The ceremony was held to retire the organization's colors and present the regimental flag and other memorabilia to the Camp Blanding Museum.

About 600 people from all over the nation attended the program, including about 150 veterans - nicknamed the Red Devils - who served in the 508th during World War II and members of their families. The guest speaker was Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a former paratrooper who served in Iraq where for a time he was the official spokesman for the coalition forces.

Kimmitt called the 508th veterans a "national treasure" whose legacy during D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge and other World War II engagements is being carried on by airborne troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The risks these men understood in 1944 the troops understand in the war on terror today," Kimmitt said.

Age and the increasing difficulty of members to attend reunions prompted the group, which was founded in 1975, to vote on whether to continue. Members decided to retire the colors and officially disband the association.

The 508th Parachute Infantry Regimental Association drew together men who formed a special brotherhood that got its start at Camp Blanding in October 1942. That's when the 508th was activated as a unit of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division.

Attending Tuesday's ceremony were about 80 men who took their initial training at Camp Blanding in 1942 before going on to jump school and combat in Europe and other battle theaters.

George Shenkle, 83, of Collegeville, Pa., was among the many who was involved in the D-Day drop behind enemy lines in the early morning darkness of June 6, 1944, beginning the invasion of France that became the turning point of World War II.

"We jumped at 2 o'clock in the morning on D-Day," said Shenkle, a retired accountant and controller who served as a combat radioman during the war. "I landed backwards on the edge of an apple orchard. There were cows grazing, which was a good sign because it meant there were no mines in the field."

Shenkle said his E Company was assigned to take two bridges to help keep the Germans from moving toward American infantry advancing inland from Utah Beach. He said that because of the flak - anti-aircraft explosives that sprayed deadly metal shrapnel at airplanes and paratroopers - and tracer bullets that peppered the planes before the drop, the paratroopers were glad to finally get the green light signaling them to jump.

Once on the ground, Shenkle said, he soon discovered his 175-pound backpack and other equipment was overly heavy. One of the first things he jettisoned were his numerous packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes.

"I left my stash of Luckies in a hedgerow," he said. "I often wonder what happened to those Lucky Strikes."

Shenkle said he volunteered for the parachute regiment because "I knew if I could make it in the paratroopers, never in my life would I have to brag about what I did in the war."

Ted Lee, 82, of Cody, Wy., had graduated from high school a few weeks before D-Day. He joined the 508th soon after, but it was January 1945 before he made his first combat jump.

"The Germans controlled the Naimjagan [sic] bridge on the Waal River in the Netherlands, and we were to take that bridge," said Lee, who has worn his original boots and jump uniform - let out slightly - to many of the reunion events. "We did a daylight jump, and it took us 2-1/2 weeks to secure the bridge."

He said the flight in the C-47 over the English Channel was rough and caused several of the paratroopers to get sick. They did so into a bucket that was slid down the center of the plane to whomever needed it, Lee said, and soon the stench filled the airplane.

"We couldn't wait to get out of the plane because we thought nothing could be worse than that smell," said Lee, who made 42 jumps as a paratrooper. "When we got out of the plane, we realized things could get much worse."

Some in his unit were hit by machine gun fire or flak as they floated to the ground. Lee landed unharmed, and helped his mortar team destroy an enemy gun nest near the bridge. Before the bridge was taken, he said, they spent more than two weeks in foxholes muddied by thawing snow.

A few months later, the 508th was tapped by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to be the honor guard at his headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, shortly after the war in Europe ended.

"It was such a different situation for us from combat," said Lee, who worked for the state of Wyoming for 33 years before retiring in 1988. "We ate at tables and were served by German POWs. It was an easy life once we got to Frankfurt."

Lee was injured on his final jump - which he made in 1996 at age 74. On a skydive, Lee jumped from 28,000 feet, free-falling to 12,000 feet before pulling the ripcord.

"In the war we jumped from about 900 to 1,200 feet," said Lee, who took time out from campaigning for the Wyoming House of Representatives to attend the reunion. "And our old chutes weren't nearly as sensitive as these new ones. I was swinging back and forth like a pendulum and broke my leg when I landed."

But before then, he said, it was a beautiful jump. And, he quipped, he didn't have to worry about flak.

Tuesday's ceremony, which prompted tears from some grayed vets and families of those association members who have died, ended with a flyover from a restored P-51 Mustang, a World War II fighter.

The plane tipped its wings and did a roll in honor of those who earned the silver parachute wings - the Red Devils who, as Florida National Guard Chaplain Lt. Col. Jim Fogle-Miller said at the conclusion of the ceremony, "went through hell" and came out heroes.

Bob Arndorfer can be reached at (352) 374-5042 or arndorb@gvillesun.com.