One of two subordinate organizations in the 100th Training Division (Leader Development), the 97th Training Brigade was formed through the redesignation and reactivation of the 97th Infantry Division, which was inactivated in 1946. During that period of inactivation, however, the Division’s instantly recognizable Trident insignia was reassigned to the 97th Army Reserve Command in 1968, but the Command was not authorized to perpetuate the Division’s lineage, and in 1996 the Command was inactivated and its component units were placed in the 99th Regional Readiness Command. The 97th Training Brigade was activated in 2010 and the old insignia redesignated for it on 6 December 2010.
The 97th Training Brigade was originally constituted and organized in the National Army as the 97th Division in September 1918, only to be demobilized on 22 December 1918 without having been deployed to Europe. Approved for wear in 1922, the 97th Training Brigade unit patch’s white trident on a blue background represents the three coastal states—Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont—from which recruits were drawn to form the original division. Besides being the Infantry color, blue also stands for the countless fresh-water lakes of the region, and the white trident and border denote the snow-covered mountains found in those states.
Related Items97th Training Brigade Unit Crest (DUI) When it was ordered into active service on 25 February 1943, it was redesignated as the 97th Infantry Division and was deployed to Europe, where it took part in the Central Europe campaign, with elements of the Division liberating a POW camp in mid-April 1945 and the Flossenbürg concentration camp on 23 April 1945.
A member of the Division’s 387th Infantry Regiment, Private First Class Domenic Mozzetta of B Company, holds the distinction of firing the last official shot in the European Theater of Operations. Shortly before midnight on 7 May 1945, Mozzetta fired at a German sniper outside Klenovice in Czechoslovakia.