HARKER HEIGHTS — In June of 1944, a few days after D-Day, American commander Henry Crampton Jones found a parachute left by an American paratrooper on Omaha Beach. He picked it up, thinking it would be an interesting thing to have.

Later on, he cut off slivers of it to make scarves for his men to wear under their scratchy, woolen collars during the cold winter in France.

After VE Day, he took the parachute remnant home and stuck it in a paper bag on which he wrote, in scrawling blue crayon, where and when he had found it.

He died in 1988, age 94, and the bag went to his daughter, Annie Sciolla of Harker Heights.

Ms. Sciolla still had the silky, green military parachute until Wednesday, when she gave the WWII artifact (in the same old paper bag) into the keeping of the 101st Airborne Division.

Sofia Sanchez, public affairs officer for Operational Test Command on West Fort Hood, accepted the parachute from Ms. Sciolla. The parachute will reside at Fort Bragg, N.C., for safekeeping until the new 101st Airborne Museum is completed in 2006.