05/25/2026
As you look across the view from our tasting room, Currahee Mountain stands proudly above Georgia’s piedmont. It has a long history, and one that we’ll write more about in the future. For this Memorial Day we want to spotlight the important role that Camp Toccoa, located at the base of Currahee Mountain, played during the Second World War.
They were called “The Greatest Generation”, the men and women born between 1901 and 1927. The lucky ones got to enjoy the tail end of the social and economic boom that followed World War I, called the Roaring 20’s. After that came hard times: the Great Depression, followed by World War II. Over 16 million Americans served in the armed services during the Second World War. Of these, approximately 100,000 paratroopers were trained. Almost a quarter of these soldiers earned their paratrooper wings at Camp Toccoa, Georgia between the years of 1942 and 1945.
The paratrooper concept was a relatively new type of warfare at the time. The first records of paratroopers date to the closing days of WWI and were pioneered by the Italians. The techniques associated with dropping combat-ready troops out of airplanes behind enemy lines developed greatly in the time between world wars. General Bill Lee is considered the Father of the Airborne and was able to persuade the then Chief of Staff, George C Marshall, to invest in the development of the U.S. Army paratrooper training program. Developing airplanes that allowed soldiers to safely exit as well as parachute equipment that would deploy in various weather, wind, and light conditions took decades to fine tune.
Once on the ground, paratroopers often found themselves scattered across miles and behind enemy lines with only paper maps and a compass to guide their way. The few supplies that were carried with them were often dispersed across the terrain and commonly damaged from the drop. Despite all of these challenges, the US military found that the ability to drop battle-ready troops behind enemy lines advantageous and worth the risk to it’s soldiers.
Three main paratrooper camps were used during the war: Camp Mckall, North Carolina; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and Camp Toccoa, here in Georgia. Following training, all paratroopers from Camp Toccoa completed their final jump to earn their certification at Fort Moore (formerly Fort Benning), GA which is now the location of the U.S. Army Parachute School.
Training at Camp Toccoa was grueling despite the fact that soldiers had previously completed basic training and were already physically fit. Soldiers were recruited from within the Army’s ranks with recruitment propaganda, like the poster shown in this post, being displayed in mess halls and barracks across the country. To sweeten the deal, the Army paid paratroopers an additional $50.00 per paycheck. Not all soldiers qualified to be in the paratrooper program. Age was limited to those in their 20s, 185lbs was the maximum body weight, 20/40 eyesight or better was required, and a systolic blood pressure of 140 was the maximum permitted. Training included physical conditioning, combat tactics, and jump school. The soldiers trained at Currahee Mountain coined the term “Three miles up and three miles down”. This phrase represented the distance from Camp Toccoa to the summit of Currahee Mountain which stands 800 vertical feet above their barracks. By the end of the training, soldiers were running this climb with fully loaded packs while wearing military boots! Exasperating this challenge was the intense heat and humidity found in Georgia. Combat tactics included advanced infantry skills such as the use and maintenance of all of the weapons to be carried by the entire squad. Map reading and navigation were critical components of the training, as were night operations, and demolitions.
Jump School was divided into four stages. Stage A was Ground School and taught basic skills associated with the parachute equipment and basic landing techniques. Stage B was Tower Week and focused on getting the soldiers accustomed to heights. Exercises included lifting soldiers high into the air using wooden towers that stood over 250ft tall, chute deployment skills, and techniques to manage winds. Stage C was the Mock Door/Air Stage which simulated the jump and descent, as well as emergency procedures in mock planes. Finally, Stage D was Jump Week. During this week, five actual jumps were performed from C-47 transport planes prior to graduation. Graduation rates for paratrooper school ranged between 50% and 60% of those who started the program. Graduates were considered among the U.S. Army’s elite fighting groups.
Upon completion of training, paratrooper regiments became part of the 11th, 13th, 17th, 82nd, or 101st Divisions. The 82nd, 101st, and 17th Divisions served in active duty in the European theater and played critical roles in the battles of North Africa, Sicily, Italy, the D-Day invasion, Battle of the Bulge, the raid on Hitler’s Eagles Nest, among others. The recently created 13th Division was deployed to Europe but the allied victory in Europe curtailed their opportunity for major military action. The 11th Airborne Division served in the Pacific theater with notable combat action in New Guinea and the Philippines, along with the occupation of Japan. By the end of WWII, over 5,000 paratroopers were killed in action.
In our tasting room, we keep copies of several books that recount the training at Currahee Mountain and the soldier's subsequent exploits. Although great reads, all of these books have been eclipsed in popular culture by the HBO series Band Of Brothers, which was created by Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg in 2001. One of the reasons that the stories of the paratroopers are so well documented is due to the work of Press Agent Colonel Barney Oldfield. Early in the war, he was assigned to one of the regiments of the 82nd Division to serve as a public affairs officer. Eventually, Oldfield was able to convince Dwight Eisenhower to allow war correspondents to become imbedded with the paratroopers during their war missions. To do this, the correspondents all had to go through the same paratrooper training as the combat soldiers. Along with personal accounts, letters, and military records, these correspondents were a critical part of documenting the paratroopers. Stephen Ambrose, the author of the book Band of Brothers, which the tv series was later based on, points out that the story of Easy Company (506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101’st Airborne Division, US Army) was so capturing in part because their scope of activity covered much of the geographic extent of the war in northwest Europe. More importantly, it was the personalities and actions of the men of Easy Company that captivated fans. It is the combined tale of men from different backgrounds and different parts of the country that rise to excellence in conditions that are demanding beyond imagination. They endured battle, starvation, freezing temperatures, and had a casualty rate of 150 percent. The stories of the soldiers that trained at Currahee Mountain are inspiring even decades later. Ambrose notes “Tom (Hanks) and Steven (Spielberg), like many others, are fascinated by World War II. They are aware of how much all of us owe the men who fought it.” To learn more about Camp Toccoa and it’s soldiers, visit:
- https://toccoahistory.org,
- https://www.camptoccoaatcurrahee.org/history-of-camp-toccoa
- National Museum of the United States Army.
