Tough ’Ombres
90th Infantry Division, 1918
Harrison Rider
The 90th Infantry Division was formed at Camp Travis, Texas, in August 1917, almost entirely from men out of Texas and Oklahoma. In 1918 it adopted a shoulder patch built from their initials: a red T, its stem driven through a red O. The soldiers joked that the letters stood for Tough ’Ombres. The name stuck, and the division carried it ashore at Utah Beach on D-Day.
On April 23, 1945, the 90th liberated the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria. Just before the Americans arrived, the SS had driven some 14,000 inmates out of the camp and south on foot. The 90th overtook the columns on the roads and freed the survivors it found. Harry Rieder was among them. The U.S. Army Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum recognize the 90th as a liberating division of Flossenbürg.
American soldiers beside the shoes of Flossenbürg’s prisoners, April 1945
Photograph: U.S. Army Signal Corps, courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Harrison Rider exists because the 90th came down that road. We put their T at the top of our mark to remember where we come from, and to thank the men who came before us.
90th Infantry Division
Harrison Rider
Photograph: U.S. Army Signal Corps, courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Insignia: U.S. Army. The appearance of U.S. Department of War visual information does not imply or constitute endorsement.