The “Trailblazer Division” was constituted in the Army of the United States on 18 January 1943 as the 70th Infantry Division and was activated at Camp Adair, Oregon on 15 June 1943. Arriving in France between 10 and 15 December, three of the Division’s Infantry regiments formed Task Force Herren (after the Division Commander General Thomas Herren) and scored significant victories in the Allied repulsion of Operation Nordwind, the desperate final offensive launched by the Germans in the European theater on 31 December 1944.
Major successes were achieved at Phillipsburg (a German supply route juncture) and Wingen, where Division elements killed more than 1,000 SS troops. And at String-Wendel, the Division freed over 1,000 Allied Soldiers and personnel from a POW camp. Following V-E day, the unit performed occupation duties until inactivated in 1945. The Division was allotted to the Organized Reserved Corps on 13 February 1952 and activated 1 March 1952. It underwent several redesignations over the next four decades, but though it was ordered into active military service during Operation Desert Storm, it never saw combat again before its last inactivation in 1995.
The imagery of the 70th Infantry Division Shoulder Sleeve Insignia was inspired by the location in Oregon which the unit was formed and activated. An axe head is symbol of the primary tool of pioneering settlers, used to clear a path through dense foliage and trees. The mountain and tree symbolize the wilderness of the area, but also have secondary meanings; the mountain recalls Mount Hood in Oregon, while the fir tree is a not-so-oblique reference to the 91st Infantry Division—the “Fir Division”—from which the initial Officers and Noncommissioned Officers of the 70th Infantry Division were drawn.