32nd Division Memorial Highway marker
Caledonia, Racine County, Wisconsin
Marker Inscription
32nd DIVISION MEMORIAL HIGHWAY Tuscania • Buna • Haute–Alsace • Saidor • Aisne-Marne • Aitape • Oise-Aisne • Driniumor • Morotia • Meuse-Argonne • Leyte • Luzon Detached Units • Africa • Sicily • Italy "Les Terribles" Germany • Japan • Army of Occupation… transcription continues on the marker
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The Story
The 32nd Division—nicknamed "Les Terribles" by the French—was drawn largely from Wisconsin and Michigan National Guardsmen and earned a fearsome reputation across two world wars. In WWI it broke the German line at battles like Aisne-Marne and Meuse-Argonne; a generation later it fought a brutal Pacific campaign from Buna through Leyte and Luzon. This memorial highway strings those hard-won battle honors together like a service record carved in stone.
Why it matters
It ties a single Midwestern citizen-soldier division to America's two defining twentieth-century wars, showing how local Guard units carried the country's fights around the globe.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the United States entered the First World War, it leaned heavily on citizen-soldiers — National Guardsmen from cities and small towns who were federalized, trained, and shipped to Europe. The 32nd Division was one of these formations, drawn largely from the Guard of Wisconsin and Michigan: ordinary Midwesterners pulled from farms, factories, and main streets into one of the largest wars the world had yet seen.
That war, and the even larger one that followed a generation later, define the era this memorial spans. The men of one world war were the fathers and neighbors of the men of the next, and a single division designation carried forward through both, its ranks refilled by new sons of the same states.
A memorial highway honoring that division belongs to a distinctly American tradition: dedicating a stretch of public road to those who served, so that everyday travel passes, quietly, over ground consecrated to their memory.
People & events
The inscription reads almost like a service record carved in stone, and each name is a battle or campaign the division fought through. In the First World War, the roll includes the great American offensives on the Western Front — the fierce fighting in the Aisne-Marne and the vast Meuse-Argonne offensive that helped bring the war to its end. The French were so impressed by the division's relentlessness that they gave it the nickname it still carries: "Les Terribles."
A generation later the same division fought a very different, brutal war across the Pacific. The names change to the jungles and beachheads of that theater — the grinding early campaign around Buna, and the later fighting through Leyte and Luzon in the Philippines — the kind of close, exhausting combat that defined the island war. The inscription even reaches to detached units and other theaters, and closes with occupation duty in the defeated Axis homelands.
Strung together, those names tell a single division's astonishing span: from the trenches and shell-torn fields of Europe to the tropical battlefields of the Pacific, borne by citizen-soldiers of the upper Midwest across two world wars.
Its place in the American story
The 32nd Division is a vivid case study in how America has fought its wars — not primarily with a distant professional army, but with citizen-soldiers, Guard units raised from specific communities and sent to carry the nation's fights around the globe. A single Midwestern division's battle honors connect two small-town states directly to the largest events of the twentieth century.
Its nickname, earned from a foreign ally, speaks to a reputation built the hard way, in some of the most punishing combat of both wars. That such a reputation was made by Wisconsin and Michigan Guardsmen underscores how much the country asked of its ordinary citizens in uniform.
And the memorial's form — a highway carrying a list of far-flung battlefields — captures a national truth in miniature: local men, sent to fight everywhere, their sacrifices brought home and written into the very roads their neighbors travel.
If you visit
Read the marker slowly and let the list of names do its work. Each is a place where these citizen-soldiers fought and fell, and taken together they trace an arc from the Western Front of one world war to the Pacific islands of the next — a whole century's worth of service compressed into one plaque.
Notice the nickname, "Les Terribles," and remember it was earned, not chosen — a tribute paid by an ally who watched the division fight. Small details like that turn a roadside stop into a genuine encounter with the men behind the name.
As a memorial highway marker, it's meant to be met in passing, so make the deliberate choice to stop. Standing beside a modern road in Wisconsin, take a moment to consider that the local Guardsmen honored here carried their communities' names to battlefields on the far side of the world.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related events
- · World War I
- · World War II
- · Meuse-Argonne Offensive
- · Battle of Buna-Gona
Themes & tags
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