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The Filthy Thirteen was the name given to the Demolition Section of the Headquarters Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, of the United States Army, which fought in the European campaign in World War II.

Contents [hide] 1 History 1.1 Dirty Dozen 2 Members 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit]History

The Demolition Section was assigned and trained to demolish enemy targets behind the lines.^[1] They were ordered to destroy a bridge over the Douve River during the Normandy Invasion of Europe in June 1944,^[1] a mission that cost the lives of most of these men. The group was airdropped for the mission by aircraft of the 440th Troop Carrier Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces.

This unit was best known for the famous photo which appeared in Stars and Stripes, showing two members wearing Indian-style "mohawks" and applying war paint to one another. The inspiration for this came from Jake McNiece, who was part Native-American.^[1]

After a disciplinary incident while on leave, McNiece joined the "Pathfinders". These were paratroopers sent in ahead of the main force to guide them in. Expected casualties were 80-90%. The pathfinders were dropped into the encircled town of Bastogne at the height of the Battle of the Bulge. Their equipment enabled them to guide in subsequent airdrops of supplies crucial to the continued resistance of the trapped 101st Airborne Division.^[1]

McNiece considered that any activities not directly concerned with killing the enemy were irrelevant, an attitude that led him to be in constant trouble with the military authorities. Nevertheless, McNiece finished the war with four combat jumps, a very rare feat for an American paratrooper. His jumps were made in Normandy, the Netherlands as part of Market Garden, the Pathfinder jump in to Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, then his last jump as an observer with the 17th Airborne Division during Operation Varsity.

Of the activities of the Filthy Thirteen, Jack Agnew once said, "We weren’t murderers or anything, we just didn’t do everything we were supposed to do in some ways and did a whole lot more than they wanted us to do in other ways. We were always in trouble."

[edit]Dirty Dozen

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E. M. Nathanson's inspiration for his book The Dirty Dozen came from a friend who filmed a documentary during the war that included a unit he believed had been recruited from convicts. Following that lead, Nathanson scoured the archives of prison records from the European Theater of Operation to find any prisoner sent to this organization. His exhaustive research provided no such person, because no su