Rendezvous With Destiny: A History Of The 101st Airborne Division

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Text originally published in 1948 under the same title.

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Rendezvous With Destiny: A History of The 101st Airborne Division

By

LEONARD RAPPORT

AND

ARTHUR NORTHWOOD, JR.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

FOREWORD 6

MAPS 7

INTRODUCTION 10

THE U.S. 14

ENGLAND 51

NORMANDY 94

ENGLISH SUMMER 245

HOLLAND 253

MOURMELON: DECEMBER 410

BASTOGNE: THE FIRST EIGHT DAYS 412

BASTOGNE: THE CONTINUING FIGHT 558

ALSACE 637

MOURMELON: MARCH 665

SOUTH GERMANY AND AUSTRIA 689

FRANCE: THE LAST CHAPTER 731

Appendix 749

Roll Of The Honored Dead Of 101st Airborne Division 749

Division HQ and Hq Co. 749

326 Airborne Engineer Bn. 749

326th Medical Company 751

101st Airborne Signal Company Co. 751

426th Airborne QM Co. 752

101st Airborne MP Platoon 752

327th Glider lnrantry (Including 1st Battalion 401 Glider Infantry and 101st Airborne Division Reconnaissance Platoon) 752

501st Parachute Infantry 762

502nd Parachute Infantry 775

506th Parachute Infantry 787

101st Airborne Division Artillery Hq. & Hq. Battery 801

321st Glider FA Bn. 801

907th Glider FA Bn. 802

377th Parachute FA Bn. 802

463d Parachute FA Bn.* 805

81st Airborne AA Bn. 805

Individual Decorations 807

Distinguished Unit Citations 811

Foreign Citations 812

Battle Credits 814

ESTIMATED CASUALTIES: NORMANDY, HOLLAND, NORMANDY AND BASTOGNE (Before 14 January 1945) 815

ESTIMATED CASUALTIES OF MAJOR UNITS ATTACHED TO 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION AT BASTOGNE (AS OF 14 JANUARY 1945) 818

Airborne Songs and Poems 820

GORY, GORY 820

BEAUTIFUL STREAMER 821

OH, HOW I HATE TO JUMP OUT OF A TRANSPORT 822

GLIDER FLIGHT 822

THE GLIDER RIDERS 823

PURPLE HEART LANE 824

SAGA OF HELL’S HIGHWAY 825

COMMENDATION 826

GERONIMO IS DEAD 826

TONY MCAULIFFE’S ANSWER 828

NUTS! OF MCAULIFFE AND HIS PARATROOPERS 828

POEM 829

THE HILLS OF BASTOGNE 829

Abbreviations 831

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 832

DEDICATION

The 101st Airborne Division, which was activated on August 16, 1942, at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, has no history, but it has a rendezvous with destiny…

MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM C. LEE IN GENERAL ORDERS No. 5, HEADQUARTERS 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION, AUGUST 19, 1942.

FOREWORD

...their attack cost Company C an officer and two enlisted men killed...Page 610

...I saw men crying that day...

...I knew him in basic at Wheeler. He was real quiet there. Then the Army changed him, did something to him. He began hollering at guys in other companies. When everybody was tired and could hardly make it he’d go right along with his machine gun; he was a machine-gunner even back then. In the troops he was always kidding the officers. He’d even kid the colonel—not disrespectful, you understand. Everybody in the battalion, in the regiment, knew him ......He was a real soldier. He wouldn’t take a commission. We wanted to make him a staff but Pfc was as high as he wanted to go. On the range you’d see him fire, pull, a patch out of his pocket and run it through the bore. It wasn’t that he bucked—he was just a good soldier....Sir, he was the best soldier I’ve ever known. He was good in garrison and a good field soldier. He was an expert machine-gunner. Sir, he was the best soldier an officer could have...

...If every machine gun in the battalion quit firing and there was one still going it would be his...

...He got the Silver Star in Normandy. I don’t remember what for; he was just a good soldier...

...He and Kelly and Jantosik were going in business together; they were always talking about it. Now he and Jantosik are dead and Kelly’s gone home wounded...

...He saved his candy to throw to the kids. Things like that. He was lots of fun...

...He got shot in the head—never knew what hit him. I’m glad he got it the way he did. Captain Cody wouldn’t leave him out there—had his body brought back to the CP...

…He kept telling me, Kid, I’m going to get you home...

Neither of the authors of this history knew the man about whom these things were said, but one of us was for a time leader of the platoon of which he had been a member, heard many men speak of him, and recorded some of the things they said. His name was William F. Haddick, Private First Class. He was one of approximately 2,043 men of the 101st—from private to general—who died in the war. And because most of their names, like his, never have occasion to appear in this history, because their deaths, like his, are generally recorded in words such as those which head this page, and because each of them left a similar legacy, greater or less, in the memory of his comrades, we dedicate this history to Bill Haddick as representative of all the men of the 101st Airborne Division who didn’t come back.

MAPS

1. — The U. S., 1942-44

2. — Southwest England, 1943-1944

3. — Main Objectives

4. — Air and Sea Routes in Operation Neptune

5. — Drop Pattern: Pathfinders

6. — Drop Pattern: 501st Parachute Infantry

7. — Plan of Operation: Southern Exits and Bridges

8. — Drop Pattern: 506th Parachute Infantry

9. — Drop Pattern: 502d Parachute Infantry

10. — Drop Pattern: 377th Parachute F. A. Battalion

11. — Northern Flank of Utah Beachhead

12. — Enemy Forces in Cotentin Peninsula

13. — The Carentan Bridgehead -

14. — The 2d Battalion, 501st, at Les Droueries

15. — D-day Activities of 506th and 3d Battalion, 501st

16. — The Foucarville Roadblocks

17. — The Three-Patrol Action

18. — Landing Pattern: Glider Elements

19. — The 506th’s Advance, D plus 1

20. — Operations in the Douve River Area

21. — The La Barquette Actions

22. — The Plan of Attack: St. Come-du-Mont

23. — The Operation: St. Come-du-Mont

24. — The 101st’s Front: 2200 Hours, 9 June 1944

25. — Advance of the 3d Battalion, 502d

26. — The Initial Attack on Carentan

27. — Private Sterno’s Odyssey

28. — Afternoon Action at Carentan

29. — The Pincers Close South of the Douve

30. — The German Counterattack on Carentan

31. — The 327th’s Fight East of Carentan

32. — Normandy: The Final Phases

33. — The Market-Garden Area

34. — Division Landings and Disposition

35. — The Capture of Zon

36. — The Capture of Vechel

37. — The Capture of St. Oedenrode

38. — The Fight at Best by Company H. 502d

39. — The Situation on D plus 1

40. — The Attack at Best, 18 September 1944.

41. — The Situation at Best, 2000 hours, 18 September 1944

42. — The Capture of Eindhoven

43. — The Situation on D plus 2

44. — The Situation on D plus 3

45. — 1st Battalion, 501st: Situation at 1000 hours, D plus 3

46. — 1st Battalion, 501st: Situation at 1600 hours, D plus 3

47. — The Situation on D plus 4

48. — Objectives of the 502d’s Attack

49. — The Situation on D plus 5

50. — The Attack on Schijndel

51. — The Situation on D plus 6 and 7

52. — The Fight in the Sand Dunes at Eerde

53. — The Situation on D plus 8, 9 and 10

54. — The Action of 5 October 1944

55. — Disposition of 506th Units after Dark, 5 October 1944

56. — The Enemy Attack, 6 October 1944

57. — Action on 6 October 1944  

58. — Disposition of Divisional Units, 7 October 1944

59. — Disposition of Divisional Units, 13 October 1944

60. — The Incredible Patrol  

61. — Total Extent of the Bulge  

62. — Bastogne: The Situation on 19 December 1944

63. — The 501st and Team Cherry, Phase 1

64. — Action Around Wardin, Phase 1

65. — Action Around Wardin, Phase 2

66. — The 501st and Team Cherry, Phase 2

67. — Team Desobry, CCB, 10th Armored Division

68. — Plan of Attack, 1st Battalion, 506th

69. — Bastogne: The Situation on 20 December 1944

70. — The Action at Foy, 20 December 1944

71. — The Action at Marvie, 20 December 1944

72. — Bastogne: The Situation on 21 December 1944

73. — Bastogne: The Situation on 22 December 1944

74. — Night Battle at Marvie, 23-24 December 1944, Phase 1

75. — Night Battle at Marvie, 23-24 December 1944, Phase 2

76. — Bastogne: The Situation on 23 December 1944

77. — G-2 Periodic Report, 24 December 1944

78. — Bastogne: The Situation on 24 December 1941

79. — The Battle at Champs, 25 December 1944, Phase 1

80. — The Battle at Champs, 25 December 1944, Phase 2

81. — The Battle at Champs, 25 December 1944, Phase 3

82. — Bastogne: The Situation on 25 December 1944

83. — Bastogne: The Situation on 26 December 1944

84. — Bastogne Envelopment According to the German Plan

85. — Opening German Movements, 18-19 December 1944

86. — Destruction of the Longvilly Block, 19 December 1944

87. — Bastogne: The Situation 27 to 31 December 1944

88. — Bastogne: The Situation, 31 December 1944 to 2 January 1945

89. — Bastogne; The Situation at 1200 Hours, 3 January 1945

90. — Northeast of Bastogne: The 501st Attacks and is Attacked

91. — North of Bastogne: The Enemy Attacks the 502d

92. — The Enemy Attacks Champs, 4 January 1945

93. — The 101st Attacks, 9 January 1945

94. — Attack and Withdrawal, 10 January 1945

95. — Bastogne: The Situation on 13 January 1945

96. — Bastogne: The Situation on 14-15 January 1945

97. — End of the 101st’s Fight at Bastogne

98. — Reduction of the Bulge, 1-16 January 1945

99. — The Western Front: Southern Sector, 20 January 1945

100. — Alsace: The 101st’s Moder River Front

101. — Operation Oscar: The 501st’s Night Raid

102. — The Ruhr: The 101st on the Rhine, April 1945

103. — Reduction of the Ruhr Pocket, April 1945

104. — Into the Redoubt: Merchingen to Berchtesgaden

105. — Last Combat Mission: The 506th Moves on Berchtesgaden

106. — Occupation: Berchtesgaden and Austria, Summer 1945

107. — Last Station: Auxerre-Jovigny-Sens, August to November 1945

INTRODUCTION

RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY began in the fall of 1945 when the job of writing a history of the 101st Airborne Division was assigned to Lieutenant Arthur Northwood, Jr., a platoon leader in the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. Northwood asked for and obtained as co-author a friend he had known at the Parachute School at Fort Benning, Georgian a platoon leader in the 502d Parachute Infantry Regiment, Lieutenant Leonard Rapport. Work began at St. Germain-en-Laye, France, where Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, ETO Historian, offered the two officers the facilities of his Historical Section. After two months of research and writing work stopped when the 101st was inactivated, and the authors, as members of the 82d Airborne Division; were redeployed to the United States. Work began again in early 1946 at the offices of the publishers of the history, the Infantry Journal Press of Washington, D. C. That summer, Lieutenant Northwood, who had a wife and a home in New York City, returned to civilian life, leaving his bachelor co-author to finish the assignment. However, as a civilian Northwood continued to contribute his time and effort toward the completion of the book.

Lieutenant Northwood wrote the U.S. and Holland chapters. For the first eight days of the Bastogne battle, Colonel Marshall’s book, Bastogne, has been reprinted, with a few omissions and additions. Lieutenant Rapport is responsible for the balance of the history.

Airborne operations, because of their nature, are likely to be conducted with few written records. Work on this history began when most of the outstanding participants of the 101st Airborne Division’s major campaigns were dead, hospitalized, or had returned home. It very soon became apparent to the two historians that the biggest break they were to have, had a beginning in the spring of 1944.

That spring, just before Normandy, Colonel Marshall decided to cover personally the airborne phase of the invasion. Almost as soon as the fighting was over Colonel Marshall was interviewing officers and men, companies and battalions, of the 101st Airborne Division, to reconstruct significant actions. From these combat interviews came a series of detailed regimental, battalion, and small-unit studies: Cassidy’s Battalion, The Fight at the Lock, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment in Normandy Drop, and The Carentan Causeway Fight. A similar series was also written on the actions of the 82d Airborne Division.

Normandy confirmed Colonel Marshall’s interest in the airborne. When the 101st went into Holland, Marshall and his assistant, Captain John G. Westover, followed, and from this campaign came Parachute Battalion in Holland and 502d Regiment at Best.

When the encirclement at Bastogne was broken, Colonel Marshall, Captain Westover, Lieutenant A. Joseph Webber, and Artist Olin Dows came into the town to begin a study of the battle—a study made while Bastogne was still nearly surrounded and the fiercest fighting was going on. The result was Bastogne: The Story of the First Eight Days, published in 1945 by the Infantry Journal Press.

All of this material prepared by Colonel Marshall and his assistants was made available by the Historical Section of the War Department, and extensive use has been made of it in this history. Some of it had to be omitted or shortened because of length; parts have been rewritten or paraphrased to fit the requirements of this history; much of it has been used in its original form.

Besides Colonel Marshall and his assistants, literally hundreds of persons had a part in the writing of this history. After they had built up the framework of their story, the historians found that there remained many gaps. So for about a year mimeographed questionnaires were distributed monthly to over three thousand members of the 101st Airborne Division Association. Each month scores of answers were received. The historians entered into extensive correspondence with some of these veterans. Sometimes these correspondents were able to furnish names and addresses of other men who in turn were able to fill in the gaps. To all these men, whose names are too numerous to be listed here, the historians and this history are indebted.

The ideal way to have reconstructed the action of the 101st Airborne Division would have been to have followed Colonel Marshall’s method: to gather together as soon as possible the participants on the scene of action and with their help decide what happened. Since this was impossible the historians adopted the following method: First, from all available records and sources they constructed the skeleton of their narrative. This skeleton they fleshed with material obtained from interviews with available participants, from the questionnaires, and from additional material gathered from such sources as German Army records, histories and records of other units, diaries, correspondence, and the like. When the chapters were thought to be substantially complete they were taken or sent to several Army posts where there were stationed the largest remaining groups of 101st veterans. At those places these groups would gather and discuss with the authors or pass around to read the chapters, making additions and corrections, and offering criticisms and suggestions.

This method proved very effective. These men, with maps and records to jog their memories, were able to be of great assistance. Almost always there was someone with first-hand knowledge to throw light on vague or disputed points. Whenever anything questionable arose—details of actions, names of persons, dates, and so on—a question in the monthly questionnaire usually brought in at least one response from someone with first-hand knowledge.

When the history was completed there was an obvious lack of balance in the space given to the various actions. Some unit actions, such as the 502d’s fight on the Carentan Causeway which had been recorded in such effective detail by Colonel Marshall, received much more space than other actions of almost equal importance but of which no such record was made at the time and for which such a detailed account could no longer be reconstructed. Rather than balance the history by cutting, the authors are leaving in this material which otherwise might never be available to the men who fought in these actions; and they express their regret that the less detailed accounts could not have been made equally as complete even at the cost of lengthening an already long book.

Of the many veterans of the 101st Airborne Division to whom this history is indebted there were some who, because of their assignments as Division staff or command officers, were best able to get an overall picture of what happened during the 101st’s campaigns. It was to these men, at Washington, West Point, Fort Bragg, Fort Benning and Fort Monroe, that the authors turned most frequently. Of the many who gave so generously of their time in reading the manuscript and discussing personally or by letter parts of this history, the authors wish to list those on whom they most often called:

Generals William C. Lee (who sometimes talked or wrote from inside an oxygen tent), Maxwell D. Taylor, Anthony C. McAuliffe, and Gerald J. Higgins; Colonels Robert F. Sink, Ned D. Moore, Harry W. O. Kinnard, Joseph H. Harper, Allen W. Ginder, Charles H. Chase, Ray C. Allen, John H. Michaelis, Steve A. Chappuis, Thomas L. Sherburne, Jr., and Julian J. Ewell; Majors Larry Legere, Walter L. Miller, Jr., and Elvie B. Roberts; and Captains Lincoln Stevenson, Frank L. Lillyman, and Lawrence Critchell. In an effort to achieve accuracy some of these officers, at the request of the historians, read the manuscript completely through several times.

Some of the outstanding writing in this history are excerpts from an as-yet unpublished manuscript by a former soldier of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, David Kenyon Webster. A number of wartime diaries and narratives were loaned by former members of the 101st: extensive use was made of those of George E. Koskimaki, Thomas B. Bruff, and Glen A. Derber. A valuable contribution was received from Melton H. McMorries. Al Brodell collected a large amount of data for the historians during the first months of research. Credit is given throughout the text to a number of other persons whose contributions are used.

The publication of this history was made possible by the 101st Airborne Division Association which underwrote the cost of publication. The Secretary-Treasurer of the Association, Carl E. Trimble, worked constantly with the historians. No call was ever made on him on which he did not come through. This former Arizona cowboy who lost a leg at Carentan rode herd on his two historians until they finally produced a book.

Thanks are due the following: Colonel Joseph I. Greene and the staff of the Infantry Journal Press for their never-failing cooperation; the Historical Division, War Department Special Staff, for permission to use material from their publications and for reproduction rights to a number of maps; to Gordon A. Harrison, Roland G. Ruppenthal, and Mrs. Cecilia G. Markey and other members of the Historical Division; to Charles Wahrman, who contributed work on a number of maps used in this history; to the members of the Departmental Records Branch of the Adjutant General’s Office and especially to Miss Thelma K. Yarborough, Miss Margaret Emerson and Royce Thompson; to Harcourt, Brace & Company for permission to quote from Ralph Ingersoll’s Top Secret; to the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company for permission to quote from Robert E. Merriam’s Dark December; to the Military Surgeon for permission to quote the material beginning on page 469; to H. I. Phillips for permission to reprint his poem, Tony McAuliffe’s Answer ; to Bill Mauldin and United Features Syndicate for permission to reproduce the cartoon on page 714; to Press Association for permission to reproduce the photographs on pages 5, 6 and 742; to the editors of Life for their courtesy in allowing the historians to go through their picture files and to use The Incredible Patrol by Corporal Russ Engel, the map which accompanies the article and which was the basis of the map reproduced on page 404, and the photographs by Life photographers Robert Capa on page 592 and William Vandivert on pages 746 and 748, all this material being reprinted from Life and copyrighted by Time, Inc., 1945; and to the U.S. Army Signal Corps for the majority of the remaining photographs in this book.

There is one last personal acknowledgment. Only the authors know how indebted they are to Major Leo H. Schweiter, last G-2 of the 101st. If anybody can be called the father of this history, Hank Schweiter is that man.

RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY

THE U.S.

August 16, 1942...eight months after. Pearl Harbor...nine days after the Guadalcanal landing...twelve weeks before the North African invasion. An American people still unaware of the beating they were taking, and equally unaware of the immensity of the forces they had set in motion to avenge that beating. An American Army, still untried, but expanding with increasing speed, strenuously training to qualify for its coming job. Three years, less one day, before that Army and that people won complete victory.

August 16, 1942. Activation Day for the 101st Airborne Division at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. It was a strange form of activation for it meant the amoeba-like breaking-in-two of one of the most promising divisions in the United States Army, the 82nd.

The 82nd Infantry Division was not among the best accidentally. It had only recently been taken through basic training by Maj. Gen. Omar Nelson Bradley who had just left it to go on to higher assignments. It was this outfit which the War Department, in the early summer of 1942; decided to split into two new airborne divisions.

Nothing could happen in Washington without a parallel flock of rumors arising in Claiborne, and in late July one of the most fascinating reports of all started to fly across company streets, through latrines and orderly rooms: We’re going airborne! No one knew if it were true, and certainly no one knew what it meant. Privates and sergeants together hoped that any future training would be easier than the weeks of basic they had just been through. Surely, they felt, long hikes were out. And it was such an exciting rumor that even staid first sergeants were seen to lose their dignity and with spinning arms outflung, come circling into their orderly rooms shouting Airborne!

Rumors crystallized into knowledge in early August when Brig. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, who had succeeded General Bradley as commander, announced that the Division had been selected for airborne training. A few days later, word of the split was also confirmed.

With these developments for a background, the first and last review of the 82nd (still being referred to in Washington as a motorized division) was held on August 15, with Maj. Gen. Oscar W. Griswold, commander of the IV Corps, participating as guest of honor. General Bradley was also present. As the Alexandria Town Talk described it, Fifteen thousand sun-bronzed American men from all of the forty-eight United States marched together for the first and last time at Camp Claiborne as the 82nd All-American Infantry Division. But to many of the men that Saturday afternoon, the heat and glare of the midsummer Louisiana sun suddenly became more important than the news or the guests or their newly acquired military discipline. They quietly fainted in their tracks.

The next day was Sunday, ever a significant day of the week for the 101st. It was on a Sunday in June that Colonel Cole was to order the bayonet charge on the causeway at Carentan. It was on a Sunday in September that the 101st was to hurtle into Holland. It was on a Sunday in December that General McAuliffe was to call his staff together and say: All I know of the situation is that there has been a breakthrough and we have got to get up there. And it was on this. Sunday in August that Col. Don F. Pratt, Acting Division Commander, issued General Order No. 1:

The 101st Airborne Division is activated at 0001 this date, and will be composed of the following, units:

Headquarters, 101st Airborne Division

Headquarters Company, 101st Airborne Division

327th Glider Infantry

401st Glider Infantry

502nd Parachute Infantry, Fort Benning, Ga.

(without change of station)

Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 101st Airborne Division Artillery

377th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion

321st Glider Field Artillery Battalion

907th Glider Field Artillery Battalion

101st Airborne Signal Company

326th Airborne Engineer Battalion

426th Airborne Quartermaster Company

326th Airborne Medical Company

The next day Brig. Gen. William C. Lee arrived and, taking charge, gave the Division its mission in a prophetic message.

The 101st...has no history, but it has a rendezvous with destiny. Like the early American pioneers whose invincible courage was the foundation stone of this Nation, we have broken with the past and its traditions to establish our claim to the future. Due to the nature of our armament and the tactics in which we shall perfect ourselves, we shall be called upon to carry out operations of far-reaching military importance, and we shall habitually go into action when the need is immediate and extreme.

The men did not then know what he meant. They learned later.

THE FIRST LEADER

The selection of General Lee to head one of the two new divisions was peculiarly appropriate, for he more than any other man had worked to develop an airborne arm for the United States Army. Even if he had never commanded the 101st Airborne Division, as the Father of American Airborne Troops he would still be a part of this story.

General Lee was a North Carolinian and remained closely identified with his state. Ruggedly built, he walked with the gait of the outdoors-man. Born in Dunn, North Carolina, he had always maintained his residence there. He went to Wake Forest and North Carolina State College where he played on the football and baseball teams. When World War I began he was twenty-two. He entered the service with a reserve commission as a second lieutenant in the Infantry. Going to France, he saw combat duty as a platoon leader and later a company commander.

Having received his Regular Army commission in 1920, he spent the next decade doing the rounds of the army schools, and teaching military science at North Carolina State College. Always forward-looking, he gradually emerged as an expert on tank warfare with a reputation for knowing more about foreign armor than any other American. During one of his two extended trips to Europe in the thirties he spent a full year as an officer in a French armored unit. Returning to this country he taught at the Tank and Infantry School, won a B.S. in Education at the University of North Carolina, attended the Command and General Staff School, and saw further troop duty. He was then ordered to the Office of the Chief of Infantry in Washington. It was there that the airborne story really begins.

It was there that Major Lee became the leading member of that small group of men who, by their combined vision, persuasiveness, stubbornness and daring, were to bring about the creation of airborne divisions by the time the U.S. Army had to have them.

U.S. AIRBORNE HISTORY

It was an American who first sensed the possibilities of vertical envelopment. Almost two centuries ago Benjamin Franklin said: Five thousand balloons capable of raising two men each could not cost more than five ships of the line; and where is the prince who could afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them.

During World War I, Brig. Gen. William Mitchell had conceived the idea of using parachute troops to break the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front. He received provisional approval of the idea and tentatively planned for November, 1918, in the Metz sector a drop of something less than a division. It was to be a build-up drop and was to be reinforced and resupplied by a breakthrough in the sector. The 1st Division was picked as the unit which would furnish the personnel, and a few men, mostly from the Regular Army, volunteered to jump experimentally. To investigate the possibilities of the operation, General Mitchell assigned his A-3, Lt. Col. Lewis H. Brereton. Colonel Brereton found that although enough bombers could be got together from all Allied sources to transport such a force there would not be enough parachutes available (and these were of the ripcord type) nor were there any weapons other than the standard ground types. Before anything except paper planning was done the breakthrough by the Allies occurred and the war ended. Colonel Brereton was to wait twenty-six years before another war placed him in command of the world’s first airborne army.

During the twenties and thirties the American Army showed very little interest in airborne troops.

In 1928 and 1929 small-scale experiments in dropping parachutists and weapons were conducted at Kelly and Brooks Fields, Texas. But during the 1930s both the Russians and the Germans carried out extensive experiments, and peacetime paratrooping probably reached a climax with the reported Russian use of five thousand paratroopers in their maneuvers at Kiev in 1936.

It was not until war was again upon the world that the U.S. Army began to think seriously in airborne terms. Late in 1939 Capt. (later Maj. Gen.) Laurence S. Kuter of the War Department General Staff wrote the original memorandum which indicated the practicality of transporting troops by air. The memorandum was sent to the Chief of Infantry’s Office and was routed to Major Lee. Long discussions followed and preliminary plans were made. The question of where to put the new troops quickly arose. It is not precisely true, as some detractors have said, that the Infantry and the Air Corps fought over who was to have the airborne troops, and the Infantry lost. For there were three sides to the argument; the Engineers also claimed them on the ground that they would be primarily saboteurs. And the Air Corps really wanted its Marines, planning to call them Air Corps Grenadiers. But Maj. Gen. George A. Lynch, Chief of Infantry, made the point, remade many times since then, that once these, troops got on the ground they would be ground fighters. Infantry wo the argument. In the Office of the Chief of Infantry it was Major Lee who had primary responsibility for developing this new kind of fighting unit.

First thought was given to parachutists. Correspondence was initiated with the Infantry Board and the Infantry School which was to lead to placing the experimental work at Benning. Even while this correspondence was being processed the Germans gave a clear illustration of what paratroopers could accomplish by their masterful use of them in the Holland invasion. Suddenly seizing and holding bridges far out beyond their national borders, the German paratroopers made it possible for an armored column to do in hours and days what the Dutch had thought would require weeks. And Holland was quickly overrun. Little did Major Lee realize, as he speeded the paper work there in Washington, that one day his own division would land by air and help the Allies fight their way back over these same Dutch roads and bridges.

There was much to be done. After extensive inquiries, Major Lee found that the U.S. Forest Service in the West knew more about dropping men and equipment on a precise spot than any other group in America, and he went out there to learn how they did it. He also studied the meager reports on what few experiments there had been in the U.S. Army in transporting troops by air at Kelly Field, Texas, and in Panama.

Reports went in. Decisions came back. And on the 25th of June, 1940, the War Department directed the formation of a parachute test platoon at Benning, with personnel to be obtained from volunteers in the 29th Infantry on that post.

TEST PLATOON

The wording of the platoon’s mission gives an insight into the tactical use of paratroopers as originally planned, and provides a reminder of the American Army’s thinking back in 1940.

...the employment of parachute troops in Hemisphere Defense to seize landing areas where only light opposition is expected, and to secure the areas for short periods until reinforced by air infantry.

Arrangements were made to secure for this platoon the planes and parachutes it needed. With Lts. William T. Ryder and James T. Bassett in charge, it embarked on an experimental eight-week training program that was in many ways to set the pattern for all future jump training in this country. The instructor in the technique of jumping was Warrant Officer Harry M. Tug Wilson, who had worked with the 1929 Kelly Field group.

Because of the hazardous nature of their work, the members of the group were authorized flight pay as long as they met flight-pay standards.

Though stationed in Washington, Lee, now a lieutenant colonel, was responsible for over-all direction, and made at least one spectacular alteration in the training program.

Studying the parachute towers at the New York World’s Fair, he became convinced that they would help his men master the art of jumping. So on July 29 the Test Platoon was moved to Hightstown, New Jersey, for a week on the tower company’s home grounds. Later, four modified towers were installed at Benning.

Back at Benning the Test Platoon made its first jump on August 16, 1940. Each jumper used a standard Air Corps T-3, free-type; human escape parachute; and, in addition, an emergency test-type parachute. The jumps were made from B-18 bombers. A few days later, on August 21, the War Department issued the following instructions for the training of parachutists: The initial jump of each individual will be at not less than 1,500 feet; thereafter, the altitude to be determined by the officer conducting training, but at not less than 750 feet without further authority.

On August 29 the first mass jump took place, before a number of high-ranking officers.

So successful was the jump, and so successful was the work of the platoon that in mid-September the War Department authorized the establishment of the 501st Parachute Battalion. Maj. William M. Miley, former Master of the Sword at West Point, was chosen as its commander. Working under him were many of the men who were to become the combat leaders of airborne battalions, regiments and divisions—Higgins, Haugen, Coutts, Sink, Jones, Michaelis, Strayer, Howell, Ewell, Lindquist, Cole and Cassidy.

PROVISIONAL PARACHUTE GROUP

With further expansion already planned, the need for a control group on the spot became increasingly apparent. On March 10, 1941 the War Department set up, again under the Chief of Infantry, the Provisional Parachute Group, with Headquarters at Fort Benning. Lieutenant Colonel Lee was placed in command. The roster of this group contained the names of many combat leaders—Howell, Gavin, Lindquist, Yarborough, Ekman, Ewell. Together they worked on the missions that had been given the Group, developing cadres for future parachute battalions, studying parachute tables of organization and tactical doctrine and preparing training literature. The jump wings and the paratrooper hat patch came out of this period.

Shortly after the establishment of this Group, airborne thinking was modified by the spectacular German success in Crete. The parachute units in the Holland campaign had been small, auxiliary to the main effort. Crete showed that large airborne units operating independently could handle an entire campaign. To the Americans this meant that the independent battalions and small groups of saboteurs which they had been planning might be useful, but larger groups also were necessary. Crete also showed more clearly than Holland the importance of gliders as a means of getting large numbers of men and large amounts of equipment into combat. The Army, through the Air Forces, also started to experiment with them.

Expansion at Benning proceeded. On July 1 the 502d Parachute Battalion was activated. That fall it helped make airborne history by jumping twice in the First Army Carolina maneuvers, and obviously impressing the visiting brass with what a parachute battalion could do. Meanwhile, the establishment on July 10 of the Parachute School as a part of the Infantry School helped to assure a more steady flow of new men. This influx was shortly to make possible the activation of the 503d and 504th Battalions.

Soon the Alabama area of Fort Benning was procured and prepared for airborne use. A vigorous training program on the squad, company and battalion level was initiated.

Finally responding to such opinions as Lt. Colonel Lee’s, I think it would be dull of us to say that parachute troops will seldom be employed in units larger than a battalion, the War Department, on January 30, 1942, directed that four parachute regiments be constituted. The 502d and 503d were soon activated, though the former, because it was used constantly as a source of replacement of both individuals and units for the other airborne outfits, remained badly under strength.

AIRBORNE COMMAND

The establishment of these regiments served further to emphasize the necessity for increased unity of command at some level below that of GHQ. On March 21, 1942, the Airborne Command was set up, with Lee, now a colonel, in charge. Into it was incorporated the 88th Infantry Airborne Battalion, the forerunner of glider troops—a hitherto independent operation under Col. Elbridge G. Chapman. The new group moved from Fort Benning to Fort Bragg.

For his strenuous labors during the next few months General Lee, just before his retirement in 1944 from division leadership, was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal with this citation:

Maj. Gen. William C. Lee, United States Army. For exceptionally meritorious and distinguished service rendered in a duty of great responsibility while organizing and establishing the Airborne Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for the training of airborne units. Through his creative genius he inaugurated and supervised the training of the original parachute groups in the Army of the United States from which the airborne units were developed. As the result of his efforts, the airborne program which exists at the present time was instituted. Major General Lee was instrumental in the establishment of the Parachute School, Fort Benning, Georgia, 15 May 1942. With meager facilities, a few partially trained instructors, and by exceptional ability, force of character and the will to get the job done, he built the framework for a powerful striking force. The creation of the Airborne Command was the first effort of the United States to train airborne units on a major scale.

The Parachute School, now under the control of the Airborne Command, was expanded still further. The increased flow of recruits made possible the quick activation of the 504th Parachute Infantry, the completion of the 503d and the subsequent activation of the 505th, the 506th and the 507th. Training progressed to such a point that by summer unit night jumps were being undertaken. An artillery test battery was set up with Maj. John B. Shinberger in charge. Personnel and pay problems were thrashed out. Plans were laid to give all infantry divisions some airborne or air transport training. It was still thought that the Army would not have any regular units larger than a regiment specializing in airborne techniques.

THE AIRBORNE DIVISION

After two months engrossed in these problems, General Lee (he had been awarded his first star on April 19, 1942) was suddenly and secretly ordered to England in company with Generals Eisenhower, Arnold and Somervell. His mission was to find out what was expected of airborne troops in the invasion of Europe. He also was to study British airborne organization and technique as a possible model for our own. His conversations upon his return led to the inevitable recommendation —the United States needed airborne forces organized as divisions.

He indicated that the old idea of offensive employment of troops was now impractical.

In recent conferences abroad with British airborne commanders, the fixed opinion was held that enemy airfields and landing areas which will permit landing transport airplanes are generally so fortified as to make their capture a costly if not impossible operation. It is the experience of the British that it is highly wasteful to attempt to carry ordinary troops in gliders, as thirty per cent must be eliminated due to air sickness. It has been found that the selection, physical standards and special training for glider troops must approximate, that prescribed for parachute troops.

Gen. Lesley J. McNair, Commanding General of Army Ground Forces, who, up to that time had been opposed to the creation of practically all types of special-purpose divisions, reacted favorably to General Lee’s analysis. Consequently, said General McNair in a memo to his chief of staff, we should inaugurate studies without delay looking to the organization of whatever airborne divisions can be formed from one triangular infantry division, plus the available parachute regiments. He went on to set down the original over-all ratio for an airborne division—two glider units to one parachute unit. He evidently felt that General Lee agreed with him on this ratio, but General Lee, who believed very strongly in just the opposite ratio, thought subsequently that he must have been misunderstood. General McNair’s memo made it apparent that he was still thinking in terms of the two-phase landing—a small group (paratroopers) to seize the field and a larger glider group to use it.

General McNair outlined the division set-up, saying in conclusion: An airborne division should be evolved with a stinginess in overhead and in transportation which has absolutely no counterpart thus far in our military organization.

Thus was the groundwork laid. The Training Division of AGF commented a few days later on the proposed ratio between glider and parachute troops. It indicated that the current British ratio of two parachute for one glider seemed to have been the temporary and accidental result of the fact that at that moment the British had many more parachute troops available. The British also wanted to be prepared for the likely possibility that some of the parachute units might be detached at any moment for smaller independent operations. Its report made the statement that more than once saved the day for the airborne divisions: The essential point is to provide in the TO that the number of parachute regiments and the number of glider regiments may be varied to meet the training situation or to fit the specific combat operation.

On July 6, 1942, in a memo, General McNair gathered the loose threads together and proposed that the 82d Motorized Division, which had been reactivated March 25, be reorganized into two separate airborne divisions. Each division was to have a strength of 8,321 (contrasting with the regular division’s 14,000) and was to consist of two glider regiments, a parachute regiment, division artillery and service units. In this way two airborne divisions could be set up without the basic plans for army expansion in 1942 being altered. The proposal was referred to the Operations Division of the War Department, and by them to General Eisenhower. Both approved.

On July 30 the activation of two airborne divisions was ordered by Army Ground Forces to be effective August 15. This activation was to be accomplished by Third Army, with both divisions assigned to Second Army for supply and administration and to the Airborne Command for training. General Order 86, Headquarters Third Army, dated August 8, did the job. As has already been indicated, General Lee, named for a second star on August 10, arrived at Claiborne on the 17th to take charge of the 101st.

It is significant that these two airborne divisions were planned as small striking forces rather than as regular divisions. Not only was their over-all size much smaller than that of a triangular division—their units were smaller. The History of the Airborne Command records that the parachute and glider infantry regiments had a strength of 1,958 and 1,605 respectively, in contrast to the 3,000 of the standard infantry regiment. All service units were smaller than those of the standard infantry division. Weapons were much the same as in the infantry division with a predominance of the lighter types; the artillery consisted of thirty-six 75mm pack howitzers. Vehicles numbered 408 motors and 239 trailers, a total of 647 in contrast with some 2,000 in the standard infantry division, with a preponderance of jeeps and their trailers.

These figures show a division stripped down to emergency strength from the moment of activation. In the States and in England this was not so bad, even though it meant that at times a regiment would have only six jeeps with which to transact all its business. But even in a quick campaign like Normandy shortages were keenly felt. And when an airborne division was expected to hold a section of the line for a matter of weeks as in Holland or Alsace, these shortages made it extraordinarily difficult to do an effective job.

It was always easy for the casual observer to believe that an airborne division, simply because it was airborne, was more capable in every way than an ordinary division. Such misunderstanding dates from the very first announcements, as when the Alexandria Town Talk said in the previously quoted article, "The new divisions will have about 8,000 officers and men. The fire power, relatively speaking, will be far greater than it is of the infantry type [sic]."

The net result of the tables of organization was to make the airborne divisions inveterate violators of the TO. By the time the war ended they had come a long way from the standards originally laid down by General McNair.

In the matter of the two-to-one glider-paratroop ratio, there had also been reversal, at first by subterfuge, and later by regulation.

But such changes as these were well beyond the horizon as General Lee arrived in Claiborne to take over his new division.

ORGANIZING THE 101ST

General Lee’s first job was to supervise the latter stages of the reshuffling necessary to fit the men and units he received from the 82d Division into the strange new TO and get them operating as a division. Some of his organizations had been integral parts of the 82d, with a World War I record to boast about. Others were new, just established by General Order 24 of the 82d Airborne Division, dated August 15, 1942. Two were still to be constituted. This order of August 15, issued by command of Brigadier General Ridgway, was over the name of Maxwell D. Taylor, Colonel, GSC, Chief of Staff. The battle leader was present at the birth.

The older outfits were the 327th Glider Infantry, the 321st Glider Field Artillery and the 907th Glider Field Artillery. The groups activated on August 15 were the 401st Glider Infantry, the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery, the Division Headquarters and Headquarters Company, the Division Artillery Headquarters Battery, the 101st Airborne Signal Company, the 426th Airborne Quartermaster Company and the 326th Airborne Medical Company. Activated later were the 81st Airborne Antiaircraft Battalion and the 801st Airborne Ordnance Company.

The 502d Parachute Infantry also was part of the Division. It was not brought over from Benning, but waited until the Division moved to Bragg before joining it. More will be said about that later, as well as about the other two parachute regiments—the 506th and the 501st—that fought with the Division.

After its World War I experience, the 327th in 1921 had been constituted as an Organized Reserve unit, assigned to the State of South Carolina. It had been reactivated at Claiborne the preceding March along with the rest of the 82d. Filled up with men fresh from civilian life it had, under the leadership of Col. George S. Wear, just taken them through their basic training.

Since the new TO gave glider regiments only two battalions, it had many more men than it needed. Its extra personnel was used to fill out many of the other units of the Division. It was a complicated process, typified by the following paragraph of the August 15 order:

The 327th less Companies D, H, M and Antitank, is redesignated the 327th Glider Infantry and transferred to the 101st Airborne Division. Companies D, H, M and Antitank are disbanded. The personnel of the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry, less personnel of Company B, is transferred to the 401st Glider Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. The personnel of Companies H, M and Antitank are transferred to the 327th Glider Infantry, 101st Airborne Division.

The second glider regiment, newly created for its present role, was the 401st. To command it Lt. Col. Joseph H. Harper, a former battalion CO of the 326th, was chosen. Colonel Harper’s Army career had the usual varieties of peacetime service—Alaska, Hawaii, Fort Benjamin Harrison, platoon leader, company commander, aide-de-camp, post adjutant, Benning and Leavenworth. He had graduated from the University of Delaware in 1922, and taken a reserve commission. A cool man, he was destined to inherit some of the worst headaches of the division, and to deal with them in completely successful fashion. He was with the 101st until the end.

His men came from the 327th in the manner just described and from the two infantry regiments remaining in the 82d, the 325th and the 326th.

Some of the 327th personnel were subsequently sent on to fill out the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion. This also was a newly activated group made up primarily of men from the 82d’s 307th Battalion. In accordance with the basic ratio of the Division, it was to have two glider companies and one parachute company. There were as yet no jumpers to put in such a company. So on September 4, the first group of forty-five volunteers was sent to the Parachute School at Fort Benning. The man who was to command this Battalion in Normandy, John C. Pappas, was at this time a captain in charge of Headquarters and Service Company.

Turning to the artillery battalions, the 321st Glider Field Artillery Battalion, like the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, had been reactivated in March and taken a new group of men through basic training. It boasted that in the subsequent tests it made the best score in the Division. However, all its work during basic had been with 155s and 105s. The change to airborne status meant that it had to start all over again with the pack 75. Lt. Col. Edward L. Carmichael, who commanded it at the time of the split, was to continue as CO throughout combat.

In World War I the 907th was known as the 307th Ammunition Train. Made an Organized Reserve unit in 1921 it changed its designation in January of 1942 and was activated again in March. For it, as well, as for the 321st, going airborne meant the loss of C Battery and Service Battery (or the AA-AT Battery). Among the extra men those who were willing to volunteer for the Parachute School later served with the 377th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion. Lt. Col. C. F. Nelson assumed command of the 907th and led the battalion until inactivation after the war.

The 377th started off as a parachute battalion without any jumpers —and it was in for a rough period of training that fall. All the new artillerymen it received had to be sent to jump school. To add to the confusion, most of the parachute replacements sent to fill out its roster were infantrymen rather than artillerymen, and had to be retrained.

With this personnel situation, the 377th had to take up where the Airborne Command had left off in developing one of the most difficult small-scale operations of the war—getting a battalion of artillery into combat by parachute.

Experiments by the Airborne Group and the Airborne Command had shown that the pack 75mm howitzer and its ammunition could be broken down into nine loads that the 24-foot cargo chute could carry. The problems of assembly, says the unit historian, establishment of a complete communications net (both wire and radio), occupation and organization of position, organization of fire direction, employment of survey, and ammunition supply and resupply — all these remained to be worked out. Lt. Col. Benjamin Weisberg, who was to command the battalion on through Normandy, took charge in October.

Division Headquarters Company, Signal Company, Medical Company and Quartermaster Company were activated in the original order, each being composed of about half the officers and men of the similar unit in the 82d.

The Signal Company was made up of four small platoons whose names serve to describe the company duties—Radio, Wire, Message Center, and Headquarters. The growth of this company illustrates what has already been said about General McNair’s stinginess (his own word) in cutting the Division down too far, and its subsequent regrowth. Here are the dates of the three TOs under which the company operated, and the number of officers and men which each allowed:

5 September 1942: 4 officers, 81 enlisted men

10 August 1943: 4 officers, 1 warrant officer, 95 enlisted men

16 December 1944: 10 officers, 4 warrant officers, 271 enlisted men

Division Headquarters originally included Headquarters Company, the Reconnaissance Platoon, Transportation Platoon, MP Platoon, and the personnel of Division Headquarters. The Division had two bands at the time, but neither was in Headquarters, one being with Division Artillery and the other belonging to the 502d. The Reconnaissance Platoon was transferred to the 401st in mid-1943, but was sent back in a 1945 reorganization. At the latter time, the Division Artillery band was also put in Division Headquarters Company.

The 326th Medical Company was set up with ten officers and 215 enlisted men. Its commanding officer, Maj. William E. Barfield, was to become Division Surgeon at Bastogne.

The Quartermaster Company received all its members from the 407th Quartermaster Battalion of the old 82d. It started with five officers and eighty-six enlisted men.

The 801st Ordnance Company was not activated until the 2d of October, 1942. It was then made up of four officers and sixty-eight enlisted men, more than half of whom had come from the old Quartermaster Battalion, and had to be retrained.

Also activated after the mid-August date was the 81st Airborne Antiaircraft Battalion filled primarily with men from the old 327th, who came either directly from or via the 401st. It was set up to include six 71-man batteries. Batteries A, B, and C were antitank, armed with the 37mm AT gun. Batteries D, E and F were antiaircraft, armed with .50 caliber machine guns. Its first commander was Lt. Col. William C. Scoggins. When discovery of his night-blindness during maneuvers in England led to his transfer, he was replaced by his Executive Officer at the time of activation, Capt. X. B. Cox.

Such were the units that were to operate under General Lee. To assist him in running them as a division he received a group of executives the first of whom was the Assistant Division Commander, Brig. Gen. Don Forrester Pratt. Like General Lee, General Pratt had entered the Army during World War I, but unlike him had not been sent overseas. His military experience between the wars was typical, culminating in his becoming Assistant Division Commander of the 82d. With the split, he came over to the 101st. His general rank dates from August 1 although he issued the activation order as a colonel. Well-liked by both officers and men, he played a vital role in the development of the Division until his death in Normandy.

The third general officer was Anthony C. McAuliffe, the Division Artillery Commander. Unlike the other two, he was a West Pointer of the class of 1918. His additional schooling in the Army included the Field Artillery Basic School, the Command and General Staff School and the Army War College. Upon finishing at the latter in 1940, he worked for two years with the War Department General Staff, and then in the Services of Supply. He was developing weapons, clothing and equipment for the Army Ground Forces when appointed to the Division. His general rank dates from August 8, 1942. An easy-going, jovial man he could come quickly to a hard decision when one was necessary.

As Chief of Staff, General Lee had Col. Charles L. Keerans, Jr. A West Pointer (1919), Keerans had served under General Lee at Bragg as G-4 of the Airborne Command. With the 101st, he handled the key job in a masterful way, at the same time gaining a certain amount of notoriety for the equally masterful way he handled a motorcycle over the roads of Claiborne. He left the 101st the following January to become Assistant Division Commander of the 82d. As a brigadier general, lie was killed in the attack on Sicily. To Colonel Keerans must go the credit for the smooth working of the Division staff. Unlike other AGF divisions the top five men did not have a quiet month together at Leavenworth to learn their new jobs. Colonel Keerans trained them at their posts.

There was hard work still to be done at Claiborne, but it was made easier by the almost universal round of promotions and mutual congratulations which the staffing of a new division had made possible. In this atmosphere strangers familiarized themselves with each other, and with their new duties. Among the less significant changes, officers’ insignia of rank were ordered on the left side of their caps, and the jump patch, unit by unit, moved over to the right, the 502nd officers being the last to go along.

The reviews continued, as did ceremonies for the presentation of colors to new units. It was still possible to cover the eighteen miles to Alexandria, which offered all the mushroomed attractions of a typical Army town, and