On this day in 1944 the 16th Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division, US Army went ashore in Normandy. Its First Battalion is remembered in Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire.

I was going through my archives again recently and came across some photos I took in Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire back in 2016.  One of them, a memorial plaque, I could not remember taking, but it must have been somewhere near the Marine Parade.  Be that as it may, the memorial plaque commemorates the First Battalion, 16^th Infantry Regiment US Army and the time it spent in and around the town prior to D-Day 6^th June 1944.

Below are some of those photos, including the one of the memorial plaque.

Looking east along the Dorsetshire coast from Lyme Regis on 23 May 2016.

Marine Parade at Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire on 23 May 2016.

Memorial plaque in Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire commemorating the men of the 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, United States Army.

The 16^th Infantry Regiment left the USA for England in April 1942.  It sailed from England to take part in Operation Torch and on November 8 1942 landed at Arzew in French Morocco and subsequently helped in the capture of Oran.

After the defeat of German forces in North Africa it then took part in the invasion of Sicily, Operation Husky, on 10 July 1943. The landing was relatively unopposed, but the regiment later took part in heavy fighting especially during the capture of Troina where it endured a 4 day battle against the 15^th Panzer Grenadier Division.

After the capture of Sicily the regiment returned to England and on 11 October 1943 left Liverpool by train for Dorchester, its First Battalion being billeted in and around Lyme Regis. The regiment then undertook intense training for Operation Overlord.

Embarking from Weymouth on 1 June 1944 and setting sail from the port during the late afternoon of June 5, the regiment went ashore at Omaha beach in Normandy on June 6. After a morning of hard fighting and heavy casualties the 16^th Infantry Regiment had fought its way off the beach by midday and had moved inland.  After D Day the regiment was placed in reserve to recuperate.  On 27 July it participated in the breakout from St. Lo in Operation Cobra.

The regiment advanced across Europe and took part in the infamous Battle of the Hurtgen Forest after which it was sent to rest camp on Dec. 12, but it had little respite as 4 days later Hitler launched the Battle of the Bulge.  The regiment was moved to a defensive position on the northern shoulder of the bulge where it held the line until 15 January 1944 when it took part in the counter offensive.

It was present at the capture of Bonn on 8 March 1945 and then, with the rest of the First Division, moved north to clear German forces from the Hartz Mountains.

On April 28 the regiment moved with the First Division to Selb in Czechoslovakia and had pushed on to Falkenau where it halted on May 7 with the end of the war in Europe imminent.
During its 443 days of combat in World War Two the 16^th Infantry Regiment lost 1,250 officers and men killed in action and a further 6,278 were wounded or missing.