Episode 5: Tom tells the hair raising story about how the men of the 501st Parachute Regiment loaded into their aircrafts and took off to jump into Normandy. The para-troopers flew towards France at low level, enduring fog, flooding on the ground, and Nazi boobytraps on the dropzones.
or Login
Comments
To comment on this article please join/login. Here's a sample of the comments on this post.
Dick Winters was in E Co, 2 Battalion of the 506th PIR (parachute infantry regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Mr. Rice was in C Co, 1st Battalion, 501st PIR, 101st Airborne. Each regiment would have had in the neighborhood of 2000 men jumping into Normandy, and Rice's entire battalion was probably around 800 men. The 101st Airborne, at full strength, would have had as many as 15,000 men on the roster prior to D-Day. All told, the Allies had 1,452,000 troops in Normandy by late July. During nearly all of that time, the men who jumped in with both the 101st and the 82nd divisions were involved in small unit actions at the squad, platoon, and company level, and probably never saw the rest of their battalion, let alone the rest of their regiment. In all likelihood, Rice never laid eyes on Winters, during training or in combat.....or if he did, he didn't know who Winters was.
What did he say about Dick Winters? That would have been interesting to hear.