Linden, Henning.

Linden, Henning, born 03-09-1892 as Carl Henning Linden in Mound, Minnesota, to Swedish immigrant parents, Charles A. Linden and Mary (born Seaquist) Linden. Henning completed the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at the University of Minnesota and was a Cadet Captain, graduating in 1917 with a degree in civil engineering. Henning then joined the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry, assigned to the 40^th Infantry Regiment . He commanded a company of the 33rd Infantry Regiment  under Brigadier General John William Heavey   in Panama during World War I, and afterwards served in several command and staff assignments of increasing rank and responsibility. John Heavy died  on 18-11-1941, age 74 in Washington D.C. In the early 1920s Linden was Assistant Professor of Military Science for the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at the University of Maryland. In the early 1930s Linden was adjutant of the garrison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  In 1936 he graduated from the Command and General Staff College and was reassigned to Fort McClellan, Alabama. In the early 1940s Linden was an Assistant Professor of Military Science for the ROTC program at Boston University. At the start of World War II he was commander of the 53^rd  Infantry Regiment in the Aleutian Islands as the United States retook them from Japan. In 1943 he was promoted to Brigadier General as Assistant Division Commander of the 42^nd, nicknamed “Rainbow Division” Infantry Division . This division with a famous commander in the first war Douglas MacArthur  had the next casualties during their 264 days of combat, killed 2.058 and wounded 12.625. MacArthur was also the one who advised the nickname “Rainbow” in 1918. Linden commanded its three infantry regiments as “Task Force Linden” which arrived in Marseilles, France that fall, deployed in an attempt to prevent two German armies in Alsace from breaking out, and successfully defended along a 30-mile front. Two units of “Task Force Linden”, the 222^nd  Regiment and 1st Battalion 242^nd  Regiment, were awarded Presidential Unit Citations  for extraordinary heroism. At the end of January, 1945 the rest of the division arrived in France, and as part of the Seventh Army , under General Lieutenant, John Oakes   the 42^nd penetrated German defenses in the Haardt Mountains, crossed the Siegfried Line, bridged the Rhine River, and captured the cities of Wurzburg, Schweinfurt, Fürth and Donauworth^. On 29-04-1945 General Linden led a group of reporters including Marguerite Higgins and a 42^nd Division detachment as the soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp, generating international headlines by freeing more than 30.000 Jews and political prisoners.

Death and burial ground of Linden, Henning.

  After World War II he served in occupied Austria and was Chief of the Army’s Military Arts Department until he retired in 1952. Brigade General Henning Linden died in McLean, Virginia on 15-03-1984, old age 91. He is buried with his wife Marguerite, who died also old age 86, on 04-09-1979, at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 1.

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