Cold War Service
After a brief period of occupation duty, the division returned to Fort Hood, Texas, in 1946 to retrain and rebuild. The 2nd Armored Division returned to Germany to serve as part of NATO from 1951 to 1957. Several of the division's battalions participated in the Vietnam War. However, the main division would spend much of the next 35 years at Fort Hood.
The division remained on active service during the Cold War. Its primary mission was to prepare to conduct heavy armored combat against Warsaw Pact forces in defense of NATO. The division formed a key component of the U.S. military's plan to move 'ten divisions in ten days" to Europe in the event of a Soviet threat to NATO. The division practiced this task numerous times during Exercise Reforger from 1967 to 1988. To build and maintain combat skills, the division's maneuver brigades deployed almost annually to the National Training Center to face an opposing force modeling Soviet military weapons and tactics.
However, with the end of the Cold War the U.S. military began to draw down its combat units. The 2nd Armored Division was scheduled to inactivate in the spring of 1990.
Read more about this topic: 2nd Armored Division (United States)
Famous quotes containing the words cold, war and/or service:
“With his great white strong cold squares of teeth
And his little eyes of stone ...”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)