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In character, a Captain and a Staff Sergeant from a real Amy unit in Germany dress as reenactors |
They wear the patches of the 80th Division. Raised in WW1 primarily of draftees from Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, the new division was nicknamed the "Blue Ridge Division."The Division crossed the English Channel to France and began landing on Utah Beach shortly after noon on August 2, 1944. The 80th got its baptism of fire on August 8 when it took over the LeMans bridgehead in the XX Corps area. During the next nine months the 80th served in General George S. Patton's Third Army, fighting its way across Northern France, Belgium, and into Germany. By war's end some 80th units had gotten as far as Austria and Czechoslovakia. Along the way the Division saved the City of Luxembourg from German troops commanded by Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt during the Battle of the Bulge (the Ardennes Offensive), by making a 150-mile motorized march in just 36 hours to form a defensive line around the city. With the 4th Armored and 26th Infantry Divisions, the 80th Division's 2nd Battalion, 318th Infantry, and the 1st Battalion, 319th Infantry, helped relieve American forces surrounded at Bastogne. The Division crossed the Our and Sauer rivers into Germany the first week of February 1945, breaking through the "West Wall." The advance moved with such speed that in one six-day period the Division covered 125 miles. By early April it crossed the Rhine River and took the industrial city of Kassel. Proceeding eastward, it also captured Gotha, Erfurt, and Weimar-Buchenwald (location of the infamous concentration camp). By V-E Day the 80th Division had amassed 277 days of combat and had captured more than 200,000 enemy soldiers.
BE
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