To submit memorials, please CONTACT WEBMASTER.īack to the California Indian Community web portal.ĬALIE HOME PAGE | CONTACT CALIE | USER AGREEMENTĬALIF INDIAN EDU NETWORK: | | APAPAS.From D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge and more, here is the authorized biography of one of the most celebrated paratroopers of Easy Company, Sergeant Shifty Powers, the legendary sharpshooter from the Band of Brothers.Īs a boy, Darrell 'Shifty' Powers' goal was to become the best rifle shot he could be. They can’t come home because the Iraqi army boys can’t do the job and do their own fighting yet? I just believe that as long as our boys are there to do their fighting for them they won’t ever learn to help themselves.” Our boys have been in Iraq three years now. But you know something that puzzles me? In just about three years, we went into the army, exercised, trained, fought and won a war and came home. “I was in the army three years, one month and a couple of days,” Powers said before he passed on. Well I finally found something I could yell and it kind of distracted me, I’d yell ‘Oh S_ _ t what am I doing here.’ It worked for me” Currahee is Cherokee for “Stands alone.” Powers and his fellow Currahees adopted it as a unit motto. They finally told me to just yell anything I wanted. It was supposed to take our mind off jumping, but it didn’t work for me, so the instructors told me to yell Currahee (The men of the 506th were nicknamed the Currahees after the Currahee Mountain at Camp Toccoa), but that didn’t help either. They taught us to yell Geronimo when we jumped. Nowadays they have a different type of chute and they can land fairly soft, but back then, with the chutes we had, you hit the ground pretty hard. If you jump out of an airplane you’re going to hit the ground, one way or another.” Powers laughed. Powers said, “And parachuting to the ground isn’t hard either. We volunteered for paratrooper school.” Powers and his fellow paratroopers were originally sent to Camp Pickett in Virginia where they got their basic physicals and their numerous shots and immunizations, but soon shipped out to Camp Toccoa, Georgia. I worked there as a machinist for a while, My buddy “Popeye” (Robert Wynn, a fellow Virginian from South Hill) and me wanted to join the military so we went and signed up for the Army before we got stuck at the shipyard. “After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they (the government) moved all of us from the school over to the Navy Shipyard at Portsmouth, to do work on the ships there. After graduating from the local high school, Powers decided to go to technical school.

In fact, he got his nickname, “Shifty,” from his outstanding basketball play. Powers liked school because got to play basketball. He also participated in all of Easy Company's battles including Operation Market Garden, Battle of the Bulge, and the capture of Hitler's Eagles Nest. Shifty dropped behind enemy lines in Normandy on D-Day. He was a member of the famed Easy Company whose exploits received worldwide recognition in 'Band of Brothers,' a book by historian Stephen Ambrose, and miniseries produced by Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg. Shifty was a veteran of World War II, having served in the 101st Airborne, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment. He was a charter member of Clinchco Missionary Baptist Church. DARRELL 'SHIFTY' POWERS Obituary Fond Memories of Noteworthy Native American Hero War Veteransĭarrell 'Shifty' Powers, 86, of Shifty Lane, Clinchco, Va., passed away Wednesday Jat Wellmont Regional Hospital, Bristol, Tenn., after a courageous battle with cancer.

Shifty powers taccoa