While the idea of having the 5th survive the battle of Kalisz isn't necessarily a bad one, the whole idea makes me wonder: Why would you want it to survive?
Really, people make changes to the game because they have some idea for what they're wanting to do. I know the idea came from the Eastern European sourcebook, but the whole thing boils down to "What are you going to do with the 5th Infantry Division?"
Realizing that allowing the 5th ID to survive mostly intact invalidates a massive amount of publicized work and gets rid of the whole "you're on your own" bit, it would certainly help to have a grand amount of adventures and overall goal of keeping the 5th in working order? Also realize that you're going to have a completely different make-up of Soviet forces in the area. They wouldn't have just wiped out a division, losing a portion of their forces in the process and generally be in the spririts of winning the battle. Instead, the Soviets would be on a whole different level of alertness. Any soldiers attempting any sort of operations in Soviet areas would have a lot more difficulty. Additionally, the Soviets would likely be using their gasoline equipped vehicles to encircle and cut off the 5th from any support.
So, as others have suggested, maybe using another unit, such as the 8th or the 2nd Marines would facilitate the same sorts of adventures you might have and not toss out pretty much every published adventure idea in Europe.
Also, if you're looking for more stand-up fights instead of 6 people against the world, you might think of putting the PCs in some place the Persian Gulf where the combat forces are still in more respectable fighting order. Or, make up your own situation where you can have some stand-up fights rather than E&E all the time. I did that with some PCs that made it to Cyprus and found the Greeks, Turks and British still very much in active combat operations on the island.
Or just run a campaign or adventure set DURING the war so you can really get the feel for how equipped troops could really handle things that way the loss of the 5th has that much more of an impact later on.
So while I'm not saying your idea is bad, I just think it's going to result in a whole lot of wasted information from published material, and a whole lot of work to rewrite everything so that it fits with the survival of the 5th. If you're up for all of that work, then great! If not, though, you might consider just using another unit.
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