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Alsace (U.P.)—The famous Rainbow Division, Gen. Douglas MacArthur's World War I command, is in action in France with the United States Seventh Army, it was disclosed Tuesday.
Officially the United States Forty-second Division, it is commanded now by Maj. Gen. Harry J. Collins. It was activated in July, 1943, and sent overseas last November.
Incompletely trained, the Rainbow has been scheduled for gradual hardening by battle in a quiet sector. It reached the line in December, but its infantry was sent to the Seventh Army front, where it began operating at once as an emergency task force under the assistant divisional commander, Brig. Gen. Henning Linden.
The Forty-second Infantry Thus received "accelerated training."
It plugged gaps and reinforced weak spots when the German offensive in the south opened. Its battalions went into action one by one all along the Seventh Army front. On numerous occasions they absorbed the first full blow of the German drive and beat it back.
When the German offensive was stopped, the infantry was again formed up with artillery and service units, and now the Rainbow is operating as a division.
General Collins, 46, is a machine gun and infantry specialist, and has been an officer since 1917.
General Linden, 52, has been in the Army since World War I.
The Rainbow would have been ready for service earlier, but during its training period it furnished drafts from its training cadres for other divisions. These totaled some 15 thousand men.
The division's officers accuse Maj. Gen. Ira Wyche's Seventy-ninth Division, also attached to the Seventh Army, of having "kidnapped" more than five thousand of the Rainbow's men by draft.