The Men of World War II

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  He crawled back to the patrol, explained the situation, and gave his orders. “We must crawl up there with absolutely no noise, keep low, and hurry, we won’t have the cover of night with us much longer.”

  The patrol got to within 40 meters of the machine-gun up on the dike. Winters went to each man and in a whisper assigned a target, either the riflemen or the machine-gun crew. Winters whispered to Christenson to set up his 30-caliber machine-gun and concentrate on the German MG 42. Behind Christenson, Sergeant Muck and PFC Alex Penkala set up their 60 mm mortar.

  Stepping back, Winters gave the order, “Ready, Aim, Fire!” in a low, calm, firing-range voice. Twelve rifles barked simultaneously. All seven German riflemen fell. Christenson’s machine-gun opened up; he was using tracers and could see he was shooting too high, but as he depressed his fire Muck and Penkala dropped a mortar round smack on the German machine-gun. Sergeant Boyle was “astounded at the heavy, accurate fire that we delivered at the enemy.” He later told Lipton he thought it was the best shooting he had ever seen.

  The patrol began to receive some light rifle fire from across the road running from the dike to the ferry. Winters pulled it back down the ditch for about 200 meters, to a place where the ditch connected with another that ran perpendicular to it, from the dike to the river. Out of range of the Germans, he got on Boyle’s radio and called back to Lieutenant Welsh.

  “Send up the balance of the 1st platoon,” he ordered, “and the section of light machine-guns from HQ Company attached to E Company.”

  As the patrol waited for the reinforcements, Sgt. William Dukeman stood up to shout at the men to spread out (as Gordon Carson, who recalled the incident, remarked, “The men will congregate in a minute”). Three Germans hiding in a culvert that ran under the road fired a rifle grenade. Dukeman gave a sigh and slumped forward. He was the only man hit; a chunk of steel went in his shoulder blade and came out through his heart, killing him. The survivors opened up with their rifles on the Germans in the culvert and killed them in return.

  While waiting for the remainder of the platoon to come forward, Winters went out into the field between the two lines to be alone and to think things through. Three facts struck him: the enemy was behind a good solid roadway embankment, while his men were in a shallow ditch with no safe route for withdrawal; the enemy was in a good position to outflank the patrol to the right and catch it in the open field; there was nothing south of the bank to stop the Germans from moving down the road unmolested to the 2d Battalion CP at Hemmen. Under the circumstances, he decided he had no choice but to attack. It was now full daylight.

  Returning to the patrol, he found that the reinforcements had arrived. Now he had some thirty men. He called Lts. Frank Reese and Thomas Peacock and Sgt. Floyd Talbert together and gave his orders: “Talbert, take the third squad to the right. Peacock, take the first squad to the left. I’ll take the second squad right up the middle. Reese, put your machine-guns between our columns. I want a good covering fire until we reach that roadway. Then lift your fire and move up and join us.” He told Talbert and Peacock to have their men fix bayonets.

  As his subordinates went off to carry out his orders, Winters called the 2d squad together and explained the plan. Private Hoobler was standing right in front of him. When Winters said, “Fix bayonets,” Hoobler took a big swallow. Winters could see his Adam’s apple move up and down his throat. His adrenaline was flowing.

  “My adrenaline was pumping too,” Winters remembered. On his signal the machine-guns began laying a base of fire, and all three columns started to move as fast as they could across the 200 meters of level but spongy-soft field between them and the road, doing their best to keep low.

  At this point, Winters had no firm idea on how many Germans were on the other side of the road running from the dike to the ferry, which was just high enough to block his view. Nor did the Germans know the Americans were coming; inexcusably, after losing their machine-gunners and riflemen in the first volley, they had failed to put an outpost on the road or up on the dike.

  In the lead, Winters got to the road first. He leaped up on it. Right in front of him, only a few feet away, was a German sentry with his head down, ducking the incoming fire from Reese’s machine-guns. To his right, Winters could see out of the corner of his eye a solid mass of men, more than 100, packed together, lying down at the juncture of the dike and the road. They too had their heads down to duck under the machine-gun fire. They were all wearing their long winter overcoats and had their backpacks on. Every single one of them was facing the dike; he was behind them. They were only 15 meters away.

  Winters wheeled and dropped back to the west side of the road, pulled the pin of a hand grenade, and lobbed it over toward the lone sentry. Simultaneously the sentry lobbed a potato masher back at him. The instant Winters threw his grenade he realized he had made a big mistake; he had forgotten to take off the band of tape around the handle of the grenade he kept there to avoid an accident.

  Before the potato masher could go off, Winters jumped back up on the road. The sentry was hunched down, covering his head with his arms, waiting for Winters’s grenade to go off. He was only 3 yards away. Winters shot him with his M-1 from the hip.

  The shot startled the entire company. The SS troops started to rise and turn toward Winters, en masse. Winters pivoted to his right and fired into the solid mass.

  Winters described what happened next: “The movements of the Germans seemed to be unreal to me. When they rose up, it seemed to be so slow, when they turned to look over their shoulders at me, it was in slow motion, when they started to raise their rifles to fire at me, it was in slow, slow motion. I emptied the first clip [eight rounds] and, still standing in the middle of the road, put in a second clip and, still shooting from the hip, emptied that clip into the mass.”

  Germans fell. Others began aiming their rifles at Winters. Others started running away from him. But all their movements were awkward, hampered by those long overcoats. He dropped back to the west side of the road. Looking to his right he could see Talbert running crouched over leading his column. It was still 10 meters from the road. Winters’s own column, in the middle, was struggling through the field. Peacock’s column on the left was 20 meters short of the road, held up by some wires running across the field.

  Winters put in a third clip and started popping up, taking a shot or two, then dropping back down. The Germans were running away as best they could when the other American columns reached the road.

  “Fire at will,” Winters called out.

  It was a duck shoot. The Germans were fleeing. The Easy Company riflemen were shooting them unmolested. “I got one!” Webster heard Hoobler call out. “Damn, I got one!” According to Webster, “Hoobler was in his element, he ate this stuff up.”

  A bunch of Germans were cut off, hiding in some tall weeds. Christenson spotted them. “Anybody here speak German?” he called out. Webster came up. “Heraus!” he yelled. “Schnell! Hände hoch! Schnell! Schnell!” One by one, eleven Germans came out. Husky, hard-boiled, they claimed they were Poles. Christenson motioned them to the rear.

  Webster went back to the road to get in on the shooting. A German turned to fire back. “What felt like a baseball bat slugged my right leg,” Webster recalled, “spun me around, and knocked me down.” All he could think to say was, “They got me!” which even then seemed to him “an inadequate and unimaginative cliché.” (Like all writers, he was composing his description of the event as it happened.)

  It was a clean wound. The bullet went in and out Webster’s calf, hitting no bone. A million dollar wound. I got it made, he thought to himself. When medic Eugene Roe got to him, Webster had a big grin on his face. Roe patched the wound and told Webster to retire. Webster gave his bandoliers to Martin, “who was still very calm and unconcerned, the calmest, most fearless person I ever saw,” and his grenades to Christenson. He kept his pistol and M-1 and began limping to the rear.

  • • •

  Winter
s could see more German soldiers about 100 yards away, pouring over the dike from the south side, the previously unnoticed SS company. They joined their retreating comrades in a dash to the east, away from the Easy Company fire. This made the target bigger. Lieutenant Reese had brought the machine-guns forward by this time; Private Cobb set his up and began putting long-distance fire on the routed German troops.

  The surviving German troops reached a grove of trees, where there was another road leading to the river. As Winters observed, they swung left and began to follow that road to the river.

  Winters got on the radio and called for artillery. British guns began pounding away at the main force of retreating Germans. Winters wanted to push down to the river on his road, to cut off the Germans at the river, but thirty-five men against the 150 or so surviving Germans was not good odds. He got on the radio again to 2d Battalion HQ for support. HQ promised to send a platoon from Fox Company.

  Waiting for the reinforcements, Winters made a head count and reorganized. He had one man dead (Dukeman) and four wounded. Eleven Germans had surrendered. Liebgott, slightly wounded in the arm, was a walking casualty. Winters ordered him to take the prisoners back to the battalion CP and then get himself tended by Doc Neavles.

  Then he remembered that Liebgott, a good combat soldier, had a reputation of “being very rough on prisoners.” He also heard Liebgott respond to his order with the words, “Oh, Boy! I’ll take care of them.”

  “There are eleven prisoners,” Winters said, “and I want eleven prisoners turned over to battalion.” Liebgott began to throw a tantrum. Winters dropped his M-1 to his hip, threw off the safety, pointed it at Liebgott, and said, “Liebgott, drop all your ammunition and empty your rifle.” Liebgott swore and grumbled but did as he was ordered.

  “Now,” said Winters, “you can put one round in your rifle. If you drop a prisoner, the rest will jump you.” Winters noticed a German officer who had been pacing back and forth, obviously nervous and concerned over Liebgott’s exuberance when he first got the assignment. Evidently the officer understood English; when he heard Winters’s further orders, he relaxed.

  Liebgott brought all eleven prisoners back to battalion HQ. Winters knew that for certain, as he checked later that day with Nixon.

  • • •

  The ferry crossing the Germans had used to get over, and now would need to get back, was at the end of the road Easy Company was on. Winters wanted to get there before they did. When the platoon from Fox Company arrived, bringing more ammunition, Winters redistributed the ammo and then gave his orders. He set up a base of fire with half the sixty or so men under his command, then had the other half move forward 100 meters, stop and set up its own base of fire, and leapfrog the first group down the road. He intended to repeat this maneuver the full 600 or so meters to the river.

  About 200 meters short of the river, Winters’s unit reached some factory buildings. German artillery had started to work. The SS troops, desperate to get to the ferry, mounted a seventy-five-man attack on the right rear flank of the Americans. Winters realized he had overreached. It was time to withdraw to be able to fight another day. The unit leapfrogged in reverse back to the dike.

  Just as the last men got over the dike, the Germans cut loose with a terrific concentration of artillery fire on the point where the road crossed the dike. They had it zeroed in perfectly. The airborne men scattered right and left, but not before suffering many casualties.

  Winters grabbed the radio and called battalion HQ to ask for medics and ambulances. Doc Neavles came on and wanted to know how many casualties.

  “Two baseball teams,” Winters replied.

  Neavles knew nothing about sports. He asked Winters to put it in clear language.

  “Get the hell off the radio so I can get some more artillery support,” Winters shouted back, “or we’ll need enough for three baseball teams.”

  Just at that moment, Boyle “heard some mortars coming. You could tell they were gonna be close.” Boyle wasn’t moving too fast, as he was exhausted, a result of a less than complete recovery from his wound received in Normandy. “I pitched forward on the dike. A shell hit just behind me on the left and tore into my left leg from the hip to the knee and that was it. A terrible blow but no pain.” Just before he lost consciousness, Winters tapped him on the shoulder and told him he would be taken care of.

  Guarnere and Christenson cut his pants leg off and sprinkled sulfa powder on the horrible wound (most of the flesh on Boyle’s left thigh had been torn away). They gave him morphine and got stretcher bearers to carry him rearward.

  • • •

  Webster, alone, was trying to cross an open field to get to an aid station. He was crawling along a cow path, lower than he had ever gotten in training, crawling through mud and cow dung. He ripped his pants on a barbed-wire fence. On the far side, he risked getting up and limping the last 100 yards to safety. A German observer saw him and called down some 88s. Three explosions, one on each side, one behind, made Webster feel “terrified and self-conscious.” He managed to get out of the field before the 88 completed the bracket.

  Some F Company men helped him to a road junction. Two medics with a jeep, coming back from the dike, picked him up, laid him across the engine hood, “and told me to relax. They said we would be going fast, because the man on the rear stretcher, Sergeant Boyle, was badly wounded and in need of immediate medical attention.”

  Altogether, the two platoons from Easy and Fox Companies took eighteen casualties from that artillery bombardment. None killed.

  • • •

  Winters set up strong points to cover the place where the road crossed the dike. Captain Nixon came up. “How’s everything going?” he asked. For the first time since the action began, Winters sat down. “Give me a drink of water,” he said. As he reached for Nixon’s canteen, he noticed that his hand was shaking. He was exhausted.

  So was Christenson. He couldn’t understand it, until he counted up. He realized that he had fired a total of fifty-seven clips of M-1 ammunition, 456 rounds. That night while trying to stay awake on outpost duty and trying to calm down after being so keyed up, Christenson pissed thirty-six times.

  • • •

  With thirty-five men, a platoon of Easy Company had routed two German companies of about 300 men. American casualties (including those from Fox Company) were one dead, twenty-two wounded. Germans casualties were fifty killed, eleven captured, about 100 wounded.

  Later, Winters realized that he and his men had been “very, very lucky.” In an analysis, he said the main reason for success was the poor quality of German leadership. The Germans had let the 1st squad get away with sitting in the field waiting for reinforcements. They had bunched up in one big mass, inexcusable in Winters’s view. They had allowed two machine-guns to pin them down while the three columns of Easy ran 200 yards across the field in the bayonet charge. They had reacted much too slowly when Winters fired on them from the road. They failed to put together an organized base of fire when the shooting started.

  Easy, by contrast, did almost everything right. Winters called this “the highlight of all E Company actions for the entire war, even better than D-Day, because it demonstrated Easy’s overall superiority in every phase of infantry tactics: patrol, defense, attack under a base of fire, withdrawal, and, above all, superior marksmanship with rifles, machine gun, and mortar fire.”

  More can be said. For example, the physical fitness of the Easy men was a sine qua non. They put out more energy than a heavyweight boxer in a fifteen-round title match, way more; they put out more energy than a man would playing sixty minutes in three consecutive football games. Also notable was the company’s communication system, with radio messages, runners, and hand signals being used effectively. The leapfrog advances and retreats put into play the training they had undergone at Toccoa and were carried out in textbook fashion. The evacuation of the wounded was likewise carried out with calm efficiency. The coordination with British artillery was o
utstanding.

  So was Winters. He made one right decision after another, sometimes instinctively, sometimes after careful deliberation. The best was his decision that to attack was his only option. He provided not only brains but personal leadership. “Follow me” was his code. He personally killed more Germans and took more risks than anyone else.

  But good as Easy Company of the 506th was, and there was no better light infantry company in the Army, there was nothing it could do about that terror of the battlefield, modern artillery. Easy had to cross the dike to get home. It could not stay in the open field and get pounded. But in crossing the dike, the company exposed itself to zeroed-in German artillery. A few minutes of total terror, and the company had taken more casualties than it had in its encounters with German riflemen by the hundreds earlier in the day.

  “Artillery is a terrible thing,” Webster said. “God, I hate it.”

  • • •

  The Public Relations Office of the 101st Airborne Division gave the action extensive publicity, in typical wartime jargon: “Winters’s order had to be, and was, for a bayonet attack. At a result of that brave order two companies of SS were heavily battered and forced to withdraw without getting an opportunity to start their attack which was scheduled to start at almost that very instant.”

  Insofar as the German 363d Volksgrenadier Division launched a major attack at Opheusden at dawn that day, against the left flank of the 506th, the small action at the dike may have been crucial. Had the German SS companies proceeded unmolested south of the dike, they would have hit regimental HQ at exactly the moment Colonel Sink had to concentrate his attention on Opheusden.

  Sink was appreciative. He issued a General Order citing 1st platoon of Easy for gallantry in action. After describing the bayonet charge, he wrote: “By this daring act and skillful maneuver against a numerically superior force” the platoon “inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy” and turned back the enemy’s attempt to attack battalion HQ from the rear.