Members of the 2nd Infantry Division has been the wearers of the famed Indian Head Patch in five different wars around the planet. This insignia had its origin during World War One as the identifying insignia on the vehicles of the Division Supply Trains. The Commanding Officer of the trains held a contest in March, 1918, to select a distinctive identifying symbol for use upon the vehicles after he had seen the vehicles of adjacent French units decorated in this manner. Through his adjutant he sent out a memorandum authorizing prizes for the best designs submitted, with a first prize of forty francs. The winning insignia, which obtained the final approval of Division Headquarters for use upon supply train vehicles in April, 1918, was the striking red and blue Indian head, super imposed upon a white star. The head covered the reentrant angles of the star and exposed only the points. Maj Gen Omar Bundy, the Division Commander, and his Chief of Staff, Col Preston Brown, later Maj Gen Preston Brown, were riding in a command car one day in April when Gen Bundy’s eye was caught by the insignia emblazoned on a truck. According to a letter from Maj Gen Brown written some time later, Gen Bundy stopped the driver, asked the meaning of the device, and was told by the driver that it enabled him to find his vehicle in the dark. The letter does not bring out that the insignia had been authorized and was probably coming into use on all the vehicles of the trains but at that time and at any rate, the Gen and his Chief of Staff promptly sent their cars to the area to have the insignia painted upon them. In this manner the Indian Head became associated with the 2nd Infantry Division as its identifying insignia some time before it became the standard shoulder patch so proudly worn by men of the Division.
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Mar
14
2009
Category : Army Air Forces
At the peak of its strength in World War II, the United States Army Air Forces (AAF) had more than 2.400.000 men and women in uniform. There were pilots, navigators, bombardiers, gunners, and radio operators, clerks and typists, artists and flautists, teachers, mechanics, statisticians, and engineers-for it took many talents and skills to conduct and support the war in the air. All these persons, from privates to generals, had to be welded into an organization capable of giving direction and coordination to their diverse activities. For combat the men were formed into squadrons, and squadrons into groups. Above the groups were wings, and wings were organized into commands, and commands into the 16 air forces of the AAF. The upper part of the structure had to be built while the war was on, but the foundation WAS old. Some of the squadrons, two of the groups, and one wing had combat records from the First World War. One squadron, the oldest in the Air Force, could trace its history back to 1913.
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