Lieutenant Colonel John Cooper, the commander of the 463rd, and his soldiers, used field artillery to help cement the victory at the Battle of Bastogne. Lt. Col. Cooper was aggressive and ready for a fight, so he volunteered his battalion to the acting Division Commander Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe to help fight the Germans in Belgium. Although the unit’s mission was to use indirect fires to drive the enemy back, Cooper and the soldiers of the 463rd parachute field artillery found great success in shooting their 75mm pack howitzer directly at the German tanks advancing their firing position. Cooper and his men were relatively unknown and doubted across the 101st until they made themselves known with their success. According to Martin
