92d Division
 365th Infantry in Serchio Valley near Viareggio, 10 January 1945, from CMH
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To bolster crumbling units and to try out officers in new positions where they might obtain better results, officers were transferred among platoons, companies, and battalions with such frequency that at times men were barely aware of who their current commander was. Action to correct deficiencies, especially in leadership, by the reduction of noncommissioned officers and the shifting of officers from one unit to another was doomed to failure, for the supply of better material was limited. Enlisted replacements were few and those who did arrive seldom provided better material. Many of those arriving were AWOL's from the East Coast Processing Center and rehabilitees from the African Disciplinary Barracks. Most of them, unhappy to find themselves in a front-line regiment, "growled a good deal." It became easy for the older members of the combat team to listen to their gripes.
Though the 92d Division later estimated that many of its replacements, especially those from the 972d Infantry, were well trained, the replacement system in the United States, geared as it was to loss replacements for white but not Negro units, was unable to supply Negro infantry replacements in bulk. A new program expanding the training of Negro replacements in the United States was begun, but these men would not be available for several months to come. The IV Corps had already begun to worry about replacements for the division while it was still on its way to the theater. Until Negro replacements were available, the division, no matter what its efficiency, could not be used for strong offensive operations. Should it suffer heavy losses it had neither a reserve nor a replacement pool to draw upon. Not much could be expected from the overstrength of the 92d Division for, in addition to the 1,300 qualified replacements, the overstrength contained half of the division's Q-minus men from Fort Huachuca- the psychologically rather than physically unfit men of the casual camp- and 225 East Coast Processing Center AWOL's. All of the thousand-odd Q-minus men would have been included but for the War Department's desire to relieve the division of too many potential courts-martial candidates.
In the meantime, through October, the remaining units of the 92d Division were entering Italy, bringing with them, in addition to the Q-minus and East Coast Processing Center men, all of the other accumulated problems of Fort Huachuca and the training period. The remaining regiments of the division had suffered somewhat, inevitably, by the "selection out" of some of their best men for the 370th Regimental Combat Team. With the 92d were officers who, in August and September just before departure, had tried desperately to be relieved under the rotational policy for white officers with Negro troops, only to be met with indignant denials that the division had knowledge of any such policy-the month for departure was no time to encourage an exodus of even unwilling officers.47 One unit, the engineer battalion, had had a typical morale-breaking ruckus illustrative of the depth and complexity of interpersonal and inter-group relations within units of the division. The morale of this battalion came forcibly to divisional attention when, shortly after arriving in Italy and before joining the division, an unknown assailant shot an officer who lay asleep in his tent. No amount of querying could uncover the assailant's identity nor could responsibility for the weapon involved be fixed. The investigating officer, considering that there must be some truth in the many accounts so often repeated to him, summed up a "most unpleasant situation" which, he considered, "would seriously impair the effectiveness of this organization in combat."
As they arrived in Italy, the remaining units of the 92d Division prepared for entry into the line upon call. The 371st Infantry arrived at Leghorn on 18 October and began to relieve the 370th Infantry on 31 October. The 365th Infantry arrived between 29 October and 8 November, its first element entering the line on 8-9 November. The last units arrived on 22 November. At the beginning of November, the mission of the 92d Division, now under Fifth Army control (Task Force 92 ceased to exist on 6 November) , was to command its coastal sector and prepare its remaining elements for action. It was to "hold maximum enemy force in coastal area; continue to exert pressure, occupying any areas the securing of which is deemed within its capabilities" and protect the left flank of Fifth Army. That army had failed to break through to Bologna as hoped. The 92d Division's own organic elements now held the approximately twenty-mile-wide line from the sea to Barga. This, with IV Corps' line to the right, was, as General Clark described it, "the formidable half of the line that we had decided not to attack." Fifth Army as a whole went into a period of active defense preparatory to resuming the offensive aimed at the Po Valley. This offensive, in conjunction with an Eighth Army attack, was tentatively planned for about 1 December.
text from Chapter 19 of The Employment of Negro Troops by Ulysses Lee, The U. S. Army in World War II, 1966, CMH Pub 11-4Ê