DVIDS – News – eleventh ABN DIV vets go unit legacy to newly minted ‘Arctic Angels’

After they discovered the Army deliberate to activate their beloved eleventh Airborne Division from the historical past books, Joe Doshier, 86, and Wayne Porter, 84, knew they needed to be part of it.

The 2 U.S. Army veterans, who wore the division’s winged “Angels” patch as younger paratroopers within the 1950’s, made good on that hope. They and their household traveled from Kansas and Arkansas to witness the ceremony, June 6, 2022, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, through which the Army formally re-designated U.S. Army Alaska (USARAK) because the eleventh Airborne Division and its two brigades as the first and 2nd Infantry Brigades,eleventh Airborne Division.

Following the ceremony, Doshier and Porter, decked out of their satin, royal blue eleventh Airborne Division Affiliation bomber jackets, stood on Pershing Parade Subject amongst a sea of maroon berets and beamed proudly at these newly minted “Arctic Angels.”

“Makes me really feel like we had just a little one thing to do with that. For a farm boy from Kansas…this tops something I’ve ever executed,” explains Porter, a third-generation farmer from Fredonia, Kansas.

Moreover having served within the eleventh, each males have remained intently tied to the division via their work main the eleventh Airborne Division Affiliation, which was established in 1965 and has a number of chapters nationwide with a complete of roughly 900 members, in line with Doshier, who’s the Affiliation’s nationwide president, and Porter is its nationwide secretary and treasurer.

Even so, they each expressed being a bit uncertain of the reception they’d obtain throughout their go to.

“I’d by no means in my life have anticipated this (outpouring of consideration),” defined Doshier, of Rogers, Arkansas, referring to the teams of Troopers, politicians and senior Army leaders who made an effort to fulfill and take pictures with he and Porter on the ceremony. “The best way we’ve been accepted, the way in which our unit has been accepted makes us proud.”

It was one thing of a full-circle second for Porter, who stated he really operated the general public tackle system in the course of the division’s authentic deactivation ceremony, held June 30, 1958, in Germany, as a “spec-4” assigned to a communications platoon with the 187th Regimental Fight Group.

“It’s unbelievable what we’ve been via the final couple of days,” Porter added, incredulously. “Yesterday, senators developing and desirous to take photos with us, all people sought us out, the Chief of Employees of the Army, 4 stars, got here to fulfill us!”

In some ways, the 2 veteran paratroopers symbolize a connection between the previous and the long run.

“Once I see the patch now, I’m enthusiastic about the (eleventh Airborne Division Affiliation) jackets they’re sporting,” stated U.S. Army 1st Sgt. Kyle G. Tripp, of Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, eleventh Airborne Division, who escorted the group throughout their two-day go to. “It simply reveals that (unit satisfaction) was there earlier than we adopted it, and now it’s simply bloomed and multiplied on a excessive degree. I’ll at all times consider these guys.”

That’s precisely why Army leaders thought it was vital to determine a standard unit identification for the previous disparate USARAK models, who beforehand solely shared a moniker as “America’s Arctic Warriors.”

“That is actually a reckoning, not only for the eleventh Airborne Division, however it’s a reckoning for our Troopers right here,” stated U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Brian S. Eifler, eleventh Airborne Division commander. “They’ve simply develop into (a part of) one thing greater…They wish to be a part of one thing particular, one thing greater than themselves.”

The notion of figuring out with a well-liked unit, one thing bigger than self, is an expertise acquainted to many army veterans, together with Doshier and Porter, whose time within the eleventh framed their army service.

“When you may say you’re airborne that speaks greater than the rest,” he stated. “These wings imply one thing. They don’t give them to all people.”

Doshier enlisted in 1953 on the tail finish of the Korean Battle, attended primary coaching at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, after which underwent airborne coaching at Fort Benning, Georgia. He joined the eleventh Airborne Division in March 1954 with the 187th Regimental Fight Group at Camp Wooden, Japan, the place he served as a corporal with a parachute upkeep firm. He’s unabashed in his perception that the eleventh has been one of the best division in Army, bar none.

“There’s the 82nd and a hundred and first, they’re there, however they by no means did what the eleventh did. They’ll argue in the event that they wish to, however that’s information,” he stated with a wry smile and regular gaze.

Certainly, the eleventh Airborne Division has a protracted, historic previous with robust ties to the Pacific theater the place its paratroopers first noticed fight within the Philippines throughout World Battle II, incomes the Presidential Unit Quotation with two of its Troopers being posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

“I didn’t make the fight leap over Los Baños (Luzon, Philippines),” stated Porter, who attended primary coaching at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in 1956 and accomplished airborne coaching at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1957, “however my guys did, guys identical to me…The eleventh did that, and we’re a part of that.”

Theirs is a legacy they now share with the almost 15,000 Troopers sporting the division patch at this time.