SSG Donald C. Robinson, 46th Armored Infantry Battalion, 46th Armored Infantry, 5th Armored Division

SSG Donald Clarkson Robinson was born on October 26, 1917, in Colwyn, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. His parents, James Harry Robinson (1876-1950) and Menervia (Minnie) E. (Chapelle) Robinson (1876-1940), lived at 115 South Second St., Colwyn. Donald had five brothers and sisters: Harry C., Anna E., Margaret B., George A., and Norman E.—all lived at the residence. His father was the Night Superintendent of the Union League Club in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—a job he held for 38 years.

Donald attended the Darby borough schools and graduated from Upper Darby High School in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, in 1936. His area of study was listed as Commercial Studies, focusing less on typing and stenography and more specifically on bookkeeping, accounting, commercial geography, and other courses. The Selective Service required his registration for the draft in 1939, where the notes reveal he was 5’10” tall and weighed 177 lbs. with brown eyes and hair. Since high school, he held a number of part-time jobs, but took a full-time position as a bus driver with the Aronimink Transportation Company, Upper Darby in 1940. In less than a year, his conscription notice arrived, and life would change for him, and thousands like him.

On July 10, 1941, he reported to the New Cumberland Reception Center in Fairview, Pennsylvania, just outside of Harrisburg. Five days later, he was transferred to the Armored Force Replacement Center at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where after 13 weeks of initial training with half-track-mounted mechanized infantry units (they worked in concert with armored units, in contrast to the standard rifle companies), he became a PVT with Service # 33079176.

Apparently, Robinson remained at FT Knox since the Army activated the 46th Infantry Battalion on October 1,1941, and soon redesignated the unit in January 1942 as the 46th Armored Infantry. PVT Robinson was promoted three times in two years while assigned to this unit, finally as a Staff Sergeant (SSG).

Reorganized and redesignated 20 September 1943 as the 46th Armored Infantry Battalion, an element of the 5th Armored Division, the battalion consisted of three rifle companies with each company assigned 20 M3A1 half-tracks, three ¼ ton Trucks and two 2 ½ ton Trucks. These companies operated as a unit with their usual mission being to reinforce tank units or perform assaults with the assistance of tanks. The rifle platoons sometimes rode on tanks, with 1-2 platoons riding on one tank company. Each M4 Sherman tank could carry up to 6 soldiers.

As a SSG in a rifle company, Robinson would have been a squad leader in a M3A1 Half-track, responsible for 11 other soldiers whose specific responsibilities were as an assistant squad leader, a Half-track driver, or a rifleman. But in combat with loss of personnel and equipment in the company, his experience would have created other responsibilities, such as the unit leader in the mortar, light machine gun, or anti-tank squads. SSG Robinson was, in effect, a senior NCO by the time the 46th deployed for overseas duty.

The 46th Infantry participated in the Normandy Invasion and the Liberation of France, and reached the vaunted Seigfried Line in September, 1944. The 5th Armored Division liberated the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and also had the distinction of being the first American unit to reach German soil.

More specifically, all three battalions of the 46th fought in the three-month bloody campaign of the Hürtgen Forest. These were the worst, most difficult, and trying conditions of the European Theater. Casualties were extremely high during November, and in December 1944, the 46th Armored Infantry Battalion lost half its effective strength in a single day, taking a stubbornly defended hill.

During this confusing, dangerous time, as his company became part of a new attack in an effort to dislodge the German defenders, SSG Robinson was killed in action on November 17, 1944, the second day of the Second Battle of the Hürtgen Forest.

He was temporarily interred at the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery, Hombourg, Belgium, and was returned at the request of his family to the U.S. with the Return of the Dead Program in 1947. SSG Robinson was buried at the Gettysburg National Cemetery, Adams County, Pennsylvania, Section 1, Site 224, on November 20, 1947.

Sources:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/51908027/donald-c-robinson

https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/family-tree/person/tree/30937832/person/12333673703/facts

https://www.newspapers.com/. Delaware County Times, 15 July 1941 and 27 October 1947; Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 October 1947.

Atkinson, Rick. The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945. (New York: Henry Holt, 2013).

Weigley, Russell F. Eisenhower’s Lieutenants: The Campaigns of France and Germany, 1944-1945. (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1981).

Stories Behind the Stars

Thank you, SSG Donald C. Robinson of the US Army, for your sacrifice and service to our country.

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars Project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 421,000+ of the US WWII Fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? These stories will be accessible via smartphone app at any war memorial or cemetery.

If you noticed anything mistaken in this profile or have additional information to contribute to it, please contact me at pjd15@psu.edu.

SBTSProject/Pennsylvania/Delaware

Donald C Robinson