Higgins writes in the first person of finding the graves of 13 German paratroopers in an English churchyard, an event known not to have actually occurred, and claims that the book stems from his research into actual events.

* 1965 – Vietnam War: the first 4, 000 101st Airborne Division paratroopers arrive in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay.

In November 1985, it was announced that the first contingent of " armed people " trained as paratroopers had made a demonstration drop.

* July 29 – Vietnam War: The first 4, 000 101st Airborne Division paratroopers arrive in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay.

In 1965 he created the first battalion of paratroopers in the Congo Republic.

The Germans then were the first to use paratroopers ( Fallschirmjäger ) extensively in World War II, and then later by the western Allies.

The first Allied soldier to land in France was Free French SAS Captain Pierre Marienne who jumped into Britanny ( Plumelec, Morbihan ) on June 5 with 17 Free French paratroopers.

For the first time in a combat in South Asia, paratroopers were used in the subcontinent during the Second Kashmir War of 1965.

During the Shaba invasions, France sided firmly with Mobutu: during the first Shaba invasion, France airlifted 1, 500 Moroccan troops to Zaire, and the rebels were repulsed ; a year later, during the second Shaba invasion, France itself would send French Foreign Legion paratroopers ( 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment ) to aid Mobutu ( along with Belgium ).

*-Israeli Defense Forces ; IMI Tavor TAR-21 MTAR-21 / X95 version adopted in Nov 2009, now standard issue of all first line infantry units except paratroopers and Kfir brigade.

At Sola airport, the first opposed landing by paratroopers took place as German Fallschirmjägers from 1st battalion of the 1st Regiment, 7th Flieger Division were dropped on the airfield.

Otway launched the assault as soon as the first glider overshot the battery, ordering the explosives to be detonated to form two paths through the outer perimeter, through which the paratroopers attacked.

The American paratroopers consisted largely of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, making their first combat drop.

This first attack was driven off by the British paratroopers.

In mid-1941 Germany started the production of HEAT rifle-grenades, first issued to paratroopers and by 1942 to the regular army units ( Gewehr-Panzergranate 40, 46 and 61 ), but as with the British soon turned to the integrated warhead-delivery systems: In 1943 the Püppchen, Panzerschreck and Panzerfaust were introduced.

The Germans first developed the FG 42 for its paratroopers in the assault and later the Sturmgewehr 44 ( StG 44 ), the world's first assault rifle, firing an intermediate cartridge ; the FG 42's use of a full-powered rifle cartridge made it difficult to control.

Previously a company of Free French paratroopers, the French SAS squadron were the first of a range of units ' acquired ' by Major Stirling as the SAS expanded.

The immediate goal of the paratroopers was first to establish a base of operations and bolster the defenses at Ben Het.

The tank was designed at the Atelier de Construction d ' Issy-les-Moulineaux in 1946 to meet a requirement for an air-portable vehicle to support paratroopers, the first prototype ran from 1948.

Poor weather delayed the beginning of the exercise until the night of 25 September, and it was only then that the aircraft carrying the first three battalions of paratroopers could take off and attempt to drop the airborne troops on three separate drop zones.

The transport aircraft were divided into four groups, each taking off from a different airfield in the Carolinas, with two groups dropping paratroopers and two towing gliders, and between them deployed 4, 800 airborne troops in the first wave.

The actions of the regiment during the initial landing also gained the division its second Medal of Honor, when Private George J. Peters posthumously received the award after charging a German machine gun nest and eliminating it with rifle fire and grenades, allowing his fellow paratroopers to gather their equipment and capture the regiments first objective.

* May 20 – Germany invades Crete in Operation Merkur (" Mercury "), the Luftwaffes first large airborne assault and the first mainly airborne invasion in military history, dropping 10, 000 paratroopers and 750 glider troops onto the island ; 610 bombers, dive bombers, and fighters, 500 transport aircraft, and 80 gliders support the operation.

At first they were only feathers and dark indistinguishable faces and bodies, hunched over their horses' heads.

Two of the new hands, a Mexican named Jose Amado and a kid known only as Laredo, were picked for the first trick of riding night herd.

After the first two murders, the warning notes were rarely ignored.

Even the knowledge that she was losing another boy, as a mother always does when a marriage is made, did not prevent her from having the first carefree, dreamless sleep that she had known since they dropped down the canyon and into Bear Valley, way, way back there when they were crossing those other mountains.

Out of compulsion to say something cheery, Ben Prime blurted, `` Well, we were lucky to be on soft ground when the first floodheads hit.

His political opponent and lifetime friend, Thomas Jefferson, achieved immortality through his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, but equally notable were the legal and constitutional reforms he instituted in his native Virginia, his role as father of our territorial system, and his acquisition of the Louisiana Territory during his first term as President.

This is the primary function of the imagination operating in the absence of the original experiential stimulus by which the images were first appropriated.

Before being daughter, wife, or mother, before being cultured ( a word now bereft both socially and politically of the sheen you children of frontiersmen bestowed on it ), before being sorry for the poor, progressive about public health, and prettily if somewhat imprecisely humanitarian, indeed first and foremost, you were a lady.

Even the first wave of homesickness had passed, although there were moments when Captain Heard pointed out on his compass the direction of Bradford that she felt a little twinge at her heart.

When they were first written, there was evidently no thought of their being published, and those which refer to the writer's love for Mrs. Meynell particularly have the ring of truth.

The evening of our first day we drove with Christopher and Judy Sakellariadis, who were friends and patients of Norton, to dine at a restaurant on the shores of the Aegean.

So persistent were these attacks that in March of the following year, Woodruff was finally moved to action, and Pike was to learn his first lesson in frontier politics, the subtle art of diversion.

In the next few months of comparative silence, Pike waited patiently until conditions were perfect for a new attack, and then, displaying a remarkable grasp of the subtleties of political infighting, gained from his first bout with Woodruff, he used these changed conditions to excellent advantage.

Although this kind of wholesale objection came at first from some men who were not technically Puritans, still, once the Puritans gained power, they climaxed the affair by passing the infamous ordinance of 1642 which decreed that all `` public stage-plays shall cease and be forborne ''.

Our first impression of the data was that the students were surprisingly orthodox and religiously involved.

But all the reports of this first embassy show that the two Savoyards were the heads of it, for they were the only ones who were empowered to swear for the king that he would abide by the pope's decision and who were allowed to appoint deputies in the event that one was unavoidably absent.

the Low Countries, where the Middle Ages were to last for another two centuries and die out only when Charles the Bold of Burgundy met his first defeat in the fields and forests below the walls of Grandson.

It was the first American war in which the death rate from disease was lower than that from battle, due to the provision of trained medical personnel ( of the 200,000 officers, 42,000 were physicians ), compulsory vaccination, rigorous camp sanitation, and adequate hospital facilities.

There were several men of ninety or more whom I knew first or last, all of whom were still productive and most of whom knew one another as if they had naturally come together at the apex of their lives.

It met a serious rebuff in New Orleans, where the two schools selected for the first moves toward integration were boycotted by white parents.

These microfossils indicate the swamp was `` formed during the Lower Cretaceous period when dinosaurs were at their heyday and when the first flowering plants were just appearing.