The division first saw action in 1914 in the Battle of the Frontiers, including the battles before Nancy and Epinal. The division participated in the Race to the Sea and then settled into trench warfare. The divisional commander, General der Infanterie Eugen Ritter von Benzino, was killed in action on November 28, 1915. In 1916, the division entered into the Battle of Verdun and fought on the Somme in October. The division also was engaged in 1917 in the Second Battle of the Aisne, also called the Third Battle of Champagne and referred to in German sources as the Dual Battle of Aisne-Champagne ("Doppelschlacht Aisne-Champagne"). After a short spell in the trenches near Verdun, in the latter part of 1917, the division was sent to Flanders in response to the Allied offensive there. In October 1917, the division went to the Romanian Front and then to Ukraine after the armistice in Romania. It returned to the Western Front in April 1918, occupying the line near Verdun, then Reims and then engaged in mobile defense. It ended the war facing Allied forces in the Hundred Days Offensive. The division was rated as a third class division by Allied intelligence.