101st Airborne Division
Lieutenant Frank Boccia could hear the platoon ahead moving forward, reconnoitering by fire, spraying the trail and the jungle alongside it with M16 and M60 fire. Read more
101st Airborne Division
It was May 23, 1945, roughly a year before the execution of Julius Streicher, founder and publisher of the vilest anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda of the war. Read more
101st Airborne Division
Paratrooper Ed Mauser never forgot the first thing he saw when he leaped from the doorway of his C-47 transport plane in the opening hours of D-Day, June 6, 1944. Read more
101st Airborne Division
Almost every soldier on western European battlefront wanted to get to Paris. Once it was liberated on August 25, 1944, it became a mecca for Allied soldiers on leave who filled the streets, bars, and historic buildings, enjoying a brief respite from the war. Read more
101st Airborne Division
“In the years to come everyone will remember Arnhem, but no one will remember that two American divisions fought their hearts out in the Dutch canal country,” wrote U.S. Read more
101st Airborne Division
On Tuesday, June 6, 1944, at nearly three in the morning, Chicago-native Lieutenant John E. Peters safely landed Snooty, his Douglas C-47 Skytrain, on the massive 5,800-foot runway at Greenham Common airfield in southern England. Read more
101st Airborne Division
The paratroopers of the 3rd Battalion, 506th Parachute InfantryRegiment (3/506), 101st Airborne Division fought long and hard during Operation Market-Garden, the Allied assault through Holland aimed at piercing into northern Germany and ending the war. Read more
101st Airborne Division
With his troops in a bitter fight with German forces in northern France in the late summer of 1944, General Omar Bradley, commander of the Allied 12th Army Group, could not believe his ears. Read more
101st Airborne Division
“You’re crazy to go out there!” a paratrooper shouted to medic Al Mampre as he bolted from a trench outside of the Dutch town of Eindhoven. Read more
101st Airborne Division
The green light lit up the inside of the Douglas C-47 Skytrain’s fuselage, and 20 paratroopers from Easy Company’s Stick 70, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division charged out the door. Read more
101st Airborne Division
“Move out!” shouted Lieutenant Richard “Dick” Winters to the men of Easy Company. It was 6 o’clock on the morning of June 12, 1944, and Easy Company’s paratroopers braced themselves to attack the southern section of Carentan. Read more
101st Airborne Division
“Oui.” It was one of the few words 101st Airborne paratrooper Norwood Thomas knew in French, and it served him well on the morning of June 6, 1944. Read more
101st Airborne Division
By Kevin M. Hymel
It was December 19, 1944, one day before the Siege of Bastogne. Shortly after 10:30 am, 26-year-old Major William Desobry picked up his field telephone, called his combat commander, Colonel William Roberts, and asked if he could withdraw from the Belgian village of Noville. Read more
101st Airborne Division
What was it like to be a WW2 paratrooper, parachuting into Normandy in the opening minutes of June 6, 1944—D-Day? Read more
101st Airborne Division
“DON’T WORRY, GUYS––the Airborne is here!” shouted Private Howard Buford to the worn-out GIs he and his fellow paratroopers passed on the snowy road through Bastogne in the early hours of December 19, 1944. Read more
101st Airborne Division
During World War II, the use of airborne forces to “vertically envelop” the enemy went from an untested theory to a major part of offensive tactics, first for Germany and then the Allies. Read more
101st Airborne Division
In an effort to calm his nerves just before he jumped into Normandy on D-Day, Lud Labutka thought it might be a good idea to accept the drink being offered from the paratrooper sitting across from him on their C-47 transport as it crossed the English Channel. Read more
101st Airborne Division
Something about the series Band of Brothers struck a chord with television viewers all over the world. Read more
101st Airborne Division
Background: In this, the third and final installment of a three-part series excerpted from The Lions of Carentan, the 2011 book by a respected German military historian, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6 (FJR 6) has been pushed out of Ste.-Mère-église, Read more
101st Airborne Division
Background: Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6, under the command of Major Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte, had the fortune (or misfortune) to be stationed in Normandy at the time of the Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944. Read more
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