 1944, and reached England late that month. The regiment landed in France on December 29 as the division was taking over a difficult containment mission in western France. The 66th had just suffered severe losses in the torpedoing of a troopship in the English Channel, yet it was immediately assigned to contain the Atlantic port garrisons left behind by the Allied advance.
The 263rd served in the Brittany-Loire area after the 66th relieved the 94th Infantry Division. The division became the 12th Army Group Coastal Sector and controlled American and French forces facing the German pockets at Lorient and St. Nazaire. The regiment's combat experience was therefore a siege-and-containment assignment rather than a campaign of maneuver. It manned portions of a coastal front, patrolled against German outposts, supported limited attacks, and helped maintain harassing and interdictory fires intended to keep the trapped garrisons confined.
This mission continued when the sector passed to Fifteenth Army on March 31, 1945. A German counterattack near La Croix was repulsed on April 16, and from April 19 to 29 the division captured several strongpoints without converting containment into a full-scale assault. Lorient and St. Nazaire surrendered in May after the wider collapse of German command. The 263rd entered Germany only after hostilities ended, moving to occupation duty rather than participating in the final offensive.
Sources and notes can be found on the Sources page.
View sources →