From April to September 1944, 5,050 infantry, field artillery, and cavalry privates and noncommissioned officers were withdrawn from the division.

A scratch force of 106th Division personnel, in particular the division's 81st Engineer Combat Battalion, was organized and led by the 81st's 28-year-old commanding officer, Lt. Col. Thomas Riggs, in a five-day holding action (17–21 December) on a thin ridge line a mile outside St. Vith, against German forces vastly superior in numbers and armament (only a few hundred green Americans versus many thousands of veteran Germans).

The following day, the 424th Regiment, attached to the 7th Armored Division, fought a delaying action at Manhay until ordered to an assembly area.

A period of training and security patrols along the Rhine River followed, until 15 March, when the division moved to St. Quentin[5] for rehabilitation and the reconstruction of lost units.

The division then moved back to Germany on 25 April, where, for the remainder of its stay in Europe, the 106th handled POW enclosures and engaged in occupational duties.

1942 ("Triangular") Organization World War II All infantry members who received the Combat Infantryman Badge were also later awarded the Bronze Star.

Kurt Vonnegut served in this division and used his experiences during the Battle of the Bulge (and captivity as a prisoner of war) in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

[10] Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds (died 1985), who was captured on 19 December 1944 as a member of the 422nd Infantry Regiment, was recognized in 2015 by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum as the first American serviceman from World War II to be honored with the title Righteous Among The Nations for risking his life to save Jewish-American POWs under his command from being taken from the POW camp in Germany to concentration camps, where they likely would have been murdered or worked to death.

[11] Donald Prell, futurologist and founder of Datamation, the first computer magazine,[12] served as the leader of the second anti-tank platoon in the 422nd Infantry Regiment, and several years following the war researched the biological basis of personality with the British psychologist Hans Eysenck.