Though it was organized just four months before the signing of the Armistice on November 11, 1918, V Corps—understandably nicknamed "Victory Corps" because of the pronunciation of its Roman numeral designation—fought in three campaigns during World War I. Demobilized for over 20 years, the unit was officially reconstituted on June 27, 1944, after units that would be attached to it had hit Omaha Beach on D-Day. Breaking out from the Normandy beachhead, elements of the Corp proceeded to liberate the cities of Paris and Sedan during its advance to the German Siegfriend Line and encountering fierce resistance in engagements such as the Battle of Hurtgen Forest. Other notable achievements of the Corps' units during World War II included the liberation of Leipzig and becoming the first American forces to make contact with Red Army troops.
Related Items:
V Corps Patch (SSI)
V Corp Unit Crest (DUI)
During the Cold War era, V Corps was stationed in Germany near the Fulda Gap, one of the area NATO commanders considered as a possible avenue of attack in the event of an invasion by Warsaw Pact forces. In December 1995, V Corps deployed 1st Armored Division and elements of six separate brigades for the Implementation Force (IFOR), the NATO peacekeeping force assigned to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995-1996. The V Corps played a a major role in the first invasion of Iraq in 2003, plowing through Iraqi defensive positions to advance nearly 550 miles in just over a two-week period, more than justifying the unit motto of "It Will Be Done." The corps deployed a second time to Iraq in 2006, this time assuming command and control of Multi-National Corps–Iraq. 2012 saw the unit deployed to Afghanistan for a year before returning to its home base Wiesbaden in May and undergoing inactivation a month later on June 12, 2013.
The design of V Corps' Combat Service Identification Badge, or CSIB for short, is elegantly simple. Flag-blue triangles compose a pentagon bordered in white; the pentagon represent the Corps numerical designation, and blue and white are the colors used the Corps flags.