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CURRAHEE
MOUNTAIN
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, AND THE WORD
WAS GOD
In the beginning, it was the 506TH, 511TH, 501st,
517 TH Parachute Infantry Regiments, then the 457TH and 460TH Parachute
Field Artillery Battalions. Each new WWII unit faced a mountain, whose
Choctaw Indian word was Currahee.
My name is Currahee. I am a mountain near Toccoa,
GA. For centuries, I had a peaceful existence. I let little animals roam
over me, happy to be their home. Then, came man. He lived in harmony with
all of my other creatures. Later, the white men arrived with "killing
sticks," which made a loud noise when killing my animals. They drove off
my bronze men, cut my trees and made a road to my peak. During 1941,
strange things began in the valley below me. I heard the growling earth
movers. I saw trucks dumping concrete. One day the saws and hammers
ceased. Apart from rectangular buildings were long rows of tents. The
trucks came and dumped human cargo in the tent city. All were uniformed
and hurried about. I could not understand this.
As activity picked up, I began to hear strange
sounds: FALL IN - TENSION - RAT SHOULDER ARMS - RAT FACE - FWARD MAWTCH
-SQUAD HALT - LEF FACE - PRAID REST - FALL OUT.
One morning, I thought at first that my mountain
goats had returned and were stampeding up my rear slope. As I looked down,
these man creatures were running out of the camp and up that miserable
road. On they came, brown boots pounding. Some gasped and fell out.
Reaching my peak most collapsed; sweating, heaving, cursing. Shortly, they
were up and bounding back to camp. Those who could not reach my peak were
sent to other places, as were those who refused to jump in harness from a
mock airplane tower. After falling 20 ft., bodies were jerked upright,
then road down a cable to a saw dust pile on the ground. They put knives
on the end of rifles and tried to stab each other. They ran, ran
everywhere and in ranks singing. Weekly, they formed in the streets with
rifles and large packs on their backs and marched off into the darkness,
returning early the next morning. I did not understand.
Some of these men were so intense that they would
run up my road on their day off. On one such day, two of the younger men
arrived on my peak and stayed to talk. I listened and suddenly knew what
it all meant. Col. Sink was the creator of this madness, determined to
build one of the finest fighting machines ever put together, making men
out of boys fast, then on to Ft. Benning to learn how to jump from flying
airplanes. I learned that a great war was going on all over the world.
Soon, these men would parachute into enemy territory to fight and some to
die. I wondered, what manner of men are these? What patriotism motivated
them to push their bodies to the limit of human endurance? One said, I
wonder what CURRAHEE means?" I would have told them, but decided that in
time, they would learn that it means, STANDING ALONE." This condensed from
"Currahee," by Robert Flory, B-506, in the FIVE-O-SINK Newsletter, Nov.
1984, Editor, George Vanderslice.
Thanks. |