Between 18-25 January 1945, divisional units left Camp Campbell aboard 25 trains that took three to four days to make the trip to Camp Myles Standish, a staging area near Boston. The division departed aboard three ships at the Boston Port of Embarkation on 6 February 1945 arriving at Le Havre, France on the 18th of February. It was then moved by truck convoy to the vicinity of Buchy, France. It took a number of weeks to get the division assembled and ready to go, then a period of waiting for the orders to move which came at the end of March.
    Early on 31 March, columns of the 20th Armored Division, many miles long, moved through France and Belgium, across the tip of Holland, and on to Aachen, Germany. General Ward selected Herzogenrath for his headquarters and located other units of his command at Aachen, Baesweiller, Geilenkirchen and other nearby towns. Meanwhile, the 20th Tank Battalion and several supporting units received combat missions in the Maastricht-Sittard area of The Netherlands and north of Cologne, but these were "light" engagements at that stage of the war.
    On 10 April, attached to First Army, the 20th crossed the Rhine River at Bad Godesburg and moved to an area directly south of the Ruhr. The division's mission for the next eight days was one of area security and evacuation of displaced persons. Except for some minor engagements by the 20th Tank Battalion in the Altenkirchen-Siegen area, the enemy made no major attempts to breakout from the Ruhr Pocket as General Ward had thought possible.
    On the morning of 19 April, the convoy was back on the road headed for Ochsenfurt in southern Germany, passing through Patton's Third Army area, Hanau and Wuerzburg, to come under the control of XV Corps and Seventh Army. During this March, Task Force 20 and Task Force 65 were temporarily attached to III Corps for operations east of Marburg. The two task forces reverted to Seventh Army control in time to join the rest of the division at Ochsenfurt. Augsburg fell on 27 April, the division crossed the Danube on 28 April and liberated Dachau on 29 April, leaving Munich as the next major objective. In one day, the 20th had moved 50 miles against sporadic resistance, crossed the Parr, Ilm and Glonn rivers, and captured 1,200 prisoners. "So quick was Ward's advance that his tankers captured an entire German supply train and then reached the Amper River in time to seize an important bridge before the Germans could detonate the demolitions positioned for its destruction."*
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On 30 April, Combat Command "A" continued the attack on Munich from the west in conjunction with the 42nd and 3rd Infantry Divisions. Combat Command "B" attacked from the north in conjunction with the 45th Infantry Division. North of Munich, fanatical resistance was encountered in prepared defensive positions of the Anti-Tank School and SS barracks. A coordinated attack supported by artillery preparations broke this determined resistance by mid-afternoon. Munich was secured by that night. "A total of 144 battle casualties occurred in the division during the drive for Munich, but the 20th inflicted about 1,700 enemy casualties and evacuated 3,645 enemy prisoners of war."**
* Gugeler, "Orlando Ward Biography," p. IV-9.
**Headquarters, 20th Armored Division, "Division Narrative, After Action Report 23-30 April 1945." Unpublished, Washington National Records Center, p. 2.
In early May, the rapid pursuit of the enemy from Munich to Salzburg was halted when the war ended in Europe. The division's mission of security and POW-DP processing kept most of the division in the Chiemsee area while some units were in Austria most of May. By mid-July, all units were enroute by rail to Camp Lucky Strike, France and debarking from ships on the East Coast of the good ole' USA by early August. The "objective" then was to regroup at Camp Cooke, California and prepare for the planned invasion of Japan. With the sudden end of that part of the war, most of us were home by Christmas 1945.
The division was inactivated at Camp Hood, Texas, in April 1946.
SOURCE: Gugeler, "Orlando Ward Biography," Chap. XIV.