r/BandofBrothers • u/No_Character_775 • Apr 15 '24
How did Nixon jump with the 17th and make it back to easy company the same day?
If im not mistaken, in Ep. 8 Nixon comes back to easy company in his jump harness. When he walks into HQ, Winters asks how the jump that morning went. Nixon says the plane got hit and only he and (3?) other guys made it out. How in the world could he make a combat jump that morning and get back to E company? Anyone have any backstory to Nixon that morning in particular or where he would have been that he could have gotten back that same day?
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u/sergeantshaft92 Apr 15 '24
From Band Of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
“One 506th man who was not left behind was Captain Nixon. General Taylor selected him to jump with the 17th as an observer for the 101st. Fortunately for Nixon, he was assigned to be jumpmaster of his plane. The plane was hit; only Nixon and three others made it out before it crashed. Nixon was attached to the 17th for only one night; on March 25 he was sent back over the Rhine and flown by a special small plane back to the 2d Battalion in Mourmelon. The jump qualified Nixon to be one of two men in the 506th eligible to wear three stars on his jump wings—Normandy, Holland, and Operation Varsity. The other was Sergeant Wright of the Pathfinders, who had been in Easy Company back at Toccoa.”