Dear Ben,  To add a little detail, Kenny Freund was Major Hickman's number two in the 517th Regimental/Combat Team S-4 (Supply).  When we got Mark Clark's order to attack and take that part of Rome that lay in our sector (laid out on an accompanying map), it was Kenny who said, "Sorry we have too many weapons just off the boat that are still in cosmoline."  Howard Hensleigh

Dear Ben,  As many of our members probably do, I get a publication from the Army called "The Salute". 

The fall issue carries an article on the Battle of  the Bulge.  After the opening it states, "As the fighting raged, General Dwight D. Eisenhower raced his only two reserve Divisions into the fray.  On the northern edge of the growing bulge, the 82nd Airborne Division worked with the 3rd Armored Division to stop the Germans cold and push them back.  On the south, the 101st Airborne Division reached the town of Bastogne....................."

Apparently there are many who are enamored with the thought that these two great airborne divisions, which are still doing heavy lifting today, did all the fighting in the Bulge.  I do not want to detract from any of the heroic fighting that the 101st and 82nd did, but to give them credit for what we did is overstepping.  To have been accurate the article should have said that the 18th Airborne Corps was rushed into the fray.  It wasn't the 82nd that Lt. General Ridgeway rushed to assist Major General Rose, commanding the 3rd Armored, to hold the line, it was Bill Boyle and his first battalion of the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team.  And, while Rose's two combat teams were assigned elsewhere, it was the first battalion 517, with some assistance from Rose's headquarters command, that stopped the Germans cold in that sector.  Moreover, it was Paxton's 3rd battalion 517th that pushed the fanatic SS outfit back by retaking Manhay.  Retaking the vital cross roads at Manhay was the first territory retaken from the Germans in the Bulge and we did it, without unit citation or even acknowledgement.  Some accounts say we took the town with tank support, but there was not a tank in sight on the night of the 26th and morning of the 27th of December 1944 when we took the town.  A day or two later a tanker buzzed into the cross roads and the tank commander was told by a  trooper to get the hell our of there.  When he was spouting off to the trooper, an SS antitank shell went through him without exploding and bounced down the street a few times before we heard the blast. 

I am not be able to name all the other elements of the 18th Airborne Corps, but two separate battalions, the 551st and the 509th, were virtually annihilated in the heavy fighting they did in the Bulge, to the extent that they were never reorganized.  It is frequent that assigned units are ordered to take the ground that is the toughest to take.  When they are successful, the historians give credit for the success to the larger unit to which they are attached. 

The Battling Buzzards did their share of the fighting as did many smaller units assigned to larger ones.

Highest airborne regards,  Howard Hensleigh