Lt. Col. James “Maggie” Megellas, one of the 82nd Airborne’s most decorated soldiers, was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in ceremony attended by some the nation's top military officers, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, and the daughter of Holocaust survivor whose camp was liberated by Megellas' unit.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to pay his respects to a soldier who had single-handedly knocked out a German tank, rowed across a Dutch river in a flimsy boat under enemy fire and often said the “Greatest Generation” would be the one that put an end to war.
“I knew if my father was alive, I know this is what he would do and what he would want me to do — to pay my respects,” Eisen, of Westlake, Tex., said. Megellas — who led H Company of the 3rd battalion of 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment — first saw action in Italy, where he was wounded twice, Cinatl said. The 504th became known as the “Devils in Baggy Pants,” a nickname taken from a German soldier’s diary describing troops that seemed to pop out of nowhere, determined to fight.His first parachute combat mission came with Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne assault in history, Cinatl said.
“I saw a figure run up to the tank and heard an explosion and saw a flash of light,” George Heib told the Milwaukee Journal years later. “I said, ‘Who the hell is that crazy [expletive]?’” On May 2, 1945, Megellas and several paratroopers entered Wöbbelin, a satellite of the Neuengamme concentration camp near Ludwigslust, and wasn’t even sure what he had found when he encountered skeletal prisoners like Salton, who was then 17 years old and all of 75 pounds.Salton — who had been born Lucjan Salzman, with the nickname “Lucek,” in the Polish village of Tyczyn — had been separated from his family three years earlier after the German invaders started rounding up Jews.
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