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LIEUTENANT GENERAL <em>ROBERT FREDERICK SINK</em> died fifteen minutes after he was admitted to Womack Army Hospital. He had been suffering for several months with pulmonary emphysema.</p>
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Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, writing the obituary of his old friend two weeks later, noted that Bob Sink “died with his jump boots off." That was literal, only. From the time he put them on in 1940 to become one of the Army’s first paratroopers, his career reads like the history of paratrooping. His boots were never off figuratively. He kept them on for their intended purpose as long as he could, jumping with a back brace when he commanded the XVIII Airborne Corps and pioneering in the formation of the strategic Army Corps.</p>
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Bob Sink was born on 3 April 1905, at Lexington, North Carolina. His mother Mary Cecil Sink still lives there. His father Fred O. Sink preceded him in death. He attended Duke University and then the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1927. He entered the Army as an Infantry second lieutenant with the 8th Infantry Regiment at Fort Screven, Georgia. Normal Infantry assignments followed until 1940 when he volunteered for the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion at Fort Benning. There is much that has become legendary about Bob Sink, and it began here.</p>
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The 503d Parachute Infantry Regiment claimed him for a time, but the 506th became unalterably his. The 506th soon became the “Five-Oh-Sink,” and he took it through training at Benning and Bragg, to England, into the invasion of the continent at Normandy, on to Holland, and to Bastogne. Troopers from the earliest days of the 506th remember the dog-tired runs up and down Currahee Mountain at Toccoa, Georgia, led by Colonel Sink. A chunk from the top of the mountain was brought to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in later years to remind today’s paratroopers how rough things were then.</p>
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Biographers writing of Bob Sink in combat with the 506th say he “refused to clutter his mind with non-essentials.” Combat companions add that he threw the book away so often he lost it and wrote his own. The combat record of the 506th-and his-is a proud one. Improvisations boiling out of his uncluttered mind caught the Germans unaware time and time again. He risked his life as often as any of the other “Five-Oh-Sinks” and came through unscathed. But the tribute which would have pleased him most appeared just recently in the combat autobiography of one of his troopers: “Colonel Bob is the type of man you meet once and never forget. A real man with plenty of guts, he did more for the enlisted man than any other officer 1 have known."</p>
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It is also said, “He used people to help people, never to help himself.”</p>
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With four European campaigns behind him, he came home to head the Infantry detachment at West Point and later to graduate from the National War College. In 1949 he went to the Far East and became Chief of Staff of the Ryukyus Command. As assistant division commander of the 7th Infantry Division in Korea, he added the U.N. offensive, the Chinese Communist intervention, and the Chinese Communist spring offensive campaigns to his combat record.</p>
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After Korea, General Sink briefly commanded the 7th Armored Division at Camp Roberts, California, and the 44th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington. In 1954 he directed the Joint Airborne Troop Board at Fort Bragg. In 1955 he went to Rio de Janeiro as chairman of the joint Brazil-United States Military Commission and chief of the Army Section, Military Assistance Advisory Group.</p>
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By 1957 when he returned, his old division, the 101st Airborne, had been reactivated to pioneer the Army’s pentomic concept, under which light, mobile forces were developed to “go anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice and fight.” From this beginning, CONARC and General Sink’s new command, the XVUI Airborne Corps, created the Strategic Army Corps.</p>
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It was time for Bob Sink to write a new book. From the “uncluttered mind” came the basics, the essentials which provided the framework for the force which was to become not only a potent military machine which recokoned in terms of battlefields an ocean and a continent away, but also an important instrument of United States foreign policy. STRAC, under Bob Sink, became the spearhead for United States commitment in support of allies the world over.</p>
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It was interesting to sit in on his STRAC conferences. Long, careful briefings bored him. After one of them he could, in a sentence, summarize everything that had gone on in an hour before. Once, at Fort Campbell, after a presentation of an upcoming airborne exercise planned to such details as precise location of a few pieces of prepositioned equipment, General Sink cut the proceedings with, “One of these days I’m going to see an airborne exercise that’s airborne all the way." Soon he did.</p>
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It is said of Bob Sink, of his looks, his dress, his mannerisms, his talk-particularly his talk-that he was “country all the way,” and even West Point could not smooth the country out of him. That may be so; but tall, craggy-faced, handsome, he was no doubt a commander in uniform, and he wore a tuxedo with elegance.</p>
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Credited with such countryisms as, “Men, the varmints are over there on that hill; leave us take that hill,” he could turn to clear, incisive grammar at the click of a microphone switch during a press conference. The North Carolina accent was there, but the tape needed no editing. And how he could charm an audience with jump stories! His impromptu half hour at the first anniversary of the 101st Airborne Division’s reactivation was a memorable experience.</p>
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One more assignment as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Southern Command with headquarters in Panama preceded his retirement for reasons of health in February 1961.</p>
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Bob Sink is survived by his mother; his widow Grace Gall Cannon Sink; two daughters, Margaret S. Swenson of Saint Petersburg, Florida, and Robin S. Reavis of Walterboro, South Carolina; two stepsons, Thomas W. Cannon and Charles William Cannon of Lexington; two sisters, Mrs. Daphne Rose and Mrs. J. Robert Philpott, both of Lexington; and ten grandchildren. Another daughter, Mrs. Thomas Twohey of Wheaton, Maryland, died in 1964. He was first married to Margaret Elizabeth Coe, who preceded him in death. Three brothers, Charles V., Joe S., and Fred 0. Sink Jr., run the family newspaper, <em>The Dispatch</em>, in Lexington.</p>
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During his military career General Sink was awarded the Silver Star with two oak leaf clusters, Legion of Merit with one oak leaf cluster, Air Medal with one oak leaf cluster, Distinguished Unit Citation with one oak leaf cluster, American Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, Occupation of Germany Medal, Occupation of Japan Medal, Korean Service Medal, Korean Presidential Citation, Combat Infantrymans Badge, and Master Parachutist Badge.</p>
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His Allied decorations consist of the Croix de Guerre avec palme (Belgium), the Belgian Fourragere, the Netherlands Orange Lanyard, the Belgian L’Orde de Leopold (Grade of Officer) avec palme, the French Croix de Guerre avec palme, the Distinguished Service Order (Britain), and the Bronze Lion Decree of the Netherlands.</p>
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At Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the beautiful new post library was dedicated recently to the memory of Lieutenant General Robert F. Sink. This is as it should be, for libraries store history, and Bob Sink contributed more than his share to the proud history of the United States Army.</p>
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<em>-Charles H. Chase -Lou Breault</em><br />
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