Beyond Band of Brothers

by Major Dick Winters

  Ambrose did a marvelous job summarizing the postwar lives of the men who had served in Easy Company and his efforts need little recounting in these pages. Since the publication of Band of Brothers, however, a number of Easy Company men and their commanders have passed from the scene.

  Colonel Robert Sink left Germany to serve on the staff of General Maxwell Taylor at West Point in December 1945. Sink was a model officer whose charisma and leadership played a profound effect on my personal development as a combat commander. He later served as commander of both Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and its 18th Airborne Corps. He was best known for helping form the Strategic Army Corps Forces (STRAC) in the 1950s. STRAC consisted of 125,000 troopers, including two airborne divisions. Under Sink’s dynamic leadership, the Strategic Army Corps became an alert, well-trained, combat-ready striking force, capable of performing worldwide operational missions on call. General Sink’s last major assignment was as commander of U.S. forces in Panama. Lieutenant General Sink died of complications from chronic emphysema at age sixty in 1965. His place remains forever fixed in the history of the 101st Airborne Division. The Robert F. Sink Memorial Library is located on Screaming Eagle Boulevard at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

  Lieutenant Colonel Robert Strayer, commander of 2d Battalion, 506th PIR, assumed command of the 507th PIR in July 1945 and remained its commanding officer until its deactivation in December. He was promoted to full colonel in December 1945. After he left active duty, he organized 2d Eastern Pennsylvania Airborne Combat Command, which was the first reserve outfit to actually function as a reception center in processing civilians into the military. Later he served as chief of Training Division in the Pentagon. Strayer’s last command was as the commanding officer of the 157th Infantry Brigade. “Colonel Bob” was a frequent attendee at Easy Company reunions until his death in December 2002.

  Lieutenant Colonel Clarence Hester, Captain Sobel’s first executive officer, left the army in 1946 and worked for a friend for twenty-six years who promised to take him in as a stockholder. When he asked for his share, Hester was turned down for the boss’s son, so he established Hester Roofing Company in Sacramento, California. He became very successful while his former employer went broke after a few years. He visited Herbert Sobel once after the war while attending a convention in Chicago. Sobel appeared to be the same unsure person he had been in the army. Sobel and Hester enjoyed an uneasy lunch and both said the usual, “Nice to see you,” but neither had a desire to see each other again. In a letter to Carwood Lipton, Hester stated that “as an ex–GI, I have always felt Easy Company was my home.” Easy Company had given Hester a sense of purpose and responsibility that led to his self-confidence. In five short years, Hester had been promoted from private to lieutenant colonel and appointed commander of a battalion in the 101st Airborne Division. He wasn’t sure how much Easy Company had helped, but “they must have, as they are the ones I always return to.” Hester hoped that Ambrose’s book would “capture the spirit of America and the willingness of our young people to fight for a cause and go far beyond the normal effort and risks.” Clarence Hester died in 2000 at the age of eighty-four from complications due to kidney failure.

  Moose Heyliger temporarily assumed command of Easy Company when I was transferred to battalion headquarters in October 1944. Following his accidental shooting by a member of his own command, Moose remained in the hospital until his discharge in 1947. He spent the next forty years as a leading horticulturalist and a landscaping consultant. Before his death, an interviewer asked Moose if he was proud to have been a member of Easy Company. “Am I proud? You bet your life I am,” my successor-in-command instantly replied. Moose Heyliger died on November 4, 2001, shortly after the release of the initial episodes of the HBO series. His passing was a deep personal loss to all who knew him.

  Captain Lewis Nixon and I were together every step of the way from D-Day to Berchtesgaden, May 8, 1945—VE-Day. I still regard Lewis Nixon as the best combat officer who I had the opportunity to work with under fire. He never showed fear, and during the toughest times he could always think clearly and quickly. Very few men can remain poised under an artillery concentration. Nixon was one of those officers. He always trusted me, from the time we met at Officer Candidate School. While we were in training before we shipped overseas, Nixon hid his entire inventory of Vat 69 in my footlocker, under the tray holding my socks, underwear, and sweaters. What greater trust, what greater honor could I ask for than to be trusted with his precious inventory of Vat 69? Following the war Nix went through tough times and several failed marriages until in 1956, he married a woman named Grace and everything finally came together. Until Lewis met and married Grace, he had never found or experienced true love. It was only after his marriage to Grace that he found true happiness, peace within himself. Together they traveled to just about every corner of the world and shared many wonderful experiences together. Nix and I corresponded over the years and always shared some laughs. We told more than our share of lies at Easy Company’s reunions. My friend Nixon died in January 1995, and Grace asked me to give the eulogy at his funeral, which I did. Also in attendance were Clarence Hester and Bob Brewer. In my remarks, I made a point of quoting Grace, whose love and care had kept Nix alive for many years. In her many letters and Christmas cards, Grace’s message was always the same: “Lewis is so brave; he never complains; he always has a smile for me whenever I come into his room—and that just makes it all worthwhile.” Seven years later, Grace Nixon joined us in Los Angeles for the presentation of the Emmy for Best Documentary.

  Next to Nixon, Harry Welsh was my best friend during the war. During the war he was awarded two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. Following the cessation of hostilities, Harry remained on my staff throughout the summer of 1945. Together with Nixon, he and I contemplated volunteering for duty in the Pacific. Although he had accrued the necessary points to return home to get married, I convinced Harry to stick around for a while. He was an excellent soldier, the kind of man who made an outfit click and the type of leader who won battles. Harry finally returned home to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and married his childhood sweetheart, Kitty Grogan. He went to Wilkes College and graduated with honors in 1957. Three years later, he earned his master’s degree. Welsh taught political science at the college for nine years and then served as an administrator in the Wilkes-Barre School District for several decades until his retirement at age sixty-five in 1983. Harry Welsh died in 1995 from heart failure. His beloved Kitty followed three years later.

  Other Toccoa men have passed since the publication of Band of Brothers in 1992. George Luz, for one, returned home to Providence, Rhode Island, where he became a handyman. His first job was in a used furniture store where he earned seventy-five cents an hour. After four months, Luz had had enough and he became a painter for a dollar an hour. “Things were looking up,” he claimed. A few odd jobs later, he finally obtained a job with the federal government. George Luz raised a wonderful family and lived long enough to enjoy his grandchildren. “It’s been a wonderful life,” he stated in one of his last letters. When George Luz died in 1998, over 1,600 people attended his funeral—a testament to his character and community involvement. At no time was his character more evident than in the funeral home when his pastor noticed two medals placed on George’s chest: a Purple Heart for being wounded in combat, and the Bronze Star for valor. When the pastor mentioned to a family member about how proud George must have been at being awarded the medals, the response was, “We didn’t even know he received them.” That is the stuff real heroes are made of. Nobody really needed to know. George Luz typified the average soldier in Easy Company—he was tough as nails, had a wonderful sense of humor, and possessed a fierce loyalty to Company E that was second to none.

  Carwood Lipton, whom many considered the best noncommissioned officer in the company, returned to civilian life after the war where he received an engineering degree from Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. He remained active in
the Army Reserves as commanding officer of Headquarters Company, 3d Battalion, 398th PIR, until after the Korean war, but his unit was not called to active duty. Carwood Lipton proved as adept in the corporate world as he had been in leading soldiers in combat. After a career as an executive with Owens-Illinois, a manufacturer of glass products and plastics packaging, Lipton retired in 1983. In the last two decades of his life, he traveled throughout the world and enjoyed his hobbies of golf and reading. On the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, Lipton said what most of us had felt as we boarded the aircraft destined to carry us to Normandy on June 5, 1944: “If we were afraid of anything, it was that we wouldn’t measure up. We wanted to be heroes: not to the American public or in books, but to each other.” His words proved to be a fitting epitaph. Carwood Lipton died at the age of eighty-one in Southern Pines, North Carolina, from pulmonary fibrosis in December 2001.

  Denver “Bull” Randleman followed Lipton in June 2003. Bull was one of the finest noncoms in Easy Company. Like most of the men, he became a highly successful businessman and served for years as the superintendent of a heavy-construction contractor in Louisiana. He spent his last years in Texarkana, Arkansas, where he succumbed to a staph infection at the age of eighty-two in June 2003.

  David Webster, a veteran of Easy Company, always said that Sergeant Johnny Martin was the sharpest soldier in the company. After the war Johnny Martin used his G.I. Bill at The Ohio State University before returning to his old job with the railroad. In 1981 he decided to start a new career as housing contractor. Within years he became a millionaire. A frequent attendee at Easy Company reunions, he usually arrived in a fancy car that flaunted his high financial status. With each passing year, he expressed his desire: “to stay alive—that’s all.” Johnny Martin passed away in late January 2005, which left only one survivor from 1st Platoon from Toccoa days. When I received a call that he had passed on, I could not help but think had I not always placed 1st Platoon in the lead, that more of Martin’s platoon members would be alive today.

  Next to Floyd Talbert, Sergeant Joe Toye was the best soldier in Easy Company. Among his numerous awards were four Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars. After several operations as a result of losing his leg at Bastogne, Joe was discharged from the army in February 1946. He always respected Bill Guarnere for risking his own life to save him from being hit with more shrapnel. That was the way it was in Easy Company, said Toye, “One Screaming Eagle helping another Screaming Eagle.” Despite his physical handicap, Joe faced the responsibilities of raising a family with the same dedication he demonstrated in serving his country during the war. He worked for Bethlehem Steel for twenty years before retirement. Every man in the company would tell you that when the chips were down in combat, he would like to have Toye protecting his flank. Joe Toye died in 1995, and I was honored to be asked by the family to deliver the eulogy and to serve as a pallbearer. His tombstone said it all: SERGEANT JOE TOYE, 506TH PIR, 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION. His time in service meant that much to him.

  Gone too are “Popeye” Wynn, who apologized to me after being wounded during our attack on the artillery battery on D-Day, and T/Sergeant “Burt” Christenson, whose sketches of D-Day delighted Easy Company veterans for years. T/Sergeant Amos “Buck” Taylor, who replaced Carwood Lipton as platoon sergeant of 3d Platoon after Lipton was wounded at Carentan, remembered Popeye Wynn and Shifty Powers as two of the best infantrymen in Easy Company, always dependable to take the point when the platoon moved out. No history of Easy Company would be complete without the meticulous research of Burt Christenson, who maintained complete rosters of every man who served in the company over the course of the war. Ambrose relied extensively on Christenson to compile a list of casualties, addresses, and rosters in writing Band of Brothers. Christenson passed away in December 1999. Wynn followed three months later. Neither lived long enough to witness the accolades showered by an adoring public following the release of the HBO series.

  No veteran who served in Easy Company had a more distinguished military career than Salve “Matt” Matheson, who stayed in the army and rose to the rank of major general. One of the original platoon leaders in Easy Company, Matheson was born in Seattle, Washington, on August 11, 1920. Graduating from the University of California at Los Angeles, he accepted a commission in the U.S. Army and joined Easy Company at Toccoa. Colonel Strayer and Colonel Sink rapidly recognized Matt’s talents and transferred him first to battalion and then to regimental staff, where he served from Normandy through Berchtesgaden. After the war, he served in various command and staff positions in the 82d Airborne Division and fought in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. During the Korean War, Matt participated in the Inchon and Wonson landings and the amphibious withdrawal from Hungnam. In Vietnam, he commanded 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Separate) and served on General William Westmoreland’s staff during the Tet Offensive. Later he commanded the 2d Infantry Division in Korea along the Demilitarized Zone and Army Readiness Region IV before his retirement in the early 1970s. He always took immense pride in being appointed as the Honorary Colonel of the 506th Regiment. General Matheson passed away at his home in California on January 8, 2005, leaving me as the sole surviving officer from Easy Company’s Toccoa days.

  My life would certainly have been very different without Company E. I think I would have done a good job in any outfit, but Easy Company made me who I was. They brought out the best in me. If you had anything good in you, they brought it out. That is why as I look back over the six decades since the war, I find that as I meet, interact, and talk to literally thousands of people, I am always measuring them against and hoping to find men like those who served in Easy Company. They are truly my “other” family.

  As I look back on the men of Easy Company and the closeness we have enjoyed over the years, I am reminded of the dialogue attributed to a senior German officer bidding farewell to his men in the HBO mini-series. Paraphrasing his words, I would say to Easy Company and the officers and men of the 506th PIR: “It has been a long war; it’s been a hard war. You have fought bravely, proudly for your country. You are a special group of men connected by a bond that only exists in combat. You’ve shared the incommunicable experience of war and have been tested under extreme adversity. You’ve shared foxholes and held each other in dire moments. You’ve seen death and have suffered together. You’ve lived in an environment totally incomprehensible to those who do not know war. I am proud and deeply honored to have served with every one of you. You all deserve long and happy lives in peace. I bid each of you godspeed and ask the Almighty to shower His blessings on you and your families now and for generations to come.”

  16

  Reflections

  One of the last things Steve Ambrose told me before his death in 2003 was, “From now on, Winters, if you are going to talk about anything, talk about leadership.” Leadership is an interesting concept and somewhat difficult to define. General George Patton once said, “Leadership is the thing that wins battles. I have it, but I’ll be damned if I can define it.” Like Patton, I have been fascinated with leadership. It is something that you have within you that gets the job done.

  Was I a successful leader? They tell me I was and modesty prevents me from disagreeing with them. I am not so naïve that I don’t realize that the wide appeal of Dick Winters today is based on leadership in combat. I may not have been the best combat commander, but I always strove to be. My men depended on me to carefully analyze every tactical situation, to maximize the resources that I had at my disposal, to think under pressure, and then to lead them by personal example. I always felt that my position was where the critical decision had to be made. Nor am I ashamed to admit that fear was a principal factor that contributed to my success as a leader. I was always afraid of letting my men down and I was always afraid of dying. It was a combination of these fears that drove me to learn everything I could about my profession so I could bring as many of my men home from war as possible.

  Having said that, I am not
sure there is such a thing as a natural-born leader. Some leaders are born with special aptitudes or talents, but any success I might have had was the product of good upbringing, intense study and preparation, and physical conditioning that set me apart from many of my peers. I was also surrounded by a group of men who were disciplined and highly trained to accomplish any mission. Add luck to the equation and you can understand that the secret to my success was that somehow I always managed to survive another day.

  In recent years, I have been asked to address an increasing number of civic groups, corporate seminars, and governmental agencies on the subject of leadership. Most are looking for cookie-cutter solutions as to what constitutes a successful leader. What is the recipe for success? In truth there are no simple solutions, just as there is no average day in combat. Each situation is different and each requires a leader to be flexible in adapting his or her particular leadership style to the specific circumstances required to accomplish any mission. It’s a matter of adjusting to the individual, and you do this every day. You don’t have just one way of treating people. You adjust yourself to whom you are talking.