After coming back AWOL from Paris after Market Garden, McNiece volunteered for the Pathfinders thinking he would never make another combat jump. These were paratroopers sent in ahead of the main force to guide them in or guide in resupply drops. Half the surviving members of the original Filthy Thirteen followed him into the Pathfinders thinking they would sit out the rest of the war training in England. To their surprise they parachuted into the encircled town of Bastogne at the height of the Battle of the Bulge. Anticipating casualties as high as 80–90%, the 20 pathfinders lost only one man. Their CRN-4 beacon enabled them to guide in subsequent airdrops of supplies crucial to the continued resistance of the trapped 101st Airborne Division. McNiece considered that any activities not directly concerned with his mission were irrelevant, an attitude that got him in constant trouble with the military authorities. Nevertheless, McNiece finished the war as the acting first sergeant and with four combat jumps, a very rare feat for an American paratrooper. His combat jumps included Normandy, the Netherlands as part of Operation Market Garden, the pathfinder jump in to Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, and as an observer with the 17th Airborne Division during Operation Varsity. Of the activities of the Filthy Thirteen, Jack Agnew once said, "We weren't murderers or anything, we just didn't do everything we were supposed to do in some ways and did a whole lot more than they wanted us to do in other ways. We were always in trouble." The list includes original members from 1943 and the newer members during Operation Overlord and Operation Market Garden. An interview with Jake McNiece and Jack Agnew can be found on the two disc version of the "Dirty Dozen" DVD. Jack Agnew died aged 88 on 8 April 2010. Jake McNiece died aged 93 on 21 January 2013. Jack Womer died aged 96 on 28 December 2013. The 101st Airborne Division issued a press release on the unit, but war correspondents embellished the story. War Correspondent Tom Hoge started the ball rolling when he wrote the first article about these paratroopers and coined the name "The Filthy Thirteen" in an article for the Stars and Stripes, June 9, 1944, "Filthy Thirteen Squad Rivaled by None in Leaping Party." Arch Whitehouse wrote an article for "True" magazine that had some of the myths that would eventually find their way into E. M. Nathanson's book "The Dirty Dozen" which was the basis of the 1967 film of the same name.