Four stars of valor : the combat history of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II

Hailing from the big cities and small towns of America , these young men came together to serve their country and the greater good. They were the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division (the All Americans). Phil Nordyke, their official historian, draws on interviews with surviving veterans and oral history recordings as well as official archives and unpublished written accounts from more than three hundred veterans of the 505th PIR and their supporting units. This is history as it was lived by the men of the 505th, from their prewar coming of age in the regiment, through the end of World War II, when they marched in the Victory Parade up Fifth Avenue in New York, to the postwar legacy of having been part of an elite parachute regiment with a record unsurpassed in the annals of combat.

Hailing from the big cities and small towns of America, young men came together after the attack on Pearl Harbor to serve their country and the greater good. Those assigned to the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment arguably became the best PIR to descend upon Europe in World War II, making a record four combat jumps (Sicily, Salerno, Normandy, and Holland). Drawing on interviews with surviving veterans and oral history recordings as well as official archives and unpublished written accounts from the 505th and their supporting units, author Phil Nordyke brings the history of the regiment to life. Four Stars of Valor conveys with immediacy and power what it was like to spearhead the invasion of Sicily in the first American mass combat jump, to be the only U.S. parachute regiment with combat experience at Normandy, and to liberate the first town in France. This is history as it was lived by the men of the 505th, from their prewar coming of age in the regiment, through the end of World War II, when they marched in the Victory Parade up Fifth Avenue in New York, to the postwar legacy of having been part of an elite parachute regiment with a record unsurpassed in the annals of combat.

Recounts the stirring exploits of America' s foremost World War II parachute regiment, the only regiment to have earned to earn four gold stars for their parachute wings, one for each of their four combat jumps