Early Service
The battalion was formed in early 1941 as the 28th Infantry Division Provisional Antitank Battalion, and on 15 December was redesignated as the 628th Tank Destroyer Battalion, in line with the reorganization of the anti-tank force. During training, in 1943, the battalion provided a cadre to form the nucleus of the 648th Tank Destroyer Battalion. The 628th remained in the United States until January 1944, when it was shipped to the United Kingdom aboard the Aquitania. From 11 April to 5 July, it operated three marshaling camps in southern England, providing accommodation and administration for combat troops of the 1st and the 29th Divisions being prepared for the Normandy landings.
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Famous quotes containing the words early and/or service:
“Very early in our children’s lives we will be forced to realize that the “perfect” untroubled life we’d like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don’t want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)