Beyond Band of Brothers (6 page)

To fill the vacated platoon leader positions, several new officers arrived straight from OCS. One, a tough little Irishman named Harry Welsh, was assigned to the first platoon. Welsh had grown up in the coal regions of eastern Pennsylvania. Always a good athlete, he won state titles in swimming and diving. After Pearl Harbor he volunteered for the paratroopers. He was assigned to the 82d Division where he was broken from sergeant to private six times for fighting. After OCS Welsh joined Easy Company, 506th PIR, we rapidly became close friends and would later bunk together when we reached England.

Prior to leaving Camp Mackall, our battalion conducted another in a long series of physical training tests. Second Battalion scored around 97 percent, which was the highest ever recorded for a battalion. Disbelievers at headquarters thought Lieutenant Colonel Strayer fixed the results, so they ordered us back to the area, where we retested under the supervision of a Colonel Jablonski of the War Department. This time outside observers insisted that all the cooks and service personnel take the test with the infantry companies. Determined to uphold the battalion's honor, the men improved their collective score to a 98 percent passing rate. The Washington observer who verified the test results informed Strayer that his unit had scored higher than any battalion in the entire U.S. Army. Needless to say, Colonel Sink and Captain Sobel were extremely pleased with the results.

At the end of May, our company packed its gear and headed to Sturgis, Kentucky, for a series of field exercises, which took place over three states from June 5 to July 15, 1943. Five days into the exercises, the 506th PIR officially joined the 101st Airborne Division commanded by Major General William C. Lee, one of the airborne pioneers. Brigadier General Don F. Pratt, who would later be killed in Normandy, became Lee's assistant division commander. Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe was assigned as the division artillery commander. In forming the 101st Airborne Division, Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall and 82d Airborne Division commander Major General Matthew Ridgway divided the officer complement of the 82d Division to form the initial core of officers for the 101st Airborne Division, now known as the “Screaming Eagles.” We were honored to join the U.S. Army's second airborne division, but I would be less than honest if I did not say that we prided ourselves on having been a member of an independent parachute regiment.

The training we received at Camp Sturgis was the most realistic to date as controllers from the War Department supervised the largest combined paratroopers and glider-borne exercises. In spite of Captain Sobel's lack of confidence in the field, Easy Company performed well as part of the Red Forces, which were opposed by the Blue Forces. While senior headquarters digested the lessons of the airborne drop in Sicily and the controversy surrounding the fratricide involving the U.S. Navy's shooting down of twenty-three parachute transports of the 504th Parachute Infantry in the skies over Gela, Sicily, we concentrated on platoon and company tactics. Extended field marches, maneuvering against opposing forces at night, and wading through streams and rivers provided a realism that we had not experienced at Fort Benning or Camp Mackall. Easy Company conducted two training jumps during the exercise, one made with C-47s towing gliders to a release point, before dropping the paratroopers into another drop zone. From this drop zone, we marched several miles, crossed the Cumberland River in boats, and finished the field exercise just outside Camp Breckinridge,
Kentucky. At the conclusion of our field maneuvers, 2d Battalion, of which Easy formed one of the three organic rifle companies, received a special commendation from our new division commander, in which Lee extended his “congratulations on the splendid performance of Colonel Strayer's battalion” in the recent operations. Citing “a high standard of training and competent leadership on the part of the officers and enlisted men” and the “splendid aggressive action, sound tactical doctrine, and obviously well-trained individuals,” General Lee stated that he “expected all personnel in the battalion to continue to live up to the fine reputation established by the battalion for soldierly bearing and behavior.”

In mid-July, the company moved within the confines of Camp Breckinridge, where barracks and hot showers provided a pleasant break from the dirt and grime in the field. The camp itself was a paradise in comparison to any place where we had been. Camp Breckinridge was in close proximity to a number of large towns and contained its share of large post exchanges (PX), theaters, and service clubs, which provided an outlet for the soldiers who had so recently spent an inordinate amount of time in a field environment. Roughly a third of the men received ten-day furloughs in rotation before moving to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in late July to prepare for overseas deployment. Upon their return from furlough, the entire 101st Airborne Division boarded trains en route to North Carolina. Fort Bragg was the staging area for deployment to a combat theater. Easy Company was brought up to full strength and each soldier was outfitted with new gear. The company spent a lot of time on the firing ranges, ensuring that their individual weapons were properly zeroed. I busied myself with my normal administrative duties but my anxiety mounted as the departure date neared. As company executive officer, one of my responsibilities was serving as postal officer, a laborious task that consumed much of my time. Still, I was caught up with the impending deployment, though no one knew with any certainty whether we were heading to the Pacific or to Europe.

Reflecting on the previous year's training in Easy Company, I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed the men with whom I served. You would think that after two months of not sleeping on a bed, dirty clothes, and trudging up and down the Tennessee hills, one would relish the peaceful surroundings of Fort Bragg. My only complaint was the emergency rations that they claimed had been especially designed for the paratroopers, K-rations and D-rations, both of which could turn a soldier's stomach in short order. If you read the list of what the rations contained, they sounded great, but to eat the rations over a period of time was more than a normal fellow could take. The meals were just too concentrated.

While at Fort Bragg, Colonel Sink decided that all officers should have a new trench coat–style overcoat. He also wanted the officers' club to stock up on bourbon whiskey. Each officer was assessed for a coat and whiskey. I didn't drink, never did drink, so I'll never know why they picked me for the detail of going to Philadelphia to pick up the coats and whiskey. Buying the coats was no problem. I had a list of the sizes and number of coats that I wanted and the name of the supplier to contact. The bourbon was another matter.

This was wartime, everything was rationed, and I was supposed to buy a truckload of Southern Comfort. I rode around Philadelphia in a taxicab, looked in directories, asked for advice, and got nowhere. I then went back home to Lancaster and called regimental headquarters for advice. The next day Lieutenant Colonel Chase, the regimental executive officer, called and gave me an address in New York City for a distributor for Schenley's whiskey. I took a train to New York, found the distributor, and was introduced to a pudgy man sitting in a chair with his foot on a stool. My initial impression was that this man had gout. He was surrounded by more beautiful, well-groomed secretaries than I'd ever seen in my life. To say that at this point I was ill at ease hardly describes my feelings, but I had a mission—to get that bourbon or face a firing squad. I was in a totally foreign atmosphere: a kid from a Mennonite family background facing a bloated executive with all the
beautiful secretaries, and he the only man who could help me. I told him my mission and what I wanted. He smiled and said, “Yes, I could take care of that order.” In my view, right then and there, that man did his part in helping to win World War II. I spent the next hour endorsing money orders. I had been so na��ve that I had converted my money to small denominations of $20 and $50 money orders.

On August 22, 1943, the entire division boarded trains and headed north to Camp Shanks, thirty miles north of New York City on the Hudson River. The weather was crisp and cool, with the Hudson River Valley arrayed in beautiful autumn colors that reminded me of the hills in southern Pennsylvania. Camp Shanks, built on 2,000 acres in Orangeburg, New York, was the largest World War II army embarkation camp in the United States. Named after Major General David C. Shanks, commanding general of the New York port during World War I, Camp Shanks opened in January 1943. Over the course of the war, 1.3 million soldiers processed for overseas deployment through the camp, nicknamed “Last Stop USA.” Fully three-fourths of the soldiers who participated in D-Day and a total of seventeen divisions destined for Europe passed through its walls. En route to Camp Shanks, I sat in a car with Lewis Nixon and Harry Welsh as we discussed our ultimate destination. As we continued north, we knew for certain that we were European-bound. The 506th PIR closed in on Camp Shanks on September 1. As we detrained, the men formed columns of fours and marched to their assigned barracks. Each barracks was twenty by one hundred feet and contained two rows of bunks and three coal-burning pot-bellied stoves that provided minimal heating. The movement to the barracks was a long haul, with each trooper loaded to the gills with equipment. All hoped for a brief furlough to New York City, but the NOCs kept us busy with endless rounds of inoculations. Burt Christenson remarked that he had been given so many shots that his “arms hung from his body like limp rope.” When the men were given passes to New York, they were forced to remove their jump boots and their airborne patches from their uniforms for security reasons. Higher
headquarters feared that German spies would identify the 101st Airborne Division and ascertain its eventual destination.

Within days Easy Company moved to the port of embarkation. It was a short train ride to the New Jersey docks at Weehawken, where a harbor boat ferried troops to Pier 88. At the pier, troop ships were tied up for boarding. Loading the ship that would take the 506th PIR to England took nearly a full day. In our minds was a letter that Captain Sobel had sent to our parents, in which he extolled the training and dedication of their respective sons and in which he encouraged loved ones to write frequent letters to “arm him with a fighting heart.”

One of our officers, Lieutenant Fred “Moose” Heyliger, received notice as we boarded the S.S.
Samaria
that his wife had just given birth to a boy, “Little Moose.” The receipt of this news forced the rest of the company to listen to Moose sing songs all night as he celebrated the birth of his son. The rest of us were filled with trepidation, but each trooper took consolation in the fact that he was part of the best damned unit in the entire U.S. Army. As we walked up the gangplank of the
Samaria
, everyone knew that there was no turning back. Easy Company was off to war.

In early September 1943, Easy Company began its transatlantic passage aboard the British steamer S.S.
Samaria
. As we departed New York Harbor and passed the Statue of Liberty, I wondered if I would ever be coming back. Had I seen my family for the last time? Would we reach England without encountering any German submarines? Knowing that I was in the paratroopers was some consolation even though each of us knew our mission required us to be dropped behind enemy lines and that we would have to fight outnumbered until we could be relieved. None of the men had any combat experience or had any idea what combat would be like. As New York faded on the horizon, I stood and searched my soul, saying a silent prayer that God would allow me to return home.

What I remember most was the filthy condition of the ship. The excessive dirt, the terrible food, and the fact that we washed our mess kits in a garbage pail nearly turned my stomach. Forrest Guth, a trooper
from Allentown, Pennsylvania, who had joined the paratroopers with his two friends Roderick Strohl and Carl Fenstermacher recalled that the prevalent rumor on board was that the British crew consumed American food, while the paratroopers were forced to eat British food. What struck him most was the cooks serving fish chowder for breakfast. After ten days on the S.S.
Samaria
, I felt as though I had lost all my muscle tone, especially in my legs. The thought occurred to me that if we had to come off this ship and go directly into combat, it would have been mighty rough. Arriving in Liverpool on September 15, we were immediately transported to Aldbourne, in Wiltshire, approximately eighty miles west of London on the Salisbury Plain. Aldbourne was a typically quaint English town with houses constructed of brick and stone. Flowers were in bloom and most homes had well-kept yards with colorful gardens. As company executive officer, I commanded the company in Captain Sobel's absence and I handled the administrative and logistical requirements as Easy Company settled into their new billets. Within days of our arrival in England, our troops occupied their new barracks, which were Nissan huts and tarpaper shacks, heated by two large pot-bellied stoves. Officers were crammed into a huge manor house until private housing could be obtained.

Aldbourne would be Easy Company's home for the next nine months, until the unit moved to the departure airfield for the invasion of France. The initial week in the English countryside was dedicated to orientation to our new environment. To ensure American soldiers understood the intricacies of Allied cooperation, the United States War Department distributed a pamphlet to American servicemen who were going to Britain to prepare for the invasion of occupied Europe. This pamphlet's avowed aim was to prepare these young American GIs for life in a very different country and to prevent any friction between them and the local populace. Printed in 1942, the
Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain
attracted a great deal of attention for its candid views of how Britons were viewed on our side of the Atlantic. The booklet cautioned the Americans on how to conduct themselves.
Included were orders not “to fight old wars and to bring up old grievances” from the American Revolutionary period so as Hitler would be unable “to make his propaganda effective” and separate the Atlantic partners. If he could do that, his “chance of winning might return.” We were also told not to use phrases and colloquialisms that our allies might find offensive. Two unpardonable sins would be to comment on the British Government or politics or to criticize the King. The War Department assured us that the British would welcome us as friends and allies, but we ought to remember that crossing the ocean did not automatically make us heroes. There were “thousands of housewives in aprons and youngsters in knee pants in Britain who had lived through more high explosives in air raids than many soldiers saw in first class barrages in the last war.” In short, our government directed us to behave ourselves and neither be condescending, nor “a show off” because Americans were routinely more highly paid than the British Tommy. Accordingly, Easy Company conducted tours, visited local bars, met village officials, and generally became acquainted with English customs. We soon found that the English were similar to Americans in many aspects, but in other ways it was as if we were from different planets. Plumbing, electric light wiring, furniture, heating, and cooking seemed light-years behind what I was used to in the United States. Most Britons had never eaten popcorn, marshmallows, hot dogs, and other eatables that they characterized as strictly Yank chow. Nor did they possess the large and varied assortment of expressive adjectives that we did and often an expression of ours meant something entirely different to them.

Following our first week in England, officers were billeted in private homes. Looking for an opportunity to escape the crammed conditions of our not-so-spacious manor, I went to a local church where I was fortunate to meet a family named Barnes. The Barneses had recently lost a son in the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain. I first met this couple following services on my first Sunday in England. Walking to the adjacent cemetery, I sat on a bench and took time for
personal reflection and simply to enjoy some solitude. As I looked over the cemetery, I noticed an elderly couple tending to one of the graves. They then sat on an adjacent bench and the three of us talked for nearly an hour. They told me their names were Mr. and Mrs. Francis Barnes and that they were paying respects to their son Robert. The Barneses invited me to join them for afternoon tea, and I graciously accepted their invitation. I saw them periodically over the course of the next several weeks, and when our unit requested billeting within the local community, the Barnes family volunteered to host two officers as long as I was one of them.

Along with Lieutenant Harry Welsh, I moved in and the Barneses soon adopted me as a full-fledged member of their family. The Barneses also had a child from London—Elaine Stevens, thirteen years old, a refugee from the London bombing—as a houseguest. Because my sister, Ann, was also thirteen years old, they became penpals. My personal quarters were with the family in a room over their grocery store. The room wasn't big and we slept on army cots, but the comforts of home were a pleasant respite from the crowds and the barracks. While Harry Welsh spent his free time at a pub that was only a stone's throw from our room, I spent my evenings with the Barnes family.

Life with the Barneses suited me perfectly. I greatly appreciated what Francis Barnes and his wife were doing for me. They provided me a home, a family, and a fireplace to come to at the end of a day's training. They adopted me as a son. Francis Barnes was a lay preacher at one of Aldbourne's three churches. On Sundays I always had a special invitation to come to their church. Mr. Barnes would preach the sermon, Mrs. Barnes played the organ, and I wore my best dress uniform and sat front and center. Most Sundays I was the only soldier in church, but I know that without a spoken word, everybody knew my lifestyle.

A typical evening began with Mrs. Barnes knocking on my door before 9:00
P
.
M
. and saying, “Lieutenant Winters, would you like to come down and listen to the news and have a spot of tea?” Sitting around a smoldering chunk of peat in the fireplace, we listened to the
BBC. Afterward, everybody would gather around the table and Mr. Barnes would read a passage from the Bible, then he would say a prayer, after which Mrs. Barnes would serve tea and biscuits or some fresh bread. Around 10:00
P
.
M
., Mr. Barnes would then announce that it was time for bed.

My association with the Barnes family was one of the most enjoyable experiences in my life. They prepared me mentally for the tasks that lay ahead. I had observed their personal suffering at the loss of their son and experienced similar feelings when I lost some of my men in Normandy and the subsequent campaigns. By giving me time to reflect and to study my manuals for the nine months prior to the invasion, the Barneses helped me develop my own personality and hone my leadership skills. This formative period of my life was very important in continuing to build the fundamental characteristics my parents had initiated, and they helped shape my life. Today I realize what the Barnes family did was help me develop the most fundamental element in good leadership—lead by example, live by setting a good example. They lived for nearly ten years after the war, and I still treasure the mementoes that they gave me. Years later I returned to Aldbourne with Stephen Ambrose and excused myself for a few minutes to place flowers on their graves. I then took a minute to reflect on this wonderful couple and sat on the same bench where we had first met so many years earlier.

We were in England to prepare for war, not to tour the countryside, and the days were filled with intense training. Training monopolized six days of the week, with the average week consisting of prolonged marches, marksmanship, and simulated night attacks. Hikes of varying length, some up to twenty-five miles, were conducted, and there was special emphasis on physical conditioning. Map-reading remained an important component of every field exercise and every week Easy Company conducted a two- to three-day field training exercise. Captain
Sobel continued to perform poorly in the field, further exasperating the platoon leaders and the men. He remained as tyrannical, inflexible, and paranoid as he had been at Toccoa. Tension was building within the company, particularly among the officers who bore the primary responsibility for preparing the men for combat.

Nowhere was the pressure more apparent than on Sobel himself. Whereas the punishment he administered in the States was often mean and degrading, in England the punishment passed the point of normalcy to outright cruelty. If a man was late getting back to camp, instead of extra kitchen police (K.P.) duty, he had to dig a six-foot-by-six-foot pit with his entrenching tools at night after the day's training. When the soldier was finished, Sobel would tell him “to fill it up.” Our commander's inability to make decisions, coupled with his tactical incompetence, continued to alienate both officers and men alike. While Sobel was partially effective in matters where he controlled everything, he would be utterly helpless in combat where adaptability and initiative were keys to survival. The noncommissioned officers soon began grumbling and dissension spread throughout Easy. While such talk is always detrimental to the discipline in any unit, Sobel was simply not cut out to be a combat leader. While the men could tolerate a tough taskmaster, they were simply afraid to have Sobel lead them into combat. Within two months of arriving in England, things boiled over and I found myself in the middle of it. The ensuing confrontation between Captain Sobel and me brought out the best and worst qualities of leadership within Easy Company.

On October 30, Lieutenant Colonel Strayer was scheduled to inspect Easy Company. Sobel issued me orders to inspect the latrine at 1000 hours, one hour before Strayer was due to arrive. At 0930 hours I also received orders from battalion headquarters to censor the enlisted men's mail. I completed that chore and at 1000, I promptly entered the latrine. To my surprise Sobel was already there, making his own inspection. Without uttering a word, he exited the latrine, walked by me without acknowledging my presence. Behind him walked Private
Joachim Melo, the latrine orderly, wet mop in hand. Melo was soaking wet, dirty, in need of a shave, hair uncombed. He looked (and I am sure felt) like a man who had just finished doing a dirty job. Sobel left without saying a word. I proceeded with my personal inspection and found that Melo had done a superb job. When I walked to company headquarters forty-five minutes later, 1st Sergeant Evans handed me a typed document that demanded my reply by endorsement whether I desired company punishment for failure to inspect the latrine at 0945 hours as instructed by the company commander or whether I requested a court-martial. I immediately proceeded to Sobel's office to clear up the misunderstanding.

“Captain, my orders were to inspect the latrine at 1000 hours.”

“I changed that time to 0945,” he replied.

“I wasn't informed of the change.”

“I telephoned and I sent a runner.”

This was too much for me—just another example of the chickenshit that characterized Sobel's tenure as Easy Company's commanding officer. Captain Sobel was now questioning my integrity and my sense of duty. I could not care less that my punishment was the denial of a forty-eight-hour pass until mid-December. Preferring to stay home with the Barneses where I studied my manuals, I very seldom left Aldbourne anyway. Principle was now at stake. Immediately following Strayer's inspection, which Easy Company incidentally passed with flying colors, I returned to Sobel's office and demanded trial by court-martial. Aldbourne being a small village, within minutes the story spread around the company. Within days Lieutenant Colonel Strayer directed his executive officer to conduct a preliminary investigation and in the interim, he transferred me to headquarters company and appointed me battalion mess officer until the court-martial was resolved. I was heartbroken by the transfer because I was no longer a troop leader, and the general practice was to assign mess duties to those officers who were not up to standard. On reflection, I understood Strayer had little alternative as it would have been detrimental to keep me in Easy Company
when the company commander was court-martialing his second-in-command. The transfer in no way eased my pain of leaving the men with whom I had trained for over a year. This was the first time since I had been in the army that I wasn't with field troops or in troop command.

My abrupt transfer to battalion headquarters and headquarters company soon provoked widespread anger among the noncommissioned officers in the company. With Sobel still in command, the NCOs decided to push the issue. I had heard rumblings of a mutiny as soon as my court-martial was officially announced. Sergeants Mike Ranney and “Salty” Harris were the instigators. They called all the NCOs together in the company dayroom to discuss what they were going to do. Only a few of the noncommissioned officers were absent because Ranney and Harris did not want the word to reach Sobel until they had decided on what course of action to take. They invited me to the meeting. I went and told them not to do anything—any mutiny was in itself a court-martial offense. As I was in the middle of my plea asking them not to go through with this mutiny, Sobel walked in the door. Everyone just froze in place; there was not a sound. Ranney was the first to recover his voice and started off with something like, “Now how can we improve our athletic program?” This didn't fool Sobel, I am sure, but without a word, he picked up a book and left. I then excused myself and returned to battalion. After careful deliberation, the NCOs decided to bypass battalion and present a formal protest directly to Colonel Sink, our regimental commander. Each wrote a formal protest against Sobel and turned in his stripes.