Drawing on both oral and written accounts from over 300 veterans of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Phil Nordyke brings the thrilling history of this remarkable regiment to life, conveying with the intimate immediacy of first-person accounts what it was like to be there. From training at Fort Benning, Georgia, to deployment in Tunisia, desert parachute training in high winds that left the unit with a 30% casualty rate from fractures and injuries; the shipping to Italy, and involvement in spearheading that invasion, battles at Gela, Sicily, the landing at Salarno beach, fighting at Altavilla, the Anzio beachead, and the the long march through France and Belgium to Germany and victory.The 504th lost 318 soldiers killed by enemy fire on a parachute drop at Farrell Airfield, were involved in Operation Market Garden, and drove the German offensive at the Battle of The bulge in the Ardennes back. Their motto became 'Strike, Hold', and the German soldiers called them 'devils in baggy pants', with one German famously saying 'We never know when one will appear form nowhere'. A remarkable story, full of disasters, triumphs, battles lost and won, bravery, courage, and sheer tenacious determination, these first-person accounts will rivet any reader right from the start of combat operations to the final victory parade down Fifth Avenue in New York.