The 94th Training Division (Force Sustainment) is a unit of the United States Army Reserve, charged with providing sustainment training throughout the United States. The division is based at Fort Lee, Virginia and is subordinate to the 80th Training Command. The division has subordinate brigades that perform military occupational specialty (MOS) reclassification training. The division has brigades in the Continental United States.
The division traces its history to the activation of the 94th Division in 1918, which was disbanded with the close of World War I, but reformed in the Organized Reserve from 1921 until 1942. It fought in World War II, was reformed in the now-United States Army Reserve in 1956, and remained an infantry division until 1963. In 1963 it was reduced to the 94th Command Headquarters (Divisional) until the Army's realignment of reserve component combat arms into the Army National Guard in 1967. From 1968 to 1995 it supervised smaller Army Reserve units as an Army Reserve Command (ARCOM). In 1995 it became a Regional Support Command and in 2003 a Regional Readiness Command. It was then inactivated, but reformed as a training division in August 2009. The 94th Infantry Division's standard (flag) and lineage was bestowed upon the 94th Division (Force Sustainment) at its activation in 2009.
The 94th ARCOM/RSC/RRC wore the shoulder sleeve insignia of the 94th Infantry Division but did not, according to the United States Army Center of Military History, perpetuate the lineage of the old division and was thus not entitled to the division's battle honors, as it is against Army policy for TDA organizations, such as ARCOMs, RSCs and RRCs, to perpetuate the lineage of TO&E units, such as infantry divisions. Army Regulation 840-10 dictates that the distinguishing flag of an RRC features a white-bordered, 38.1 cm (15 in.) tall rendering of the shoulder sleeve insignia on a plain blue background, rather than on the horizontally divided bi-colour background of red over blue as carried by an infantry division.
Although the 94th RRC did not carry the lineage of the 94th Infantry Division, today's 94th Military Police Company (formerly under the 94th RRC) carries the lineage of the World War II Military Police Platoon, 94th Infantry Division. The 94th Military Police Company also served in Desert Storm, Bosnia, and most recently Iraq. In 2003-04 the 94th MPs added a battle streamer to their guidon when they were awarded the Valorous Unit Award for their actions in al-Anbar, hunting Iraqi Ba'ath members after the collapse of government and conducting Counter-Insurgency Operations against the increasing militant uprisings in Al-Qaim, Rutbah, Haditha, Baghdad, Ramadi and Fallujah. The 94th MPs were also awarded The "Order of the Spur" by Colonel Teeples of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment (3CR), as a nod to the combat action of the 94th Military Police Company during their mission with the 3d Cavalry Regiment. The history and spirit of the Military Police Platoon, 94th Infantry Division of World War II lives on with them.
World War I The 94th Division originated in 1918 and was intended to be formed with Spanish-speaking troops enlisted from Puerto Rico. The Army found that it lacked enough Spanish-speaking instructors to train men for the support and service units of the division, so it was agreed to create it as a "paper" division comprising only four infantry regiments, like the 93rd Division. The infantry regiments were assigned numbers 373–376, which would have been associated with the National Army's 94th Division. The 373rd and 374th Infantry Regiments were organized with Hispanic Puerto Ricans, while the 375th Infantry was organized with Afro–Puerto Ricans. The 376th Infantry was never organized. With the close of World War I, the units were disbanded at Camp Las Casas, Puerto Rico.
One of the division's nicknames, the "Neuf-Cats," most likely comes from this era, as most World War I combat involving Americans occurred in French-speaking areas and the number "94" was pronounced in French as "Neuf-Quatre", literally, "Nine-Four". As the pronunciation of the numeral four in French is similar to the English word "cat," the division decided to adopt this as a nickname and pluralized it.
Inter-war years
The 94th Division was constituted in the Organized Reserve (present-day United States Army Reserve) on 24 June 1921, allotted to the First Corps Area, and assigned to the XI Corps. The division was further allotted to the state of Massachusetts as its home area. The 373rd-375th Infantry Regiments were allotted to Puerto Rico's 211th Infantry Brigade as part of a hypothetical division which was never organized, and the 376th Infantry was assigned to the 94th Division. To flesh out the rest of the 94th Division's infantry, the 301st and 302nd Infantry Regiments (part of the 76th Division in World War I) were assigned, along with the newly-constituted 419th Infantry. The 76th Division retained only its World War I-era 304th Infantry, taking the 385th Infantry from the 97th Division and adding the newly-constituted 417th and 418th Infantry Regiments, while the 97th Division took the 76th Division's 303rd Infantry and retained the 386th-388th Infantry Regiments.
The 94th Division headquarters was organized in November 1921 at the Custom House Tower in Boston, and remained there until activated for World War II. The designated mobilization and training station for the division was Camp Devens (redesignated Fort Devens in 1931), Massachusetts, and it was also the location where much of the division's training activities occurred in the interwar years.
The 94th Division was originally nicknamed the "Pilgrim Division" in reference to the cultural history of Massachusetts. A shoulder sleeve insignia featuring a Native American with bow and arrow was authorized on 21 July 1922. This design was superseded 6 September 1923 by one depicting the black silhouette of a Puritan carrying a blunderbuss on his shoulder, on a gray circle, with the wording of the new design's description was amended on 22 December of the same year.
For the few years when the division headquarters was called to duty for annual training as a unit, it often trained with the staff of the 18th Infantry Brigade, 9th Division, at Camp Devens. The annual training of the enlisted personnel of the headquarters included staff training, branch-specific training, and division-level command post exercises. For several years, the division conducted a “Special Officers Camp” at Camp Devens for unassigned officers, officers who could not attend training with their assigned units, and basic officer training for recent Reserve Officers' Training Corps and Citizens Military Training Camp commissionees. The division’s subordinate units trained all over the First Corps Area. The infantry regiments, for example, held their annual training primarily with the units of the 18th Infantry Brigade at Camp Devens and Fort Ethan Allen, Vermont. Other units, such as the special troops, artillery, engineers, aviation, medical, and quartermaster, trained at various posts in the First, Second, and Third Corps Areas, often with the active units of the 1st and 9th Divisions. For example, the division artillery trained at Fort Ethan Allen with the 7th Field Artillery; the 319th Engineer Regiment trained at Fort DuPont, Delaware, with the 1st Engineer Regiment; the 319th Medical Regiment trained at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, with the 1st Medical Regiment; and the 319th Observation Squadron trained with the 5th Observation Squadron at Mitchel Field, New York.
In addition to the unit training camps, the infantry regiments rotated responsibility to conduct the Citizens Military Training Camps at Camp Devens each year. On a number of occasions, the division participated in First Corps Area and First Army command post exercises in conjunction with other Regular Army, National Guard, and Organized Reserve units. However, Organized Reserve units were even more seriously under-strength and received even less equipment and funds with which to train than did Regular and Guard units, which meant that the 94th Division did not participate in the various First Corps Area maneuvers and the First Army maneuvers of 1935, 1939, and 1941 as an organized unit due to lack of enlisted personnel and equipment. Instead, the officers and a few enlisted reservists were assigned to Regular and Guard units to fill vacant slots and bring the units up to war strength for the exercises. Additionally, some officers were assigned duties as umpires or support personnel.
World War II Re-formed
The 94th Division, like the other divisions of the Organized Reserve was not mobilized as a complete unit. In August 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was given permission by Congress to order all members and units of the National Guard and all members of the Organized Reserve to active duty for one year. The officers and men of the 94th Division were subsequently individually assigned to existing Regular Army and National Guard units as needed, leaving the division virtually unmanned. The majority of mid-level officers (captains through lieutenant colonels) in the U.S. Army during the Second World War were Reserve officers.Twice The Citizen: A History of the United States Army Reserve, 1908–1995, Second and Expanded Edition, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office (1997), p. 67. As such, the 94th provided leaders to every theater in the war.
Before Organized Reserve infantry divisions were ordered into active military service, they were reorganized on paper as "triangular" divisions under the 1940 tables of organization. The headquarters companies of the two infantry brigades were consolidated into the division's cavalry reconnaissance troop, and one infantry regiment was removed by inactivation. The field artillery brigade headquarters and headquarters battery became the headquarters and headquarters battery of the division artillery. Its three field artillery regiments were reorganized into four battalions; one battalion was taken from each of the two 75 mm gun regiments to form two 105 mm howitzer battalions, the brigade's ammunition train was reorganized as the third 105 mm howitzer battalion, and the 155 mm howitzer battalion was formed from the 155 mm howitzer regiment. The engineer, medical, and quartermaster regiments were reorganized into battalions. In 1942, divisional quartermaster battalions were split into ordnance light maintenance companies and quartermaster companies, and the division's headquarters and military police company, which had previously been a combined unit, was split.