World War II Service Maps

About the Collection

The Texas A&M University Libraries holds over 120 service maps produced by American military units during World War II. These maps — many drawn by hand, others printed for official use — trace the paths of infantry divisions, armored units, engineer battalions, and corps across the battlefields of Western Europe, Italy, and the Pacific. Together they form an intimate cartographic record of the war: where units landed, where they fought, and the routes they followed from the beaches of Normandy to the Rhine and beyond.

Unlike official military maps made for operational planning, service maps were typically created after the fact as commemorative or documentary records. Soldiers and officers drew on their own memories and unit records to chart the campaigns they had lived through — marking command posts, river crossings, major engagements, and the towns where they stopped. The result is a collection that is at once historically precise and deeply personal.

What You Will Find

The collection spans theaters and unit types:

• Western Europe — Routes of infantry divisions, armored divisions, and engineer groups from the D-Day landings through Germany's surrender, including maps for the 13th Armored Division, the 29th Infantry Division, the 36th Infantry Division, and dozens of corps and battalion-level units.
• Italy — Campaign maps for units that fought up the Italian peninsula, including the IV Corps and the 111th Engineer Combat Battalion.
• Pacific — A smaller but significant set of maps documenting operations in the Pacific theater, including naval logs and island campaign records.

Explore the Maps

Use the search and browse tools to find maps by unit name, theater, or campaign. Each item opens in a full-screen viewer with zoomable detail, allowing you to trace routes at the scale of individual roads and river crossings.