Cold War
The 508th was reactivated as the separate 508th Airborne Regimental Combat Team 1951 at (Fort Benning, Ga) Fort Bragg, North Carolina, served in Japan, and later moved to Fort Campbell where it once again inactivated in March 1957 as part of the reactivation of the 101st Airborne Division.
When the Army abandoned the Pentomic battle group structure in the early 1960s, the 508th reorganized under the Combat Arms Regimental System as a parent regiment and at the same time was renamed the 508th Infantry. Within the 82nd Airborne Division, the former Company A, 508th PIR was reorganized and re-designated as HHC, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 508th Infantry, an element of the 3rd Brigade. The former Company B, 508th PIR was reactivated as HHC, 2nd Battalion (Airborne), 508th Infantry, part of the 1st Brigade. The 1st and 2nd Battalions, 508th Infantry continued to serve in the 82d Airborne Division. They served in Operation Powerpack in the Dominican Republic in 1965 and 1966.
When the 3rd Brigade was sent to Vietnam in response to the Tet Offensive in early 1968, 1-508th accompanied it. There it took part of the heavy fighting of Hue and Saigon. It was later awarded the Presidential Unit Citation. In 1983 both battalions served in the Operation Urgent Fury with the invasion of Grenada.
From 8 August 1962 to 26 June 1968, the lineage of Co C, 508 PIR was reactivated as HHC, 3-508th INF, and the unit served as an airborne battalion within the 193rd Infantry Brigade in Panama. When the Airborne component of the battalion was reduced to a single company (Co A), the battalion was reflagged as the 3rd Battalion, 5th Infantry.
In October 1983, the 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry Regiment, also deployed to Grenada in Operation Urgent Fury.
The colors of 1st Battalion, 508th and 2nd Battalion, 508th Infantry departed the 82d Airborne Division during an Army-wide reflagging of combat units in the 1980s, leaving the division with battalions of the 325th, 504th, and 505th within the 2nd, 1st and 3d Brigades, respectively.
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Famous quotes containing the words cold war, cold and/or war:
“Professor: War is hell, Mr. Thornhill, even if it’s just a cold one.
Roger Thornhill: If you fellows can’t lick the Vandamms of this world without asking girls like her to bed down with them, and fly away with them, and probably never come back, perhaps you ought to start learning how to lose a few cold wars.
Professor: I’m afraid we’re already doing that.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice.... It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a few days’ duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)