This Ike jacket was worn by T/Sgt. Roger L Kitchen, Company D, 508th PIR.  Displayed here are the coveted parachutist's wings, Combat Infantry Badge (CIB), and the so-called "Ruptured Duck' signifying Honorable Discharge.  Although his campaign ribbons are absent, the jacket does have the Presidential Unit Citation, Netherlands Orange Lanyard and the Belgian Fourragere.  Note also the Pathfinder insignia on the left sleeve.

   Although the ribbon is not displayed on the jacket in this photo, Sgt. Kitchen earned among other things, the Purple Heart.

   Kitchen was a corporal at the time the regiment made the jump into Normandy on June 6 1944.

   Kitchen  was hit by shrapnel while awaiting the green light prior to jumping from the C-47 he and his stick were in.  Nonetheless he completed the jump with a landing  somewhere between the Douve and Merderet rivers.  Once on the ground he found that the wounds in his forehead and on a knuckle of the right hand were minor so he just bandaged himself before joining into the fray.

   After the end of hostilities Sgt. Kitchen learned that there was a point system being used to determine how soon a man could go home and that medals counted as points.  He went to an officer who recalled that Kitchen had been wounded, and that officer saw to it that he was awarded he Purple Heart which was officially awarded on May 28 1945.