I’m sorry Jumpmaster……..

Medals go to 70 who made history

First Lt. Henry Moltz was about to make his first combat jump when he realized that the static line of his parachute was out of place.The line was hanging around his knees, instead of hanging properly over his shoulder, as he approached the door of the C-130. Fellow paratroopers were yelling at him to fix it, but there was nothing he could do at that point. He was the first jumper and was seconds away from going out the door. “I turned in the door and acted like nothing was wrong,” said Moltz, a 24-year-old Texan. “I knew that no matter what happened, I was leaving if I had to use my reserve or not.” His main chute opened fine and he landed safely.

Moltz was one of about 70 paratroopers from B Company, 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, who jumped in Afghanistan in February 2003. It was the first combat jump by the 82nd Airborne Division since Panama in 1989. In a ceremony today, the paratroopers will be awarded a Combat Parachutist Badge with one bronze star to indicate a combat jump. The star is centered on the shroud lines below the canopy.

The paratroopers had been in Afghanistan for about a month and had been running missions in the eastern part of the country when they were ordered to pack up their gear and move to Bagram air base. The mission was kept so secret that the soldiers didn’t know what they were doing until almost a week after they arrived at the base. “Rumors were flying around. I wasn’t sure we would jump until the parachutes arrived,” said Spc. Raymond Mullenix, a 21- year-old Florida native.

Even getting the parachutes was a furtive operation.

The paratroopers covered the parachutes with their ponchos as they carried them into the building where they were training.

“We had guards around the buildings,” said Spc. Eddie Camacho, a 22-year-old team leader from New York City.

Secrecy remains

Parts of the operation are still classified. The paratroopers’ mission was to establish an outer security perimeter around the drop zone to protect soldiers from the 75th Ranger Regiment as they carried out a different mission. They expected to meet some resistance from al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

The drop zone was in a remote part of western Afghanistan. The paratroopers said it was flat and sandy, but surrounded by mountains. “It looked like a white piece of paper with mountains around it,” said Sgt. 1st Class John Setzer of Binghamton, N.Y. Setzer is 31. He was one of the jumpmasters and was a platoon sergeant in the company.

The paratroopers jumped at dusk. “We could see forever in every direction for miles,” said Staff Sgt. Nathan Buchko, a 24-year-old forward observer in the 319th Airborne Field Artillery. He was attached to the company.

Most of the paratroopers said they had little time to look around before they landed. Master Sgt. Brian Severino, B Company’s first sergeant, said he felt like he was in the air forever. All of the paratroopers said it was a hard landing.

Once on the ground, the paratroopers assembled in less than 20 minutes, faster than they ever had at Fort Bragg. “It was flawless,” Moltz said. They met no enemy resistance and completed their mission. They were picked up the next day by helicopter and returned to Bagram.

‘Quiet professionals’

While the paratroopers were still in Afghanistan, news of the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s jump into northern Iraq was reported. Setzer said no news reporters were with the 82nd when his group jumped. He said it was a matter of pride that they received little press attention. “We were definitely the quiet professionals,” Setzer said.

After the jump, the hardest part for the paratroopers was keeping their mouths shut. The jump was not declassified for almost a year. When Setzer and Severino returned to Fort Bragg, people were talking about rumors of a jump. Some of the instructors at the Advanced Airborne School said they had heard about it, but that it was probably a lie, Setzer said.

“A lot of people were jealous,” Severino said. “It was very difficult not to rub it in people’s faces. One company out of nine got picked to do the mission.”

Camacho put it this way: “We were told by our battalion commander that 70 of us are going down in history for a combat jump and that right there is the greatest honor a soldier in the 82nd Airborne could ever have

82nd Airborne’s ‘most decorated’ visits Fort Knox

 

FORT KNOX, KY. – Before he left for war, Jim Megellas entered the Army at Fort Knox as a fresh-faced ROTC Lieutenant.

That was 64 years ago, the war was World War II, and Megellas (or “Maggie,” as he eventually came to be known) was on his way to becoming a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division.

He visited Fort Knox Oct. 20 to speak to troops gathered in Haszard Auditorium and sign copies of his new book, “All the Way to Berlin: A Paratrooper at War in Europe.”

Megellas left the Army after the war. From 1968-1970 he served in the Republic of Vietnam. Megellas was head(equivalent to the rank of Major General) of the Civil operations and Revolution Development Support(CORDS)

Now, he speaks to veterans’ groups and Soldiers around the world.

“The reason I wrote this book was because I felt I had a story to tell,” said the veteran of Operation Market Garden.

A recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, Megellas is still the 82nd’s most decorated Officer, and the Regiment presents yearly The James Megellas Award for the “Most Outstanding Lieutenant of the Year”.

Megellas recently spoke to soldiers at several U S Military Bases in Germany, and Holland, where he fought during World War II, and recently in Afghanistan. He said he knew several of the soldiers that were stationed at FOB Salerno and in Kabul.

“I felt we were cut from the same cloth,” he said. “There’s the same mission, the same devotion to the job.”

Megellas said he doesn’t subscribe to Tom Brokaw’s idea of a “greatest generation.”

“Every generation produces great men and women,” he said to the gathered Fort Knox Soldiers. “In order to protect those things we hold dear, we answered the call, just as you are doing today.”

He recounted some of his memories from his campaign in Europe, particularly a brutal encounter with a German unit during the Waal River crossing in Nijmegen, Holland.
“If there is such a thing as hell on Earth, that’d be pretty close,” he said. “They were shooting at us with grazing fire, maybe a foot and a half off the ground. The Germans were laying everything they had on us.”

His unit was to cross the river in 26 boats, none of which had a motor. The only means of propelling the canvas boats were with an insufficient number of paddles. Megellas used the butt stock of his Thompson machine gun as a paddle when he and his paratroopers crossed the first wave. “I was careful, though,” he said. “I didn’t want to get my gun wet, because if I did make it across, I had some business to take care of.”

The action during broad daylight was dramatized in the book “A Bridge Too Far,” by Cornelius Ryan, and eventually made into a film starring Robert Redford.

Megellas said he was shocked by the war movies playing in theaters when he returned at the end of the war.

“When I came back, I was appalled by what I saw about war in the movies,” he said. “It was glorified.

“War is not to be glorified,” he said. “War is the most brutal form of human endeavor. Those who glorify a war dishonor the men who fought and died in it.”

James Megellas, the 82nd Airborne Division’s most decorated Officer, met Oct. 20 with Fort Knox, Ky., Soldiers. The division presents its “most outstanding” Lieutenant with the James Megellas Award yearly.

Jim Megellas visits his former unit in Afghanistan

It took three days and 12,500 miles of travel through Amsterdam, Dubai and Kabul for Fond du Lac native and World War II hero Jim “Maggie” Megellas to meet up with paratroopers from his former unit, the 82nd Airborne/504th Parachute Regiment, in Afghanistan.

“It was incredible — they accepted me as one of their own,” Megellas, 89, said Monday in a telephone interview from his home in Colleyville, Texas. “The young soldiers there are mirror images of myself and the men I served with during World War II. They’re a little older now because of the volunteer army, but the people who do the patrolling are still the privates and the non-commissioned officers.”

Megellas, former Fond du Lac City Council president and author of “All the Way to Berlin,” said the caliber of the young men and women serving in the military hasn’t changed since he served in the regiment.

“They’re dedicated and devoted,” he said. “The soldiers felt good about being there. They believe in what they’re doing in Afghanistan.”

U.S. troops at Forward Operating Base Salerno, Megellas said, are keeping watch for Taliban members that try to infiltrate the Pakistan border — which is about 15 miles from the isolated area occupied by the camp. The soldiers measure their progress there in small ways — by building a school or putting in a road, he said.

Afghani people lined the roads to greet soldiers while he was there — a much different reception than the troops are receiving in Iraq, he said.

Though he was the guest of honor, Megellas rode in a Humvee, wore body armor on border patrol, and “lived the life of a soldier” in a tent throughout his 12-day February visit. At one point, he joined other Army personnel in a bunker as rockets landed dangerously near.

He was struck by the poverty in Afghanistan, which reminded him of Yemen, where he lived during his service as director of the U.S. Agency for International Development. He said the illegal cultivation of poppies used to manufacture morphine is the largest source of income for the local populace in Afghanistan, and the government is having a difficult time trying to control it.

Megellas is waiting to hear whether he will be cleared to visit troops in Iraq.

“The USO is making a list, and I might be on it,” he said.

In the meantime, Megellas’ book is in the sixth printing, and he’s thinking about writing another one. While it would be nice to have another reunion with his former comrades like the one held in Fond du Lac about three years ago, it probably won’t be possible, he said. Most of the veterans are unable to travel anymore, and 10 have died since the 2003 reunion.

“When you visit your old unit 61 years later, it’s a great experience,” Megellas said.

Name: Lt. Col. James “Maggie” Megellas, age 89.

From: Fond du Lac native

School: 1942 Ripon College graduate

Service: Commissioned to serve in World War II in Europe; most decorated officer of the 82nd Airborne Division

Government service: Former Fond du Lac City Council president; appointed by President John F. Kennedy as director for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington, D.C.; served as regional director for the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support in Vietnam

Awards and decorations: Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Star Medals, two Bronze Star Medals and two Purple Hearts; received the Military Order of Willhelm Orange Lanyard from the Dutch Minister of War

Jump At Fort Bragg(video)

This is how they jump today:

Hometown hero

MADISON — James “Maggie” Megellas was fairly typical of many young men who came of age during America’s Great Depression. The son of Greek immigrants who settled in Fond du Lac, he worked odd jobs alongside his parents and six brothers and sisters to keep the family from starving during a time when a fourth of the nation was unemployed.When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, eventually choosing one of America’s toughest war assignments: the paratroopers.Megellas went on to become the most decorated officer of the 82nd Airborne Division, which Germans had dubbed “Black Death” for the tenacity of its paratroopers’ fighting. Megellas served in H Company, which fought its way through Italy and then across Europe all the way to Berlin in the spring of 1945. He was in the midst of some of the war’s bloodiest fighting.

During the Italian campaign at the battle of Anzio, which claimed the lives of 30,000 Allied soldiers, for example, Megellas’s unit helped halt a vicious German counter attack that almost pushed the Allies back into the sea. With only two dozen soldiers — a fifth of its normal strength — Megellas’s small unit was surrounded by Germans, but kept shooting. In Italy, Megellas was shot twice.

The 82nd then moved across France. Megellas parachuted behind enemy lines into Holland three months after D-Day during Operation Market Garden, a badly executed Allied attack on several strategic bridges between Holland and Germany.

He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, receiving a decoration for valor after leading an attack against a large force of German armor and infantry. Megellas was part of the force that eventually linked up with the Russians near Berlin at the war’s end.

He went on to lead a distinguished life at home, running for Congress in Wisconsin, serving in Vietnam to help its government build its infrastructure, and retiring with his wife to live in Texas and write a well-known book called “All the Way to Berlin” — a vivid account of life as a front-line soldier who waged pitched battles in war against German troops. Wounded three times in battle, his decorations include the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts and the Military Order of Willhelm Orange Lanyard from the Dutch Minister of War.

Megellas is a “hometown hero” — a soldier who constantly sacrificed his own personal safety to help win battles and rescue comrades. And that’s why in 2006 we honor our “hometown heroes.” They’ve earned it.

State of Wisconsin, Department of Veterans Affairs