In 1939 prior to World War II, the 2nd Infantry Regiment was assigned to the 5th Infantry Division. In February 1942 the regiment was sent to Iceland for training, to provide security for U.S. bases located there, and to load and unload supply ships. It was then sent to England and then Ireland for training.

In July 1944 the 2nd Infantry Regiment along with the 5th Infantry Division landed in Normandy, France. It became part of General George Patton's Third United States Army, leading the way in the breakout from the beaches of Normandy in Operation Cobra, capturing Rheims and then seized Metz after a major battle at Fort Driant.

On 13 July 1944 SSGT Robert Bass was killed by enemy artillery fire. He was the first member of the 2nd Infantry and also the 5th Division killed in action in the war.

In 1939, the 11th joined the 5th Division at Fort McClellan, Alabama and by 1942 was on its way to Iceland and remained there for 15 months until the regiment, and the division, moved to England.

The regiment landed in Normandy on 10 July 1944 and fought its way across France as part of the 5th Infantry Division, which was assigned to General Patton's famed Third Army. The 11th Infantry played a prominent role in the reduction of the fortified city of Metz in the fall of 1944.

During the Battle of the Bulge, the 11th counter-attacked into the southern portion of the Bulge, engaging the Germans in bitter winter fighting. On 22 March 1945, the 1st Battalion made a night river assault across the Rhine River at Oppenheim, giving General Patton a division bridgehead over the Rhine two days ahead of Field Marshal Montgomery's famous crossing. The 11th Infantry ended the war in Czechoslovakia.

Shortly after its return from the European Theater of Operations, the regiment was retired.

The Rhineland Campaign, although costly for the Allies, had clearly been ruinous for the Germans. The Germans suffered some 300,000 casualties and lost vast amounts of irreplaceable equipment. Hitler, having demanded the defense of all of the German homeland, enabled the Allies to destroy the Wehrmacht in the West between the Siegfried Line and the Rhine River. Now, the Third Reich lay virtually prostrate before Eisenhower’s massed armies.

In August 1944, while his armies were being destroyed in Normandy, Hitler secretly put in motion actions to build a large reserve force, forbidding its use to bolster Germany’s beleaguered defenses. To provide the needed manpower, he trimmed existing military forces and conscripted youths, the unfit, and old men previously untouched for military service during World War II.

In September Hitler named the port of Antwerp, Belgium, as the objective. Selecting the Eifel region as a staging area, Hitler intended to mass twenty-five divisions for an attack through the thinly held Ardennes Forest area of southern Belgium and Luxembourg. Once the Meuse River was reached and crossed, these forces would swing northwest some 60 miles to envelop the port of Antwerp. The maneuver was designed to sever the already stretched Allied supply lines in the north and to encircle and destroy a third of the Allies’ ground forces. If successful, Hitler believed that the offensive could smash the Allied coalition, or at least greatly cripple its ground combat capabilities, leaving him free to focus on the Russians at his back door.