“The Bloody First.” “The Fighting First.” “The Big Red One.” The 1st Infantry Division is the oldest continuously serving division of the United States Army, and has fought in many of the nation’s conflicts. Formed during World War I, it brought its simple yet distinctive insignia to World War II, Cold War Europe, Vietnam, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. It was originally activated on May 24, 1917, almost exactly 108 years ago. This article is a short overview of the proud service of America’s oldest division.
 
World War I
The First Expeditionary Division, which later became the 1st Infantry Division, was activated a few weeks after America’s entry into World War I on April 6, 1917, and was organized at Fort Jay in New York Harbor. Its first commander was Brigadier General William Luther Sibert.
 
Sibert was originally in the Corps of Engineers, rather than infantry, and was responsible for the construction of several critical parts of the Panama Canal between 1907 and 1914. Congress wanted to promote him to brigadier general in 1915, but the Corps already had one, and the rules at the time didn’t allow for two within the Corps. Sibert was therefore appointed an infantry officer, as infantry didn’t have the same limitation. The U.S. was still at peace, so nobody expected any trouble from having an infantry officer with no infantry experience. Sibert himself actually protested the promotion exactly because he had no relevant experience, but was ignored.

That changed with World War I. Pershing's (The General of the Armies) American Expeditionary Forces were suffering from a shortage of officers, and Sibert, one of the few senior infantry officers on active duty, was quickly placed at the head of the First Division. Sibert’s unsuitability quickly became evident, and he was replaced in early 1918. Sibert was later appointed the first head of the Chemical Warfare Service, a job better suited to his engineering skills, and he’s still known as the “Father of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps.”

The 1st Division, initially still under Sibert’s command, arrived in Europe in the second half of 1917. On July 4, one of the early arrival battalions paraded through Paris to lift war-weary French spirits. When the unit reached the tomb of Marquis de La Fayette, the famous French officer who fought alongside Washington in the War of Independence, Colonel Charles E. Stanton stopped to deliver a short speech, ending with “Lafayette, we are here!”, a quote commonly misattributed to Pershing.

The first American shell of the war was fired by the artillery of the 1st Division on October 23, 1917, and the division suffered its first casualties two days later. In April 1918, the 28th Infantry Regiment (a part of the division) captured the town of Cantigny and 250 Germans in 45 minutes, earning the nicknames “The Black Lions of Cantigny.” The division went on to fight at Soissons (where they suffered heavy casualties), the Saint-Mihiel salient, and the last major battle of the war, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. In this last offensive, the 1st Division defeated, in part or whole, eight German divisions, in no small part thanks to the planning of George C. Marshall. (George C. Marshall)
 
During the war, the division had a mascot: Rags, the mixed-breed terrier. Rags was originally found as a stray on the streets of Paris by a private, who marched in a parade earlier and was late in reporting back. He picked up the dog and told the military police it was the division mascot to avoid being reported AWOL. Rags was trained as a messenger dog (“Let slip the dogs of war”), and once saved a surrounded unit of 42 people by delivering a message request for artillery bombardment; he was wounded, gassed and partially lost his eyesight later in the war. He also developed a keen ear for the whistle of incoming artillery shells, and warned his human comrades before they could hear them.

The Interwar Years and World War II
The division returned to the U.S. after nine months of occupation duty in Germany. It was briefly used to quell coal miners’ strikes, but was then allowed to wither as the military was returning to a peacetime size. By the mid-1920s, the division’s headquarters comprised the divisional commander and a few staff officers with no ability to actually exercise command over the remaining units. The division was boosted back up to functional levels from 1926 onward, and the division underwent various training exercises and maneuvers in the late 1920s and the 30s.
 
The division was moved to Camp Blanding, Florida, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor for reorganization and new equipment. In May, 1942, the unit got a new commander: Terry de la Mesa Allen, Jr., an accomplished World War I veteran (“Terrible Terry,” the Bad Boy General), before departing for England, and moving from there to North Africa.

The division landed in Oran, Algeria on November 8, 1942 as part of Operation Torch, the Allied landings in Africa. It fought in several battles, including the Battle of Kasserine Pass (The Battle of Kasserine Pass), eventually helping secure Tunisia by May 1943.
 
In July 1943, the 1st Infantry Division took part in Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. General Patton (The Wars of George S. Patton), commander of the U.S. Seventh Army at the time, specifically asked for the division to be added to his forces. The division saw heavy combat during its initial amphibious landing in an area defended by German and Italian tanks at Gela, and the grinding advance up the mountainous middle of the island that ended in a “race” between American and British forces to capture the port city of Messina. (The Rivalry Between Patton and Montgomery) Terry Allen did not see the end of Operation Husky at the head of the Big Red One: he was relieved of his post by Lieutenant General Omar Bradley (Omar Nelson Bradley). Allen cultivated combat effectiveness in the division, but at the price of discipline; one particular incident occurred in Oran in Algeria. Units from the division returned to the city after fighting on the frontlines found that the Services of Supply troops in the city closed their clubs and installations to combat troops; enraged, the men went on a rampage, “liberating” Oran once more. This and other incidents prompted the discipline-obsessed Bradley to relieve Allen, and his aide-de-camp Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, Jr.), in Sicily.

Allen was replaced by Clarence R. Huebner at the head of 1st Division, who immediately ordered close order drills, parades and weapons instructions to reintroduce discipline. This went down with the combat veterans, who loved Allen, as well as could be expected. One soldier of the division was recorded exclaiming "Hell's bells! We've been killing Germans for months and now they are teaching us to shoot a rifle? It doesn't make any sense." The division eventually warmed up to Huebner, though, and he led the unit, during the landings on Omaha Beach in Normandy and the breakout from the Allied lodgment with Operation Cobra. (The Cobra Strikes)
 
The unit advanced across France and into Belgium, where they participated in the Battle of the Mons Pocket, where Allied forces killed 3,500 and captured 25,000 Germans at the cost of around 90 lives. The division played an important role in the capture of the German city of Aachen in September-October 1944, and fought in the nearby Hürtgen Forest (The Battle of Hürtgen Forest).

The division was moved off the frontline in early December 1944 for rest and refitting after half a year of combat, only to be moved rapidly back to the Ardennes front once the Battle of the Bulge began. It continued to fight at the Siegfried Line and in Germany, reaching Czechoslovakia by the end of the war in Europe, accruing a total of 20,659 casualties during the war, 3,616 of whom died in combat. The division took 188,382 prisoners and 17 men were decorated with the Medal of Honor. (The Medal of Honor)

The best-known tribute to the exploits of the 1st Infantry Division in World War II is the 1980s war epic The Big Red One. The film’s plot is fictional, but was inspired by autobiographical elements from the wartime service of writer and director Samuel Fuller, who himself served in the division. The ensemble cast includes Lee Marvin, himself a World War II veteran of the Pacific, and Mark Hamill (who already fired some vaguely World War II-based guns (World War II Guns in a Galaxy Far, Far Away) as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.)
 
After World War II
The “Fighting First” stayed in Germany after the war on occupation duty, and as deterrent against Soviet aggression. Units from the division were tasked with securing the Nuremberg Trials (A War Crime in Any Language) and transporting convicted Nazi war criminals to Spandau Prison in Berlin. The division returned to America in 1955, though parts of it continued to be rotated to West Germany during the Cold War. The division participated in REFORGER (“REturn of FORces to GERmany”), an annual large-scale NATO exercise held until 1993 to ensure that NATO had the capability to rapidly deploy forces to West Germany if World War III broke out.

The commander of the division during that operation was Major General Keith L. Ware. Ware was drafted into the army during World War II, was decorated with the Medal of Honor, and decided to stay on after the war, becoming one of the first men to climb the rank ladder from drafted private all the way up to general. On September 13, 1968, Ware was flying in his command-and-control helicopter to view a battle that was about to unfold. The helicopter came under heavy anti-aircraft fire and went down, killing all onboard. It’s been speculated that the Viet Cong might have used a captured American radio set to lure the general’s ride into the ambush.

The end of the Cold War did not bring an end to the overseas assignments of the 1st Infantry Division. The First Gulf War, the IFOR mission to the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan all saw the Big Red One serve the nation far away from home. Most recently, a part of the division was deployed to Eastern Europe in response to Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. With the second invasion of 2022, and the war still going on, several units of the Bloody First are still on guard in Europe.