Camp Beauregard - 761st Tank Battalion

The 761st Tank Battalion was activated at Camp Claiborne on April 1, 1942, trained on light M5 Stuart tanks, and moved to Fort Hood for medium Shermans. It landed at Omaha Beach on October 10, 1944, joined Patton's Third Army, and saw its first combat on November 7. It went to the aid of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and with the 71st Infantry Division it liberated the Gunskirchen concentration camp on May 4, 1945. Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously in 1997.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — steps away
  A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.
• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 4.2 mi
  Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 4.8 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Kent Plantation House — 6.5 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.

More markers nearby

• State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy — 2.1 mi
• Jefferson Highway — 2.5 mi
• Central Louisiana State Hospital Cemetery — 3.3 mi
• Louisiana College — 3.4 mi