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Lineage and Honors

509th Parachute Infantry Battalion

With the advent of World War Two, the United States Armed Forces foresaw a need for highly mobile units that the Allies could quickly insert into the theater of battle. An experiment began at Fort Benning, Georgia where a group of volunteers began jumping out of perfectly good aircraft while in flight. Thus was born the American Paratroopers. Following great debate and an arduous command decision, the United States Army began forming Airborne units for combat. On 14 March 1941, the 504th Parachute Battalion was constituted and then activated on 5 October 1941 at Fort Benning, Georgia.

The 504th moved to Fort Bragg, North Carolina for training in February 1942. The 503rd and 504th Parachute Infantry Battalions were joined together to form the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, with the 504th being renamed 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry on 24 February 1942.

As an independent battalion, the 2/503rd sailed to Scotland in June 1942, becoming the first American parachute unit to go overseas in World War Two. It was attached to the British 1st Airborne Division for training. The training included mass tactical jumps from C-47 aircraft at 350 feet, extensive night training, and speed marching for 10 miles to and from the training area daily; and on one occasion, 32 miles in 11 hours. On 2 November, as the 503rd was staging for Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, it was reorganized and redesignated as 2nd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry. On this momentous day, as C-47's flew over the English countryside, the 509th Paratrooper was born.

The training paid off when the 2/509th spearheaded the Allied invasion of North Africa. The longest Airborne operation occurred 8 November 1942. After a C-47 flight of over 1600 miles from England, the battalion seized Tafarquay Airport in Oran, Algeria by parachute assault. One week later, after repacking their own chutes (every man was his own rigger in those days), the battalion conducted their second combat jump on 15 November 1942 to secure the airfield at Youk-Les-Bains near the Tunisian border. From this base the battalion conducted combined operations with various French forces against the German Afrika Korps in Tunisia. One unit, the 3rd Regiment of Zouaves (French Algerian Infantry), awarded their own Regimental Crest as a gesture of respect to the American Paratroopers. This badge was awarded to the battalion commander on 15 November 1942 by the 3rd Zouaves' Regimental Commander.

From December 1942 to June 1943, the 2/509th trained in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco in preparation for the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943. During the invasion of Sicily, the 2/509th was attached to the 82nd Airborne Division, but was held in division reserve and saw no action in that campaign.

The invasion of Italy began in September 1943 with the amphibious assault at Salerno. The 2/509th was initially in reserve with the 82nd Airborne Division in Sicily until the beachhead was in danger. On 14 September, while the 82nd Airborne Division dropped inside American lines to reinforce the beachhead, the 2/509th was assigned the mission of cutting enemy supply lines behind the German defensive positions. The 2/509th launched its third parachute assault at Avellino, Italy, only to find that the valley DZ was occupied the night before by the 6th German Armored Panzer Division. The 2/509th operated independently for some two weeks behind German lines in company and platoon size elements disrupting the German rear area. Separate units scrounged for food and water among the Italian civilians until the unit finally reassembled in Salerno on 28 September 1943. Total casualties were 123 killed or captured including the 509th commander and his entire staff.

On 10 December 1943 the battalion was reorganized and redesignated one more time to 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, and recognized as an independent unit. During this period, October through December 1943, the battalion operated with Darby' s Rangers, and fought as Mountain Infantry in the high ground above Venafro, Italy.

The 509th PIB's next operation was an amphibious assault at Anzio, Italy, on 21 January 1944. Still operating with Darby's Rangers, the 509th was in the first assault wave of the invasion force. The Rangers sent two battalions against an elite German Armored Division on the beachhead, while the 509th was assigned a critical defensive position which they held despite heavy losses. For its heroic actions in stopping the desperate German counterattack at Carano, Italy, the 509th was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the first parachute unit so honored. In addition to the battalion award of 29 February, Charlie Company won a second Presidential Unit Citation for a night attack on 14 March, and Corporal Paul B. Huff became the first paratrooper to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.

After Anzio, the 509th conducted its fourth parachute assault and fifth combat assault spearheading the attack by the First Airborne Task Force at Le Muy, in southern France, on 14 August 1944. December 1944 saw the 509th attached to the 82nd Airborne Division in time for the Battle of the Bulge. In another defensive mission, against incredible odds, the 509th held out from 22 to 30 December at Sadzot, Belgium, against two Panzer Grenadier Battalions, both elite German mechanized infantry units, and earned the battalion its second Presidential Unit Citation. In January, tasked with an offensive mission, the 509th advanced in the hills of St. Vith, Belgium, capturing and holding critical high ground for the passage of the 7th Armored Division. After the action, which left only seven officers and forty-eight enlisted men in the entire battalion, the 509th fell victim to reorganization one last time.

Toward the end of World War Two, separate Parachute Infantry Battalions were no longer considered necessary, and the 509th was disbanded on 1 March 1945, with the survivors and returning wounded being sent to the 82nd, 101st or 13th Airborne Divisions as replacements.

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CAMPAIGNS

World War II Campaign participation credits of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion include the following:

Algeria-French Morocco*

Tunisia*

Naples-Foggia*

Anzio*

Rome-Arno

Southern France*

Rhineland

Ardennes-Alsace

*designates Campaign Arrowheads for spearheading action

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Unit Awards

Presidential Unit Citation (Army), streamer embroidered Liege, Belgium

Presidential Unit Citation (Army), streamer embroidered Carano, Italy

French Croix de Guerre with Silver Star, streamer embroidered Muy En Provence

Citation in the Order of the Day of the Belgian Army for action in Ardennes

Citation in the Order of the Day of the Belgian Army for action in St. Vith

Insignia of the French 3d Zouaves Regiment

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Distinctive Insignia

The "Wildcat Patch", which was soon shortened to "Cat Patch", had been dreamed up by the Walt Disney Studios some time shortly after 7 Dec 1941, and several paratroop units adopted similar Disney based patches. The backgrounds remained the same, and the number of the unit was added, so the design was hardly unique to the 503d.

Les Hughes, currently the webmaster of the American Society of Military Insignia Collectors (ASMIC) recalls several variants of the cat patch, as during his years as a collector he's had at least two examples of the version on a felt square, each coming directly to him via a veteran of the 509 Parachute Infantry Battalion. He's not seen any examples suggesting the patches were used by any unit other than the 503rd, but leaves the issue open. Of his examples, one was embroidered on a light-blue felt square (see below) and the other fully-embroidered on a disk (see below). The cat is colored differently in the square and disk versions, but the cat is the same. The disk version also exists, he says, with both an embroidered border and an olive drab wool border. He recalls seeing the fully embroidered disk versions in two sizes.

The square felt and fully embroidered disc versions (latter with an embroidered and an olive drab border)

This is the patch from Jim Mullaney's A-2 leather jacket. Jim writes..."I was issued this jacket in June or July 1942 at Fort Bragg. Everyone didn’t get one and there was some grumbling when yours truly - a lowly 2nd Lt. - received his. Seems I had a close friend in supply who made these decisions. His name is Elden Campbell and he presently lives in Virginia. After arriving in Aussieland, Elden was in charge of the parachute packing and drying sheds in Gordonvale.. After all these years I still remember him as if it were yesterday…"

Les says that the 509 had a well know patch of its own ("the Gingerbread Man"), made in Italy and approved for wear by the men locally, but never approved by the Army. He considers it unlikely that the Army would ever formally approve a design executed by Disney as an official patch, as "the Institute of Heraldry was rather rigid in the types of symbolism it would allow." Whilst this might have been the case for the larger Army units, the use of cartoon characters was widespread for Army Air Force squadrons, which sported versions of almost every popular cartoon character (326th - Alley Oop; 401st Bombardment - Hairless Joe; 155th Photo Recon - Sylvester the cat; 11th Bombardment - Mr. Jiggs.) A very fine example is the official unit patch of the 597th Bombardment, which was...

" Over and through a light yellow disc, BUGGS BUNNY proper seated on the left wing of a caricatured grayed green aircraft, holding aloft a carrot proper with the left forepaw, and shoving a tan and brown aerial bomb off a wing tip with hind feet. (Approved 20 Dec 1943).

How might veterans of the 509th come by the 503d's Cat Patch? "Well," Les says, "the 509 began its existence as the 504th Parachute Battalion, the fourth and last independent parachute battalion of the Army's fledgling airborne forces. When the Army realized the inadequacy of an airborne force of only four battalions and began forming its parachute units into regiments, the 504th Battalion became the 2nd Battalion, 503rd PIR. As the 2/503 PIR, the unit was deployed to England in June 1942, where it trained for the Army's first airborne operation of WWII: a drop on North Africa. Just prior to deploying to North Africa, the unit was redesignated 2/509, and later, when the decision was made not to complete the regiment, it became the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion. Anyway, it seems clear to me that the 509 vets had the "cat patch" by virtue of their having once been part of the 503d. This also tends to date the patch - at least the square version - probably to early 1942."

Photos courtesy Les Hughes
Text extracted from: http://corregidor.org/503jumpstation.htm

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