12th Infantry unit history by G. Johnson

I'm very interested in 12th Infantry Regiment of 4th ID. The 12th fought in ETO 1944-45 and suffered heavy casualties in Normandy and Hürtgen Forest. The regiment is quite known, I guess, mainly because of the high casualty rate. Despite that, there's not much information online about the events of the twelfth. Only the best known parts of it's journey are covered well: Normandy and Hürtgen. All the other events are way less reported online.

I've found loads of very detailed unit histories about many other regiments, divisions and battalions, but not one about any of the regiments of the 4th ID. I know there's a unit history, written by Gerden F. Johnson. The name is formal "History of the Twelfth Infantry Regiment in World War II". It seems very comprehensive with over 400 pages. I haven't manage to find it anywhere in PDF or some other internet format. There are few copies of it in certain American libraries, but because I live in Europe, a trip to the library would be a wee bit too dear for me. Not one copy is currently available on Amazon or some other site.

Does anyone here have a copy of that book? It would be great if somebody could scan the whole thing and make it available for everybody.

Or does somebody know some other good sources? I have covered the basics pretty well, but the details (battalion, company and platoon level) are quite unclear.

Thanks,

Konna

 

Well, I don't know, but it's 70 years old. How is it?

 

For me there's no difference if it's in Honolulu or New York.

The book is published by National Fourth (Ivy) Division Association. If it's a non-profit organization, is it really their interest to hold on the copyright, if there is one? And I dare to claim that Col. Johnson isn't alive anymore, is he?

Shouldn't they be happy that people want this keenly to study the history of the division?

 

Ok, I explored the Association. The membership costs at least $45 and the members have access to their sources. Unfortunately I didn't find any list of material they possess. Probably they have copies of that book, but do they have PDF version?

http://www.4thinfantry.org/content/membership

 

You should be able to have your local library obtain a copy of the book through the inter-library loan program. They will enter the title, author and copyright year into their computer and the libraries that have the book will come up. Your library will contact one of them and have the book sent to them where you can check it out. I've done this several times and it works great. Here's a link showing basically what your libraries search will find; as you can see it's available at numerous libraries:

http://www.worldcat.org/title/history-of-the-twelfth-infantry-regiment-in-world-war-ii/oclc/5019176&referer=brief_results


Steve

 

Does anyone know any good sources about general events in the breakthroughs. I found this somewhat sufficient when it comes to comprehensive description about the events of 12th Infantry: http://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-A-Utah/index.html

It only needed a little digging, and I could find relatively detailed battalion and sometimes company level information. I used the browser search tool and just skipped loads of information about other units. (Of course that wasn't detailed enough for me. As many of you know, those unit histories that were written right after the war are often very thorough and full of minor particularities and names and. Sometimes even squad and platoon level actions are descriped.)

I tried to do the same with the breakout chapter: https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Breakout/USA-E-Breakout-23.html

This chapter was way more general. Hardly the actions of full regiments were separately introduced, and sometimes not even that.

Before I started researching this unit, I thought that it would be very easy because the 4th Division is so well known. It's quite an opposite, I think. Some way more obscure units are way better covered online.