91st Chemical Mortar Battalion

Activated on 15 February 1944 at Camp Joseph T. Robinson, Arkansas, as the 91st Chemical Battalion Motorized, the unit was redesignated the 91st Chemical Mortar Battalion on 22 February 1944. Lieutenant Colonel Roy Muth assumed command that day and remained battalion commander until becoming the Chemical Officer of VIII Corps on 15 April of the following year. Over the next five weeks, the new battalion was populated largely by former antiaircraft personnel, and on 2 April it boarded a train for Camp Swift, Texas, where it began training in the tactics of chemical warfare. By summer's end, at full strength and well equipped, the battalion was ready to ship to Europe. Muth moved his troops to Massachusetts, and on 11 October the 91st left Boston on the USS Wakefield. The last elements of the battalion debarked at Omaha Beach on 22 October, where one first-person account recalled meeting dirty, tired, jubilant Air Corps personnel heading home while the newly arrived men were clean, fresh, and downhearted. Two days later the battalion was assigned to XII Corps, the spearhead of the Third Army, but remained bivouacked in the Valognes Staging Area for more than a month while securing additional equipment and supplies. Its first operational mission in the continuing consolidation of the Normandy trains area was to patrol and provide security for the vital gasoline pipeline from Cherbourg to the limit of the Normandy Base Section. Relieved of that mission on 10 December, the 91st assembled in the Abbe de Blanchlande to join the Third Army's eastward drive, which began three days later. Once in combat, the 91st Chemical Mortar Battalion fought continuously for 117 days. Veteran Kenneth Goosman recalled that its mortar fire answered the enemy with whatever was necessary and that one platoon firing for effect could place 300 pounds of high explosives on a target. Fighting alongside the infantry it supported, the battalion suffered forty-nine casualties, including fifteen battle deaths. After expending 68,789 high explosive and chemical rounds, including white phosphorous, High Dawn earned battle stars for the Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, and Central Europe Campaigns.

Bedford, Virginia · United States