On the third anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, men of the Powder Horn Regiment—the 100th Infantry Division’s 399th Infantry Regiment—were poised on the outskirts of the small Alsatian town of Lemberg, France in the northeast. The 100th Division was advancing through the Lower Vosges toward German positions around the Maginot Line fortifications at Bitche.
The soldiers of the 399th were the first of the 100th Infantry Division’s units to enter combat. They had relieved elements of the battle-weary 45th Infantry Division in the Vosges Mountains near St. Remy a month earlier.
Although formed in November 1942 at Fort Jackson, South Carolina (it also trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina), the “Century Division” was not sent overseas until October 1944, arriving at Marseille, France, and assigned to Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch’s Seventh Army, which had been battling its way up the eastern border of France since landing along the Riviera (Operation Dragoon) on August 15, 1944.
