551^st Parachute Infantry Battalion Roll of Honor

by Les Hughes

© by author 2006

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Dan Morgan's 110

The number of men of the 551^st to have died in combat while serving with the battalion has been a matter of controversy since the Army’s Center of Military History (CMH) challenged the battalion's Battle of the Bulge casualty figures cited in its veterans' application for a Presidential Unit Citation (PUC) and cited in Gregory Orfalea’s book.¹ Those casualty figures appear to be largely the ones compiled by Dan Morgan in writing his history of the battalion.²  

While Mr. Orfalea appears to agree with Mr. Morgan’s number of those killed in combat (110),³ unlike Mr. Morgan, he chose not to include in his book a list of their names. If Mr. Orfalea could devote a full page to a list of the names of the 90 veterans of the 551^st whom he interviewed for his book, then why not equal space for the names of the men he believes died in the service of the battalion and their country? Here was an opportunity to memorialize these men, and he chose not to. I think Mr. Orfalea understood how problematic that list is. (Two, perhaps three, of Mr. Morgan's 110 were members of the 551^st Association at the time Mr. Orfalea was writing his book, and at least eight others Mr. Orfalea identifies in his book as not having been with the battalion at the time of their death.)

The manner in which Mr. Morgan compiled his list of the battalion’s 110 war dead must be understood before proceeding. There were two sources of the 110 names: (a) the records of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) and (b) the recollections of the 551^st veterans.

Circa 1980, a group of ladies, under the direction of the wife of a veteran of the battalion, visited the ABMC and searched its records of war dead for the names of members of the 551^st. Judging from the results of that search, I infer two things. First, at that time the records of the ABMC comprised both the war dead interred in ABMC military cemeteries abroad and interred in cemeteries in the US. Today that is not the case: ABMC records (now online) comprise only war dead interred in ABMC military cemeteries abroad; the records of those interred in the US are now under the control of the Army’s Office of Casualty and Memorial Affairs, and are accessible only via FOIA requests. Because of the expense of FOIA enquiries, it was not possible for me to obtain the dates of death of those that Mr. Morgan lists as interred in the US. Second, it is apparent that the ladies were provided with the names and Army Service Numbers (ASN) of everyone who had served, regardless of when or for how long, in the 551^st, because Mr. Morgan’s list includes the names of a number of former battalion members interred abroad who were in other units at the time of their death. The same may be true of those on Mr. Morgan's list who are interred in the US. (Mr. Morgan acknowledged that his list contained the names of some former battalion members who had died in other units.) 

I was in touch with Mr. Morgan in the early 1980s and obtained from him material that included a copy of his book, a complete roster of 551^st personnel, a partial (though extensive) roster listing the homes-of-record of many of the men, and his accounting of 551^st dead that included those who died in the tragic night jump at Camp Mackall. 

In 2006 I twice visited the CMH at Fort Lesley J. McNair, Virginia, to examine its file on the 551^st. From the CMH's file, I obtained copies of all the battalion’s Bulge Casualty Reports and many of its Morning Reports from that period. (The CMH had all of the battalion's Morning Reports from the Bulge, but I did not have time to copy them all.) Using the materials from Mr. Morgan and the CMH, I compiled a complete list of the battalion’s Bulge casualties. By committing the list to a spreadsheet, I was able to sort it by name, rank, army service numbers (ASN), type of casualty, date of casualty, date of report, or company. And I revisited Mr. Morgan’s list of 110 dead using the Bulge casualty list and the online databases of war dead of the ABMC and the National Archives (NARA).⁴ (The ABMC's database lists date of death; NARA's does not.)

A comment regarding the Morning Reports and the Casualty Reports of the 551^st is in order before proceeding. In his history of the 551^st, Gregory Orfalea disparages the accuracy the battalion's Morning Reports during its action in the Battle of the Bulge. Indeed, Mr. Orfalea appears to suggest that the Morning Reports may have been suppressed, perhaps even fabricated, when he says: "These figures are culled from the battalion's January 1945 Morning Reports, which, strangely, were lost to all previous researchers, including myself and Morgan, for half a century."⁵ Morning Reports are held at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, not at NARA. In fact, a 551^st veteran who lived in the St. Louis area provided Mr. Morgan with copies of many of the battalion's Morning Reports for the period August through December 1944.⁶ Why he did not obtain the Morning Reports for January and February 1945 is impossible to determine at this point in time. But rather than believing that the Army intentionally withheld  the reports (why would it?), it is more reasonable to believe that a request for Morning Reports from the CMH, acting under the authority of the Secretary of the Army, elicited the full cooperation of the NPRC, whereas a request from a civilian researcher did not. (Mr. Orfalea does not indicate when or from whom he sought copies of the battalion's Morning Reports.)

Let us examine further the matter of the battalion's Morning Reports. Mr. Orfalea states: "Though the Morning Reports are reliable for unit strength before battle, after the counteroffensive started they became notoriously incomplete and unreliable. And that is not so unnatural given the extremely cold weather, constant attack movements, isolation, loss of radio and telephone communications, and other vicissitudes of one of the most arduous combat scenes in U.S. history."⁷ This assertion ignores an important fact: the 551^st was withdrawn from combat after the assault on Rochelinval and spent the final month of its existence recuperating and regrouping—one month for the battalion to get a handle on its casualty statistics and for its Morning Reports and Casualty Reports to reflect them. 

If, as Mr. Orfalea claims, the Morning Reports are unreliable, one might reasonably wonder what he does find reliable. The answer is revealing. "The G-3 Report for January 3, 1945, of the 82d Airborne cites casualties for the 551st that day of 18 officers and 171 enlisted men, including 2 officers and 29 enlisted men killed; based on 643 men going into battle that morning, this equals a 29 percent casualty rate, reported as of 1800 hours or 6 P.M. The integral 82d regiments suffered between 15 and 25 percent casualties that first day of the counteroffensive. Inexplicably, the CMH report on which the Army relied to deny the PUC to the 551st, cites a GOYA casualty figure one-third the size of the official record: 61 vs 189."⁸

This argument may appear reasonable to the casual reader, but it falls apart when examined critically. First, unlike Morning Reports, G-3 Reports have never been an official record for personnel reporting. And as for reliability, consider what a G-3 report is. The G-3 is the Assistant Chief of Staff, Operations and Plans, and the report in question, issued by his section, would have described the operational status of the 82^nd Airborne Division and its elements, and the situation confronting them based on the best intelligence available at the time. Necessarily, if they are to be timely, these situation reports will contain information that has not been verified—the people who use these reports understand this and view their contents, especially when the situation is fluid, as the best estimates available. Even more relevant is the fact the G-3 Report was compiled at the division level. How would the division's G-3 Section have known the number of casualties suffered by the 551^st, an attached battalion, except by relying on reports from the 551^st?  And in doing so, relying on the same people responsible for the battalion's "unreliable" Morning Reports. Furthermore, one can reasonably imagine that at the time the G-3 Report was issued, January 3, the first day of the counteroffensive and a day of heavy fighting for the 551^st, that the fog of war obscured much. Labeling the battalion's Morning Reports unreliable, reports issued daily during the six weeks the unit was in the Ardennes, while touting as "the official record" the casualty figures of a single G-3 Report is, I think, an argument in the service of a story-line. (The battalion's own casualty report for the action of January 3, issued nine days later, lists one officer and 16 EM killed, and one officer and 40 EM wounded—58 casualties, a figure far closer to the 61 of the CMH than to the 189 of the G-3 Report.)

Battle of the Bulge Casualties

Ten Casualty Reports—the first dated 3 January; the last 8 February—were submitted by 1LT Hugh Robinson, the battalion's Assistant Adjutant. The reports are detailed: each entry comprising the casualty's name, rank, ASN, company, type of casualty, and date of casualty. The lengthiest report was that of 12 January, which contains 156 entries. By contrast, the final three reports—from 25 January to 8 February—contain only 24 entries: four died of wounds and 20 returned to duty.

The battalion's Casualty Reports from the Battle of the Bulge can be summarized as follows:

 * Three survived; one KIA, included in 38.  ^‡ One died of wounds, included in 8.  ⁺ Includes five from injuries incurred in S. France

One might wonder whether some of the wounded died after the battalion was disbanded and, thus, should be included among the battalion's dead. To answer this question, I checked each of the men deemed to have been seriously wounded against NARA's database of war dead and found none listed.

There is a significant disparity between the above accounting of the battalion's casualties for the Ardennes campaign and what was believed by Morgan, Orfalea, and the battalion's veterans. Morgan reports instances of men having received minor wounds that they treated themselves or that were treated by medics or buddies, and then the men returned to the line without having been officially a casualty. I have no doubt that this occurred, but to what extent it reduced the battalion's casualty statistics is anybody's guess. Obviously, such a source of ambiguity does not extend to the number of dead. Mr. Morgan wrote: "It is highly likely that our killed-in-action in the Bulge alone should run to at least 160."⁹ That estimate was weighted—heavily, it appears—by the battalion's veterans' recollections of that chaotic and traumatic period. In fact, the casualty statistics of the XVIII Airborne Corps lists 163 as the total number of men killed in the 509^th and 551^st PIBs and the 517^th PRCT for the entire Battle of the Bulge (see Comparative Statistics below). 

Casualties for All Actions

When one carefully examines Mr. Morgan’s list of 110 dead, one finds the following: