Northwest South Carolina, where my mother lives, is a throwback to simpler times. Green town squares, edged by storefronts well more than a century old, are dotted by statues and plaques honoring heroes from the past in the flapping shadows of American flags, which seem to be everywhere. Driving through gently rolling countryside, expansive, grand homes whose properties are bordered with split-rail fences dot the landscape, intermingled with pastures populated by horses and cattle. History almost oozes from the very ground itself.
I took a drive with Mom, generally just following our noses, passing through towns like Powdersville, Cateechee, Clemson, Keowee and Seneca. Before long we crossed into northeast Georgia, about as country as you can get. Pine forests at times lined both sides of the two-lane highway, occasionally broken by lakes and streams....along with souvenir shops and billboards encouraging us to visit tourist destinations.
One particular billboard caught my eye and my heart; it became our landing spot.
Toccoa, Georgia.
To those not familiar with history, particularly World War II history, Toccoa might not mean anything.
It means much to me, along with the mountain which stands nearby: Currahee.
Toccoa, Georgia was the site where, in early 1942, the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne trained its young soldiers in becoming paratroopers. The 506th, especially 'Easy' (E) Company, was featured in the 2001 HBO series 'Band of Brothers', following the company from its training at Camp Toccoa through the D-Day parachute jump into Nazi-occupied France, the siege at Bastogne and the ending of the war as they occupied Hitler's mountain-top retreat at the 'Eagle's Nest' high in the Bavarian Alps.
My wife claims I watch the series every time it appears on television; she isn't wrong.
Several segments of the opening episode feature the men of Easy company running up and down Currahee Mountain, a six-mile round trip. Today, the town features an annual event called the Currahee Run, in which runners navigate some of the same route that the men of Easy ran in 1942.
I had to find the site where Camp Toccoa once stood.
First, though, Mom and I toured the Currahee Museum, which featured a history of the area along with its large display of parachute infantry training which occurred at the military training site. Walking among the glass-encased rifles, parachute gear, old writing desks, mess hall equipment and just about everything a young soldier ever used I was enveloped in the nostalgia of those times, imagining what life must have been like for those patriot heroes now gone: Colonel Robert Sink, Major Dick Winters, Carwood Lipton, Joe Toye, Bill Guarnere, Denver 'Bull' Randleman, Captain Lewis Nixon, George Luz, Don Malarkey...the list is endless.
One entire room of the museum contained the names, profiles and awarded citations of Easy Company. Suffice it to say that the display was awe-inspiring, especially considering what those men endured during the war as seen through the eyes of HBO's cameras.
Also included was an original, complete stable which was first used to house paratroopers of the 506th when they arrived at Aldbourne, England; several stalls of the stable were outfitted as if the men had just left them. They had been destined for demolition, however the museum had been contacted and expressed interest in displaying one of them. Workmen in England dismantled a stable, shipped it to Toccoa and then reassembled it inside the museum.
As for Currahee, the staff at the museum gave us pre-printed directions to get to the mountain and the area where the now-gone Camp Toccoa once stood; unfortunately, Mom and I soon discovered that the access road was closed, barricaded by concrete stanchions, for unknown reasons...
...but there's always the next trip south. Toccoa is a mere 56 miles from Mom's place.
An original leather jacket worn by members of the 101st Airborne after the war
The original stable from England stands to the left
Carwood Lipton's display
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