Beginnings
The 509th was originally constituted on 14 March 1941 as the 504th Parachute Battalion and activated on 5 October 1941 at Fort Benning, GA. It was reorganized and redesignated on 24 February 1942 as the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment. Just prior to its first operation, it was again redesignated on 2 November 1942 as the 2nd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment. (The 2nd Battalion was the only active element of the 509PIR. In the 503d PIR, then in Australia, a new 2nd Battalion, with different honors and lineage, was formed.) The unit, heavily combat-attrited in Italy, was redesignated on 10 December 1943 as the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, a designation it retained for the remainder of the war.
The battalion was the first US airborne unit to ship to England early in 1942, and was assigned to the British 1st Airborne Division for further training. Although it was a non-divisional unit for most of the war, it was attached to the 82nd Airborne Division during the Allied invasion of Italy, was part of the provisional 1st Airborne Task Force for the invasion of southern France in August 1944, and was attached to the 101st Airborne Division from 22 November to 18 December 1944.
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