517th Parachute Infantry Combat Team

Christmas 1944 in France

submitted by Clark Archer (with the help of Ed Flannery)

Note: The chute picture on the front is of a German Parachute. Keep in mind that the Germans occupied France not long before this booklet was printed. Not many people are going to notice. - Ed F.

This booklet was issued around Christmastime in 1944, while the 517th was involved in the Battle of the Bulge. The booklet is primarily a set of rosters of all the soldiers who were assigned to the 517th at that time.

Unfortunately, the surviving copies are old and yellowed and very fragile. Clark Archer was very kind to send us his original to be scanned in. Because of the yellowing and the small size of the print, the text is very hard to read on a computer screen. Therefore, I have posted most pages as 160% of their original size. This makes it readable on a screen, but does have the drawback of requiring you to have to scroll around the page to read it all. I felt this was acceptable in order to keep the text readable. This size also allows for a fairly good quality when printed. Printed quality is actually better than the screen viewing quality. This size is just big enough to print out each page onto 8 1/2 by 11 paper.

Here is a complete copy in pdf format, provided by Steve Markle, son of Eugene C. Markle, 596 PEC.  Also, Dieter Laes rebuilt the pdf copy so that it is now searchable.  Note that some names may not be spelled right.  Check partial names and other spellings. 

New:  Good quality paper reproductions of this booklet have recently been printed and are available on eBay. 

Printing instructions: It depends on your Internet Explorer or other viewing program, but in most cases once you get to the page that you want to print, you should click once on the image itself . Nothing will happen, but the viewer will now know that you are on that frame of the page. Then you go to the "File" menu, and select "Print". On the lower section, it will ask you how you want to print the selected frames. Make sure you choose the "Only the selected frame" option. (See diagram below) This will print out one page at a time, and should fit well onto normal 8 1/2 x 11 paper.