101st seeking to save 'Band of Brothers' regiment

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

http://news.yahoo.com/101st-seeking-...100029603.html <cite class="byline vcard top-line">KRISTIN M. HALL <abbr>June 28, 2013</abbr> </cite>



FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — The 101st Airborne Division is trying to save its illustrious 506th Infantry Regiment, whose origins date to World War II's fabled "Band of Brothers," from deactivation under the Army's massive restructuring.
The Army announced this week that at least 12 combat brigades nationwide are to be eliminated by 2017 under sweeping military reductions, among them the 4th Brigade Combat Team at Fort Campbell, Ky.
The long-term reorganization seeks to reduce the Army's size from a high of about 570,000 members at the peak of the Iraq war to 490,000 to shrink spending and reflect the country's current military needs as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan end.
The brigade traces its lineage to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, created in 1942, at Camp Toccoa, Ga.
The 506th was among several parachute regiments created to sneak behind enemy lines in the war. Nicknamed "Currahee," which is a Native American Cherokee term for "stands alone," the regiment parachuted into Normandy during the D-Day invasion in 1944 and then later parachuted into Holland. The regiment raced to liberate Europe amid bouts of fierce fighting in Bastogne, Belgium and then overran Hitler's famed "Eagle's Nest" in Germany.
The regiment wasn't associated with the "Band of Brothers" nickname until the book by historian Stephen Ambrose came out in 1992, reigniting interest in the regiment among the public. The subsequent HBO miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks about the men of Easy Company won national acclaim, and followed the soldiers from paratrooper training through D-Day and the end of the war.
Brig. Gen. Mark Stammer, acting senior commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said the division wants to preserve the regiment's two battalions, along with its flags and its historical legacy.
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Items belonging to Col. Robert Sink, the first commander of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, a …

He said during a news conference Thursday at the post on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line that the regiment's battalions should be transferred to two of the division's three remaining infantry brigades. Obama down sizing of our military in full force. Why should we have the most powerful military in the world? ITS NOT FAIR, RIGHT? So goes the leftist/liberal thinking and so goes Obama's agenda to weaken us..-Tyr