The 30th Infantry Division was a unit of the Army National Guard in World War I and World War II. It was nicknamed the "Old Hickory" division, in honor of President Andrew Jackson. The Germans nicknamed this division "Roosevelt's SS". The 30th Infantry Division was regarded by a team of historians led by S.L.A. Marshall as the number one American infantry division in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), involved in 282 days of intense combat over a period from June 1944 through April 1945. In the present day the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team is now a part of the North Carolina National Guard and their most recent combat deployment was in 2019. World War I The division was originally activated as the 9th Division (drawing units from North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee) under a 1917 force plan, but changed designation to the 30th Division after the American entry into World War I in April 1917. It was formally activated under its new title in October 1917, as an Army National Guard division from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. In May 1918 the division was sent to Europe and arrived in England, where it departed for the Western Front soon after. The division, along with the 27th Division, was assigned to the U.S. II Corps but did not serve with the main American Expeditionary Force (AEF) and was instead attached to the Second Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), trading American equipment for British equipment. The major operations the 30th Division took part in were the Ypres-Lys, and the Somme offensive, in which it was one of the two American divisions that assisted the Australian Corps to break the Hindenburg Line in the Battle of St. Quentin Canal. The division had, in three months, from July until October 1918, sustained 1,237 officers and men killed in action (KIA), with a further 7,178 wounded in action (WIA) or missing in action (MIA). Interwar period World War II Early years Following the entrance into the Second World War in December 1941, the division was called into federal service on 16 September 1940; it was a National Guard formation from the states of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. It was initially assigned to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, on 16 September, where it was located until October 1942. The 30th was moved to Camp Blanding, Florida,