The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  The men were learning to do more than swear, more than how to fire a rifle, more than that the limits of their physical endurance were much greater than they had ever imagined. They were learning instant, unquestioning obedience. Minor infractions were punished on the spot, usually by requiring the man to do twenty push-ups. More serious infractions cost a man his weekend pass, or several hours marching in full field pack on the parade ground. The Army had a saying, Gordon related: “We can’t make you do anything, but we can make you wish you had.” Brought together by their misery, held together by their cadence counts, singing, and common experiences, they were becoming a family.

  The company learned to act as a unit. Within days of the formation of Easy, the 140 men could make a one-quarter or one-half turn, or an about-face, as if one. Or set off at double-time, or on a full run. Or drop to the ground to do push-ups. Or shout “Yes, Sir!” or “No, Sir!” in unison.

  All this was part of the initiation rites common to all armies. So was learning to drink. Beer, almost exclusively, at the post PX, there being no nearby towns. Lots of beer. They sang soldiers’ songs. Toward the end of the evening, invariably someone would insult someone else with a slurring reference to his mother, his sweetheart, his home town, or his region. Then they would fight, as soldier boys do, inflicting bloody noses and blackened eyes, before staggering back to their barracks, yelling war chants, supporting each other, becoming comrades.

  The result of these shared experiences was a closeness unknown to all outsiders. Comrades are closer than friends, closer than brothers. Their relationship is different from that of lovers. Their trust in, and knowledge of, each other is total. They got to know each other’s life stories, what they did before they came into the Army, where and why they volunteered, what they liked to eat and drink, what their capabilities were. On a night march they would hear a cough and know who it was; on a night maneuver they would see someone sneaking through the woods and know who it was from his silhouette.

  Their identification worked downward, from the Army to the Airborne to the 506th to 2d Battalion to Easy Company to platoon to squad. Pvt. Kurt Gabel of the 513th PIR described his experience in words that any member of E Company could have used: “The three of us, Jake, Joe, and I, became . . . an entity. There were many entities in our close-knit organizations. Groups of threes and fours, usually from the same squads or sections, core elements within the families that were the small units, were readily recognized as entities . . . . This sharing . . . evolved never to be relinquished, never to be repeated. Often three such entities would make up a squad, with incredible results in combat. They would literally insist on going hungry for one another, freezing for one another, dying for one another. And the squad would try to protect them or bail them out without the slightest regard to consequences, cussing them all the way for making it necessary. Such a rifle squad, machine gun section, scout-observer section, pathfinder section was a mystical concoction.”1

  Philosopher J. Glenn Gray, in his classic work The Warriors, got it exactly right: “Organization for a common and concrete goal in peacetime organizations does not evoke anything like the degree of comradeship commonly known in war . . . . At its height, this sense of comradeship is an ecstasy . . . . Men are true comrades only when each is ready to give up his life for the other, without reflection and without thought of personal loss.”2

  The comradeship formed in training and reinforced in combat lasted a lifetime. Forty-nine years after Toccoa, Pvt. Don Malarkey of Oregon wrote of the summer of 1942, “So this was the beginning of the most momentous experience of my life, as a member of E Company. There is not a day that has passed since that I do not thank Adolf Hitler for allowing me to be associated with the most talented and inspiring group of men that I have ever known.” Every member of Easy interviewed by this author for this book said something similar.

  • • •

  The N.C.O.s came up from the ranks, gradually replacing the Old Army cadre types who quit as the training grew more intense. Within a year, all thirteen sergeants in Easy were from the original group of privates, including 1st Sgt. William Evans, S. Sgts. James Diel, Salty Harris, and Myron Ranney, and Sgts. Leo Boyle, Bill Guarnere, Carwood Lipton, John Martin, Robert Rader, and Amos Taylor. “These were men,” as one private said, “who were leaders that we respected and would follow anywhere.”

  The officers were also special and, except for Company Commander Sobel, universally respected. “We couldn’t believe that people like Winters, Matheson, Nixon, and the others existed,” Private Rader remembered. “These were first-class people, and to think these men would care and share their time and efforts with us seemed a miracle. They taught us to trust.” Winters, Rader went on, “turned our lives around. He was openly friendly, genuinely interested in us and our physical training. He was almost shy—he wouldn’t say ‘shit’ if he stepped in it.” Gordon said that if a man called out, “Hey, Lieutenant, you got a date tonight?” Winters would turn beet red.

  Matheson, who was soon moved up to battalion staff as adjutant and who eventually became a Regular Army major general, was the most military minded of the young officers. Hester was “fatherly,” Nixon flamboyant. Winters was none of these, nor was he humorous or obstinate. “Nor at any time did Dick Winters pretend to be God, nor at any time did he act other than a man!”, according to Rader. He was an officer who got the men to perform because he expected nothing but the best, and “you liked him so much you just hated to let him down.” He was, and is, all but worshiped by the men of E Company.

  • • •

  Second Lieutenant Winters had one major, continuing problem, 1st Lieutenant (soon promoted to captain) Sobel.

  The C.O. was fairly tall, slim in build, with a full head of black hair. His eyes were slits, his nose large and hooked. His face was long and his chin receded. He had been a clothing salesman and knew nothing of the out-of-doors. He was ungainly, uncoordinated, in no way an athlete. Every man in the company was in better physical condition. His mannerisms were “funny,” he “talked different.” He exuded arrogance.

  Sobel was a petty tyrant put into a position in which he had absolute power. If he did not like a man, for whatever reason, he would flunk him out for the least infraction, real or imagined.

  There was a cruelty to the man. On Saturday morning inspections, he would go down the line, stop in front of a man who had displeased him in some way, and mark him down for “dirty ears.” After denying three or four men their weekend passes on those grounds, he would shift to “dirty stacking swivels” and keep another half-dozen or so in barracks for that reason. When someone was late returning on Sunday night, the next evening, after a full day’s training, Sobel would order him to dig a 6 x 6 x 6-foot pit with his entrenching tools. When the pit was finished, Sobel would tell him to “fill it up.”

  Sobel was determined that his company would be the best in the regiment. His method of insuring this result was to demand more of Easy’s men. They drilled longer, ran faster, trained harder.

  Running up Currahee, Sobel was at the head of the company, head bobbing, arms flapping, looking back over his shoulder to see if anyone was dropping out. With his big flat feet, he ran like a duck in distress. He would shout, “The Japs are going to get you!” or “Hi-ho Silver!”

  “I remember many times finishing a long run,” Tipper said. “Everyone at the point of exhaustion and waiting in formation for the command, ‘Fall out!’ Sobel would be running back and forth in front of his men shouting, ‘Stand still, STAND STILL!’ He would not dismiss us until he was satisfied that we had the discipline to impersonate statues at his command. Impossible, of course. But we did what he wanted when he wanted. We wanted those wings.”

  Gordon developed a lifelong hatred of Sobel. “Until I landed in France in the very early hours of D-Day,” Gordon said in 1990, “my war was with this man.” Along with other enlisted, Gordon swore that Sobel would not survive five minutes in combat, not when his men had live am
munition. If the enemy did not get him, there were a dozen and more men in Easy who swore that they would. Behind his back the men cursed him, “f——ing Jew” being the most common epithet.

  Sobel was as hard on his officers as on the enlisted men. Their physical training was the same, but when the men heard the final “fall out” of the day, they were free to go to their bunks, while the officers had to study the field manuals, then take a test on the assignment Sobel had given them. When he held officers’ meetings, Winters recalled, “He was very domineering. There was no give-and-take. His tone of voice was high-pitched, rasplike. He shouted instead of speaking in a normal way. It would just irritate you.” The officers’ nickname for their captain was “The Black Swan.”

  Sobel had no friends. Officers would avoid him in the officers’ club. None went on a pass with him, none sought out his company. No one in Easy knew anything about his previous life and no one cared. He did have his favorites, of whom No. 1 was company 1st Sgt. William Evans. Together, Sobel and Evans played men off against one another, granting a privilege here, denying one there.

  Anyone who has ever been in the Army knows the type. Sobel was the classic chickenshit. He generated maximum anxiety over matters of minimum significance. Paul Fussell, in his book Wartime, has the best definition: “Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant ‘paying off of old scores’; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. Chickenshit is so called—instead of horse- or bull- or elephant shit—because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously.”3

  • • •

  Sobel had the authority over the men. Lieutenant Winters had their respect. The two men were bound to clash. No one ever said so directly, and not everyone in Easy recognized what was happening, and Winters did not want it that way, but they were in competition to be the leader.

  Sobel’s resentment of Winters began during the first week at Toccoa. Winters was leading the company in calisthenics. He was up on a stand, demonstrating, “helping the fellows get through the exercise. These boys, they were sharp. And I had their complete attention.” Colonel Sink walked past. He stopped to watch. When Winters finished, Sink walked up to him. “Lieutenant,” he asked, “how many times has this company had calisthenics?”

  “Three times, sir,” Winters replied.

  “Thank you very much,” Sink said. A few days later, without consulting Sobel, he promoted Winters to 1st lieutenant. For Sobel, Winters was a marked man from that day. The C.O. gave the platoon leader every dirty job that he could find, such as latrine inspection or serving as mess officer.

  Paul Fussell wrote, “Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.”4 Winters disagreed. He believed that at least some of what Sobel was doing—if not the way he was doing it—was necessary. If Easy ran farther and faster than the other companies, if it stayed on the parade ground longer, if its bayonet drills were punctuated by “The Japs are going to get you!” and other exhortations, why, then, it would be a better company than the others.

  What Winters objected to, beyond the pettiness and arbitrary methods, was Sobel’s lack of judgment. The man had neither common sense nor military experience. He could not read a map. On field exercises, he would turn to his X.O. and ask, “Hester, where are we?” Hester would try to locate the position for him without embarrassing him, “but all the men knew what was going on.”

  Sobel made up his mind without reflection and without consultation, and his snap decisions were usually wrong. One night at Toccoa the company was out in the woods on an exercise. It was supposed to be on the defensive, stay in position and be quiet and let the enemy come into the killing zone. “No problem,” as Winters recalled, “just an easy job. Just spread the men out, get them in position, ‘everyone be quiet.’ We’re waiting, waiting, waiting. Suddenly a breeze starts to pick up into the woods, and the leaves start to rustle, and Sobel jumps up. ‘Here they come! Here they come!’ God Almighty! If we were in combat, the whole damn company would be wiped out. And I thought, ‘I can’t go into combat with this man! He has no damn sense at all!’ ”

  Winters recognized that Sobel was “a disciplinarian and he was producing a hell of a company. Anytime you saw Easy, by God, the men were sharp. Anything we did, we were out in front.” Private Rader said of Sobel, “He stripped away your civilian way of doing things and your dignity, but you became one of the best soldiers in the Army.” In Winters’s opinion the trouble was Sobel could not see “the unrest and the contempt that was breeding in the troops. You lead by fear or you lead by example. We were being led by fear.”

  I asked every member of Easy that I interviewed for this book if the extraordinary closeness, the outstanding unit cohesion, the remarkable staying power of the identification with Easy came about because of or in spite of Sobel. Those who did not reply “Both,” said it was because of Sobel. Rod Strohl looked me in the eye and said flatly, “Herbert Sobel made E Company.” Others said something similar. But they nearly all hated him.

  That feeling helped bring the company together. “No doubt about it,” Winters said. “It was a feeling everybody shared. Junior officers, noncoms, enlisted men, we all felt exactly the same way.” But, he added, “It brought us together. We had to survive Sobel.”

  They hated him so much that even when he should have earned their respect, he failed. While at Toccoa everyone, enlisted and officer, had to pass a qualifying physical test. By then they were in such good shape that no one was really worried about it. Almost all of them could do thirty-five or forty push-ups, for example, and the requirement was only thirty. But there was great excitement, Tipper said, because “we knew Sobel could barely do twenty push-ups. He always stopped at that point when leading the company in calisthenics. If this test were fair, Sobel would fail and wash out.

  “Sobel’s test was public and fair. I was part of a not-so-casual audience perhaps fifty feet away. At twenty push-ups he was noticeably bushed, but kept going. At twenty-four or twenty-five his arms were trembling, and he was turning red, but slowly continuing. How he managed to complete the thirty push-ups I don’t know, but he did. We were silent, shook our heads, but did not smile. Sobel did not lack determination. We comforted ourselves with the idea that he was still a joke, no matter what.”

  The paratroopers were volunteers. Any man or officer was free at any time to take a walk. Many did. Sobel did not. He could have walked away from the challenge of being an Airborne officer and walked into a staff job with a supply company, but his determination to make it was as great as that of any member of the company.

  • • •

  Pushing Easy harder than Dog and Fox was difficult, because 2d Battalion commander Major Strayer was almost as fanatic as Sobel. On Thanksgiving Day, Sink let his regiment feast and relax, but Major Strayer decided it was time for a two-day field exercise for the 2d Battalion. It included long marches, an attack against a defended position, a gas alarm in the middle of the night, and an introduction to K rations (tins containing a sort of stew, crackers, candy, and powdered fruit juice).

  Strayer made that Thanksgiving even more memorable by laying on the Hawg Innards Problem. He stretched wires across a field, at about 18 inches off the ground. Machine-gunners fired over the top of the wire. Beneath it, Strayer spread the ground with the intestines of freshly slaughtered hogs—hearts, lungs, guts, livers, the works. The men crawled through the vile mess. Lipton recalled that “the army distinction between ‘creep’ and ‘crawl’ is that a baby creeps, and a snake crawls. We crawled.” No one ever forgot the experience.

  • • •

  By the end of November, basic training had been completed. Every man in the company had mastered his own specialty, be it mortars, machine-guns, rifles, communications, field dressings, and the r
est. Each man was capable of handling any job in the platoon, at least in a rudimentary fashion. Each private knew the duties of a corporal and sergeant and was prepared to take over if necessary. Each one who made it through Toccoa had been harassed almost to the point of rebellion. “We all thought,” Christenson said, “after this, I can take anything they can throw at me.”

  • • •

  A day or so before leaving Toccoa, Colonel Sink read an article in the Reader’s Digest that said a Japanese Army battalion had set a world record for marching endurance by covering 100 miles down the Malayan Peninsula in seventy-two hours. “My men can do better than that,” Sink declared. As Strayer’s 2d Battalion had trained the hardest, Sink picked it to prove his point. The 1st Battalion took the train to Fort Benning, the 3d took the train to Atlanta, but the 2d marched.

  At 0700, December 1, Dog, Easy, Fox, and Battalion HQ Companies set out, each man wearing all his gear and carrying his weapon. That was bad enough for the riflemen, terrible for those like Malarkey in the mortar squad or Gordon, who carried a machine-gun. The route Strayer chose was 118 miles long, 100 miles of that on back-country, unpaved roads. The weather was miserable, with freezing rain, some snow, and thus slippery, muddy roads. As Webster recalled it, “The first day we sloshed and fell in the red mud and cursed and damned and counted the minutes before the next break.” They marched through the day, through twilight, into the dark. The rain and snow stopped. A cold, biting wind came up.

  By 2300 hours the battalion had covered 40 miles. Strayer picked the campsite, a bare, windswept hill devoid of trees or bushes or windbreaks of any kind. The temperature dipped into the low twenties. The men were issued bread smeared with butter and jam, as they couldn’t get the field stoves started. When they woke at 0600, everything was covered with a thick layer of frost. Boots and socks were frozen solid. The officers and men had to take the shoestrings out of the boots to get them onto their swollen feet. Rifles, mortars, and machine-guns were frozen to the ground. The shelter halves cracked like peanut brittle.