On the morning of February 7th, 1944, a German officer sat in a frozen foxhole less than 100 m from the American lines at Anzio, Italy. His hands trembled, as he wrote in his diary, not from the cold, though the Italian winter had turned the beach head into a miserable wasteland of mud and ice. His hands trembled because of what he had witnessed over the past 2 weeks.

American parachutists, devils in baggy pants, are less than 100 meters from my outpost line. I cannot sleep at night. They pop up from nowhere, and we never know when or how they will strike next. Seems like the black-hearted devils are everywhere. That German officer would die within days.

His body was found by advancing American troops. The diary was recovered from his pocket, its pages stained with mud and blood. An American sergeant who spoke German translated the passage for his squadmates. They read it aloud in their foxholes while artillery shells burst in the distance. They laughed, a harsh sound in the frozen air.

They passed the diary around, each man reading the words for himself, and then they adopted them as their own. The passage spread through the regiment within hours. Men copied it onto scraps of paper. They wrote it in letters home. They memorized it. For soldiers who had been fighting continuously for weeks, who had lost friends and watched their companies shrink from combat and disease, those words from an enemy soldier meant something profound.

The Germans feared them. The Germans could not sleep because of them. The Germans thought they were devils. The 54th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division had earned many things in the brutal fighting across Sicily, Italy, and soon Holland and Belgium. They had earned medals, scars, and the respect of every Allied commander who witnessed them fight.

But that diary entry gave them something more valuable than any decoration. It gave them an identity. They became the devils in baggy pants. This is the story of how American paratroopers earned that name. Not through a single battle or a single act of heroism, but through a relentless, terrifying campaign that broke the spirit of the German soldiers sent to destroy them.

The 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment was activated on May 1st, 1942 at Fort Benning, Georgia. The United States had been at war for less than 5 months. The concept of airborne warfare was still experimental. Dropping soldiers from aircraft behind enemy lines had never been attempted on a large scale by any army.

The men who volunteered for parachute duty were walking into the unknown. The training was designed to break them. Five weeks of physical punishment that pushed human endurance to its limits. Running miles before dawn in the Georgia heat. Climbing ropes until their hands bled. Doing push-ups and sit-ups until their muscles failed. Learning to pack their own parachutes.

Knowing that a single mistake could kill them. Learning to exit an aircraft at 400 ft while traveling at 120 mph. Learning to land without breaking both legs. Learning to fight the moment their boots touched ground, often surrounded by enemies, often alone. The instructors were relentless.

Any sign of weakness resulted in punishment for the entire platoon. Men who quit were publicly humiliated before being sent back to regular infantry units. Those who remained faced increasingly brutal tests. Night jumps without lights, water landings, combat exercises with live ammunition. The dropout rate exceeded 40% with some training cycles washing out nearly half the volunteers.

Those who remained were forged into something new. They were younger than regular infantry, averaging 22 years old. They were in peak physical condition. They earned $50 extra per month in hazardous duty pay, which marked them as a breed apart. And they carried themselves with an arrogance that irritated every soldier who had not earned the silver wings.

They called themselves paratroopers. They called everyone else legs, a term of contempt for soldiers who walked into battle instead of falling from the sky. They believed they were the best soldiers in the American Army. They intended to prove it. Colonel Reuben Henry Tucker took command of the 504th in December of 1942.

He was 31 years old, one of the youngest regimental commanders in the entire United States Army. Tucker had graduated from West Point in 1935 after initially failing out due to poor grades in mathematics. He fought his way back into the academy, refused to quit, and eventually graduated with his class. That determination would define his entire career.

Tucker volunteered for the paratroopers when the program was still considered a career-ending gamble. Senior officers warned him that airborne units were experimental, that the concept might be abandoned, that he was throwing away his future. Tucker did not care. He wanted to lead soldiers in combat.

He wanted to be at the sharp end of the spear. The paratroopers offered that opportunity. His superiors described him as aggressive to the point of recklessness. He cared nothing for paperwork or administrative details. One story that circulated through the division claimed that when Tucker left Italy, he had an orange crate full of official charges against his soldiers for various infractions.

Rather than process the paperwork, he supposedly threw the entire crate into the Mediterranean. His men loved him for it. General James Gavin, who commanded the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment and later the entire 82nd Airborne Division, wrote in his memoir that Tucker was probably the best regimental commander of the war.

That was extraordinary praise from a man who was himself considered one of the finest combat leaders in the American Army. Tucker led from the front. He jumped with his men on every combat operation. He was present at the point of contact, making decisions in real time rather than from a headquarters miles behind the line. He was wounded multiple times, but always returned to his regiment as quickly as possible.

He demanded absolute commitment to two principles: strike the target, hold the objective. These words became the regimental motto, strike, hold. They meant that the 5004th would attack aggressively and would never voluntarily give up ground they had taken. Other units might retreat when the situation became untenable. The 54th would not.

In April of 1943, the 54th boarded the troop ship George Washington and sailed for North Africa. They arrived in Casablanca and immediately began training for their first combat operation, the invasion of Sicily. The men practiced night jumps over the Tunisian desert. They studied maps of their drop zones. They cleaned and recleaned their weapons.

They wrote letters home that many would never mail. The invasion was scheduled for July of 1943. The 54th would jump into Sicily on the second night of the operation, reinforcing the 5005th Parachute Infantry Regiment that had landed the night before. What happened instead would haunt every man who survived it. On the night of July 11th, 1943, 144 transport aircraft carrying 2,000 paratroopers of the 504th flew from Tunisia toward Sicily.

The flight path took them over the Allied invasion fleet anchored off the Sicilian coast. The naval commanders had been informed of the incoming aircraft. Safe corridors had been established. Recognition signals had been coordinated. Pilots were told to flash their amber position lights to identify themselves as friendly. None of it mattered.

Earlier that day, German bombers had attacked the invasion fleet. Sailors were exhausted and jumpy. Anti-aircraft crews had been firing at enemy aircraft for hours. When the first C47 transports appeared over the beach, someone mistook them for German bombers returning. A single gun opened fire, then another. Then the entire fleet erupted.

Anti-aircraft batteries on ships and shore began pouring traces into the night sky. The slow flying transport planes, clearly marked with American insignia, flashing their amber lights as ordered, became targets in a shooting gallery. Pilots tried to take evasive action, but the C-47 was not designed for combat maneuvering.

Aircraft that dove to escape the fire flew into the paths of shells aimed at other planes. The formations broke apart. Some pilots turned back toward Tunisia, still carrying their paratroopers. Others tried to find any open space to drop their men. Inside the aircraft, paratroopers watched shells tear through the fuselage.

Men sitting next to their friends suddenly slumped dead. Blood pulled on the floor. The smell of burning fuel and torn metal filled the cabin. Jump masters screamed for men to hook up and prepare to exit, but many aircraft were already on fire. 23 aircraft were shot down. 37 more were severely damaged. Paratroopers died in their seats before they could jump.

Others leaped from burning aircraft only to be shot while descending in their parachutes. Some drowned when their planes crashed into the Mediterranean. The official count would list over 400 casualties, including 81 confirmed dead. Some historians believe the true number was higher.

One aircraft that made it back to Tunisia was found to have more than 1,000 bullet holes in its fuselage. The ground crew could not understand how it had stayed airborne. Colonel Tucker’s aircraft flew twice along the coast while he searched desperately for the drop zone. His plane absorbed more than 2,000 holes from friendly fire.

By some miracle, Tucker survived and landed safely. By morning, fewer than 550 men of the 54th had assembled at their objective. The regiment had been shattered before it ever engaged the enemy. The disaster transformed the survivors. The men who had watched their friends die from American bullets developed a hardness that would define them for the rest of the war.

They had learned that death could come from any direction at any moment, from friend or foe. They stopped expecting fairness. They stopped expecting safety. They expected only to fight and if necessary to die. Sicily also taught them something else. Despite the chaos of the friendly fire incident, the scattered paratroopers who reached the ground fought with devastating effectiveness.

Small groups of five or 10 men attacked German convoys, destroyed communications lines, and sewed confusion far behind enemy lines. The Germans could not understand how American soldiers kept appearing in places where no American soldiers should be. This was the essence of airborne warfare. Strike from unexpected directions.

Hold ground that the enemy assumed was secure. Make them afraid to sleep. Two months after Sicily, the 54th jumped again, this time into mainland Italy at Salerno, where Allied forces were being pushed back toward the sea by German counterattacks. General Mark Clark, commander of the fifth army, was so desperate for reinforcements that he requested the paratroopers be dropped directly onto the beach head behind friendly lines to stabilize the collapsing front.

The situation at Seno was critical. German Panza divisions had counterattacked with devastating force. American and British units were falling back under the weight of superior firepower. There was real fear that the invasion might fail, that the allies might be pushed back into the Mediterranean as they had been pushed out of France at Dunkirk 3 years earlier.

Clark needed reinforcements immediately. He did not have time to wait for troops to be shipped from North Africa. He needed soldiers now, tonight on this beach, ready to fight in the morning. the paratroopers would have to do. The drop on September 13th, 1943 succeeded where Sicily had failed. This time, commanders took no chances with friendly fire.

General Clark issued direct orders that all anti-aircraft batteries on ships and shore were to hold their fire from 9:00 in the evening until further notice. He met personally with naval and ground commanders. He sent representatives to every unit to ensure the message was received. The aircraft flew a route that skirted the invasion fleet, minimizing contact with nervous gunners.

Strict anti-aircraft discipline was enforced. Any soldier who fired at the incoming aircraft would face court marshall. The aircraft arrived unmolested. 1,300 paratroopers floated down onto a beach head illuminated by barrels of burning gasoline that marked the drop zone. It was a crude but effective system.

The fires were visible for miles, guiding the pilots to the correct landing area. The paratroopers assembled quickly, formed into their units, and moved to the front lines. The next morning, they attacked. The fighting for Altavilla, a village overlooking the beach head, became one of the most savage engagements of the Italian campaign.

The village sat on high ground that dominated the surrounding area. Whoever held alter controlled the approaches to the beach head. The Germans understood this. They had fortified the village with machine gun positions, mortars, and anti-tank guns. They were determined to hold. German forces held the high ground and poured fire onto the advancing paratroopers.

The terrain offered little cover. Men had to cross open fields under observed fire. Artillery shells burst among them. Machine gun rounds cut through the advancing ranks. Companies were reduced to platoon. Platoons were reduced to squads. Men fought with rifles, grenades, bayonets, and when ammunition ran out, their fists.

The fighting was handto hand in the streets of the village, room to room in the shattered buildings. During the battle, a staff officer from division headquarters, suggested that Colonel Tucker withdraw his regiment to more defensible positions. The attack had stalled. Casualties were mounting. A tactical retreat would allow the paratroopers to reorganize and try again with better preparation.

Tucker’s response became legendary throughout the fifth army. Retreat hell. Send me my other battalion. The 54th took Alter Villa. They held it against repeated German counterattacks. When the fighting ended, Tucker and two of his men received the Distinguished Service Cross for their actions. The regiment had proven itself in offensive combat against entrenched German positions. But the real test was coming.

On January 22nd, 1944, Allied forces launched Operation Shingle, an amphibious landing at Anzio, 30 mi south of Rome. The plan was to outflank the German defensive lines that had stalled the Allied advance through Italy. Instead of jumping, the 5004th would land by sea and help establish the beach head.

The initial landing met almost no resistance. The Germans were caught completely offguard. For a few hours, the road to Rome lay virtually undefended, but the Allied commander, Major General John Lucas, chose to consolidate the beach head rather than push inland. He waited for reinforcements. He built up supplies. He prepared defensive positions.

The Germans did not wait. Within days, Field Marshal Albert Kessler had rushed reinforcements to Anzio. Artillery batteries on the surrounding hills began a relentless bombardment of the beach head. German troops dug in along every approach. The opportunity for a quick advance vanished. Anzio became a siege. The 54th was assigned to defend the right flank of the beach head along the Mussolini Canal.

This waterway, part of a drainage system built during the fascist era, cut through flat exposed farmland that offered no cover from German observation posts in the hills. Every movement during daylight drew artillery fire. Every night brought probing attacks by German infantry. For the first time, the paratroopers found themselves fighting a static defensive war.

This was not what they had trained for. Airborne soldiers were supposed to strike fast and hard to seize objectives and move on. Now they were stuck in trenches reminiscent of the First World War, enduring constant shelling, sleeping in foxholes filled with freezing water, eating cold rations, and waiting for attacks that came without warning. The conditions were appalling.

Rain turned the beach head into a swamp. Temperatures dropped below freezing at night. Trenches filled with water that could not be drained. Men stood in mud that reached their knees. trench foot disabled hundreds of soldiers, their feet swelling and turning black from constant exposure to cold water.

Malaria began spreading after the Germans deliberately stopped the pumps that kept the surrounding marshland drained, flooding the reclaimed land with brackish water that bred millions of mosquitoes. And always the shells fell. German artillery observers could see every inch of the beach head from their positions in the Alburn Hills.

They registered their guns on roads, supply dumps, aid stations, and command posts. The bombardment was constant. Men learned to judge the sound of incoming shells, to distinguish between the ones that would land close and the ones that would miss, but there was no reliable way to avoid them.

A man could be killed walking to the latrine. He could be killed eating breakfast. He could be killed in his sleep. The Germans brought up a massive railway gun that the troops nicknamed Anzio Annie. It fired shells weighing over 500 lb from positions so far behind the lines that American aircraft could not locate it.

The shells arrived without warning and destroyed everything within 50 yards of impact. There was no rear area. There was no safety. The beach head was only 7 mi deep at its widest point. Every square yard was within range of German guns. The psychological pressure was immense. Veterans who had survived Sicily and Salerno began breaking down.

Some developed what doctors called combat fatigue, what an earlier generation had called shell shock. They trembled uncontrollably. They could not sleep. They jumped at every sound. Some had to be evacuated. Others shot themselves. Replacements who had never seen combat arrived fresh from training camps in the United States.

Many were killed before they learned the names of their squadmates. A man might arrive in the morning and be dead by afternoon without ever firing his weapon at the enemy, but the 5004th did something that no other unit at Anzio attempted with such ferocity. Instead of merely defending their positions, they attacked. Colonel Tucker ordered aggressive patrolling from the first day on the line.

Every night, squads of paratroopers crossed the canal and infiltrated German lines. They moved in darkness, their faces blackened with burned cork, their dog tags taped to prevent jingling. They carried knives and bayonets for silent killing. They carried grenades for emergencies. They carried their weapons on halfcock, ready to fire instantly.

The patrols gathered intelligence, mapping German positions and identifying artillery batteries. They captured prisoners, dragging German soldiers back across the canal for interrogation. They killed centuries, slitting throats in the darkness. They destroyed equipment, placing demolition charges on vehicles and supply dumps, and then they vanished back across the canal before dawn, leaving the Germans to discover what had happened.

The Germans had never encountered anything like it. Their defensive positions were supposed to be impenetrable. Their outposts were supposed to provide early warning of any attack. Their sentries were supposed to sound alarms before any enemy could penetrate their lines. But the Americans appeared behind them. Inside their perimeters in places that should have been secure.

Soldiers who had been alive at midnight were found dead at dawn with their throats cut. German officers doubled their guard posts. They set up ambushes along likely patrol routes. They booby trapped approaches to their positions. None of it worked. The Americans kept coming. The paratrooper uniform contributed to the terror. American jump trousers were designed with large cargo pockets on the thighs, giving them a baggy appearance that looked nothing like standard infantry pants.

The pockets were functional, designed to hold ammunition, grenades, and medical supplies. But they also created a distinctive silhouette that was visible even in low light. German soldiers began recognizing this silhouette. When they saw it, they knew they were facing the American paratroopers. They knew they were in danger.

Word spread through German units. The men in the baggy pants were coming. They came at night. They came silently. They came for you. The German officer who wrote the diary entry was not unique. His fear was shared by thousands of German soldiers along the Anzio perimeter. The constant American raids destroyed sleep, destroyed morale, destroyed the assumption that darkness provided protection.

Men who had been confident in their defensive positions became jumpy and paranoid. They fired at shadows. They shot their own messengers. The psychological impact of the paratrooper raids exceeded their military effect. In early February, the Germans launched a massive counterattack designed to push the allies back into the sea.

36 battalions of German infantry supported by tanks and artillery struck at the heart of the beach head. This was one of the largest concentrated attacks the Germans would launch in Italy. Adolf Hitler himself took personal interest in the operation, demanding that the Anzio abscess be eliminated. The British divisions in the center bore the brunt of the assault.

Their lines buckled under the weight of German armor and infantry. Units were overrun. A breakthrough seemed imminent. If the Germans reached the beaches, they could cut the beach head in half and destroy the Allied forces peacemeal. The 5004th was ordered to plug the gap. H Company had been reduced to 25 enlisted men and two officers.

At full strength, an infantry company contained nearly 200 men. H Company was at less than 15% strength. They had no food because supply convoys could not reach their positions under the constant artillery fire. They had little water. They were nearly out of ammunition. They were sent forward anyway into unfamiliar territory where British lines had collapsed and German forces were advancing without opposition.

Lieutenant James Miguel led a patrol to scout the German positions. Miguel was 26 years old, a Greek American from Fondulac, Wisconsin, who had studied at Ripen College before the war. He had already been wounded twice in the Italian campaign. he would be wounded again before it ended. What Melis did not know at the time was that he would become the most decorated officer in the history of the 82nd Airborne Division, earning a distinguished service cross, multiple silver stars, and two nominations for the Medal of Honor. He was simply doing

his job, leading his men into danger because someone had to do it. On that night in February, Miguelas and his men crawled through the darkness until they literally stumbled into advancing German troops. The enemy was moving forward in high spirits, calling out to each other in German, confident that the breakthrough was imminent.

They did not expect to encounter American resistance this far behind where the front line was supposed to be. Miguel’s ordered his company to dig in along a railroad embankment. They were far ahead of any friendly units, cut off from resupply and reinforcement. They had no communication with headquarters because their radios could not reach battalion command. They had no support.

For the next 24 hours, 27 Americans held their position against repeated German assaults. Wave after wave of enemy infantry attacked their position. German mortars bracketed the railroad embankment. Machine gun fire swept across their foxholes. They fought until their ammunition was nearly exhausted. They fought until their weapons jammed from continuous firing and had to be cleared by hand.

They fought because there was nowhere to retreat and no one coming to relieve them. They fought because that was what paratroopers did. When reinforcements finally arrived, H Company had suffered only one casualty. They had stopped the German advance in their sector. The third battalion of the 54th, which included G, H, and I companies, received one of the first presidential unit citations awarded in the European theater of operations for their actions from February 8th to February 12th, 1944.

The citation noted extraordinary heroism and outstanding performance of duty, but the official recognition mattered less than what the men had proven to themselves and their enemies. They could be surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. They could be cold, hungry, and exhausted, and they would still fight.

The Anzio beach head held. The German counterattack failed. Both sides settled into a grinding stalemate that would last for months. The 54th remained at Anzio for 63 days. During that time, the regiment suffered nearly 600 casualties, roughly 25% of its strength. Two of the three battalion commanders were wounded.

Companies that had landed with 150 men were reduced to 40 or 50. On March 23rd, 1944, the survivors were finally withdrawn from the beach head. Landing craft carried them back to Naples. From there, they sailed to England to rejoin the rest of the 82nd Airborne Division. They expected to jump into Normandy for the D-Day invasion. They trained for it.

They planned for it. But when June 6th arrived, the 54th stayed in England. Their casualties in Italy had been too severe. They did not have enough experienced men to conduct another combat jump. The regiment that had been baptized in the friendly fire disaster over Sicily, that had saved the Seno beach head that had earned its terrifying nickname in the frozen trenches of Anzio, watched from a distance as other units jumped into France.

They would not wait long for their next fight. On September 17th, 1944, the 504th parachuted into Holland as part of Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne assault in history. The plan was audacious, the brainchild of British field marshal Bernard Montgomery. Three airborne divisions would seize bridges across multiple rivers in the occupied Netherlands, creating a corridor 60 mi long through German held territory.

British armor would drive up this corridor and cross the Ry River into Germany. If successful, the war might end by Christmas. The operation was given the code name Market Garden. Market was the airborne component, the seizure of bridges. Garden was the ground component, the armored advance. Both had to succeed or the entire operation would fail.

The 54th was assigned to capture bridges over the Mass River and the Maswall Canal near the city of Nijmmeagen. These bridges were essential to the plan. Without them, British tanks could not advance to the final objective at Arnham. Unlike their previous combat jumps, this one would be made in daylight. Commanders believed that daylight jumps would reduce the problems of navigation and assembly that had plagued earlier operations.

The men were not sure this was an improvement. Jumping in daylight meant the Germans could see them coming. It meant anti-aircraft fire would be more accurate. It meant landing in open fields with no cover from enemy observation. They jumped anyway. They landed in open fields that offered no concealment from German defenders.

Anti-aircraft fire burst around them as they descended. Some men were killed in their parachutes. Others landed in German positions and had to fight immediately upon touching ground. Within 4 hours, the regiment had seized its assigned bridges and secured the surrounding area. It was the fastest objective completion of the entire operation.

While other units struggled with scattered drops and disorganized resistance, the 54th accomplished its mission with brutal efficiency. But one crucial bridge remained in German hands. The highway bridge over the V River at Nij Megan was essential to the entire plan. Without it, British armor could not advance to relieve the British first airborne division, which was being destroyed at Anheim, 10 mi to the north.

American and British forces spent two days trying to capture the bridge by ground assault. Every attempt failed. German defenders had turned the southern approaches into killing grounds. General James Gavin, commanding the 82nd Airborne Division, ordered a desperate gamble. The 54th would cross the Vile River in assault boats and seize the northern end of the bridge while ground forces attacked from the south.

The crossing would be made in broad daylight across 400 yardds of open water. directly into prepared German defensive positions. The boats were flimsy canvas craft supplied by the British. They had wooden frames and no motors. Each boat could carry 13 paratroopers and a crew of three engineers who would paddle.

The 54th had never trained on these boats. They had never practiced a river assault. They did not even know what the boats looked like until they arrived just before the attack. The boats were supposed to arrive early in the morning. Traffic jams along the single road supplying the Allied advance delayed them until midafter afternoon.

Every hour of delay allowed the Germans more time to reinforce their positions. Every hour of delay reduced the chances of relieving the British at Arnham. When the boats finally arrived, the paratroopers had to assemble them under fire. The canvas stretched over collapsible wooden frames that proved difficult to erect.

Some boats were missing paddles. Some had holes in the canvas that had to be patched with tape. Some would not hold together at all. Colonel Tucker asked a British tank officer if his men had ever done anything like this before. The British officer looked at the flimsy boats, looked at the 400 yardds of open water, looked at the German guns on the far side, and asked the question that every sane person would ask.

Tucker’s reply became famous. No, they are getting on the job training. At 3:00 in the afternoon on September 20th, 1944, H and I, companies of the Third Battalion, carried their boats across a dyke and launched into the Wall River. British tanks laid down, covering fire. British artillery attempted to create a smoke screen on the far bank, but the smoke screen was immediately apparent as insufficient.

Wind carried it away from the German positions. The defenders could see everything. German machine guns, mortars, and artillery opened fire before the first boats reached the water. Men died carrying their boats to the launch point. Other boats swamped and sank in the swift current before getting halfway across. The while was running high from recent rains, and the current was much stronger than expected.

Boats drifted downstream, carrying them away from their landing zone and deeper into German fields of fire. Paratroopers paddled with rifle butts when they ran out of oars. Some paddled with their hands. Some bailed water with their helmets, while others paddled. The boats were never designed for a river this wide or a current this strong.

The crossing took between 15 and 25 minutes, depending on where each boat landed. Those minutes seemed like hours to the men in the boats. All around them, soldiers were hit and fell into the water. Blood mixed with the river. Bodies floated downstream. Boats were riddled with bullet holes and began taking on water.

Some capsized, dumping wounded men into the cold river where they drowned, dragged down by their equipment. Roughly half the paratroopers in the first wave were killed or wounded during the crossing. Of the 26 boats that launched, only 11 survived to make a second trip. Those who reached the far shore did not pause to organize.

They charged directly at the German positions, screaming, firing from the hip. Overwhelming defensive positions through sheer ferocity. German soldiers who had watched the Americans paddle across the river under murderous fire could not believe these men were still attacking. Some Germans threw down their weapons and surrendered. Others ran.

Those who resisted were killed in brief, savage encounters. The paratroopers had watched their friends die in the boats. They were not in a mood to take prisoners. By 6:30 that evening, the northern end of the Naiman Bridge was in American hands. The longest bridge in Europe had been captured, and the 54th had done what seemed impossible.

A British officer who witnessed the crossing later wrote that it was the most gallant action he had ever seen. General Gavin called the V River, crossing one of the finest feats of arms of the entire war. The crossing became legendary within the airborne community, proof that determined infantry could accomplish missions that seemed suicidal on paper.

But the sacrifice was not enough to save market garden. British armor that should have raced across the bridge to relieve Annem inexplicably halted on the south side for hours after the crossing succeeded. By the time they finally moved, German reinforcements had sealed off the northern approaches. The British First Airborne Division, trapped at Arnham and running out of ammunition, could not be saved.

Of the roughly 10,000 British and Polish paratroopers who had landed at Arnum, fewer than 2,000 escaped. The rest were killed, wounded, or captured. Market Garden, which was supposed to end the war by Christmas, became one of the greatest Allied defeats of 1944. The 54th remained in Holland through November, fighting a grinding defensive battle against continuous German counterattacks.

The flat Dutch terrain offered no natural cover. Artillery observation was excellent in both directions. Men lived in flooded foxholes, eating cold rations, suffering from trench foot and exposure. When they were finally pulled off the line, they had been in combat for 56 consecutive days. The regiment had suffered nearly 500 additional casualties since landing in Holland.

Some rifle companies had been reduced to a handful of exhausted survivors. They were sent to France to rest and refit. The rest lasted exactly 4 weeks. On December 16th, 1944, three German army groups launched a massive offensive through the Arden’s forest aimed at splitting the Allied armies and capturing the vital port of Antwerp.

The assault achieved complete surprise. American units in the path of the attack were overwhelmed. The front line collapsed. The 82nd Airborne Division received orders to move immediately. There was no time to gather equipment. There was no time to plan. The 54th loaded onto trucks and drove through the night toward Belgium, not knowing where they were going or what they would face when they arrived.

The ride took 18 hours through freezing rain and snow. The trucks had no heat. Many had no canvas covers. The paratroopers huddled together for warmth, wearing every piece of clothing they owned. Along the way, they passed columns of retreating American soldiers, men from units that had been overrun by the German offensive.

The retreating soldiers looked shellshocked and defeated. Some had thrown away their weapons. The paratroopers did not throw away their weapons. They checked their ammunition. They sharpened their knives. They prepared to fight. Their destination was changed on route. Originally headed for Baston, they were redirected north to block the advance of KF grouper Piper, the armored spearhead of the German offensive.

This battle group commanded by SS Lieutenant Colonel Yokim Piper consisted of nearly 5,000 men and over 100 tanks, including the massive Tiger 2 heavy tanks that outclassed anything the Americans possessed. These were elite Waffan SS troops, ideologically committed Nazis who had already massacred American prisoners at Malmidi.

The 54th arrived in the area of Webermont, Belgium on December 18th. They immediately began marching toward the sound of guns. There was no time to dig defensive positions. There was no time to coordinate with other units. There was barely time to eat. The temperature was below zero. Snow covered everything. The roads were sheets of ice.

Men slipped and fell constantly. Some developed frostbite within hours of arriving. On December 20th, the regiment attacked the village of Chennur, which was held by elements of KF grouper Piper. The paratroopers had no tank support. They had no artillery preparation. They had no air cover because the same weather that had enabled the German surprise attack also grounded Allied aircraft.

They crossed 400 yd of open ground laced with barbed wire every 15 yards, advancing directly into heavy machine gun fire, 20 mm cannon fire from armored flack wagons, and fire from German armored reconnaissance vehicles. It was the heaviest enemy fire the 54th had ever encountered. Worse than Sicily, worse than Salerno, worse than Anzio, worse than the Wild River Crossing.

men fell with every step, but the others kept advancing. They did not stop to help their wounded. They did not stop to take cover. They charged directly at the German positions, firing their weapons, throwing grenades, and closing to hand-to-hand combat. They took the village anyway. The fighting in Chao went house-to-house, roomto room.

Paratroopers kicked indoors and sprayed rooms with automatic fire. They threw grenades through windows and charged in behind the explosions. They killed Germans with bayonets and rifle butts when their ammunition ran out. Belgian civilians were trapped in the village during the fighting. Some hid in cellars.

Others were herded into the church by the Germans. When American soldiers finally secured the church, they found dozens of frozen, terrified civilians who had been imprisoned for 3 days without food or water. For the next several days, the regiment fought a series of brutal engagements that helped trap Comf Grouper Paper. Unable to advance, unable to retreat, unable to be resupplied, Piper was forced to abandon his vehicles and escape on foot with the remnants of his command.

The Battle of the Bulge continued through January of 1945. The 54th fought in conditions that rivaled Anzio for misery. Snow fell constantly. Temperatures dropped far below zero. Men developed frostbite while manning defensive positions. Hot food was impossible to deliver. Wounded soldiers froze to death before they could be evacuated.

When the battle ended, the 54th had been in combat for 42 consecutive days. Some rifle companies had been reduced to fewer than 50 men. In the spring of 1945, the regiment participated in the final drive into Germany. They crossed the Rin River in one of the last opposed river crossings of the war. They advanced deep into the collapsing Third Reich, pushing through shattered cities and devastated countryside.

The fighting was sporadic but dangerous. Fanatical German units continued to resist even as their country disintegrated around them. Snipers hid in rubble. Teenagers with anti-tank weapons ambushed convoys. The war was clearly won, but men still died every day. On May 2nd, 1945, a platoon led by Lieutenant Miguel was among the first American units to liberate Woblin concentration camp near the town of Ludviklust.

What they found there defied comprehension. Bodies were stacked like cordwood. Thousands of corpses emaciated beyond recognition as human beings lay in heaps waiting for burial. The few prisoners still alive weighed less than 70 lb. They could not stand. They could not speak. They stared at their liberators with hollow eyes that had seen horrors no words could describe.

The paratroopers had seen death. They had caused death. They had lived with death for nearly 2 years, but nothing had prepared them for wobbling. Miguel later recalled that the experience haunted him for the rest of his life. The soldiers who liberated the camp never forgot what they saw. It confirmed why they had fought. It justified every sacrifice they had made.

Germany surrendered on May 8th, 1945. The 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment had fought in every major campaign of the European theater except the Normandy invasion, which they missed only because their casualties in Italy had been too severe. They had made four combat jumps at Sicily, Salerno, Nijmagedan, and a final jump into Germany near the end of the war.

They had conducted an amphibious assault at Anzio. They had crossed a river under fire at Naiman. They had held positions that seemed impossible to hold and taken objectives that seemed impossible to take. The regiment had received four presidential unit citations during the war for actions at Mayori, Anzio, Chenno, and the Ry River crossing at Hdorf.

Individual soldiers had received hundreds of decorations for valor, including multiple distinguished service crosses, the second highest award for bravery in the American military. When the war ended, the 82nd Airborne Division was selected to serve as the American Occupation Force in Berlin. This was a signal honor reserved for the unit that commanders believed best represented American military excellence.

They marched in formation through the conquered capital of the Third Reich. passed the ruins of buildings that had once housed the Nazi regime, General George Patton, watching the parade, said that in all his years in the army and all the honor guards he had ever seen. The 82nd was undoubtedly the best. The division earned a new nickname that day, America’s guard of honor.

But the men of the 54th kept their original name. They remained the Devils in baggy pants. Colonel Tucker left the regiment after the war. He continued his military career eventually retiring as a major general in 1963. He served as common dant of cadetses at the citadel where he influenced another generation of officers.

General James Gavin who commanded the 82nd airborne division wrote in his memoir that Tucker was probably the best regimental commander of the war. Tucker died in 1970 at the age of 58. He is buried at Bowurt National Cemetery in South Carolina. Lieutenant James Miguel returned home and served two tours in Vietnam.

He wrote a memoir titled All the Way to Berlin that documented his experiences with H Company. Despite being nominated for the Medal of Honor twice, he never received it. In 2020, at the age of 103, Miguelas finally received his final recognition when he was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. Ross Carter, a rifleman with Sea Company, was wounded in the arm during the fighting at Cheno in December of 1944.

He recovered enough to rejoin his unit in February of 1945 and served until the end of the war. After the war, Carter returned to his native Virginia and began writing about his experiences. He worked from memory and from letters he had written during the war. He wrote about the men in his squad, about their jokes and their fears, about the way they lived and the way they died.

He wrote with brutal honesty about the reality of infantry combat without glory and without sentimentality. His brother Boyd, a professor of literature, helped edit the manuscript. Boyd chose the title from the German diary entry that had defined the regiment. Those Devils in Baggy Pants was published in 1951.

The book became one of the most acclaimed firsthand accounts of infantry combat in World War II. Critics praised its unflinching honesty. Veterans said it captured the experience of combat better than any other memoir they had read. It sold over a million copies and remained in print for decades. Carter did not live to see his book’s success.

He died in 1947 from cancer that developed during postwar Arctic operations just 2 years after the war ended. He was 28 years old. The 504th parachute infantry regiment remains active today. Assigned to the first brigade combat team of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Liberty, North Carolina.

The soldiers who serve in the regiment today are volunteers just like the men who volunteered in 1942. They undergo rigorous training that has evolved but still emphasizes the same qualities that defined the original paratroopers. physical toughness, mental resilience, the willingness to jump out of aircraft and fight wherever they land.

The modern soldiers who wear the regiment’s distinctive unit insignia carry forward a legacy that spans eight decades and multiple wars. They know the history. They study it. They are tested on it. Every soldier who joins the 5004th learns about Sicily and Salerno, about Anzio and Nijmegan and the Battle of the Bulge.

The unit has deployed to the Dominican Republic in 1965, to Granada in 1983, to Panama in 1989. They served in Desert Storm in 1991. They deployed repeatedly to Iraq and Afghanistan in the wars that followed September 11th, 2001. The regiment has received four presidential unit citations across its history. It has been commanded by officers who went on to become some of the most senior leaders in the United States military.

including General William West Mland, General David Petraeus, and General John Campbell. But every soldier who serves in the 5004th learns the same fundamental lesson that the original paratroopers learned at Fort Benning in 1942. Airborne soldiers are expected to accomplish missions that other troops cannot.

They are expected to fight outnumbered and surrounded. They are expected to hold ground regardless of the cost. Strike hold and they learn about a German officer who died in a frozen foxhole in Italy, leaving behind a diary entry that his enemies would carry with pride for the next 80 years. American parachutists, devils in baggy pants, are less than 100 m from my outpost line.

I cannot sleep at night. They pop up from nowhere, and we never know when or how they will strike next. That German officer understood something that his superiors never grasped. He understood that certain soldiers cannot be defeated by superior numbers or superior firepower. They can only be killed and even then others will take their place.

The Veyt had conquered most of Europe by 1944. German soldiers had defeated the armies of Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Yugoslavia, and Greece. They had driven deep into the Soviet Union. They had never encountered an enemy they could not defeat through superior tactics and firepower. But they could not defeat the men in baggy pants.

The paratroopers did not care about the odds. They had been trained to fight outnumbered. They expected to be surrounded. They planned for it. Their entire doctrine was based on landing behind enemy lines and holding ground until relieved. If relief never came, they would hold until they died. This mentality terrified German soldiers who were accustomed to enemies who surrendered when their situation became hopeless.

The Americans did not surrender. They kept fighting. They launched counterattacks when they should have been retreating. They held positions when they should have been running. The 54th Parachute Infantry Regiment did not win the war by themselves. No single unit did. Millions of soldiers from dozens of nations contributed to the Allied victory.

The war was won through industrial production, strategic bombing, naval power, and the sacrifice of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front. But the 54th represented something essential about the American way of fighting. They were volunteers who chose the hardest path when easier options were available. They were young men, barely out of high school or college, who refused to quit when every rational calculation said they should.

They were soldiers who attacked when defense would have been easier and held when retreat would have been safer. They did not ask for recognition. Most of them came home after the war and resumed ordinary lives. They worked jobs, raised families, and rarely spoke about what they had done. The ones who wrote memoirs did so reluctantly, usually decades later, often only after their friends had died.

They did not think of themselves as heroes. They thought of themselves as soldiers who did their jobs. The heroes, they said, were the ones who did not come home, but history remembers them differently. History remembers them as the devils in baggy pants. If you found this story as compelling as we did, please take a moment to like this video.

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