Stephane Lavit

The 1st Infantry Division was established in 1917 to participate in the fighting in France and faced the major German offensives of 1918. During the Second World War, it effected its first assault landing in North Africa in 1942. Then followed the invasion of Sicily, D-Day in Normandy, the battle of the Bulge and the conquest of the Reich, as far as Czechoslovakia.According to the division lore, at the time, the U.S. Army consisted of the First Infantry Division and eight million replacements! Thanks to hundreds of historical pictures, the reader will follow the Big Red One’s glorious path in its most difficult assignments.

Through various hundreds of “clichés d’époque”, the journey of this American division that landed in Provence in August 1944 after a long campaign in Italy, leads us just to the heart of Germany, where this military unit is the first to enter the concentration camps of Dachau. This American division had formerly freed a part of Southern France, and then went back up the valley of the Rhone up to the Vosges. As its squads are made up of numerous native american soldiers, the 45th division has achieved copious honours during the three hard battles which could be compared to the battle of Normandy that took over the spotlight the following years.