When the doors to the landing craft opened, entire units were killed almost instantly by dug-in German forces. Scores of the division's troops were among the 3,000 killed in the opening hours of the assault on Fortress Europe in one of the most gruesome and heroic battles in U.S. military lore and immortalized in the opening scene of "Saving Private Ryan."
Now, in light of a reckoning over Confederate monuments for their racist history, the storied 29th Infantry Division patch — a yin-yang pattern with blue and grey -- is being reviewed for potential retirement by the Naming Commission, a panel stood up by Congress last year to review rebel references across the military.