Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1943-08-13
By ELMO SCOTT WATSON

ny GLN1O SCO11 VA1SON
Released by Western Newspaper Union.
THE other day veterans of
l. the And Division of World
War I held their reunion in Tul-
sa, Okla. Then they went to
Camp Gruber near Muskogee,
there to see the reactivation of
their tradition-rich outfit, to pass
on to the new And Division of
World War II their honored bat
tie flags and to gaze proudly up
on the shoulder patch adjoining
the uniform of each man in it
the red, yellow and blue striped
quarter-circle which was the
sign and symbol of a first
class fightin' man." member
of the Rainbow" Division.
The reactivation took place at
midnight-the champagne hour"
so called because it was the hour
when the last great German push
of World War I, the Champagne
offensive, began. That offensive,
which started on July IA, 1918, broke
to pieces against the stubborn resist
ance of those fighting Yanks of the
Rainbow division and from that day
the might of the kaiser's armies
ebbed until it reached low tide in a
railroad car in Compeigne forest
four months later.
Two Messages.
Before the veterans of the Rainbow
division of quarter century ago ad-
journed their 1943 meeting, they sent
two messages to widely separated
parts of the world. One was flashed
to Gen. Douglas Macarthur, "some-
where in the Southwest Pacific" be-
cause it was he who had given their
division its nickname. The other
was the traditional reunion greet
ings to one-armed Gen. Henri Joseph
Eugene Gouraud, who commanded
the Fourth French army, which in
cluded the American division, at the
historic battle in the Champagne
sector July IA and Is, 1918. The
message was sent to Gen. Dwight
D. Eisenhower, commander-in-chief
of the Allied forces in the European
theater of war, to be transmitted to
General Gouraud somewhere in Oc-
cupied France"
In the early summer of 1917 a
young colonel named Douglas Mac
Arthur was serving as censor" for
news coming out of the war depart
ment in Washington. Visited by
newspaper men one day, he told
them of the forthcoming organiza-
ton of new division to be COM
posed of units from 81 states and
the District of Columbia. AS the
journalists were leaving, Macarthur
remarked that the assembling of so
many units from so many states into
one division was somewhat like
making up a rainbow. Struck by
the aptness of the expression, the
newspaper men used it in their sto-
ries and the nickname stuck to the
division when it was organized on
August l, 1917, and concentrated at
Camp Mills on Long Island in New
York.
While the division was still at
lamp MILLS, many OlHeTent KINGS OF
rainbow designs were used as divi-
sional insignia. They were irregular
in size but nearly all were a half
circle with the three colors of red,
yellow and blue in them. 1t was
not until the division was engaged in
a major action in the Meuse-
Argonne that the final, official de-
sign was conceived and adopted.
Col. William N. Hughes Jr., who
had succeeded Col. Douglas MacAr-
thur as chief of staff of the division,
determined the measurements, re-
duced the original design to a quar-
ter circle and telegraphed the de-
scription, with the approval of Maj.
Gen. Charles T. Menoher, then divi-
sion commander, to corps headquar-
tiers.
1t is one of the cherished
traditions of the And that Cen
eral Menoher, acting on an
omen of a rainbow in the sky,
sent the division into action in
the Champagne operation. From