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The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, under the command of Colonel Edson Raff, was the lead assault formation for the 17th Airborne Division, and was consequently the first American airborne unit to land as part of Operation Varsity.
After it had participated in Operation Varsity, the 17th Airborne Division continued to advance through Germany as a part of XVIII Airborne Corps, engaging German forces around Wesel, Essen and Münster. When Germany unconditionally surrendered on 7 May 1945, the division was conducting occupation duties in northern Germany.
The 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment (513th PIR) was an airborne infantry regiment of the United States Army, raised during World War II.The 513th formed part of the 17th Airborne Division and participated in the European Campaign, fighting in the latter stages of the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945 and parachuted into Germany in Operation Varsity in March, in the largest airborne drop of ...
In April 1943, Miley organized the activation of the 17th Airborne Division at Camp Mackall, North Carolina. He was the sole commander of the 17th Airborne Division during the war, leading the division through such actions on the Western Front as the Battle of the Bulge and Operation Varsity. The division was deactivated in late 1945, but ...
Nixon was one of the few men of the 101st Airborne to jump with another division or regiment. On March 24, 1945, Nixon was assigned by Major General Maxwell Taylor, the commanding general of the 101st, to be an observer with Major General William Miley's 17th Airborne Division during Operation Varsity, the airborne crossing of the river Rhine. [7]
The operation took the Allied forces completely by surprise, and several units under the command of First Allied Airborne Army became involved in the Allied attempt to first halt, and then repel the offensive; these units were principally the 101st Airborne Division, 82nd Airborne Division, 17th Airborne Division and the 6th Airborne Division.
XVIII Airborne Corps planned and executed Operation Varsity, the airborne component of Operation Plunder, the crossing of the River Rhine into Germany. It was one of the largest airborne operations of the war, with the British 6th and U.S. 17th Airborne Divisions under command. [5]
He served in Europe and became a private first class in Company E of the 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 17th Airborne Division. [1] [2] During Operation Varsity on March 24, 1945, Stryker's company attacked a strongly defended building near Wesel, Germany. When a platoon tasked with making a frontal assault became pinned down by intense ...