North African Jews settled here briefly after the conflict, then it was taken over by an Israeli paratrooper unit.
He qualified as an intelligence officer, and got orders to join the 82nd Airborne Division, a paratrooper unit in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The first was Malvin Brown, part of an all-black army paratrooper unit assigned to firefighting in 1945.
Tall and blond, Trautmann had grown up in Germany as an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth, then served with a Luftwaffe paratrooper unit on the Russian front.
He later joined the Pathfinders, an exclusive paratrooper unit that jumped behind enemy lines to provide logistical help to Allied missions, including in the Battle of Bulge.
The Special Air Service, a paratrooper unit of the British military, administers special training in firearms to authorized police officers in the United Kingdom.
The French soldiers, part of an elite paratrooper unit, had only recently taken over from American forces in the area as part of the expanded French deployment in Afghanistan under President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Smoke rose from the base, where mutinous members of the red beret paratrooper unit loyal to the deposed president Amadou Touré started firing their weapons to protest against attempts to reassign some of them.
The elite paratrooper unit continues to battle fascism -- but now on American soil.
