Gen. James "Jumpin' Jim" Gavin, 82nd Airborne Division Options

[Irishmaam]

I see him mentioned in numerous spots when I did a search but not in the Veterans Thread .If it is somewhere I missed it please feel free to move this..Thanks

Remembering D-Day
By Chuck Baldwin
CNS Commentary
06 June, 2000

On this date 56 years ago, the invasion of France by Allied Forces began under the code name, "Operation Overlord."

More than 5,000 ships and 1,200 transport planes carried more than one quarter of a million men into the greatest military invasion in the history of the world. By July 1, over one million soldiers had landed. 50 infantry divisions and 10 tank divisions of Hitler's best met them. At stake were the fate of the war in Europe and the fate of freedom for the world.

It was the German Field Marshal, Erwin Pommel, who predicted that, "For the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day." How right he was.

By the end of that day over 2,500 allied soldiers and sailors had slipped into eternity. No one knows how many Germans did the same. The end of that day also brought a great victory for the allied forces and the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.

The Pathfinders and Paratroopers arrived first. It was Brig. Gen. James "Jumpin' Jim" Gavin who warned his troops, "When you land in Normandy you will have only one friend: God." So, in the pre-dawn darkness of 6 June 20,000 Paratroopers descended into occupied France.

Eisenhower was more worried about the airborne operation than any other part of the invasion. His fears were warranted. Of the 120 Pathfinders only 38 landed on their targets. It is believed that Pvt. Leonard Devorchak was the first American killed on D-Day.

Some of the Paratroopers fell into swollen swamps, others into the channel itself and with heavy-weighted equipment on their backs, drowned - some in less than two feet of water. Some were carried by brisk winds into the occupied town of Ste. Mere-Eglise.

As fate would have it, a villa had caught fire in the Town Square, and about 100 inhabitants were busy passing buckets, trying to put out the fire. Some of our brave Paratroopers landed screaming in the middle of that blazing inferno. Others were machine-gunned to death as they descended into the heavily armed village.

Our men were strewn and scattered over miles of enemy territory, enlisted men without officers and officers with no men to lead. Numbered in the latter group was Major General Maxwell Taylor.

He found himself with a plethora of officers, but only three enlisted men. He told them, "Never have so few been commanded by so many." If confusion and disarray prevailed among our Paratroopers, however, it was even more in evidence among the German defenders. They still had no idea that the invasion had begun.

As dawn broke, the allied armada descended upon the beaches of Normandy. The names of those beaches have been indelibly carved into our minds: Sword, June, Gold, Omaha and Utah. Under the command of General Montgomery, the British 2nd Army attacked Sword, June and Gold. The American 1st Army stormed Utah and Omaha.

The resolve of the infantry soldiers was unmistakable. On the H.M.S. Empire Anvil, Cpl. Michael Kurtz said to his squad, "As soon as we're spotted we'll catch enemy fire. If you make it, okay. If you don't, it's a good place to die. Now let's go."

One free Frenchman numbered among that gallant group said, "We shall die on the sands of our dear France, but we will not turn back." Such was the commitment and dedication of those brave men.

With heavy artillery from innumerable naval guns and with the strafing of formation after formation of more than 11,000 Air Force and Navy planes, the invasion began. Perhaps the worst was at Omaha Beach. "Bloody Omaha" they called it.

General Omar Bradley was concerned about Omaha Beach. He knew his 1st Infantry Division was attacking some of Germany's most battle-proven divisions, the tough 352nd. Like Eisenhower's concern for the Paratroopers, Bradley's fears were justified. Landing craft were blown apart as they came in.

German mortar and machine-gun fire were omnipresent. Misfortune piled upon misfortune. Many soldiers landed in the wrong sectors. Demolition engineers, who were supposed to blow paths through the beach obstacles, were egregiously behind schedule. As a result, demolition teams were running into invading infantrymen. Many assault troops were taking shelter behind the very obstacles the engineers were trying to blow up.

During those initial moments it was as if time stood still and Armageddon had begun. Bodies and parts of bodies were floating on the water, and yes, flying through the air! Every wave of the sea regurgitated more bodies, more blood, more ruined equipment. The young medics' accounts of this awesome spectacle are incredible.

Sgt. Alfred Eigenberg told of seeing a soldier whose leg was "laid open from the knee to the pelvis as neatly as though a surgeon had done it with a scalpel." The wound was so deep that Eigenberg could see the femoral artery pulsing. The young medic did the only thing he knew to do. He folded the nearly sliced halves of the man's leg together and carefully closed the wound with safety pins.

Over at Utah Beach it was a different story. Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt, the 57-year-old son of the former President, and the only general to land with first-wave troops, studied to determine why his forces had met with so little resistance.

He quickly figured it out. They had landed in the wrong place. 30,000 troops and 3,500 vehicles were right behind him. If a corrective decision was not made immediately, a major defeat was imminent. Roosevelt turned to his battalion commanders and said, "We're going to start the war from here." He subsequently took his 4th Infantry Division and drove inland, taking out German positions wherever they found them.

On the beaches of Sword, June and Gold, the British and Canadians were landing. These troops encountered less resistance than did the Americans on Omaha. They would make D-Day's greatest advances, but they failed to capture their principal objective: the city of Caen. There they encountered the plucky 21st Panzer Division, who held on to the town for the next 5 weeks.

By mid-morning it was obvious the Allies would succeed, and by nightfall more than 150,000 allied troops were ashore with thousands more on their way. Germany surrendered less than a year later.

In all historical incidents, especially those of major significance, there are stories behind the stories. Nowhere is this more in evidence than in the stories of great battles.

We are familiar with the story of that dastardly winter in 1775 when Washington's troops were starving and freezing. It looked as if our valiant struggle for independence was about to crumble.

Washington's response was to cross the Delaware River and attack a far superior, fresher, better-equipped, better-fed, better-conditioned enemy. The rest is history.

What you may not recall is that when Washington's troops began crossing the Delaware the adversarial guards sent a word of warning to the Hessian general that an attack had begun. Washington would have certainly been defeated had the commander responded to that message. The general was in the middle of a huge victory party, however. Being handed the warning, therefore, he simply wadded it up and put it in his pocket without even reading it.

It is very interesting that June 6 is not only the date of the D-Day invasion, it is also the birthday of Mrs. Erwin Rommel. Because of this, the great commander had left Normandy and returned to Germany to be with his wife.

He was sure the weather was too inclement for an attack. Rommel left Normandy on June 4. On June 5 Allied Chief Meteorologist, Capt. J.M. Staff of the Royal Air Force told General Eisenhower that there would be twenty-four hours of relief in the weather - just twenty-four hours.

Eisenhower deliberated his decision for about five minutes. Slowly he said, "I am quite positive we must give the order. I don't like it, but there it is. I don't see how we can do anything else."

What did Washington and Eisenhower have in common? Did Washington know that the enemy Commander would discard the warning of his attack? Did Eisenhower know Rommel would be gone from the battlefront? What caused that twenty-four hour clearing in the weather the same day Rommel was home for his wife's birthday? What is the thread that binds so much of our country's history together?

President Lincoln may have said it best. During those dark days of the Civil War, an aide said the President, "I sure hope God is on our side." Mr. Lincoln replied, "I am not at all concerned about that for I know that God is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation be on God's side."

When our troops crossed the Delaware River, we were fighting for liberty. When our forces landed on the Normandy coast, we were fighting for liberty. When the flag was hoisted over Iwo Jima, we were fighting for liberty. When we sent our young men to the icy mountains of Korea, the steamy jungles of Vietnam and the desert sands of Iraq, we were fighting for freedom.

When men fight for liberty, God fights with them! In our National Anthem, the inspired pen of Francis Scott Key asks the question, "Oh say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" Thanks to the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Coast Guardsmen of D-Day, Old Glory still waves!

The author is the host of the Chuck Baldwin Live radio program.

[STRIKEHOLD]

Irishmaam,

Thanks for adding this post! I had the priviliage of meeting Gen. Gavin on a couple of occasions and my dad always thought very highly of him even though he did come from the 505th which was of course not as good as the 504th! (IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) One thing I also know is he was also called Slim Jim Gavin.

Regards,

Jim

[Irishmaam]

Thats what I love about this place.So many of the people here know one of these great heros, or have actually met them, or have served with them etc. That is one amazing thing isnt it Thanks Jim
Cindy

[Irishmaam]

AIRDROP:
BEGINNING OF
THE LONGEST DAY
BY CORNELIUS RYAN
At a few minutes past midnight on D day, the first
wave of Allied assault troops touched down on
French soil by parachute and by glider. Hitler's
fortress had been penetrated by men who had
vaulted, airborne, over its wall. The story of this
remarkable airdrop is told by Cornelius Ryan, who
was aided in the preparation of his book The
Longest Day by Reader's Digest researchers and
editors.
Although the Germans didn't recognize it, the
appearance of paratroopers on the Cotentin
Peninsula was the clue to the fact that D day
had begun. These first American troopers—
120 of them—were pathfinders. They had been
trained in a special school set up by Brig. Gen.
James M. ("Jumpin' Jim") Gavin, Assistant
Division Commander of the 82d Airborne.
Their mission was to mark drop zones in a
fifty-square-mile area back of Utah Beach for
the full-scale American paratrooper and glider
assault that would begin one hour later. "When
you land," Gavin had told them, "you will have
only one friend: God."
The pathfinders ran into difficulties at the
very beginning. German flak was so intense
that the planes were forced off course. Only
thirty-eight of the 120 pathfinders landed on
their targets. The remainder came down miles
off.
Private Robert Murphy of the 82d landed in a
garden in Ste.-Mere-Eglise. As he headed out
of the garden and started toward his drop
zone, lugging his portable radar set, he heard
a burst of firing off to his right. He was to learn
later that his buddy, Pvt. Leonard Devorchak,
had been shot at that moment. Devorchak,
who had sworn to "win a medal today just to
prove to myself that I can make it," may have
been the first American to be killed on D day.
All over the area pathfinders tried to get their
bearings. Moving silently from hedgerow to
hedgerow, bulky with guns, mines, lights and
fluorescent panels, they set out for rendezvous
points. They had barely one hour to mark the
drop zones for the full-scale American assault.
Fifty miles away, at the eastern end of the
Normandy battlefield, six planeloads of British
pathfinders and six R.A.F. bombers towing
gliders swept in over the coast. The sky
stormed with vicious flak, and ghostly
chandeliers of flares hung everywhere when
the jumps began.
Two of the British pathfinders plunged out of
the night sky squarely onto the lawn before the
headquarters of Lt. Gen. Josef Reichardt,
commanding officer of the German 711th
Division. Reichardt was playing cards when
the planes roared over, and he and the other
officers rushed out—just in time to see the two
Britons land.
It would have been hard to tell who were the
more astonished, the Germans or the
pathfinders. Reichardt could only blurt out,
"Where have you come from?" To which one of
the pathfinders, with all the aplomb of a man
who has just crashed a cocktail party, replied,
"Awfully sorry, old man, but we simply landed
here by accident."
Reichardt hurried into his headquarters and
picked up the phone. "Get me Fifteenth Army
Headquarters," he said. But even as he waited
for the call to be put through, the drop-zone
lights in both the British and American sectors
began to flash on. Some of the pathfinders had
found their zones.
In St.-Lo, at the headquarters of the German
LXXXIV Corps, the next level of command
below Seventh Army Headquarters, the staff
had gathered in Gen. Erich Marcks's room to
honor him with a surprise birthday party.
Standing in a little group around their
stern-faced, one-legged general ( he had lost a
leg in Russia), the officers came to attention.
Stiffly raising their glasses, they drank his
health, blissfully unaware that, as they did so,
thousands of British paratroopers were
dropping on French soil.
For most of the paratroopers it was an
experience they would never forget. Private
Raymond Batten landed in a tree. His chute
caught in the branches and he hung there
slowly swaying back and forth in his harness,
fifteen feet from the ground. It was very still in
the wood, and as Batten pulled out his knife to
cut himself down he heard the abrupt stutter of
a Schmeisser machine pistol nearby. A minute
later there was a rustling of underbrush
beneath him. Batten had lost his Sten gun and
he hung there helplessly, not knowing whether
it was a German or another paratrooper
moving toward him. "Whoever it was came and
looked up at me," Batten recalls. "All I could do
was to keep perfectly still and he, probably
thinking I was dead, as I hoped he would, went
away."
Batten got down from the tree as fast as he
could and headed toward the edge of the
wood. On the way he found the corpse of a
young paratrooper whose parachute had failed
to open. Next, as he moved along a road a
man rushed past him shouting crazily, "They
got my mate! They got my mate!" And finally,
catching up with a group of paratroopers
heading toward the assembly point, Batten
found himself beside a man who seemed to be
in a state of complete shock. The soldier
strode along, looking neither to left nor right,
totally oblivious of the fact that the rifle which
he gripped tightly in his right hand was bent
almost double.
Weird things happened to these early
invaders. Lieutenant Richard Hilborn, of the
1st Canadian Battalion, remembers that one
paratrooper crashed through the top of a
greenhouse, "shattering glass all over the
place and making a hell of a lot of noise," but
he was out and running before the glass had
stopped falling. Another landed, with pinpoint
accuracy, in a well. Hauling himself up hand
over hand on his shroud lines, he set out for
his assembly point as though nothing had
happened.
The most sinister enemy in these opening
minutes of D day was not man, but what man
had done with nature. In the British zone, at
the eastern end of the Normandy battlefield,
Rommel's anti-paratroop precautions paid off
well: he had caused the Dives Valley to be
flooded, and the waters and swamps were
deathtraps. The number of men who died in
these wastes will never be known. Survivors
say that the marshes were intersected by a
maze of ditches seven feet deep, four feet
wide and bottomed with sticky mud. A man
plunging into one of these ditches, weighed
down with guns and heavy equipment, was
helpless. Many drowned with dry land only a
few yards away.
In the square of Ste.-Mere-Eglise everybody
looked up, transfixed. Then the German guns
in the town began firing and the roaring was on
top of them. The aircraft swept in through a
crisscrossing barrage of fire. The planes' lights
were on. They came in so low that people in
the square instinctively ducked and the
airplanes cast "great shadows on the ground
and red lights seemed to be glowing inside
them."
In wave after wave the formations flew
over—the first planes of the biggest airborne
operation ever attempted: 925 planes carrying
13,000 men of the U.S. 101st and 82d
Airborne Divisions, heading for six drop zones
all within a few miles of Ste.-Mere-Eglise.
Lieutenant Charles Santarsiero was standing
in the door of his plane as it passed over. "We
were about four hundred feet up," he
remembers, "and I could see fires burning and
Krauts running about. All hell had broken
loose. Flak and small-arms fire were coming
up and our guys were caught right in the
middle of them."
The troopers tumbled out of their planes, one
after the other. Caught by a heavy wind, Pvt.
John Steele saw that instead of landing in a
lighted drop zone, he was heading for the
center of a town that seemed to be on fire.
Then he saw German soldiers and French
civilians running frantically about. Most of
them, it seemed to Steele, were looking up at
him. The next moment he was hit by something
that felt "like the bite of a sharp knife." A bullet
had smashed into his foot. Then Steele saw
something that alarmed him even more.
Swinging in his harness, unable to veer away,
he was heading straight toward the church
steeple at the edge of the square.
Above Steele, Pfc. Ernest Blanchard saw the
maelstrom of fire coming up all around him.
The next minute he watched, horrified, as a
man floating down beside him "exploded and
disintegrated before my eyes," presumably a
victim of the explosives he was carrying.
Blanchard began desperately to swing on his
risers, trying to swerve from the mob in the
square below. But it was too late. He landed
with a crash in one of the trees. Around him
men were being machine-gunned to death.
There were shouts, yells, screams and
moans— sounds that Blanchard would never
forget. Frantically Blanchard sawed at his
harness. Then he dropped out of the tree and
ran in panic, unaware that he had also sawed
off the top of his thumb.
Steele now hung just under the eaves of the
church, his parachute draped over the steeple.
He heard the shouts and the screams. He saw
Germans and Americans firing at each other in
the square and the streets. And he saw, on the
roof only a few yards away from him, German
machine gunners firing at everything in sight.
Steele decided that his only hope lay in
playing dead. He hung so realistically "dead"
in his harness that Capt. Willard Young of the
82d, who passed by during the height of the
fighting, would never forget "the dead man
hanging from the steeple." Steele was to
dangle there for two hours before being taken
captive by the Germans.
The mighty airborne armada was still droning
ceaselessly overhead. Thousands of men were
jumping for the drop zones northwest of the
town, and between Ste.-Mere-Eglise and the
Utah invasion area. On them hung the fate of
the whole Utah Beach operation.
The Americans worked against staggering
odds. The two divisions were critically
scattered. Only one regiment—the 505th—fell
accurately. Sixty percent of all equipment was
lost, including most of the radios, mortars and
ammunition. Worse still, many of the men were
lost. The route of the planes was from west to
east across the north-jutting peninsula and it
took just twelve minutes to cross the peninsula.
Hundreds of men, heavily weighted with
equipment, jumped too early and fell into the
treacherous swamps. Many drowned—some in
less than two feet of water. Others, jumping too
late, fell into the English Channel.
Corporal Louis Merlano landed on a sandy
beach in front of a sign reading, ACHTUNG
MINEN! He had been the second man in his
group to jump. As he lay on the beach trying to
get his breath he heard screams in the
distance—they came from the last eleven men
from his plane, who were at that moment
drowning in the Channel.
Merlano got off the beach fast, ignoring
mines. He climbed over a barbed-wire fence
and ran for a hedgerow. Someone else was
already there; Merlano didn't stop. He ran
across a road and started to climb a stone
wall. Just then he heard an agonized cry
behind him. He whirled around. A flame
thrower was hosing the hedgerow he had just
passed, and outlined in the flame was the
figure of a fellow paratrooper.
Americans came together in the night in
countless small fields and pastures, drawn by
the sound of a toy cricket. Their lives
depended on a few cents' worth of metal
fashioned in the shape of a child's snapper.
One snap of the cricket had to be answered by
a double snap. Two snaps required one in
reply. On these signals men came out of
hiding, from trees and ditches, around the
sides of buildings, to greet one another. Major
General Maxwell D. Taylor, commander of the
101st, and a bareheaded rifleman met at the
corner of a hedgerow and warmly hugged each
other. Some paratroopers found their units
right away. Others saw strange faces in the
night and then the familiar, comforting sight of
the tiny American flag stitched above the
shoulder patch. Lost men joined with small
groups made up of men from different
companies, battalions and regiments. Many
troopers of the 82d were led by 101st officers
and vice versa.
Hundreds of men found themselves in small
fields, surrounded on all sides by tall
hedgerows. The fields were silent little worlds,
isolated and scary. In them every shadow,
every rustle, every breaking twig was the
enemy. Lieutenant Jack Tallerday moved down
along the side of a hedgerow with his little
group of men fanning out behind him. Soon
they heard and then saw a group coming
toward them. Tallerday snapped his cricket
twice and thought he heard an answering click.
"As our two groups approached each other,"
Tallerday says, "it was quite evident by their
helmets that they were Germans." And then
there occurred one of those curious incidents
that happen in war. Without firing a shot, each
group silently walked past the other, in a kind
of frozen shock, until the darkness obliterated
the figures as though they had never existed.
All over Normandy this night, paratroopers
and German soldiers met unexpectedly. Three
miles from Ste.-Mere-Eglise, Lt. John Walas
almost tripped over a German sentry who was
in front of a machine-gun nest. For a terrible
moment, the men stared at each other. Then
the German fired a shot at Walas at pointblank
range. The bullet struck the bolt mechanism of
the Lieutenant's rifle, which was directly in
front of his stomach, nicked his hand and
ricocheted off. Both men turned and fled.
Major Lawrence Legere talked his way out of
trouble. Legere was leading a little group of
men toward the rendezvous point. Suddenly he
was challenged in German. He knew no
German but he was fluent in French. In the
darkness of the field he posed as a young
farmer and explained in French that he had
been visiting his girl and was on his way home.
As he talked, he was fingering a grenade. He
yanked the pin, threw the grenade and killed
three Germans.
These were crazy moments for everyone—
particularly the generals. They were without
staffs, without communications, without men.
General Taylor found himself with a number of
officers but only three enlisted men. "Never,"
he told them, "have so few been commanded
by so many."
In an apple orchard outside
Ste.-Mere-Eglise, Lt. Col. Benjamin H.
Vandervoort, who was to hold the northern
approaches to the town, was in pain and trying
not to show it. His battalion surgeon, Captain
Putnam, later recalled his first sight of
Vandervoort: "He was seated with a rain cape
over him, reading a map by flashlight. He
recognized me and, calling me close, quietly
asked that I take a look at his ankle with as
little demonstration as possible. His ankle was
obviously broken, but he insisted on replacing
his jump boot, and we laced it tightly." Then, as
Putnam watched, Vandervoort picked up his
rifle and, using it as a crutch, took a step
forward. He looked at the men around him.
"Well," he said, "let's go." He moved out
across the field. Vandervoort was to fight on
his broken ankle for forty days, side by side
with his men. When the battle of Normandy
was over, Maj. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway of
the 82d said, "Vandervoort was one of the
bravest, toughest battle commanders I ever
knew."
Already the first reinforcements had reached
the invasion troops. In the British area
sixty-nine gliders had landed—forty-five of
them on the correct landing strip near Ranville.
On the other side of the Normandy battlefield,
four miles from Ste.-Mere-Eglise, the first
American glider trains were just coming in,
lurching from side to side through "flak thick
enough to land on." Sitting in the copilot's seat
of the 101st's lead glider was the assistant
division commander, Brig. Gen. Don F. Pratt.
He was, reportedly, "as tickled as a schoolboy"
to be making his first glider flight. Strung out
behind was a procession of fifty-two gliders in
formations of four, each glider towed by a
Dakota. The train carried jeeps, antitank guns,
an entire airborne medical unit, even a small
bulldozer.
Surgical technician Emile Natalle was in the
glider right behind General Pratt's. It overshot
the zone and crashed into a field studded with
"Rommel's asparagus"—heavy posts
embedded in the ground as anti-glider
obstacles. Sitting in a jeep inside the glider,
Natalle gazed out through one of the small
windows and watched with horrified fascination
as the wings sheared off and the posts
whizzed past. Then there was a ripping sound
and the glider broke in two—directly behind
the jeep in which Natalle was sitting. "It made it
very easy to get out," he recalled.
A short distance away lay the wreckage of
Glider No. 1, smashed against a hedgerow.
Natalle found the pilot lying in the hedgerow
with both legs broken. General Pratt had been
killed instantly, crushed in the crumpled
cockpit. He was one of the few casualties in
the 101st's landings, the first general officer on
either side to be killed on D day.
It was nearly dawn—the dawn that 18,000
paratroopers had been fighting toward. In less
than five hours they had more than fulfilled the
expectations of General Eisenhower and his
staff. The airborne armies had confused the
enemy, disrupted communications and now,
holding the flanks at either end of the
Normandy invasion area, they had to a great
extent blocked the movement of enemy
reinforcements.
In the British zone, glider-borne troops were
firmly astride the vital Caen and Orne bridges,
which they had captured in a daring attack just
after midnight, and paratroopers were in
position on the heights overlooking Caen. By
dawn the five German-held crossings over the
Dives River would be demolished. Thus the
principal British assignments had been
completed and as long as the various arteries
could be held, German counterattacks would
be slowed down or stopped.
At the other end of the invasion beaches the
Americans, despite more difficult terrain and a
greater variety of missions, had done equally
well. The men of the Allied airborne armies
had invaded the Continent and secured the
initial foothold. Now they awaited the arrival of
the seaborne forces with whom they would
drive into Hitler's Europe. For U.S. ground
troops, H hour—6:30 a.m.—was exactly one
hour and forty-five minutes away

[texas38]

One never tires of re-reading Cornelius Ryan's account of D-Day. As a matter of fact, I think it was the first accounting I'd ever read of the war - sometime back in the early 60s. It was a paperback book - all I could afford in those days but, nevertheless, a fascinating read. Still is.

Marilyn

[STRIKEHOLD]

Thats what I love about this place.So many of the people here know one of these great heros, or have actually met them, or have served with them etc. That is one amazing thing isnt it Thanks Jim
Cindy

Cindy,

I agree it's great that we have met some of these men who will always be remembered for what they did for us.

Here is a photo of Gen. Gavin and my Dad at My Uncle's house down the cape. They both passed within 6 mos of this photo. My uncle Ed is in the background.

(IMG:http://www.Strikehold504th.com/jim/dadgavin.jpg)

This post has been edited by STRIKEHOLD: Feb 1 2005, 06:00 PM

[roobarb]

That picture'e a real gem Strike, you must treasure it (IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Have to admit i haven't read many accounts of Gen Gavins career. As a result im not very knowledgeable about it. Thats why im reading this (IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
The few accounts i have read have led me to believe that he was a real soldiers General. Who cared for his men and liked to take the risks they were taking. Like an old style general at the front end of things. Please correct me if im wrong.
Maybe it was because he was kind of young for a general!

(IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[STRIKEHOLD]

That picture'e a real gem Strike, you must treasure it  (IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Have to admit i haven't read many accounts of Gen Gavins career. As a result im not very knowledgeable about it. Thats why im reading this  (IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
The few accounts i have read have led me to believe that he was a real soldiers General. Who cared for his men and liked to take the risks they were taking. Like an old style general at the front end of things. Please correct me if im wrong.
Maybe it was because he was kind of young for a general!

(IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Glad you liked the photo.... I got a PM asking me who was who. The man standing is my dad. Sitting is Gavin. In the back is a photo of my dads brother Ed. He was a PT Boat Cmdr. PT 127.

My dad only met Gavin once in Combat. My dad was in the Recon Platoon in Italy. They had just returned to Naples from the Volturno River area. Anyway they were unshaven looking. Gavin came opon them and chewed them out for looking like that in a rear area. One of my dad's pals piped up and said, he was sorry but no orderly was around to carry his razor. I guess Gavin ripped them a new one and my dad was just glad to escape with his leave in Naples intact.

After the war my dad got to know Gavin very well and I got to meet and talk with him at the Thayer Hotel at West Point. I spoke with him looking while he was looking out at the old sports fields and the new Stadium. I think it is Nike Stadium. Anyway it was somthing I'll always remember!

[texas38]

How very fortunate you were to have met General Gavin. I can remember reading in the paper about him and Ridgeway being assigned to Korea when war broke out there, or - uh - the "Police Action." Not being able to read at the time of WWII, I was determined to follow the action in Korea and I did, until it bogged down into a quagmire. Of course, by then I was 15 and had other things on my mind. (IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Marilyn

[LongJohn]

Thanks for sharing, Cindy. I remember General Gavin as a slim young officer who made the Airborne uniform with bloused pants, jump boots and Ike jacket the envy of the Armed Forces. Cochran boots sold for something like $20 in 1942, and a whole heap of GIs came up with the bucks just so they could look Airborne while on weekend passes.

We haven't talked much about the 82nd and Gavin here, but the 82nd was Sergeant Alvin York's division in WWI, the AA standing for All American. How many rember "Geronimo!" was the battle cry of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division?

Heroes all.

LongJOhn

Cindy,

I agree it's great that we have met some of these men who will always be remembered for what they did for us.

Here is a photo of Gen. Gavin and my Dad at My Uncle's house down the cape.  They both passed within 6 mos of this photo.  My uncle Ed is in the background.

(IMG:http://www.Strikehold504th.com/jim/dadgavin.jpg)

[texas38]

I remember "Geromino!" We kids yelled it all the time while jumping off the high board at the swimming pool. There was simply no other way to make that jump without yelling, "Geromino!" Splash!

Marilyn

[Bart]

What a great photo! I guess it must have been taken in 1989/1990 then? Thank you very much for posting it.

When I was travelling through the Nijmegen/Groesbeek area with BK during the last Market Garden commemoration, she made me practice the right pronounciation of the generals name over and over again... I sounded too English I am afraid (IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[homefront41]

You're a regular card, you are, Bart!!! We spent more time running around the 82nd Airborne AO than the 101st, as I recall. And at no time did you ever sound too English!

Jim, as you know, I've seen this photo before and I know what wonderful memories you have of meeting WW2 vets through your father. That must have been a great day.

John and Marilyn, "Geronimo" was certainly a big part of my childhood. It wasn't until many years later that I understood where it came from. But it made perfect sense to us as children to yell that when leaping ... almost anywhere! It's amazing how that stuff crept into our young without-a-care worlds. BK

[DriveOn]

We haven't talked much about the 82nd and Gavin here, but the 82nd was Sergeant Alvin York's division in WWI, the AA standing for All American.   How many rember "Geronimo!" was the battle cry of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division?

Heroes all.

LongJOhn

Sir - permission to speak?

I was in the 501st (after the parachute part was removed) - it was still the 'Geronimo' regiment at that time, and was a part of the 101st AB. To the best of my knowledge it was a part of the 101st in WW II as well (going from memory - I didn't look anything up).

And Marilyn and BK - we did the exact same thing as kids. Somehow we grew up thinking that that was what all paratroopers yelled. Must go back to some movie.

[Irishmaam]

Jim I have seen that photo before. I love it. The Geronimo thing. I think its every kids jump motto...Thanks everyone for adding to this thread as I dont know muchabout the man but I am now learning Cindy