I. World War I: Origins of "The Sightseeing Sixth Division."
The Sixth Division was organized in November of 1917 as a square division consisting of the 51st, 52nd 53rd and the 54th Infantry Regiments, the 16th, 17th and 18th Machine-Gun Battalions and the 3rd, 11th and 78th Field Artillery Regiments. The units of the division gathered in New York and left for France in July of 1918. After marching and training all over western France, the Sixth was assigned on August 31st to the Vosges sector. There, a chain of lofty wooded peaks had stalemated both the French and German armies. Their mission was the defense of a 21-mile. The Division engaged in active patrolled in No Man's Land and behind the Boche lines. Daily German artillery concentrations of high explosives and gas shells kept the 6th supporting artillery busy with counterbattery fire. In addition infantry platoon strongpoints defended against German raiding parties which launched their attacks using liquid fire and grenades.

The Division developed its reputation for hiking when, prior to the Argonne Offensive, it engaged in extensive fake marches, often under enemy artillery and air bombardment, to deceive the Boche into thinking a major attack was to take place in the Vosges sector. Relieved and reassigned on October 10, 1918, the 6th Division hiked to an assembly area, marching over mountains and broken trails, usually in the dead of night.

After another short period of training, consisting primarily of forced marches, the Division hiked itself into the closing campaign of the war, the Meuse-Argonne offensive. In Corps reserve, the 6th was used in place of an unavailable cavalry division to try to maintain contact with the rapidly retreating Germans. Pulling machine-gun carts and ammo carts by hand, the best hiking outfit in the AEF marched from one front to another, usually on muddy bypaths and rain-soaked fields, to establish and incredible record of forty hiking days in a sixteen-day campaign. Finally moved to another part of the front to maintain the brunt of the attack, the 6th reached the assigned area on the scheduled date, November 12, 1918, to find the war at an end, its reputation as the "Sightseeing Sixth" assured.

During its three months at the front, the 6th Division lost 227 men killed in action or died of wounds. It maintained an active defense in one important sector and played a major role in the tactical plan in another. The men of the 6th had distinguished themselves in combat, many earning the Distinguished Service Cross and Croix de Guerre. The Division was highly commended by General Pershing for its contribution to the final victory.

After the Armistice, the 6th continued its hikes through France and Germany to spread the fame of the six-point Red Star, adopted as the Division insignia on November 19, 1918. The bulk of the Division returned to the States in June of 1919 aboard the USS Leviathan. The Division continued its service at Camp Grant, Illinois and was deactivated on September 30, 1921.

II. The 6th Division in World War II.
A) Overview.
The 6th Infantry Division of World War II holds the unchallenged record for consecutive days of continuous combat in the Pacific Theater, 219 days of continuous combat, set by the Division on the Island of Luzon, the Philippines. At the end of World War II, the Division's men were the most heavily engaged troops in the United States Army still fighting Yamashita's men in the Cagayan Valley of Northern Luzon. During the War, the men of the 6th Division fought a total of 306 days of combat. Casualties for the 6th Division totaled 1,174 dead, 3,876 wounded and 9 missing. Japanese casualties fighting the Division totaled 23,000 dead and 1,700 captured.

Before the long battle for Luzon, the Division's baptism of fire came in a battle at Maffin Bay, New Guinea, known as the battle for "Lone Tree Hill." It was to prove to be "the bloodiest ten days in the entire New Guinea campaign to take a stubbornly defended hill from a determined and well-entrenched enemy." 1The battle took place in a larger campaign better known as the Wakde-Sarmi Operation West of Hollandia, in then, Dutch New Guinea, now Iryan Jaya. The Battle for Lone Tree Hill, which the Division Spear-Headed, included the type of merciless fighting, against an elite and heavily entrenched Japanese Infantry, only encountered elsewhere in New Guinea by the 32nd Infantry Division at Buna and the 41st Infantry Division on the Island of Biak.2

B) Reactivation of the Division and Preparations for War.
On October 12, 1939, in the wake of the German Wehrmacht's conquest of Poland, the War Department reactivated the 6th Infantry Division in a simple ceremony at Ft. Lewis, Washington under the command of Brigadier General Clement A. Trott. True to its "Sightseeing" reputation, the Division remained at Ft. Lewis less than two months before beginning forty-six months of training and division building that would take the "Sightseers" to nine different army camps and post before its assignment to the Southwest Pacific. First stop for the Sixth was Camp Jackson, South Carolina where the original components of the Sixth Division were assembled: the 1st, 3rd and 20th Infantry Regiments, the 1st and 80th Artillery Regiments, the 8th Medical Battalion and the 6th Engineer Battalion.

After numerous reorganizations and more "sightseeing," the scattered units of the Division were assembled at Ft. Leonard Wood, Misouri, in the latter part of May 1941. The final unit line-up for the Division was as follows: the 1st, 20th and 63rd Infantry Regiments (the last having been organized from a cadre of the 1st Battalion and the 3rd Infantry Regiment), the 1st, 51st, 53rd and 80th Field Artillery Battalions, Headquarters and Heaquarters Company, 6th Military Police Platoon, 6th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, 6th Signal Company, 6th Engineer Combat Battalion, 6th Medical Battalion, 706th Ordnance (LM) Company, 6th Quartermaster Company, Headquarters Special Troops and Division Band. Countless new recruits filled Ft. Leonard Wood during June and July of 1941 as the Division built its forces for the strenuous training that lay ahead.

Most of the men of the Division were enjoying a well-earned 15-day furlough after participating in the Louisiana Maneuvers when the war came on December 7, 1941. Ft. Leonard Wood became a beehive of activity, under the command of Generals Clarence S. Ridley and Julius Ochs Adler, as the members of the 6th became a "training division" assisting in training as more recruits flowed into Ft. Leonard Wood to build newly formed organizations and divisions for the burgeoning war effort.

In September of 1942 the Division took part in the Tennessee Maneuvers as a part of training for troops expected to be sent to Europe. In October 1942 General Franklin C. Sibert, who had served with General Stillwell during the Burma Campaign, who intimately understood Jungle warfare. On November 25, 1942, the Division was ordered to the desert of Arizona and California where they were trained with the expectation that they would be sent to North Africa as a mechanized infantry division. There in the desert, with the expectation that they were to be sent to North Africa, the Division were trained with a new, and then, secret-anti-tank-weapon, the Bazooka. Due to the unexpected success of troops in North Africa combined with General MacArthur's desperate need for troops in the Southwest Pacific and General Sibert's background, an abrupt change in plans sent the 6th Division in March of 1943 to Camp Roberts at San Luis Obispo California. The Division was headed for New Guinea. Now assigned to the Sixth Army under the leadership of General Walter S. Krueger, the Division was in for a new round of training, this time in the art of Jungle warfare.

San Luis Obispo was an even more intensive and competitive place to train with emphasis on practicing close, fast combat, rapid movement and synchronized, to-the-minute maneuvers. Perimeter defense and offense would be the rule in every engagement. In the Jungle, the front would be everywhere and the war would be fought on the squad level. In July of 1943 the Division set sail for Oahu, Hawaii for Jungle training. The only thing missing in the Hawaii training would be the mud and the jungle diseases. The men trained hard day and night improving their skills at learning to fight at an instant, in the dark with the enemy a few yards or feet away. They were briefed by the survivors of Buna-Gona and by the Australians who fought so heroically on the Kokoda Trail against the Japanese in 1942. The Jungles of New Guinea were one of the most merciless places on earth, filled with diseases, for many of which, there was no known cure. In 1942 the Jungle had caused more casualties than combat, and the jungle could kill.

As for the enemy, the men were briefed that the Japanese did not obey the Geneva Convention. Hard experience in Burma, Guadalcanal, Kokoda and Buna lead the way. No medic would wear a red cross. A red cross was a target. No wounded man would cry out "medic;" instead code names or terms would be used. The Japanese understood English and a cry of "medic" was an invitation to be shot. The Japanese knew that troops without someone to care for the wounded were more likely to panic and make mistakes that would get them killed. The Japanese were tough and merciless fighters. They were experts in night fighting. They would kill or torture you if you surrendered and would view your surrender as a sign of your weakness and inferiority. The Japanese had been trained from youth in the Bushido-Banzai cult of death. They would have no greater glory than to kill themselves with you along with them.3

The men of the 6th Division were to learn that these stereotypes, while not always true, were all too frequently what they would encounter. Too often, Japanese attempting to surrender intended to kill you. Stories of Americans being butchered while attempting to surrender were a part of the briefings. The fighting would be without mercy.

Footnotes

1 The Division Public Relations Section, The Sixth Infantry Division in World War II 1939-1945 (The Battery Press 1947) at p. 48.

2The total loss of life at Buna and Biak was considerably higher for the 41st and 32nd Divisions. The 32nd and 41st Divisions had been in New Guinea a full year longer than the 6th Division and their sacrifices, along with those of the Australians stand as a testament to their bravery and service during the hard-fought and little known campaigns in New Guinea.

3 Eric Bergerud, Touched With Fire (Penguin Books 1996)("The most remarkable behavior show by Japanese soldiers was their willingness to accept orders that meant certain death and their refusal to surrender. Loyalty to the feudal lord and an unquestioning willingness to die pursuing duty were deep and genuine parts of the traditional samurai ethic.") at p. 130.