A Summary History of the 509th Parachute Infantry

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"The Geronimos"
(Originally published in 2011)

The 509th Infantry Regiment (ABN) traces its lineage to the formation of the 504th Parachute Infantry Battalion on October 5, 1941, just two months before the United States entered World War II. The battalion was the fourth battalion of parachutists to be activated at Fort Benning, Georgia. The battalion, and every designation of the unit since, has adopted the nickname of the "Geronimos." This came from the famous exclamation of Geronimo! that was started by a member of the Parachute Test Platoon as he exited the aircraft on a qualifying jump to prove he wasn't scared and still had the presence of mind to yell something distinctive.

Very quickly the Army realized that to fight the upcoming war they would need regiments of paratroopers rather than independent battalions. Effective on March 1, 1942, the 504th PIB was redesignated as the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment. With individual training completed, the 2/503rd PIR moved to Fort Bragg, North Carolina for battalion-level training on March 29, 1942. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Edson Raff, the 2/503rd PIR was selected as the best-prepared parachute battalion and became the first airborne unit in the U.S. Army to deploy to England. The battalion departed on the Queen Elizabeth on June 4, 1942, and arrived in Glasgow, Scotland, six days later.

The Geronimos made the estate of Chilton-Foliat their training base for the next six months. For most of this time, the battalion thought they would be called upon to jump into France. However, the cross-channel invasion was postponed for more than a year. The 2/503rd was incorporated into Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. On the night of November 7, 1942, the Geronimos climbed aboard 39 C-47 aircraft and departed Lands End in Great Britain for a 1500-plus mile trip to North Africa. Their mission was to take control of airfields at La Sénia and Tafaraoui near Oran, Algeria. While their mission on November 8 was less than successful, the battalion has the distinction of being the first American airborne unit to make a combat jump in World War II.

Just prior to departing England, the Army passed down orders for another name change for the Geronimos. Since the other battalions of the 503rd PIR had deployed to the Pacific Theater, it was believed that a new regiment would be formed around the Geronimos. They were redesignated the 2nd Battalion of the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment effective November 2, 1942.

The 2/509th made a second combat jump in North Africa, this time at Youks les Bains, a French-occupied airfield on the Algerian/Tunisian border on November 15, 1942. This time the French were cooperative and became allied with the American and British forces. French forces in the area participated with Edson Raff's "Tunisian Task Force," an ad hoc group of American units including the Geronimos. The Tunisian Task Force successfully kept the German and Italian forces in the area out of the mountain passes that led from Tunisia into Algeria until the main effort of the Americans and British could move east.

Now under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Doyle Yardley, the Geronimos were attached to the 82nd Airborne Division for the invasion of Sicily but were held in reserve for the entire operation. Four days after the invasion of Salerno on the coast of Italy, when the beachhead was in danger of collapsing, Fifth Army commander General Mark Clark called for reinforcement by his airborne forces. While the 82nd Airborne Division was dropped inside the beachhead, the 2/509th PIR was sent on a seemingly suicide mission to drop on and seize the crossroads town of Avellino, more than twenty miles behind enemy lines. Their drop on the night of September 14, 1943, was scattered and the battalion was not able to concentrate their forces. However, the small unit actions of the Geronimos wreaked havoc in the enemy's rear area. More than 80% of the unit was able to make it back to friendly lines. Unfortunately, the battalion commander was wounded and taken prisoner on the night of the jump.

The 2/509th was reconstituted in Naples and assigned directly to Fifth Army Headquarters. The new commander was Lieutenant Colonel William Yarborough. In order to provide a unit identity while assigned to Fifth Army, Yarborough had a unit patch designed. This patch included a Native American stick figure that the paratroopers said looked like a "gingerbread man." The patch, still used today, is known as the gingerbread man patch and provided a new nickname for the paratroopers of the 509th: the gingerbread men.

The Geronimos began their next combat operation on November 9, 1943, in the mountains of Italy above the Volturno River. Attached to Darby's Rangers, the battalion attacked the crest of Mount Croce above the town of Venafro. The gingerbread men held their position against continuous German attacks in foul weather with resupply over difficult terrain for the next 34 days.

By this time the Army decided that the other battalions of the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment would not be fielded after all. The 2nd Battalion would remain an independent airborne battalion. On December 10, 1943, the Geronimos were officially designated the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion.

In the early morning hours of January 22, 1944, the 509th PIB, again attached to Darby's Rangers, made a beach landing at Anzio. The gingerbread men endured 73 days of combat at Anzio. During this time the Geronimos earned two Presidential Unit Citations. The first was for the battalion holding the Allied line against the onslaught of the German division's deliberate attack. The second was awarded to C Company, 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion for "Raid Nibble," the assault on two strategic stone houses on the German line.

The next combat operation for the Geronimos was the jump into southern France as part of Operation Dragoon. The 509th PIB was part of the First Airborne Task Force (FABTF) and jumped on the morning of August 15, 1944. After seizing the town of Le Muy, France, the FABTF turned and moved up the coast of the French Riviera with the gingerbread men in the lead. The 509th Parachute Infantry Combat Team (the 509th reinforced with the 551st PIB and the 463rd Airborne Artillery attached) took the cities of Cannes and Nice by the end of August in what became known as the "Champagne Campaign." The name was derived from the jubilant civilians who poured into the streets to welcome their liberators.

In September 1944 the Geronimos, along with the other units of the FABTF, moved into the French Maritime Alps to screen the U.S. Seventh Army's push to the north. After more than three months of patrol actions in the mountain passes, the gingerbread men were relieved and moved to join the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions camps around Rheims and Soissons, France on December 13, 1944.

On December 16, 1944, three German armies crashed through the Ardennes sector of Belgium nearly splitting the Allied line into two pieces. The "Battle of the Bulge" required the immediate deployment of all reserves to restore the line. The 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion deployed to the northern shoulder of the bulge on December 22 and was attached to the 3rd Armored Division. While being held in reserve, the Geronimos' commander, Major Edmund Tomasik, saw a break in the American line at the small village of Sadzot. On his own authority, Tomasik committed the Geronimos, who held the line against two German regiments of SS Grenadiers. This action earned the gingerbread men their third Presidential Unit Citation. As the Americans turned to the offense, the 509th PIB was attached to the 7th Armored Division for the push to retake the Belgian town of St. Vith. In successive attacks, the Geronimos strength was continually depleted until they were relieved on January 28, 1945, with only 55 men remaining.

The Army had much earlier decided that our airborne forces would consist of regiments and divisions. There was no need for independent battalions. On February 1, 1945, the surviving members of the 509th PIB were informed that the unit would be deactivated. The gingerbread men were sent to other units as replacements. Although the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion was not allowed, as a unit, to continue through to the end of the war, the Geronimos had amassed an impressive record in combat. The battalion earned eight battle stars and three arrowheads (for combat invasions) for their colors. The gingerbread men were awarded two Presidential Unit Citations as a battalion and a third for C Company. The government of France awarded the battalion the Croix de Guerre with Silver Star. They received two Army and two Corps commendations. Individual paratroopers of the 509th had won the Medal of Honor (Corporal Paul Huff), 10 Distinguished Service Crosses, 62 Silver Stars, 6 Croix de Guerre with Silver Stars, 5 Legions of Merit, and dozens of other decorations.

The 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment was kept on the Army's list of inactive units from the end of World War II, through the Korean War, and into the Cold War. Under the Combat Arms Regimental System (CARS), implemented in 1957, combat regiments that were considered the most historically distinguished were selected to serve as the parent units of battalions. The 509th was chosen as one of these regiments whose heritage deserved to live on.

In April 1963, the 509th was reactivated as the 509th Infantry Regiment (Airborne/Mechanized) with 1st and 2nd Battalions assigned to the 1st Brigade of the 8th Infantry Division in West Germany. Stationed at Lee Barracks near the city of Mainz, the two battalions of the 509th PIR now had a dual role of both mechanized infantry and as an airborne "fire brigade" for contingency missions. Both battalions participated in "Project Partnership," an extensive training program that involved training with NATO forces' weapons and tactics. For a ten-year period, a new generation of gingerbread men fulfilled their Cold War mission of defense and deterrence in West Germany.

With the changing strategic requirements of the Cold War, it was determined that a battalion-sized combat team could satisfy the airborne contingency requirements in Europe. In 1973, the two battalions of the 509th Infantry Regiment were consolidated into one. Redesignated the 1st Battalion (ABN) 509th Infantry (Battalion Combat Team), the unit was moved to a new home in Vicenza, Italy. The 1/509th ABCT had a fourth company assigned to it, designated "Battery D" and fielding pack howitzers. This gave the Geronimos their own organic indirect fire support. Additional augmentation included an engineer platoon, a parachute rigger platoon, and a double-strength medical platoon. Assigned to the Southern European Task Force (SETAF), the battalion combat team was the only airborne unit stationed in Europe.

In 1983, the 1/509th ABCT in Vicenza was reflagged as the 4/325th Infantry Regiment to bring the unit into alignment with those regiments traditionally assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. However, the 509th was not completely out of the picture yet. In 1975, C Company (Pathfinder), 509th Infantry was activated as a separate company at the Army Aviation Center, Fort Rucker, Alabama, to provide training support to Aviation School. Unfortunately, this unit was also reflagged in 1993.

The 1st Battalion, 509th (ABN) Infantry Regiment was reactivated once again on December 18, 1987, to serve as the Opposing Forces (OPFOR) at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC), Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. The JRTC moved to Fort Polk, Louisiana in June 1993. The 1/509th serves as the OPFOR to provide realistic training that simulates combat conditions for American and Allied light infantry and special operations units rotating through training cycles at the JRTC. The modern-day gingerbread men also have an on-order combat mission. They were called upon to conduct this mission through a deployment to Operation Iraqi Freedom II in 2004.

The most recent embodiment of the Geronimo spirit was fashioned on September 16, 2005, with the creation of the 3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry (Airborne) at Fort Richardson, Alaska. The 3/509th Infantry (ABN) is assigned to the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, the only airborne brigade in the Pacific theater. After only one year of training together, the Geronimos of the 3rd Battalion made their first deployment. The 3/509th has participated in the Global War on Terror with deployments to Iraq in 2006 and Afghanistan in 2007. At the time of this writing, the 3/509th was training for another deployment to Afghanistan in late 2011.

For a complete history of the gingerbread men during World War II, read The Boldest Plan is the Best: The Combat History of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion During WWII by Jim Travis Broumley.

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The Raid on El Djem, A Nonfiction Excerpt

Since we recently released our first historical fiction work, The Bridge at El Djem, I thought I would share an edited section from the nonfiction book it was based on. The Boldest Plan is the Best: The Combat History of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion is an amazing story for a nonfiction book, (forgive me if that sounds less than humble, really I’m talking strictly about the true history of the unit). But I’m a sucker for a pulpy adventure story, so when it came to writing a fiction work, I took a number of liberties with history. And I don’t really think that’s a bad thing. Growing up I learned a lot of history reading mass-market paperbacks and watching old movies on Saturdays. That being said, I wanted to provide the opportunity for fiction fans to know the true story that inspired The Bridge at El Djem.

So here it is, footnotes removed, an excerpt from The Boldest Plan is the Best:

Raid on El Djem

By mid-December [1942], the Germans had two armies in Tunisia. General Juergen von Arnim’s Fifth Panzer Army was in the north around the ports of Tunis and Bizerte. General von Arnim had counterattacked the British First Army and held them at the mountain line approximately fifty miles west of Tunis. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps had retreated from Libya into southern Tunisia under pressure from the British Eighth Army. Rommel, under orders from the Axis high command not to retreat further, held the Mareth Line, a fortified border between Tunisia and Libya.

Hitler was attempting to resupply his armies in North Africa through the ports in the north. Those supplies for the Afrika Korps that were not lost to Allied attacks at sea, were sent south by rail. Rommel’s army was consuming 400 tons of fuel a day. Stopping the flow of supplies would cripple Rommel’s ability to maneuver in the south. General Anderson’s First Army headquarters believed that the German supply line would be cut by destroying a key railroad bridge near the village of El Djem. The steel girder bridge was on the coastal railroad line between the cities of Sousse and Sfax. The Air Corps had hit it multiple times with bombers and again with fighters shooting rockets. The bridge would not come down.

The original concept for parachute troops was more like what we think of today as Rangers or Special Forces. The 2/509’s initial training emphasized hand-to-hand fighting and demolitions. Some unknown staff officer must have remembered this or perhaps they had read of the exploits of the paratroopers in the press. Regardless, the order came down from Allied Forces Headquarters for a platoon from the 2/509^th to jump into the area of El Djem, some sixty air miles behind enemy lines, and blow up the bridge from the ground.

The original order called for two officers and twenty-one enlisted men, making up an assault-security team and a demolition team, to jump in at 2100 hours on December 20. After blowing the bridge, the raiders were to move to a spot for a pickup by aircraft. Whoever wrote the original order must have thought that the paratroopers were supermen who could do anything. It specified that each man would “act as [an] Intelligence agency,” capturing papers and documents, capturing officers, and cutting telephone lines. Secondary tasks were included such as creating diversions in the enemy’s rear area and acting “generally as guerrillas.” First Lieutenant John Martin, the demolitions platoon leader, was chosen to lead the raid, with Second Lieutenant Dan DeLeo leading the assault team.

Ignoring the fanciful “intelligence agency” directives, the mission was actually doable. That is, if the platoon was dropped where they needed to be, they did not encounter any sizeable enemy force and were able to make it to their pickup point before daybreak. Then the changes came. First, the aircraft pickup was canceled. Reasons were not provided, but it was assumed that the Air Corps thought the risk of losing their aircraft was too great. Nevertheless, the risk of losing paratroopers was not. The raiding force would have to walk out and exfiltrate to the nearest Allied unit.

Lieutenant Colonel Doyle Yardley, as battalion commander, could make the final call on who would go on this mission. Rather than arguing with higher headquarters and getting the mission canceled (as the men believed Raff would have done), Yardley decided that he did not want to lose his best men on an operation that was starting to look like a suicide mission. He based his roster decision on men he thought would “most easily be replaced.” Yardley removed Lieutenant Martin and Corporal Lloyd Bjelland from the demolition team and radioman Ellis Bishop. Second Lieutenant DeLeo would now command the operation.

Dan DeLeo was new to the Geronimos, but he was not an inexperienced soldier. DeLeo had joined the Illinois National Guard in 1937 and rose to the rank of sergeant. He obtained his commission in 1942 just before entering active duty. After jump school, he came to England with the replacements for the 2/509th PIR. DeLeo had been placed in charge of the rear detachment of replacements in England. He and the other replacements had come to North Africa by ship a couple of weeks after Operation Torch. They were reunited with the rest of the battalion at Maison Carrée.

The changes to the mission were made before Yardley briefed DeLeo. The Lieutenant did not know that he or any of the men on his roster were considered to be “easily replaced.” On the bright side, foreign languages would not be a problem on this mission. DeLeo spoke Italian. One of his men, Sergeant John Betters, could speak Arabic. Another, Private Roland Rondeau, also spoke fluent French. Added to the raiding force were two French paratroopers, First Sergeant Jean Guilhenjouan and Corporal Paul Vullierme, to act as guides. Both had served in the area for several years and both spoke Arabic. The mission was postponed until Christmas Eve and then rescheduled again. DeLeo’s group, now numbered at 32 men, left Maison Blanche the morning of December 26 in three C-47s. After a brief stopover at Tebessa, they continued on to the airstrip at Thelepte where they spent the remainder of the day. The jump was scheduled for 2200 hours that night.

Colonel Raff says that he did not “know that much” about the mission until the three C-47s landed at Thelepte. He tried to stall the mission for a day in order to arrange an aircraft pickup. Unfortunately higher headquarters overruled him and the mission still had to go that night. Knowing how much trouble transport pilots had in finding drop zones in the dark, Raff asked Lieutenant Colonel Phil Cochran to go along as a copilot. Cochran was the commander of the P-40 fighter squadron and had personally attacked the bridge in daylight. Raff figured that if any pilot could find the bridge at night, Cochran could. Raff also advised some of the men going on the mission to kill any Arabs that they encountered, as they could not be trusted and would probably alert the enemy to their presence. Oddly, and for reasons unknown, Raff did not have this discussion with Lieutenant DeLeo.

The flight to the drop zone took about an hour. As the aircraft crossed the “lines” near Godsin there was some flak, but none of the aircraft were hit. Even with Cochran on the flight, they were unsure of the exact location of the bridge. They circled a small town, decided it was El Djem, and then flew to where they thought the drop zone was. No injuries were sustained on the jump, but one man was missing and the troopers were unable to locate one of their equipment bundles. This was a common occurrence on a night jump, and they decided that there was probably enough TNT in the one bundle to drop at least the center span of the bridge.

Before the raiding party set out for the bridge, a group of five Arabs appeared at the drop zone. Some of the men insisted that they follow Raff’s advice and kill them, but the lieutenant would not allow it. DeLeo offered them some of their parachutes, prized by the Arabs, for their silence. The platoon headed east toward the rail line under the heavy burden of their equipment plus an extra 500 pounds of explosives.

An hour and a half later, they reached the railroad tracks. Here they turned south, assuming they had been dropped at the right location. In the dark of night, they could only see a few yards, so it was difficult to fix their location in the desert. They had to trust their plan. The paratroopers encountered another Arab, this one with a donkey cart. The Americans pressed the Arab into service to help carry the burden of the large amount of TNT. But an extra 500 pounds was too much for the donkey and after a time DeLeo let that Arab go free as well. We do not know why the lieutenant did not confirm his position with Arabs, unless perhaps at this point he was confident that they had been dropped at the right location and all was going to plan. Regardless, after hours of marching in the dark, DeLeo realized that they should have come to the bridge by now.

The men took cover in an olive grove to rest. In the morning twilight, the lieutenant was able to take a compass reading on some nearby hills and, with the help of his French guides, fix his location. He now knew for sure that the pilots had dropped them south of the bridge instead of north of it. They had spent the night walking away from the bridge. He told the men that they were nearly twenty-two miles south of their objective.

All of the paratroopers knew that there was no way they could march twenty-two miles back to their objective in broad daylight. The best that DeLeo could do was to cause some damage and then get his men out. Their chosen target was a small building next to the tracks that they spotted another hundred yards down the tracks, near a cut through a small hill. It had electrical wires leading to it and they thought that the building was for controlling switches on the line. The demolition men set their charges to the building and roughly 100 yards of track, all set to blow at the same time.

By now the enemy was closing in on them. DeLeo had posted security men up and down the tracks. Within minutes of each other, paratroopers came running up to report enemy soldiers in at least platoon strength were approaching on foot from both the north and the south. While they were setting their charges, a switching car came down the tracks, and German soldiers onboard traded shots with the paratroopers. The Germans decided to wait for their reinforcements to arrive and withdrew back up the line. DeLeo shouted for everyone to move west and take cover. The demo men lit a three-minute fuse. They could see more enemy soldiers arriving in trucks farther down the tracks.

The ground shook under their feet as 500 pounds of explosives went off all at once. Dirt, ties, rails, and other debris flew hundreds of feet in the air. While the explosion must have shocked the approaching enemy into momentary inactivity, the paratroopers immediately started double-timing to the west. The Americans quickly split up into groups of two to six each and headed for home as best they could with enemy soldiers closing in on them from three directions.

The two French paratroopers, Sergeant John Betters, Private Frank Romero, and Private Roland Rondeau stayed with Lieutenant DeLeo. The six men moved out together almost at a dead run. They came to a road and followed it. Soon a cargo truck appeared with a lone driver. The six paratroopers stepped out into the road with their weapons leveled and commandeered the truck. DeLeo sat in front with the Italian driver. The lieutenant wrapped a sheet over his head to look like an Arab while the other men climbed in the back and remained hidden under a tarpaulin. This guise allowed them to travel for some miles that included a harrowing passage right through a column of German soldiers marching on the road. Sensing the need to get off the main route, DeLeo had the driver turn onto a secondary road heading west which soon degenerated into nothing but a camel track. Eventually, the truck landed in a ditch, broken beyond repair.

Before proceeding on foot, Sgt Betters advocated killing the Italian. As with the Arabs they had encountered, DeLeo wouldn’t hear of it. The Lieutenant gave the Italian 300 francs to compensate him for his broken truck and hoped that he would think favorably of the Americans, or at least not report their presence for a while. The group proceeded on foot, traveling by night and hiding during the day. The language skills of the group came in handy in gaining information and bartering for food during their odyssey. According to Rondeau, “After a couple of days, we gave it up [hiding during the day]. I guess we got a little cocky, and we hiked all the way in day and night until we got to our lines.”

DeLeo’s group eventually stumbled into a French outpost, only after walking into a minefield while approaching it. The French defenders were kind enough to show them the way out of the minefield, after which they called Raff’s headquarters to let them know that the paratroopers were back. A truck was sent to pick up the wayward Americans. They had been gone nearly two weeks and DeLeo estimated that they had traveled about 120 miles to get back to Allied lines.

Besides DeLeo’s group, only Private Charles Doyle and Private Mike Underhill made it home to the 2/509th while they were still in North Africa. Those two privates, moving individually, endured a similar ordeal to those who were with DeLeo. That meant that only eight soldiers who went on the raid at El Djem made it back to Allied lines. Sixteen others survived the war after serving time as prisoners of the Axis. One, Staff Sergeant Manuel Serrano, would rejoin the unit in Italy after escaping from a POW camp there. The remaining eight raiders are presumed to have been killed by the enemy. Just prior to leaving North Africa, Lieutenant Dan DeLeo had the opportunity to visit the bridge near El Djem. It was still standing. The lieutenant knew when he saw the sixteen stone pillars that held up the double-tracked steel girder bridge, that his raiding party could have never carried enough explosives to blow it. He was confident that he and his men had done as much damage twenty miles south as they would have been able to do had they found the bridge that fateful night. The raid at El Djem was the third and last combat jump for the 2nd Battalion of the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment in North Africa.

Get the books on Amazon:

The Boldest Plan is the Best: The Combat History of the 509^th Parachute Infantry Battalion during WWII.

The Bridge at El Djem: A Jack Bell WWII Novel.