American Valor Quarterly Issue 12 - Spring 2015 | Page 32

started drafting men, up to age 35 with
three kids. Here I was, a young man
with no family to worry about, and
that started to get to me. At the same
time, we started to hear the rantings
and ravings of Hitler on the radio every
day, and we saw the deterioration of the
war efforts with Britain and France. I
started to understand that if we didn’t
get into the war in a real way, the world
would be different. So for that reason,
I quit my job with the intention of
signing up for the armed services.
When I was five, I had seen a
parachute jump at a county fair in
Bedford, Indiana, and I always thought
I’d like to do that. But I was also
passionately interested in submarines
and I read all I could about them.
So when I went to the post office to
sign up, they accepted me for work
on submarines. Then I asked, “Well,
how soon am I going?” The response
I got was that they were in the process
of building the submarine I would be
serving on, so I would have to wait
about six months before I could report
for duty. That wouldn’t work for me
since I couldn’t go and ask for my job
back, so I went across the hall and
signed up for the parachute troop.

war strategy similar to what we were
doing in WWI. But Gen. Bradley felt
that with some changes to the training
curriculum, paratroopers could be
useful to the U.S. Army. He knew we
couldn’t simply fight the way we did in
WWI. There had to be changes.
Gen. Bradley tapped a West Point
graduate named Col. Robert Sink to
lead the new parachute regiment. He
told Col. Sink, “We want you to form a
new unit, such as the Army has never
seen. You can have any personnel you
want; any material you want, anything
you want done; no one can manage
you.” About 6,500 people signed up
for this unit right out of civilian life.
Beginning in the middle of July, 1942,
until Dec. 1st, Col. Sink held what
we called “airborne basic.” Prior to
this, anyone who went into parachute
training went straight to Fort Benning
for four weeks. In four weeks you
were a paratrooper. After that month
of training, they sent four or six
parachutes to one regiment and eight or
10 to another regiment. But Col. Sink
had another idea. He wanted enlisted
men who would start in and have this
basic training that he designed, before

going on to Fort Benning for further
training, and then finally overseas for
combat. Col. Sink believed people who
started together, worked together, went
to combat together would create a
cohesive unit, in which you knew by the
time attrition had finished, every man
you had would stay with you. From
July, 1942 until December, that 6,500
enlisted men shrunk down to 1,650
people. That’s how rugged it was. The
discip [