In all its war operations, the Seventy-Ninth Division faced the enemy in Lorraine, the province which the United States was pledged to win back for France.
Victory, in the face of stubborn opposition, crowned the efforts of the Seventy-Ninth Division. It was only appropriate, therefore, that the division should select as its emblem the ancient symbol of victory, The Lorraine Cross.
The divisional insignia was worn on the left sleeve of the uniform blouse at the shoulder.
A national emblem of the independent Duchy of Lorraine for centuries, and even now a distinctive cognizance of the Border Province of France, the double traverse cross, known as the Cross of Lorraine, forms part of the armorial bearings of no less than 163 noble families. And several military units engaged in the world war adopted the cross as an emblem. These units include, besides the Lorraine Detachment of the French Army, the Seventy-Ninth Division.
Before its adoption as an emblem by the reigning house of Lorraine, the double traverse cross had a long and interesting history. Important in the history of the development of the shape of the Cross with its two beams, the design being Byzantine and emblematic of the triumph of Christ over Death, are ancient double traverse crosses, each containing fragments of the Real Cross of the Crucifixion. They are preserved in different sections of France.
The double traverse of the Cross of Lorraine comes from the substitution, for the Titulus, or inscription originally used to mark the Cross upon which Christ was crucified, of a plain horizontal arm. The origin of the double traverse cross is Eastern, and, students of the subject point out, it undoubtedly represents the Jerusalem Cross--the True Cross--with its main horizontal beam and the Titulus, represented by a plain beam in the Cross of Lorraine.
Reliquaries containing parts of the Red Cross upon which the Savior was crucified, including the reliquaries in Poitiers and Limoges, are double traverse in form. On an enamelled plate in the Treasury of Graz Cathedral, Hungary, the figure of Saint Helena, credited with the recovery of the True Cross, is represented draped in a dress which is emblazoned with a double traverse cross.