An enlightening way to gain a perspective of the kind of men who served as paratroopers during WW II is listen to what their children have to say about them. For example, Kenneth Cuddeback’s son Jim wrote an article for a local newspaper about his father. Jim says:
"The article is about my father but I wrote it as a thank you to all service men and women. While I wrote the article, I kept thinking about the men of Hq1 that I had met with my father during their many reunions."
Jim continues. "I wrote the article without my Dad's knowledge from my recollections of what he had told me over the years, and from the many stories I had heard from his WW II comrades."
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"Washington man thanks his father, others for defending our nation's freedom" By Jim Cuddeback
[Published November 19, 1999 in the Washington [Iowa] Evening Journal.]
The young soldier tried to smile for the camera. He was apprehensive about what lay ahead but did not want to let it show in the picture. It was time to board the plane that would take him over Holland that afternoon, and he wanted one last picture before he added the little camera to the other equipment he was carrying. The equipment was heavy. It included the main parachute on his back and a reserve chute in the front, seven grenades, an antitank mine, gas mask, entrenching tool, emergency rations for three days, some underwear, and an M-1 Carbine with 200 rounds of ammunition.
 [The Hq1 communications equipment and sup-plies (radios, spare batteries, telephones, reels of wire, etc.) were wrapped into equipment bundles which were hooked to the belly of the plane in pararacks or carried in the cabin to be shoved out the door before the jumpers.]
This would be his sixth jump. The first five jumps had been into friendly fields in England, where the 82nd Airborne Division had been stationed since before the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The 82nd had suffered tremendous casualties fighting in France. This young soldier, along with many others, were the replacements. His airborne training had been brief but strenuous and now he and the | 
