506th Airborne Infantry Regiment Patch Currahee

Count the parachutes on this shield and you get six, because the 506th was the sixth parachute regiment the Army activated. The regiment stood up on July 20, 1942, at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, under Colonel Robert F. Sink. Toccoa sits below Currahee Mountain, and the volunteers trained on its slopes until the mountain's name became the regiment's motto. Currahee is a Cherokee word meaning stands alone. The green mountain at the base of this shield is Currahee itself.

As the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, the regiment jumped into Normandy on D-Day, dropped into Holland for Operation Market Garden, and held at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion, whose story became the 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers, is the best-known company the regiment ever fielded. The 506th was inactivated in France on November 30, 1945, and reactivated several times between 1948 and 1954. Its battalions fought in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division, and later elements deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Today the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 506th Infantry, serve in the 1st and 3rd Brigade Combat Teams of the 101st.

The patch is shield-shaped, 2.87 inches wide and 3.5 inches tall, cut to its outline. A blue field stands for infantry, and a white lightning bolt slashes across it from the upper left, the mark of an attack from the sky. Six white parachutes with black shroud lines hang in rows of three, two and one. The green silhouette of Currahee Mountain fills the lower corner, and a white scroll wrapping the base carries CURRAHEE in blue letters. Each element on it has a reason to be there, and a paratrooper can read all of them.

The 506th built its name in the hedgerows of Normandy, along the dikes of Holland and in the frozen woods around Bastogne. Every man who reached Toccoa in 1942 had volunteered for parachute duty, and the regiment never lost that edge. Soldiers who served in its battalions in Vietnam, at Fort Campbell, in Iraq and in Afghanistan carry the same motto those first volunteers shouted on the mountain. Being a Currahee puts a soldier in a line that runs from Easy Company to the 101st Airborne of today.

It fits a shadow box with jump wings and a 101st Airborne Division patch, or the vest you wear to an airborne reunion. For a son or grandson who wants to understand what his father's regiment stood for, it is a good gift and a good place to start. The patch has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on. Currahee.