American Valor Quarterly Issue 12 - Spring 2015 | Page 10

Currahee Military Museum

Since there were 7,000 recruits that
qualified to join the 506th, there was
the lingering question of where to
put them all. Fort Bragg, in North
Carolina, would be an ideal place
because they had plenty of room,
but because there wasn’t widespread
support for paratroopers in the
Army at the time, the officers at Fort
Bragg said, “We don’t want them.
We don’t want anything to do with
them because they’d be a failure here.”
Fort Benning was another logical
fit because they’d just developed
the Army airborne school. But sure
enough, officers at Fort Benning said,
“We don’t need another failure; not
here.” We also went through Fort
Hood and Fort Gordon, but they all
said, “We don’t want them.” Finally,
we got set up at this place called
Camp Toombs, named after a Georgia
Senator from the 1850’s. Senator
Toombs preached cessation back in
1852 so they couldn’t keep the name,
and changed it to Camp Toccoa. They
decided this would be a good place
for us because when we fall flat on
our face no one will have heard of this
unit, or of Camp Toccoa.
Next on the agenda was to name
a commandant for the troops the
506. We found out later that it was
decided to name a major who was up
for promotion to lieutenant colonel,
but who they wanted to get rid of
because he was sort of an alcoholic,
like most of them, but he was more
of an alcoholic. He was also a West
Point graduate, a maverick, and part of
a test platoon of US Army parachute
troops. They said, this is your man.
The reason they couldn’t get rid of
him before was because his folks
owned four newspapers in the South.
With all that pull, the thought never
occurred to get rid of him. They
couldn’t. So they sent him our way,
thinking that when we fell flat on
our face, they’d get rid of the 506 and
our commandant, Robert F. Sink. Of
course, it didn’t exactly work out that
way. Sink became Lt. Col. Sink right
10

CAMP TOCCOA, GEORGIA:
ORIGINAL HOME OF THE
506TH PARACHUTE INFANTRY
REGIMENT. THEIR LEGENDARY
CALL, “CURRAHEE!,” COMES
FROM THE NAME OF THE
MOUNTAIN AT THE CAMP ON
WHICH THE UNIT TRAINED,
RUNNING “THREE MILES UP,
THREE MILES DOWN.”

away [