Nickname: None recorded. ….. Shoulder Patch: Regular Armored patch with red ( Field Artillery ), yellow ( Cavalry ) and blue ( Infantry ) areas; red bolt of lightning over tank tread and cannon, and numeral in yellow area. ….. Training: The 14th was activated at Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, November 15, 1942, under Armored Force and later assigned to X Corps, Third Army. Maneuvers: Tennessee, Second Army. Transferred to Camp Campbell, Kentucky, Second Army. Overseas: October, 1944 (ETO). ….. Commanding Generals: Maj. Gen. Vernon E. Prichard, November, 1942, to July, 1944; Maj. Gen. Albert C. Smith, July, 1944, to present. ….. Component Units: (As of October, 1944): 499th, 500th and 501st Armored Field Artillery Battalions; 25th, 47th and 48th Tank Battalions; 19th, 62nd and 68th Armored Infantry Battalions. Higher commands: Sixth Army Group and Seventh Army. ….. Combat Highlights: Capture of 50,000 German prisoners, liberation of 200,000 Allied prisoners, capture and destruction of 500 enemy tanks along with mountains of enemy materiel are in the record of 14th Armored Division battle accomplishments. On one 500-mile drive across the battle area,, the 14th liberated 1000 enemy-held towns. Sent into combat November, 1944, the division’s first task was a drive through the Vosges Mountains, considered one of the most difficult enterprises facing a modern army. The division breached the Vosges defenses, poured into the Alsatian Plain, took Haguenau, Wissembourg and knifed into Germany. The von Rundstedt winter offensive dragged the 14th into defensive action. It first battled crack Nazi troops in the Bitche salient, thwarting the Nazi attempt to overrun Alsace and recapture Strasbourg. For nine days they slugged it out with one panzer and two panzer grenadier divisions at Hatten and Rittershofen. Gen. Jacob L. Devers called the action “the greatest defensive action of the war.” Early in 1945, the 14th joined the offensive to clear the Saar-Palatinate area and cracked the Siegfried Line in two places, driving to the Rhine at Germersheim and entering a period of pursuing fleeing Nazi troops. The division crossed the Rhine, March, 1945. In the final phase, the 14th took Lohr, Bad Bruckenau and Neustadt. With the 12th Armored it clamped a pincers on Schweinfurt, ballbearing center. Swinging south, the 14th outflanked Bayreuth and Nurnberg. Hammelburg, prison of thousands of Allied officers, fell at once. In its last long dash of the war, the 14th crossed the Danube at Ingolstadt and pushed to the Isar river, where it liberated an additional 110,000 Allied prisoners at Moosburg, largest Nazi prison camp. Last act of the dashing 14th was to seize a bridge intact on the Inn.