The ‘Reject’ Who Stopped 700 Germans — After the Army Tried to Kick Him Out 8 Times

Some WWII heroes became legends because the Army trained them.
Others became legends because the Army tried to erase them.

This is the true story of Jake McNiece — a soldier the U.S. Army marked as a discipline problem, a man the 101st Airborne tried to kick out eight times, and the same man who later stopped 700 German troops with just 35 paratroopers during the Battle of Normandy.

Jake wasn’t the polished, regulation-perfect soldier you see in recruiting posters. He was part of the Filthy Thirteen, the war-painted paratroopers who jumped into Normandy on D-Day and changed the course of several critical WWII operations. He survived his C-47 transport plane exploding, fought his way across the hedgerows, captured the bridge at Chef-du-Pont, and held it for 72 hours against overwhelming German infantry and mortar fire.

When American aircraft mistakenly bombed the bridge they had just taken, Jake repositioned his 35 men on the high ground and prepared for a fight no commander expected them to survive. What followed became one of the most staggering defensive stands of the Second World War — a tiny group of airborne soldiers breaking wave after wave of German attacks using nothing but terrain, discipline, and raw will.

Months later, during the Battle of the Bulge, Jake volunteered to parachute into surrounded Bastogne to guide C-47 resupply aircraft through freezing fog — a mission that kept the 101st Airborne alive long enough for reinforcements to break through.

Jake McNiece never asked for medals. He never bragged. After the war, he went home, worked in a post office, and quietly left behind one of the most unbelievable combat records in WWII history.

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#WW2 #WW2History #MilitaryHistory #Paratroopers #FilthyThirteen