The Seventh Army Story 1960 US Army; The Big Picture TV-472

more at http://quickfound.net/

'Today the major American ground force in Europe is the Seventh Army. It is a combat-ready fighting force--with traditions and standards of which it can be proud. In telling its story, THE BIG PICTURE goes back to July 1943, when the Seventh was one of the great armies formed to crack the walls of fortress Europe. Film viewers will see the Seventh born at sea, on the way to its first campaign--the invasion of the not-so-soft underbelly of Europe. Its target-- Sicily. Commanded by General Alexander M. Patch--a soldier who roamed his front lines--the Seventh anticipated the German operation "Northwind" which came on New Year's Eve 1944 and continued for 23 days. Today, in exercises such as WINTERSHIELD in Germany, the Seventh trains with other NATO forces. The training emphasis is on combat readiness, and the training continues in terrain and under weather conditions as rugged as any Seventh Army encountered during World War II. Today this Army stands ready--a pyramid of fighting strength--to resist aggression.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Europe

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

United States Army Europe (USAREUR), formally United States Army Europe and Seventh Army, is an Army Service Component Command of the United States Army. It is responsible for directing US Army operations throughout the United States European Command Area of Responsibility. During the Cold War, HQ USAREUR supervised ground formations primarily focused upon the Warsaw Pact militaries to the east as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) Central Army Group. Since the Revolutions of 1989, USAREUR has greatly reduced its size, dispatched US forces to Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and increased security cooperation with other NATO land forces...

Seventh United States Army was the first U.S. Field Army to see combat during the Second World War and was activated at sea when the I Armored Corps under the command of Lt. General George Patton was redesignated on 10 July 1943. The Seventh Army landed on several beaches in southern Sicily and captured the city of Palermo on 22 July and along with the Eighth British Army captured Messina on 16 August... The Headquarters elements of the Seventh Army remained relatively inactive at Palermo, Sicily, and Algiers, North Africa, until January 1944 when Lt. General Alexander Patch was assigned as commander and the Army began planning for the invasion of southern France.

The invasion was originally given the code name of Operation ANVIL but was changed to Operation Dragoon before the landing. In March 1944, Lt. General Alexander Patch was assigned to command the Army which moved to Naples, Italy, the following July. On 15 August 1944, Seventh Army units assaulted the beaches of southern France in the St. Tropez and Saint-Raphaël area. Within one month, the Army employing three American Divisions, five French Divisions, and the First Airborne Task Force had advanced 400 miles and had joined with the Normandy forces. In the process, the Seventh Army had liberated Marseilles, Lyon, Toulon, and all of Southern France.

Seventh Army then assaulted the German forces in the Vosges Mountains, broke into the Alsatian Plain, and reached the Rhine River after capturing the city of Strasbourg. During the Battle of the Bulge, the Seventh Army extended its flanks to take over much of the Third Army area which allowed the Third to relieve surrounded U.S. forces at Bastogne. Along with the First French Army, the Seventh went on the offensive in February 1945 and eliminated the enemy pocket in the Colmar area. The Seventh then went into the Saar River valley, crossed the Rhine, captured Nuremberg and Munich...

At the end of the war, the total U.S. Army strength in Europe was 2.4 million: two Army groups (6th and 12th), five field armies (First, Third, Seventh, Sixth and Ninth), 13 corps headquarters, and 62 combat divisions (43 infantry, 16 armor, and 3 airborne) as well as 11,000 tanks and armored fighting vehicles. Within a year rapid redeployments had brought the occupation forces down to fewer than 290,000 personnel...