[We Are The Mighty] Albert Michael Hassenzahl served as a U.S. Army paratrooper during World War II. He was in C Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Hassenzahl, who died in 2009, conducted an interview with the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project in 1998. We Are The Mighty is running some of those transcripts leading to Veterans Day on November 11, 2026. WATM edited the interview for clarity and brevity.
"[In] the fall of 1941, I was attending the University of Toledo in Ohio. I was in the middle of my junior year when December 7, 1941, came along and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I finished out the semester, and in early February of 1942, I enlisted in the United States Army as a private.
"[They] ordered [me] to Louisiana at Camp Livingston and took basic training with the 28th Infantry Division. After completing basic training, I found that I qualified for possible officer training school at Fort Benning, Georgia, as an infantry officer. I applied for the school and was accepted and went to Fort Benning. After 90 days, [I] graduated as a second lieutenant in the infantry.
"We were popularly or unpopularly known as 90-day wonders. At this point in time, I had several opportunities to go to Columbus, Georgia, near Fort Benning, and I noticed the paratroops that were in town. I noted what excellent soldiers they appeared to be. I investigated the paratroops and I learned something about them, and decided that was the outfit that I wanted to be in.
"After Fort Benning and the infantry school, I put an application in to parachute school, took a physical, and spent four rugged weeks undergoing training. There were four stages: A, B, C, and D. C stage was up on the towers. And at that point, we were hauled up on the 250-foot tower with an open parachute that could be released at the top of the tower.
"And the Monday morning that our class made this formation, we made free jumps off those towers when they released the chute. But when we assembled and started our morning training, a strong wind came across the field. The first guy came down with his chute open and broke his leg with that strong wind. The second guy went up, and he came down and broke an ankle. I was the third man up. Everything was fine until just before I hit the ground, and a strong, strong gust of wind caught me and swung me at a sharp angle to the ground and slammed me down on my right knee. I spent a good six weeks on physical therapy before they let me go back and complete the C stage about six weeks later.
"And then D stage was the last stage where you go up in an airplane and make five practice jumps to earn your wings, and that must have been sometime, oh, in November. I received a pair of silver wings, and I was a bona fide paratrooper from this point on."
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