The 101st Airborne Division traces its lineage to World War I with the formation of the 101st Division on 23 July 1918 and demobilized 11 December 1918. In 1921, the 101st Infantry Division reconstituted and reorganized as a reserve unit with headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On 15 August 1942, the division disbanded as a reserve unit and activated in the United States Army as the 101st Airborne Division.

     Originally, the 101st had one parachute regiment (the 502nd Parachute Infantry), two glider regiments (the 327th and the 401st Glider Infantry), and three artillery battalions (the 377th Parachute Field Artillery, the 321st Glider Field Artillery, and the 907th Glider Field Artillery).

     In October, 1942, the 101st began rigorous training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Throughout the fall and winter, General Lee helped to establish a whole new tactic of warfare - the use of airborne troops in battle.

     In June of 1943, the 101st received a second parachute infantry regiment, the 506th, from Camp Toccoa, Georgia. The 506th had trained in the shadow of Currahee Mountain and had adopted the name "Currahee" as its motto

     The 101st Airborne Division boarded ships in New York harbor in September, 1943 and arrived in England ten days later. They spent ten months in the counties of Berkshire and Wiltshire, training six days a week. In October, the Division began its own jump school to train over 400 new personnel and key members of non-jump units of the 101st.

     In January, 1944, the newly nicknamed Eagle Division received a third parachute infantry regiment, the 501st. In March, the 401st Glider Infantry Regiment detached one battalion to be a part of the 82nd Airborne Division. Major General Lee suffered a heart attack in February and returned to the United States. Major General Maxwell D. Taylor became the new commander.

     Meanwhile, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force planned an invasion of Northern France, codenamed Operation OVERLORD. The mission of the 101st was to jump in before the waterborne invasion forces landed on an area designated as UTAH Beach. The paratroopers would secure exits from the beachhead and prevent these areas from receiving German reinforcements.

     At fifteen minutes after midnight on 6 June 1944, Captain Frank L. Lillyman led his team of 101st Pathfinders out of the door of a C-47 transport and landed in occupied France. Behind the Pathfinders came six thousand paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division in C-47's of the IX Troop Carrier Command. D-Day began. Running into heavy German flak as they approached the drop zones, many of the troop transports took evasive action and scattered the jumpers over a wide area. By nightfall only twenty five hundred men could assemble in their units.

     Struggling to carry out the mission of the 101st to clear and secure the exits from Utah Beach for the arrival of the 4th Infantry Division, small groups of soldiers valiantly did the best they could. Major General Taylor could assemble only a little over a hundred men, most of them officers, before he set out to secure one of the causeways leading to Utah Beach. Referring to his brass-heavy group, Taylor remarked, "Never were so few led by so many."

     On the night of 6 June, the Assistant Division Commander, Brigadier General Don F. Pratt, led the fifty-two glider assaults during the invasion. Although all of the pilots managed to land within a two-mile area, only six of them were in the designated zone.

     Glidermen played an important role during the Normandy operations. As counterparts of the airborne infantrymen, they delivered personnel, equipment, vehicles, and weapons to the Division. The first daylight glider operation occurred on the morning of 7 June. Using a heavier cargo glider, the pilots delivered 157 personnel, 40 vehicles, 6 guns, and 19 tons of equipment, which was crucial to the success the Division had in carrying out its objectives.

     After the seizure of the causeways, the 101st proceeded toward a new objective, the capture of the town of Carentan, which was the junction point for the two American forces from UTAH and OMAHA Beaches and a key to the success of the invasion. For five days the 101st waged a bitter fight to dislodge the German 6th Parachute Regiment from the town and to hold R until the arrival of American armor units from the beachhead. During the attack on Carentan, Lieutenant Colonel Robert G. Cole, Commander of 3rd Battalion, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, wiped out a strategically important pocket of enemy resistance. For this action, Lieutenant Colonel Cole became the first member of the 101st
to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.

     After thirty three days of continuous fighting, the 101st Airborne was relieved and returned to England to train for its next mission. Elements of the Division received the Distinguished Unit Citation and the Division Commander was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

     That Autumn, the 101st took part in the largest and most daring airborne operation of the war, Operation MARKET GARDEN. Three airborne divisions, the British 1 st and the American 82nd and 101st, would jump into a narrow corridor in Holland and seize a series of important bridges. At the same time, a British army corps would drive out of Belgium, quickly cross the captured bridges, finally cross the Rhine at the town of Arnhem, and then sweep into the German Ruhr.

     On 17 September 1944, the 101st jumped into four drop zones between the Dutch towns of Son and Veghel and set out to seize their objectives. Heavy opposition f rom elements of several German divisions around the town of Best presented a serious threat to the Division and the entire MARKET GARDEN Operation. During this battle, Private First Class Joe E. Mann of the 3rd Battalion, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, became the second member of the Division to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. Private First Class Mann shielded the men of his squad from an exploding grenade at the cost of his own life.

     The glider operations associated with MARKET GARDEN were among the most extensive in the war. American glider troops of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions departed from seventeen different airfields. The 101st alone used a total of 933 gliders. Over 750 of these made landings either on the landing zone or within one mile of it. The men, material, and weapons brought in by gliders once more played a decisive role in the success of a mission.

     Two days after the 101st landed in Holland, the first elements of the British Guards Armored Division reached the Americans at Eindhoven, the first Dutch city to be liberated. While the British continued their unsuccessful drive to capture Arnhem, the American paratroopers fought a series of engagements against superior German forces that were trying to cut the corridor along a sixteen-mile front. After seventy-two days in combat, the Division received relief, at the end of November, and went to a base camp at Mourmelon-le-Grand, France, for a long and well deserved rest.

     On 16 December the Germans attacked through the Ardennes. The American front began to collapse, and the entire northern wing of the Allied armies in the west was threatened. At 2030 hours, 17 December, the 101st received orders to proceed north to Bastogne.

     Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe(Division Artillery Commander), the acting commander (General Taylor was in the United States on War Department business), led the 11,840 soldiers to the strategically important Belgian town of Bastogne. Since the German forces were overrunning the lightly protected ap- proaches to the town, General McAuliff a directed the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment east towards the direction of the town of Longvilly, an offensive move that temporarily disorganized the Germans and gave the 101st time to set up Its defense of Bastogne.

     It was the mission of the 101st to hold Bastogne and disrupt the German line of communication. During the battle, Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and the 969th Field Artillery Battalion were attached to the 101st. These units played critical roles in the outcome.

     On 20 December, German troops isolated Bastogne and the 101st by seizing the last road leading out of the town. The success of their offensive in the west depended on the defeat of the 101st and the capture of Bastogne. Strong German armored and infantry forces tried to break through the American lines north, then south, and finally west of the town, and were beaten back each time. On 22 December, the German commander, Lieutenant General Heinrich von Luttwitz, issued a demand for surrender. General McAuliffe gave his now-famous reply, "Nutsl'Although outnumbered by units from five German divisions, the 101st continued to resist until 26 December when the American 4th Armored Division broke through to Bastogne.

     During the next three weeks, the Screaming Eagles encountered some of the hardest and bloodiest fighting of the Bastogne campaign. Teamed with the United States Third Army, they reduced the German pocket in the Ardennes and ended German resistance in the area.

     On 18 January 1945, VIII Corps relieved the 101st of its task of defending Bastogne. Upon departure, the Division received a receipt from the VIII Corps command that read: "Received from the 101st Airborne Division, the town of Bastogne, Luxembourg Province, Belgium. Condition: Used but serviceable." For its heroic Defense of Bastogne, the 101st was awarded the Distinguished Unit Citation, the first time in the history of the United States Army that an entire division received the award.

     At the end of March, the 101st went to the Ruhr region of Germany less the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, which remained in reserve for a proposed, but never conducted, special raid to free Allied prisoners of war. After the collapse of the Ruhr pocket, the rest of the 101st moved to southern Bavaria.

     The last combat mission of World War II for the Screaming Eagles was the capture of Berchtesgaden, Hitler's's vacation retreat. Once again teamed with the Third Infantry Division, the 101st completed their mission and spent the remainder of the war at Berchtesgaden, with some elements in Austria. Battery A of the 321st Field Artillery fired the last combat round for the division in this operation.

     While at Berchtesgaden, the 101st received the surrender of the German XIII SS and LXXXII Corps. Several prominent Nazis were also captured. The 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment captured Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commander-in-chief of the Nazi party. The 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment captured Julius Streicher, the anti-Semitic editor of Der Sturmer, and Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Oberg, the chief of German SS in occupied France. Colonel General Heinz Guderian, a leading armor expert, was also captured.