1st Brigade, 5th Division (Mechanized)
I. & II. World War
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5th Division History in WWII. The 5th Division dropped anchor off the coast of Utah (Red) beach near Les Dunes De Varreville on D+33, 4 July 1944 at 0900 hours and liberated the town of Vidouville, and then on August the 3rd, 1944 at 1645 hours, the 5th Division was moved to the vicinity of Cerisy La Salle in the sector of the Third Army and thus passed to the First U.S.Army reserve, and thence to the control of XX Corps of the Third U.S. Army and transferred to Gen, George S. Patton’s Third Army and saw action in many towns in France and on into Germany.
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On April 23, 1944, the 5th division began a long advance to their next objective The next move for the Red Devils was to be a long one three hundred miles advance to the town of Regan, near a point where Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia joined borders, arriving on April 30 1945, the 5th division was ordered to attack in an “southeasterly” direction towards the town of Linz in southern Czechoslovakia and northern Austria to clear the area of German troops that had retreated to that area. Elements of the 2nd RCT, Company C. 803rd Tank Destroyer, 5th Infantry Division advanced to the area of Volary, Czechoslovakia on the morning of May 7, 1945, was loaded and on the road ready to continue the attack. Leading as "point" for the regiment was the reconnaissance platoon of Company C, 803rd Tank Destroyer Battalion. At 08:40 the platoon was ambushed northeast of Volary, Czechoslovakia by elements of the 11th Panzer Division.
The platoon leader, Lt. Donald Warren, was wounded along with two other soldiers and the machine gunner in the lead Jeep, Pfc. Charles Havlat of Dorchester, Nebraska an (Czech-American), took a bullet through the helmet and died instantly. Unconditional surrender of the Germans came at 0241 hours, May 7, 1945, at a schoolhouse in Rheims, France from Colonel General Jodl to Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith who signed for General Eisenhower. The ceasefire order was officially released at 0831 hours at 5th Division Headquarters. Pfc. Charles Havlat died some nine minutes after the cease order and 5 hours and 59 minutes after the unconditional surrender. It has been established that Pfc. Havlat, was the last American soldier killed in action on the 5th Infantry Division front and possibly the last American killed in the European Theater.
In July 1968, the 1st Brigade of the 5th Infantry Division (Mech.) was deployed for overseas duty in the Republic of Vietnam
