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, cold, war and/or service:
“Professor: War is hell, Mr. Thornhill, even if it’s just a cold one.
Roger Thornhill: If you fellows can’t lick the Vandamms of this world without asking girls like her to bed down with them, and fly away with them, and probably never come back, perhaps you ought to start learning how to lose a few cold wars.
Professor: I’m afraid we’re already doing that.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“For, brother, know that this is art, and you
With a cold incautious sorrow stricken dumb,
Have your own vanishing slit of light let through,
Passionate as winter, where only a few may come:
Not idiots in the street find out the lees
In the last drink of dying Socrates.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Bernstein: “Girls delightful in Cuba stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery but don’t feel right spending your money stop. There is no war in Cuba. Signed Wheeler.” Any answer?
Charles Foster Kane: Yes—Dear Wheeler, You provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1985)
“The Service without Hope
Is tenderest, I think—
...
There is no Diligence like that
That knows not an Until—”
—Emily Dickinson (1831–1886)