Pierre Rinfret

In 2001 I started a brief period where I emailed back and forth with Pierre Rinfret. I found him to be intelligent and honest about his experiences. A lot of former Yankee division people are not to crazy about what he wrote in regards to the division during World War II.

Anyone who has ever been in any kind of combat realizes that he is referring to isolated incidents, and it does  not refect on the formation as a whole. We discussed his and my war experiences just for the fun of it.

Pierre made a few statements on his site before he passed away that I did not agree with.

He said that veterans organizations never made any changes at all for the benifit of veterans. This was not true and the major groups were instrumental in working with Ronald Reagan in 1987 to get the Veterans Adminstration raised to cabinet level. This allowed veterans the right of appeal through the VA’s own court system.

He thought that General Paul should have relieved Colonel Colley and all the command involved in the Cumberland Gap drowning incident. General Paul was an interesting person, he was a player in the Regular Army and was a fast mover that orginally was from Worcester.  There were many training accidents in the military at that time and it is still quite common for people to die in them to this day.

As for the Irish in the YDVA, the association has always been a Boston based entity and his regiment the 104th was really from Central Massachusetts, a slight culture difference. Yet he continued to send his dues in even though he did not approve of the drinking.

Pierre entered the division after the Lorraine Campaign, so the divison was really well battered by the time he got there. His claim it was full of draftees in a training divison was true at that point, but the Lorraine Campain was every bit as deadly and devastating as World War II combat could be, Pierre missed the unit before then and may have had a different point of view.

43rd ID at Guadalcanal

The 43rd Infantry Division finally got overseas in 1943 and was staged at Guadalcanal after some preliminary staging points in the pacific. The Divison is credited with a campaign star for Guadalcanal and recieved 10 injuries as result of bombing,  but the unit did not participate in ground combat while there.

The Division officers used the time to interview other units who had fought there to improve their knowledge of Japan’s fighting abilities.

The Draft…

When the 26th and 43rd Infantry Divisions were activated during World War Two they both were used as sources of recruits for other functions in the Army to include officer canidates and pilots.

So when the 26th detached the 182nd Infantry combat team it had only 8oo original Massachusetts Guardsmen in it. So how is it considered to be a regional divison then?

The answer is simple, the 1941 draft for the Army orginally placed men in the National Guard Divisons closest to where they lived. The 26th and 43rd where both full of New Englanders until 1942 when it no longer became practical to run that system.

26th Recon Troop- Bar Harbor

When I went to the National archives in College Park, MD a while back, I reviewed the official after action reports and lineage documents pertaining to the 26th Recon Troop. In them it declared that the Troop was a detached company of the 181st Infantry and thererfore was part of that regiments lineage. Today I saw where a veteran of World War II declared it was a newly formed unit made up of volunteers from Yankee Division. I will have to look into that.

The other thing I found out was that when Yankee Divison was given coast watching duty prior to going to Europe in 1944 it was assigned the east coast. The 26th Recon Troops area was Ellsworth, Maine and patrolled from Bar Harbor to Canada.

The Recon Troops as a whole have a different history. Even though they had tank platoons attached the doctrine was from out of Fort Riley not Fort Knox. Riley was still the home of the horse cavalry and was tasked with applying the skills of that to mechanized units designated as cavalry.

June 17th

In Massachusetts National Guard history June 17th is the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, that was the birth of the Continental Army.

But for the 110th Cavalry June 17th has another signifgance as well. In Virginia during the 1863 cavalry campaign leading up to Gettysburg was the Battle of Aldie.

This was the most costly battle for the regiment, and there is a monument to the men on the Snickersville Turnpike. Heading around the bend pursuing rebel forces the Virginia Cavalry dismounted behind two stone walls that ran besides the turnpike.

The volley wiped out half the regiment in less than 5 minutes, the corpses of the horses and men blocking further advancement.

In 1891 the veterans association got together and had the memorial installed.

Reverend Michael J. O’Conner

Michael J. O’Conner was the chaplain for the 101st Infantry Regiment, the old Irish 9th of  Civil War fame,during the First World War in Yankee Division. He was essentially the Boston equivalent of Father Duffy of New York.

After the war he was assigned to St Bridgett’s in Framingham, where he had regimental insignia of the Yankee Division put in the stain glass of the church.

Those crests are still there today.

Christopher J. Sullivan

Captain Christopher Sullivan perished in the First Cavalry Division in Iraq. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Before he was on active duty he was in B Troop 110th Cavalry while in ROTC.

When and how does a National Guard unit pick its history?

When and how does a National Guard unit pick its history?

That is question that has plagued everyone who has ever been in the Guard. The United States Army in its wisdom has a method for all. The accoutrements on the army uniform reflect the different histories.

The Division Patch is the history of the overseeing unit, it may have nothing to do with the battalion, the regiment or your company, troop or battery. I had two in the Guard, the 26th Infantry Division and the 42nd Infantry Division. The 26th was under Patton’s control in World War II and the 42nd under MacArthur’s in World War I.

Distinctive Unit Insignia and its companion the Regimental Coat of Arms. This is worn on the service uniform and reflects the history of the regiment or battalion the unit is assigned to. This may have nothing to do with your armory. In my case the 110th Armor was the history of the 26th Recon Troop and 181st Infantry Regiment. The 110th Cavalry was the history of the 182nd Infantry Regiment. The 172nd  Armor reflected the 1st Vermont Infantry in the Civil War and the Vermont militia when it was the Green Mountain Boys.

Last was the unit citations, this reflected where your armory went. In my case in Concord it was a Navy Presidential Unit Citation and Philippine Unit Citation, this represent the armory going to the pacific with 182nd Infantry. There was none that I knew of  for Hudson.  Westminster was the Army Presidential Unit Citation to represent service in the 2nd Battalion 172nd Infantry in the Pacific Campaign.

Each Armory had unique names assigned in the 1800s but this tradition was largely forgotten. Concord was the Concord Independent Battery, Hudson was the Hudson Light Guards and Westminster was the Estey Guards,

The 54th Massachusetts

Governor Patrick and Major General Carter, his Adjutant General are both African Americans and both the first to hold their offices.

They decided to re flag the Massachusetts National Guard’s Honor Guard with the colors of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment from the American Civil War last week. The regiment has a monument to it in front of the state house on Boston Common.

This is great way to remember a historically important unit.

The Oldest?

As a seventeen year old private in 1986 I was assigned to Company C 1st Battalion 110th Armor at the Concord, Massachusetts armory. I considered this to be quite an honor and was proud to have marched in the 1987 Patriot’s Day Parade. Like most New Englanders I never really mentioned it for almost two decades, but as I have gotten older I looked back at it with fond memories having served in the militia unit that fought in the first battle of America, or was it?

I found out that having served my last  couple hitches with Company B 2nd Battalion 172nd Armor in Westminster, Vermont I had served in the towns of  both opening engagements of the Revolution because April 19, 1775 was the Battle of Lexington and Concord, but the Westminster Massacre was a month before hand. In March of 1775 pro Torrey New Yorkers in what would become Vermont went into a Westminster court house and opened fire. The people including the wounded were rounded up and thrown in jail. The next day the Massachusetts and New Hampshire Militias intervened. This was the first militia versus loyalist action of the Revolution. This was history no one ever mentioned to me while I was there, but then again I am a flatlander.

Those were the first battles of the United States, but A Troop 1st Squadron 110th Cavalry had a more obscure history that was never fully claimed. When the 1st Battalion 110th Armor was consolidated in 1988 it was moved to the Hudson, Massachusetts Armory, which was Marlboro during the colonial period. When A Troop got there it replaced Company B 1st Battalion 110th Armor  which had been tank company 181st Infantry regiment subsequent to World War II.

The Hudson Armory housed the 181st Infantry prior to the Second World War. The 26th Cavalry Recon Troop of  Yankee Division was the only intact unit that was separated from the regiment to fight in Europe, and this was the parent organization of the 1st Battalion 110th Armor that became A Troop 110th Cavalry. The 181st Regiment is the oldest in the United States, going back to the mid 1600s. Each infantry regiment had an attached cavalry troop in those days and they were separated to combine with the Three County Troop to form the Cavalry Troop that fought in the King Philip’s War. Therefore A Troop 1st Squadron 110th Cavalry Massachusetts Army National Guard 1988-1995 was a descendant formation of that troop which fought in 1675.

That’s 100 years before the Revolution, and the first known mounted unit to go into combat in the New World. When the 110th Armor and 26th Cavalry combined in 1988 Concord could claim the same thing because Headquarters Troop in Methuen could as it claims 182nd Infantry Regiment which is a split from the same parent regiment as the 181st. This means that B Troop in Methuen as well because when King Philips War ended the original Troops were reformed.