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American veteran Tom Rice, who participated in Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands on September 17, 1944, has died at the age of 101. His unit, the 101st Airborne Division, mention Rice “a humble man”, who only wanted to do his duty for his country during WWII.
Operation Market Garden was a daring plan to capture important bridges over the Meuse, Waal and Rhine with paratroopers. It was intended for Allied ground troops from Belgium to cross those bridges, but this failed.
It went fast
Three years ago, Rice made another jump from a plane over the Netherlands at the age of 98. That parachute jump in Groesbeek was part of Market Garden’s 75th anniversary. “He went fast,” Rice told Omroep Gelderland at the time. “The parachute opened before I knew it.”
Rice had parachuted into France on D-Day in June 1944. She also repeated that jump in 2019. “It was morning and dark and it was very difficult,” she said of her experiences during the Allied landings in Normandy. “After my jump I landed on my feet, dropped to my knees and bounced a few times because I was so heavily packed.”
75 years after D-Day, this veteran parachute jumps again
After the war, Rice worked as a teacher in California for nearly 44 years. “I want to do as many jumps as possible until I’m 101,” he told the Distinguished Parachute Division in 2019.
