Beyond Band of Brothers

by Major Dick Winters

  “Give me a drink of water,” I replied as I sat down on the edge of the dike. Until that point, I had not realized how exhausted I was. He handed me his canteen and as I went to lift the canteen, my hand was visibly shaking. I’d often seen Nixon’s hand shake when he had one too many drinks, but this was the first time that I had ever seen my own hand shake. Nixon’s shaking hands were the result of guzzling a shot of Vat 69 and was due to the shock of his nervous system gearing up. I felt my shaking hands were the result of my nervous system settling down, recovering from exertion and excitement.

  How we had survived, I had no idea. We were certainly very lucky, as we had probably faced 300 plus troops. Fortunately the German leadership was abysmal. This was a far cry from what we had experienced in Normandy, where the enemy marksmanship and grazing fire inflicted a far greater number of casualties on Easy Company. At no time during our current battle had there been any evidence of German commanders directing well-aimed and concentrated fire until their artillery had opened up as we reached the river. This lack of fire discipline was seen originally by the indiscriminate firing of the machine guns early in the morning. Once we had eliminated the enemy machine gun crew, the Germans magnified their mistakes by letting our initial squad get away with sitting in that open field, waiting for the balance of the platoon and the machine gun section to come forward from the company CP. While we waited, we were located in a shallow trench—they had a road bank for a firing line. We sat there for at least one hour without the enemy exercising the slightest bit of initiative. Additionally, the German officers allowed their company to bunch up in one gigantic mass once the battle started. Finally the Germans compounded their errors by permitting us to pin them down with two machine guns while the remainder of 1st Platoon made a dash across 200 yards of a perfectly flat field. To allow roughly thirty-five men rout two companies of elite troops hardly spoke well of the leadership of the enemy.

  In my estimation, this action by E Company was the highlight of all Easy Company’s engagements during the entire war and it also served as my apogee as company commander. Easy’s destruction of the German artillery battery at Brecourt Manor on D-Day was extremely important in its contribution to the successful landing at Utah Beach, but this action demonstrated Easy Company’s overall superiority, of every man, of every phase of infantry tactics: patrol, defense, attack under a base of fire, withdrawal, and, above all, superior marksmanship with rifles, machine guns, and mortar fire. All this was done against numerically superior forces that had an advantage of ten to one in manpower and excellent observation for artillery and mortar support. Since early morning, we had sustained twenty-two casualties from the fifty-five or so soldiers who were engaged. Nixon and I estimated the enemy casualties as fifty killed, eleven captured, and countless wounded. I guess I had contributed my share, but killing never made me happy. Satisfied, yes, because I knew I had done my job; but never happy.

  There was no superior officer or staff officer present to witness any part of the engagement. Therefore, it was up to me to write up the account. Describing this action, I intentionally wrote the entire narrative without once using the word I. My reason was simple—I wanted to ensure that all credit went to the men who deserved it. I was not bucking for a personal decoration or any personal acknowledgement of my abilities as a combat commander. On October 16, I recommended that 1st Platoon and the first section of the light machine gun platoon of Headquarters Company be cited for gallantry in action. In compiling my recommendation, I noted that 1st Platoon had spearheaded the company attack at Carentan. In Holland they had led the attack on Nuenen during which fifteen men of the platoon were killed or injured. Now they had been instrumental in the destruction of two companies of SS troops. God, I was proud of these men! Eleven days later, Colonel Sink issued a regimental general order that cited 1st Platoon, Easy Company for “their daring and aggressive spirit and sound tactical ability” against a vastly superior enemy force. That citation was reward enough for me.

  My real satisfaction lay in the eyes of the men. In a sense, Staff Sergeant Talbert was representative of the entire company. From that day onward, there was a look in his eye of respect, and a look in my eye of respect for him and the others who had participated in the attack. The key to a successful combat leader is to earn respect, not because of rank, but because you are a man. In a letter dated after the war, Tab attempted to summarize our relationship: “The things we had are damn near sacred to me.” The feeling was mutual as October 5 sealed feelings of camaraderie and friendship that were beyond words. You can’t describe it. You have to live through it, but you never question it.

  October 5 marked my last combat action as commander of Easy Company and the last day that I fired my weapon in combat. On October 9, Colonel Sink assigned me to 2d Battalion headquarters to serve as battalion executive officer. First Lieutenant Fred Heyliger temporarily assumed command of Easy Company until First Lieutenant Norman S. Dike Jr. arrived from regimental headquarters to assume command of the company with which I had served for two years. Heyliger had been an 81mm mortar platoon leader in Headquarters Company of 2d Battalion. He had two combat jumps to his credit and was well respected in Easy Company.

  Leaving Easy Company was the hardest thing I had done in my life. Life in an infantry company is extremely intimate and the result is that men share their collective experiences each and every day. As I reflected on my two years in the company, from a platoon leader at Toccoa to Easy’s commanding officer since D-Day, I knew that I was leaving the greatest group of men with whom I had ever served. From the tyrannical tenure of Captain Sobel through my relief, Easy Company had trained and fought as a cohesive unit. At Toccoa, Sobel had constantly screamed at the men and he forced each soldier to stand on his own. You were not supposed to help one another. If you did, Sobel withheld your pass and placed you on extra duty. He was trying to wash the men out. This brought the men closer together as they helped each other with their sprains, in carrying heavy equipment, such as crew-served weapons, mortars, and base plates. Easy Company had to work together to get through each day, and this cohesion intensified as the weeks passed. In time, I noticed that when the men started receiving packages from home, they shared within their squad and within their platoon. When we deployed to England in 1943 the cooperation manifested itself even more when the noncommissioned officers mutinied because of their fear of going into battle with Captain Sobel. The rebellion was based on true fear of what lay ahead. Fortunately Colonel Sink had intervened to diffuse a highly dangerous situation. And later, of course, when we entered combat, the men continued to share the good and the bad, the tough times and the easy times. From D-Day onward, combat further cemented the closeness that united Easy Company. Stress and combat created a special bond that only exists in an infantry company at war. Hardship and death brought the men together as close as any family or any husband and wife. It was this bond that made Easy Company “a band of brothers” that exists to this day. I was fortunate enough to have been a part of it, but the cohesion that existed in the company was hardly the result of my leadership. The company belonged to the men—the officers were merely the caretakers.

  PART THREE

  In War’s Dark Crucible

  Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land, Drawing no dividends from time’s tomorrows.

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON, “Dreamers”

  9

  Interlude

  I moved to battalion on October 9 to assume my new duties as battalion executive officer to Lieutenant Colonel Strayer. My transfer was part of a large-scale reorganization of the 506th PIR by Colonel Sink. Following the engagements on October 5, Sink transferred a number of officers within the regiment to a variety of command and staff positions. Of the nine rifle companies within the 506th, four received new commanders. In addition to Easy Company, new commanders arrived to take command of each of 1st Battalion’s line companies. Many of the transfers resulted from battlefield casualties. Others occurred because o
fficers failed to measure up to the strain of combat. Still other officers seemed incapable of making decisions. I found myself highly critical of any leader who failed to lead by example. You could see similar feelings in the eyes of the men. The first thing they did when a new platoon leader arrived was to “size him up,” to determine if he had the mettle. The biggest problem lay with replacement officers. We desperately needed good officers who were technically and tactically proficient. Unfortunately, battlefield casualties required us to accept a number of replacements who simply were not up to par, but there was no alternative. We needed bodies to fill the ranks.

  As excited as I was about the new responsibility, my transfer was bittersweet since it entailed leaving Easy Company. Orders were orders; there was no room for looking at it any other way, but I would be less than truthful if I said that the day I left Easy Company was not a tough day. I was now simply the battalion executive officer, a staff officer with no command authority. I was no longer creative; I felt that I had “lost my men.” I knew all the men in Easy Company personally. I had been their leader and had been with them since they had joined the army. At battalion, you don’t really know or work with the individual paratrooper. You deal with the officers and the leaders. In Easy Company, we had shared our lives as soon as we joined the airborne infantry. It was this shared experience that created the cohesion and the loyalty within the company, a loyalty that was not always transferred to battalion or more senior headquarters.

  On battalion staff I had ample opportunity to reflect upon my two plus years as a member of Easy Company, especially the past four months when I had been privileged to serve as its commander. Naturally, I had made my share of mistakes, but they were sins of omission rather than commission. My principal error had been a tendency to fall into a particular habit. Although I did not realize it at the time, I tended to develop a routine when attacking the enemy. I usually deployed 1st Platoon on the left, 2d Platoon on the right, and 3d Platoon in reserve. I continued this method of deployment throughout the war. As you might expect, the first two platoons incurred the greatest number of casualties, which is why sixty years after the war, the survivors of 3d Platoon far outnumber their sister platoons. This bothers me a lot. I should have aligned the platoons differently and altered the tactical formations.

  Only later did Strayer inform me of the reasons behind my transfer. In early October, Colonel Sink had called Strayer to his command post and informed him that he was going to make Major Carl Buechner, his logistics officer and a West Point graduate, a battalion commander in order for Buechner to receive the prerequisite experience for more senior command. He was doing this even though Major Oliver Horton, the 2d Battalion executive officer, was senior to Buechner with respect to date of rank and service within the regiment. In Strayer’s opinion, this was nothing more than the West Point Protective Association at work. Strayer informed Sink that he did not agree that Buechner was the man for the job. In the past Buechner had demonstrated a lack of common sense in dealing with the men. Strayer argued forcibly that Horton had earned the promotion and ought to be given a chance, but Sink was adamant and directed that Major Horton report to regimental headquarters to be advised of the situation. Colonel Strayer then returned to his own headquarters and advised Horton that if the regimental commander insisted on putting Buechner in command over him, that he, Horton, should demand a court-martial. Sink relented and assigned Horton to command, leaving a vacancy in 2d Battalion. Strayer then returned to regimental headquarters and requested that I be assigned as his executive officer. Regrettably, Major Horton was killed in an attack above Opheusden on October 5. Strayer considered Horton one of the most outstanding officers in the 506th PIR and later named his son after him.

  I found life on battalion staff extremely boring in contrast to commanding Easy Company. My principal responsibility now lay in providing logistical and administrative support to the battalion. My tactical job was to line up other people to make the attack or to maintain a position. As executive officer, I no longer could let myself become involved in a firefight. That was a company commander’s or a platoon leader’s primary responsibility. My new position was one of a counselor, a guide, and a leader. Battalion staff required new responsibilities and I made the necessary adjustments as rapidly as possible.

  During the third week in October, battalion headquarters received a visitor from the First British Airborne Division. Lieutenant Colonel O. Dobey, also known as the “Mad Colonel of Arnhem,” had been captured during Market-Garden, but he escaped and was rescued by the Dutch Underground. Now Dobey was attempting to coordinate the rescue of approximately 140 men on the north side of the Rhine. The group included eight to ten Dutch civilians, five American aviators, and over one hundred British paratroopers who had evaded their German adversaries when the enemy destroyed the British airhead in Arnhem. The mission to extract the British soldiers fell to Easy Company. First Lieutenant Fred Heyliger, temporarily in command of the company, served as the patrol leader. As battalion executive officer, I had no hands-on part in the planning or the execution of the patrol other than to provide the necessary support. Heyliger did an absolutely superb job and all Allied soldiers were safely returned to friendly lines on the night of October 22 and the morning of October 23. All twenty-four men of Easy Company who participated in the extraction were later commended for their “aggression, spirit, prompt obedience of orders, and devotion to duty.” The British remembered Heyliger’s contribution and leadership of the patrol by awarding him the British Military Cross.

  Within a week of “the rescue,” the 101st Airborne Division’s area of responsibility was enlarged, causing the 506th to shift east along the river, taking over the area formerly held by the 501st PIR. Second Battalion headquarters moved to Schoonderlogt, west of Elst. Military action during this period was confined to reconnaissance and combat patrols. The Germans still held the area along the railroad tracks on our side of the Rhine, south of Arnhem. The sword hanging over our heads at all times lay in the fact that the enemy controlled the high ground north of the river. Thus, they could observe every move we made during daylight hours, and they could, at their will, deliver a mortar or artillery concentration whenever the target we presented was worthy of the expenditure of ammunition.

  On October 31, I called 1st Lieutenant Heyliger on the telephone and suggested that at night the two of us make an inspection of Easy Company’s outposts because for the past week the Germans had been aggressively patrolling through E Company’s sector. “Moose” readily agreed and about 2100 hours that evening, I arrived at his command post. First Lieutenant Harry Welsh, leader of 2d Platoon, held the sector of the line facing east. His CP was located in a barn about fifty yards west of the railroad tracks, along which the Germans maintained their outposts. This was an extremely active sector, so we telephoned Welsh to advise him that we were en route to see him. Welsh was an excellent platoon leader, but on this occasion, he failed to notify his outposts that we were approaching their position. As Moose and I proceeded down the path leading to the command post we were walking shoulder to shoulder, for the pathway was only about six to seven feet wide. The path was slightly raised, so there was a drop of approximately three feet into a drainage ditch on each side of the pathway. Heyliger felt we were getting close to the platoon CP when suddenly we received an order to “Halt!” Moose was a calm, easygoing officer, but when he took an extra deep breath, I immediately tensed. I knew Moose had forgotten the password. He started to identify himself, but before he had a word half out, Wham, wham, wham! We were looking straight down the barrel of a rifle spitting fire at us from a distance of ten yards.

  Instinctively, self-preservation reflexes had me diving into the ditch on the left-hand side of the road as I saw that rifle spewing lead. Lieutenant Heyliger dropped to the road with a moan. I thought for a moment that we had run into a German patrol; that rifle had fired so fast that it could have been a German machine pistol. Then I heard footsteps running away
. I crawled out of the ditch, grabbed Moose, and pulled him over to the shoulder of the path. He had been hit in the right shoulder and left leg. His calf looked like it had just been blown away. I immediately started to bandage the leg. In a few minutes I heard footsteps running toward us and I recognized Harry Welsh calling us in a low voice, “Moose? Dick?”

  Welsh and a few Easy Company men were a welcome sight. Moose was in desperate need of help. We bandaged him as best we could and gave him several shots of morphine to ease the pain. By the time we evacuated him off the line and into an ambulance, Heyliger had lost so much blood that he was nearly comatose. A whitelike pallor covered his face. As he left for the hospital, I said, “I hope he makes it.” Heyliger survived, but for him the war was over. In command for less than a month, he had fallen victim to a senseless case of fratricide so characteristic of undisciplined soldiers rushing to the front before they were properly trained. Now safely back in England, he wrote me a letter, thanking me for taking care of him that night. He went on, “Jesus, they put casts right over my wounds and it smells as if a cat shit in my bed. I can’t get away from that stink.” Moose remained in the hospital until his discharge in 1947. He suffered terribly from that wound for the remainder of his life. And to the day he died over a half century later, he still could not recall the password.