101st Airborne

Origins

The 101st Airborne Division was activated on 16 August 1942 at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, as the U.S. Army raced to build a parachute force for World War II. Its first commander, Major General William C. Lee, often called the father of the American airborne, told his new soldiers that the division had "no history, but it has a rendezvous with destiny." The division's shoulder patch shows the head of a bald eagle, taken from Old Abe, the eagle mascot of a Wisconsin regiment in the Civil War, and from it came the nickname the Screaming Eagles.

Organization & Training

In the Second World War the division was built around parachute and glider infantry, chiefly the 502nd and 506th Parachute Infantry Regiments and the 327th Glider Infantry, with the 501st Parachute Infantry attached for the campaign in Europe. Every paratrooper was a volunteer, and each went through jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, where five qualifying jumps earned the silver jump wings. The 506th trained at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, running again and again up nearby Currahee Mountain, whose name became the regiment's motto.

After the war the division was reactivated in 1956 at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, still its home. In 1968 it was converted to an airmobile division and in 1974 it became the Army's only air assault division, moving by helicopter rather than parachute.

Weapons & Equipment

In 1944 riflemen carried the M1 Garand, and many officers and support troops the folding-stock version of the M1 Carbine, designed with airborne troops in mind. The Thompson Submachine Gun and the M1911 Pistol were widely carried, and squads relied on the M1918 BAR and the M1919 Browning Machine Gun for heavier fire. Paratroopers wore a version of the M1 Helmet with a stronger chinstrap for the jump. In Vietnam the division fought with the M16 Rifle, the M60 Machine Gun and the M79 Grenade Launcher. Today's Screaming Eagles carry the M4 carbine, the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon and the SIG Sauer M17, with snipers using weapons such as the M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System.

Notable Actions

In the first hours of 6 June 1944 the division dropped by night over Normandy. Cloud and flak scattered the aircraft, but small, mixed groups fought their way to the causeways leading inland from Utah Beach, which helped the seaborne landings of the Normandy Landings succeed. The division then took the town of Carentan against German paratroopers of the Fallschirmjäger. In September 1944 it jumped into Holland for Operation Market Garden and held the long road north that its men called Hell's Highway.

Bastogne made it famous. In December 1944 the division was rushed by truck into the Ardennes to hold the road junction town against the German offensive known as the Battle of the Bulge. Surrounded, short of winter clothing and ammunition, and shelled for days, it refused a German demand to surrender on 22 December with the acting commander Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe's one-word reply, "Nuts!" Tanks of Patton's Third Army broke through on 26 December, though the division has always said it did not need rescuing.

In Vietnam the 101st fought from 1965 to 1972, and in May 1969 took Hill 937, known as Hamburger Hill, at heavy cost. In the 1991 Gulf War it carried out a huge helicopter assault deep into Iraq as part of the coalition's great western sweep, and it later served repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Legacy

Easy Company of the 506th, followed from training to the war's end in Stephen Ambrose's book Band of Brothers and the television series made from it, became the best-known rifle company of the war. The division's larger legacy is the idea it has carried since 1942: light infantry that arrives from the air, where the enemy least expects it.

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