Fort Benning is a relatively old post, dating back to just after World War I. In spite of its age (some of the buildings are more than fifty years old) and remote location, it is the crossroads for the Army’s infantry community. Located on the post are such vital facilities as the U.S. Army Infantry Center and the School of Infantry. This is the institutional home for infantry in the Army, and the primary center for their weapons and tactical development. If a system, tactic, or procedure has anything to do with personnel carrying weapons into battle, the Infantry Center will in some way own it.
The Center’s responsibilities have ranged from developing the specifications of the M? Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the development of tactical doctrine for the employment of the new Javelin antitank guided missile. Fort Benning is also home to a number of training facilities, including the notorious U.S. Army School of the Americas. Known ruefully as the College of the Dictators (Manuel Noriega of Panama was one of its more notable graduates), it has provided post-graduate military study programs for officers of various Latin American nations for decades. Fort Benning is a busy place, and it is here that our look at airborne training begins.
In the middle of the post is a large parade area with a number of odd-looking pieces of training equipment. These include three 250-ft/76-m tall towers that look like they were plucked from a fairground (they were!), as well as mockups of various aircraft. Tucked over to one side of the parade ground is the headquarters of the 1st Battalion of the 507th Airborne Infantry Regiment (the 1/507th), which runs the U.S. Army Airborne Jump School.
There are ghosts here, though you have to know more to see them. Close your eyes, and travel back over half a century to a time when America had no airborne forces.
It was 1940 and America was desperately trying to catch up with the astounding combat achievements of the Germans, Russians, and Italians. Already, the Nazis had used airborne units to take Norway, Denmark, and the Low Countries of Western Europe with great success. This was one of many German innovations that had been demonstrated in the first year of World War II, and the leadership of the U.S. Army had taken notice. There was a smell of war in the air, and more than a few Army officers knew that America would eventually be part of it. The question for them was whether airborne forces could prove useful for the growing American Army that was beginning to be assembled. It fell to a small group of visionary Army officers on this very field to prove that America both needed and could develop airborne forces. At the heart of the effort was a man who, though he himself never saw combat with the American airborne force, would be honored as their institutional father: Bill Lee.
Major General William Carey Lee, USA, started life as a native of Dunn, North Carolina. A veteran of service in the Great War, he was a citizen soldier (a graduate of North Carolina State University, not West Point) in the tradition of officers like J. J. Pettigrew.[14] Lee was an officer with a vision for the possibilities of warfare, and was always looking for new and better ways for technology to be applied to battle. After World War I, he served in a variety of posts around the world. At one point, he was the occupation mayor of Mayen, Germany. Later he would serve a tour of duty in the Panama Canal Zone. It was in his service as a lieutenant colonel in the Office of the Chief of Infantry in the War Department (the old name for the Department of the Army) that he rendered his most valuable service to America and its armed forces.
During the inter-war years, he had taken a great interest in the idea that aircraft could deliver troops to the modern battlefield. Such thinking was hardly popular at the time, especially after the court-martial of Billy Mitchell for speaking out against the Army’s lack of vision on the uses of airpower. Army generals were more concerned with holding on to what little they had in the way of bases, men, and equipment than exploring the crackpot ideas of airpower zealots like Mitchell. Still, Lee watched the development of the airborne forces of Russia, Italy, and Germany with great interest, and he began to think about how Americans might use paratroops in their own operations.
Then came the German assault on Scandinavia and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940. The parachute and air-landing troops led by General Kurt Student were the spearhead of the Nazi invasion in Western Europe. This made everyone in the U.S. Army take notice, and Lee was well positioned to make use of the excitement. Less than two months after the Germans attacked in the West, Lee was assigned to start a U.S. Army project to study and demonstrate the possibilities of airborne warfare. By late 1940, he had formed a small group of volunteers known as the Parachute Test Platoon at Fort Benning. Their job was to evaluate and develop airborne equipment and tactics, and do it in a hurry. This small group of airborne pioneers was to do in just a few months what had taken countries like Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union years to develop. In those few short months, the test platoon demonstrated almost all of the key capabilities necessary to effectively drop combat-ready units into battle. Numerous parachute designs were tested and evaluated, along with lightweight weapons, carrying containers, boots, knives, and a variety of other equipment. They were racing against time, since Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the Second World War were just months away.
Along the way, they frequently applied a bit of Yankee ingenuity to their problems, with sometimes surprising results. When several of Lee’s officers saw towers with parachute-drop rides at the New York World’s Fair, they felt that the towers might be of value in training paratroopers. So when the fair closed down, the Army acquired them, and moved the 250-foot /76.2-meter-tall towers to Fort Benning. Today three of them survive on the parade ground, and are still used by trainees who attend Jump School.
The results from Lee’s early tests were so promising that by early 1941, he had been authorized to enlarge his test group to 172 prospective paratroopers. His leadership abilities were so well respected that he had over 1,000 volunteers for the enlarged group. Bill Lee was a man with a vision who recognized the qualities of the men who would be his first paratroopers. He encouraged their swagger and dash by his own example, leading from the front and never asking them to do anything that he himself would not do. That was why, at the age of forty-seven, he made his first parachute jump. At an age when most other Army officers might be thinking about retirement, he was building a new combat arm for the nation.
By 1942, the Army had seen the worth of Lee’s ideas, and was endorsing them fully. Now a full colonel, he helped stand up the first two parachute regiments (the 502nd and 503rd) in March of that year. Three months later, he was a brigadier general coordinating plans with the British for future airborne operations. Then, in August of 1942, the real breakthrough came when the U.S. Army decided to form two airborne divisions from the shells of two infantry divisions, the 82nd and 101st. Command of the 101st fell to Lee, now a major general. Over the next year and a half, Bill Lee worked himself and the 101st into combat shape. Seeing the need for the division to have heavier equipment, he added gliders to the 101st, and laid out the basic airborne plan for Operation Overlord, the coming invasion of France. Unfortunately, ill health kept General Lee from fulfilling his personal dreams of leading the 101st into combat. He suffered a debilitating heart attack in February of 1944, and was sent home to recover. Disappointed, he handed over command of the Screaming Eagles of the 101st to General Maxwell Taylor for the invasion. In his honor, though, when the troopers of the 101st jumped into the night skies over Normandy on June 6th, they replaced their traditional war cry of “Geronimo!” with “Bill Lee!” Though Bill Lee never fully recovered, and died in 1948, he had created a lasting legacy for the airborne forces. It’s still out there, on the training ground at Fort Benning, where new young men and women still use the tools that Bill Lee built for them half a century ago.
For today’s student paratroopers, very little has changed since Bill Lee and his test platoon first jumped at Fort Benning. Surprisingly, most of the course and equipment at the U.S. Army Jump School would still be familiar to those early airborne pioneers. For the young men and women who come here to be tested, it is a journey to someplace special in the Army. On this same parade ground, all the great names in airborne history have passed: Ridgway, Taylor, Gavin, Tucker, and so many more. The students know this, and realize that they have started down a difficult road. Three weeks on the Fort Benning training ground at the hands of the 1st of the 507th frequently breaks men and women who truly believed that they had the stuff to be a paratrooper. Some do, and it is their story that we are going to show you now.
The Schoolhouse: The 1st Battalion, 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment
