The 76th was preparing for war . . .

While training continued at Camp McCoy, an advance training group moved early in November to Northern Michigan near the town of Watersmeet, where winter training experts direct from the Mountain Training Center at Camp Hale, Colorado, administered the special training program. The student group included the Reconnaissance Troop, the Infantry Regiments' Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoons, other intelligence personnel and men who would later become winter warfare instructors for the remainder of the division. These troops, representing instructors from each and every divisional unit, occupied five vacated CCC camps during the training phase, returning to Camp McCoy early in December, while intelligence personnel remained in the Northland until shortly before Christmas. The remainder of the division, meanwhile, had been carrying out company, battalion, regimental, and finally combat team exercises in the beautiful and varied terrain of Camp McCoy, also undergoing, during this period, artillery and infantry battalion test problems. As final preparation for the real winter maneuver, the entire division participated in D exercises at Camp McCoy, conducted by XVI Corps during January and early February 1944. The division's winter training phase began at Ottawa National Forest, in the area of Watersmeet, Michigan, on 19 February.

On the bayonet course at Camp Mc Coy . . .

Artillery battalion firing tests . . .

The natives of Michigan said it was a mild winter. All we knew was that the ground was so frozen you couldn't drive in a tent spike. To us doughs snow was snow. We slept in it, ate in it, fought our problems in it, and shivered plenty in it. Or else we sweated under "ninety pounds of rucksack" on long hikes in archless, clumsy shoepacs. An instructor told us that if we built a lean-to and spread pine boughs, we'd find our sleeping bags quite comfortable. No doubt his dictionary had a different definition for comfort. All of us had burnt battle pants and scorched shoes as a result of hugging a bonfire too closely at one time or another. Any one of us gladly would have paid five dollars for a real hot cup of coffee. The stuff we got in the chow line turned cold thirty seconds after being poured into our frozen metal cups. Nevertheless, in our off duty hours we'd go over to the PX truck and gladly buy ice-cold Coca Cola just for the sake of something to do. Between exercises, Special Service provided movies and dances, but many times we preferred not to go, because it was hell having to leave a warm room, climb on a truck and be hauled through the freezing night to a desolate wood and a patch of snow where your instructor said you would sleep soundly and warm in the sleeping bag PROVIDING you first removed all your clothes. Brother, that was a trick we could never learn . . . . .

All troops lived outdoors in the snow. The temperature, despite what the natives had to say about mildness, dropped as low as twenty-eight degrees below zero. XVI Corps again directed these maneuvers. Attached to the division were the 808th Tank Destroyer Battalion, the 562d Anti-Aircraft Battalion, a bakery unit, and several specialist teams. Four exercises were conducted, during which the 385th Infantry Regiment and component combat team elements, with headquarters in Pori, Michigan, opposed the division as an enemy force. Living like Eskimos, the troops often operated on snowshoes and skis. Toughened, confident, ready for any action, the division returned to Camp McCoy during the week of 12 March 1944. It was fully expected by all concerned that there would be a move to Louisiana for maneuvers during April, then to a staging area, and finally and at long last, overseas.

Watersmeet. We sweated under ninety pounds . . .

Military necessity, however, again ruled otherwise. In England, the United States and Great Britain were building great stores of men and materials to be used in the all-out invasion of Fortress Europe. Again the War Department turned to the 76th Division for replacements to build up the manpower reservoir needed for D-Day. Seven thousand troops left the division during April, but again its depleted ranks were refilled quickly, and the division emerged with a new personality. In miniature it became a replica of America and its Army. Instead of containing men drawn mainly from the Eastern States or the South, it was now made up of men from every state in the Union. Its men had received previous military training in virtually every branch of the Service, including Infantry, Anti-Aircraft Artillery, Army Air Corps, and the Army Specialized Training Program. An intensive training program compressed months into weeks and the division quickly, developed into a tough, intelligent fighting team. They were busy days, but not so busy that the second anniversary of the division's activation, which was also Infantry Day, could be overlooked. As an added feature of the occasion, the division played host to more than 200 mid-western industrialists who came to see how the weapons and materials of war which they manufactured were used under combat conditions.