The 2nd Armored Division (Forward) Monument Project

By Jim Purcell

There are some people who may ask why the 2nd Armored Division (Forward) should erect a stone memorial at Fort Hood, Texas. Yet, ask any of the former officers, NCOs and soldiers of the 2nd Armored Division (Forward) and they can tell you right away.

   A lifetime ago, the men and women of the 2nd Armored Division (Forward) held the line in the Northern Army Group in Northern Germany, as part of a larger British and allied force stationed in the area..The division forward was the northernmost maneuver brigade for U.S. Forces operating in the Federal Republic of Germany. 

A familiar sight at the main gate of Lucius D. Clay Kaserne in Garlstedt, FRG

   People today have forgotten today what the Cold War was: A time and an era when peoples throughout the world were convinced that America and its Allies from the West were going to square off with the former Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies in what could be this planet’s final war. 

   Later, after its Cold War service was completed with the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the division forward would join the larger military effort during the Persian Gulf War, when it participated in offensive operations against dictator Saddam Hussein’s military forces. 

   Sadly, for many 2AD(F) soldiers and veterans, the colors of the 2nd Armored Division, both forward and main, were folded shortly after its return from Southwest Asia with its deactivation during the early 1990s. 

   The 2nd Armored Division (Forward) was one of those units that made its living performing critical missions far away from home. And, whatever the division forward did, it never once let down our nation in the face of hostile foreign powers in the Cold War or that same nation during America’s first shooting war with Iraq.

   No service, the kind of which 2nd Armored Division (Forward) performed, is without terrible losses. Whether it was in the Federal Republic of Germany during regular training or on the battlefields of Southwest Asia, some of our friends died, or became disabled.

   As much as any unit in the U.S. inventory in the military, the 2nd Armored Division (Forward) family served this nation as much as any other during difficult times. 

   Many of its veterans believe, with good reason, that the efforts of so many, who labored so hard for so long that the contributions of these soldiers must not be forgotten, or become some minor footnote to the legacy of the 2nd Armored Division (Main). Accordingly, a committee of veterans was formed in 2020 and its singular mission came to be the creation of a simple, stone monument on Fort Hood, Texas, where the 2nd Armored Division (Main) was last active.

(Jim Purcell was the Intelligence Sergeant for S-2, 4/41st Infantry at Lucius D. Clay Kaserne, in Garlstedt, FRG, and at Fort Hood, Texas)