Band of Brothers

by Stephen Ambrose

  A German tank started to break through the hedgerow on Easy's left flank, exactly where F Company should have been. Welsh told Pvt. John McGrath to bring his bazooka and come on. They raced out into the open field, crouched down, armed the bazooka, and Welsh told McGrath to fire. The shot hit the turret, but bounced off. The German tank turned its 88 mm cannon toward Welsh and McGrath and fired. The shell zoomed over their heads, missing by a few feet. The tank gunner could not depress his cannon sufficiently, because the tank driver was climbing the hedgerow in an effort to break through.

  Welsh started reloading the bazooka. McGrath was saying, over and over, "Lieutenant, you're gonna get me killed. You're gonna get me killed." But he held his place, took careful aim at the tank, which was at the apex of its climb, cannon pointing skyward, the huge vehicle just about to tip forward as it broke through, and fired. He hit exactly where he wanted, the unarmored belly of the tank, and it exploded in a great burst of flame and fire.

  That was the critical moment in the battle. German tank drivers lined up behind the one McGrath had hit, put their gear in reverse and began to back off. Meanwhile battalion headquarters had stopped the retreat of D and F companies, pulled them together, and pushed them forward about 150 meters, closing the gap somewhat on the left flank.

  Still the Germans came on. They tried a flanking movement on the far (north) side of the railroad track. Winters got some mortar fire going, which stopped that attempt. Easy held its ground. The company had taken ten casualties on June 12 in the attack on Carentan, and nine more on June 13 in the defense of Carentan.

  Gordon dropped out of the line and found Winters. A piece of shrapnel had gone into the calf of his leg on one side and come out on the other; he was also bleeding from the shrapnel wound in his shoulder. But what bothered him was a boil that had developed on his shin right above his boot. The pain was unbearable. He told Winters he had to have the boil lanced. Winters told him to hobble his way back to the aid station.

  The medic took one look at this man bleeding from the leg and shoulder, looking like someone who had not slept for three days and had just come in from an intense battle, and asked, "Are you hurt?"

  "Well, yes," Gordon replied, "but that's not the problem. My problem is this boil. Get the boil." The medic lanced the boil, then looked at the other wounds. He said the shoulder would be all right, "but your leg wound is bad." Each side of the wound had closed, and Gordon's leg was turning blue. "You're going to have some real problems with that," the medic said. "We've got to evacuate you."

  "No way," Gordon protested. "I didn't tell Lieutenant Winters."

  "I'll get word back to him, don't worry about that." So Gordon finally agreed to be evacuated.

  At 1630, sixty tanks from the 2nd Armored, accompanied by fresh infantry from the 29th Division, came up to relieve Easy. Winters recalled "what a wonderful sight it was to see those tanks pouring it to the Germans with those heavy 50-caliber machine-guns and just plowing straight from our lines into the German hedgerows with all those fresh infantry soldiers marching along beside the tanks."

  "Oh, what a mess they made!" Welsh remembered, rubbing his hands with glee as he thought about it forty-seven years later.

  At 2300 Easy and the rest of the 506th was withdrawn into division reserve in Carentan. The officers found billets for the men in undestroyed houses. Winters found a deserted hotel for his billet. Before going to bed, the officers checked on the men. Welsh returned to the hotel from his rounds, sat down on the steps, and fell asleep right there. Winters slept between sheets. It was a sleep he never forgot.

  The following day, June 14, the barber shops had opened for business, and the men were queuing up for haircuts (they would help themselves to liquor, food, or whatever in abandoned shops and homes, but they paid for services). Winters went to the aid station to have his leg wound attended to; for the next five days he took it easy. It was during this period that he wrote the diary entries about his D-Day experiences, quoted in the preceding chapter. Welsh ran the company. Colonel Sink dropped by to thank Winters for the job Easy had done on June 13, when it held the right flank and prevented a German breakthrough that might well have been decisive in the struggle for Carentan. Sink also said he was recommending Winters for the Congressional Medal of Honor for the action at Brecourt Manor on D-Day. Winters thought that was very nice, but wondered what about medals for the men.

  As for the action at Carentan, Colonel Sink told reporter Walter McCallum of the Washington Star, "It was Lt. Winters' personal leadership which held the crucial position in the line and tossed back the enemy with mortar and machine-gun fire. He was a fine soldier out there. His personal bravery and battle knowledge held a crucial position when the going was really rough."3

  3. Washington Star, June 25, 1944.

  The company went into a defensive position south of Carentan. The second day in this static situation, someone came down the hedgerow line asking for Don Malarkey and Skip Muck. It was Fritz Niland. He found Muck, talked to him, then found Malarkey, and had only enough time to say good-bye; he was flying home.

  A few minutes after Niland left, Muck came to Malarkey,

  "His impish Irish smile replaced by a frown." Had Niland explained to Malarkey why he was going home? No. Muck told the story.

  The previous day Niland had gone to the 82nd to see his brother Bob, the one who had told Malarkey in London that if he wanted to be a hero, the Germans would see to it, fast, which had led Malarkey to conclude that Bob Niland had lost his nerve. Fritz Niland had just learned that his brother had been killed on D-Day. Bob's platoon had been surrounded, and he manned a machine-gun, hitting the Germans with harassing fire until the platoon broke through the encirclement. He had used up several boxes of ammunition before getting killed.

  Fritz Niland next hitched a ride to the 4th Infantry Division position, to see another brother who was a platoon leader. He too had been killed on D-Day, on Utah Beach. By the time Fritz returned to Easy Company, Father Francis Sampson was looking for him, to tell him that a third brother, a pilot in the China-Burma-India theater, had been killed that same week. Fritz was the sole surviving son, and the Army wanted to remove him from the combat zone as soon as possible.

  Fritz's mother had received all three telegrams from the War Department on the same day.

  Father Sampson escorted Fritz to Utah Beach, where a plane flew him to London on the first leg of his return to the States.

  The company dug in. Neither side was making infantry assaults south of Carentan, but the incoming and outgoing mail was tremendous, since both sides were receiving reinforcements in artillery and heavy weapons, the Americans from the beach and the Germans from the French interior.

  In their foxholes, the men of Easy stayed underground, ready to repel any ground attack, but otherwise remaining out of sight during daylight hours. Lieutenant Nixon, battalion intelligence officer (S-2), wanted to know the strength of the German infantry opposite Easy's position. Winters came down the line, asking for a volunteer to take out a high noon patrol. No one responded. He told Guarnere that he was nominated to lead the patrol. Guarnere got a briefing from Nixon, who gave him a map showing all the hedgerows and a cluster of farm buildings that seemed to be a German command post, almost a kilometer away.

  Guarnere, Privates Blithe and Joseph Lesniewski of Erie, Pennsylvania, and two others set out. Using the hedgerows for concealment, they moved forward. Blithe was at the point. He reached the last hedgerow leading to the farm buildings. A German sniper put a bullet into his neck.

  "Get the hell out of here," Guarnere shouted. As the patrol fell back, German machine pistols opened up. When the patrol got back to Easy's lines, the company's machine-guns answered the fire.

  Later, Malarkey led another patrol in another attempt to get information on the enemy. On this patrol Private Sheehy, at the point, moved up next to a hedgerow. Malarkey joined him there, but as he moved forward he stepped on a tree limb, breaking it. Immediately a German h
elmet raised up right across the hedgerow. Sheehy got him full in the face with a blast from his tommy-gun.

  Seeing more Germans, Malarkey pulled the patrol back at a full run. Rob Bain, carrying a 300 radio, had trouble keeping up. After they had gotten back safely, Bain's comment was, "Apparently patrols are quite necessary, but it appears to me to be a good way to get your tail shot off."

  The next day was relatively quiet. Fat Norman cattle were grazing in the field behind the company's position. Pvt. Woodrow Rob-bins, 1st squad machine-gunner, was dug in about 15 feet from Christenson's foxhole.

  "Hey, Chris," he called out, "let's get some of that meat in the field!" Christenson did not want to leave his foxhole, but Bill Howell joined Robbins as he crawled up to a cow and shot her. They butchered the animal, then returned with a hind quarter. Robbins cut up steaks for the whole squad. They fried the meat over open fires in their foxholes. That night, Robbins and Howell tied the remainder of the carcass to a tree to the rear.

  They covered it with a poncho,- the squad figured to be eating beef rather than K rations for a few days. What they had not figured on was all the shrapnel flying around from the incessant artillery barrages. It perforated the meat. At the next feast, the men of the squad were continually cutting their gums on shrapnel.

  June 23. A sniper fired at Christenson, from 600 meters. Chris ducked behind a hedgerow and shouted to Robbins to spray the area from which the bullet came. Robbins fired fifty rounds at the distant trees. "I could hear a nervous grumbling from the men down the line," Christenson remembered. "Tension always grew when out of complete silence a machine-gun fires that many rounds." In the far distance, the sound of mortars belched, waump, waump, waump, waump. "This nerve-racking sound confirmed that four mortar bombs were heading in our direction. The suspense of waiting is eerie. Indescribable. Miserable. Then 'Boom,' the first one exploded not more than 7 feet in front of Robbins' and Howell's gun."

  Howell jumped out of his position and ran to Christenson's foxhole, as the second mortar round exploded almost on top of the first, "so close that you could taste the pungent gun powder." Howell leaped into Christenson's foxhole. "I was all bent over and unable to move," Chris said, "because of my doubled up, cramped position. It was difficult to breathe, yet I was laughing hysterically for Howell's eyes were as big as tea cups. He was muttering things like, 'Christ-sake, oh my God,' at each shell burst. The pressure this big man was putting on me suddenly threw me into a state of panic, for I was suffocating." Fortunately the shelling stopped.

  After two weeks on the main line of resistance (MLR), the men of Easy stank. They had not had a bath or shower or an opportunity to shave. Many had dysentery,- all were continually drenched with sweat. Their hair was matted from dirt and dust made worse by the profuse sweating caused by wearing their helmets constantly, and by the impregnated clothes they had been wearing since June 6. They looked like Bill Mauldin's Willy and Joe characters.

  On June 29, the 83rd Infantry Division came up to relieve the 101st. "They were so clean looking," Christenson remembered, "with a full complement of men in each unit. Even the paint on their helmets looked as if they had just been unpacked. The impact of seeing such a disheveled motley group as we were was a shock to them."

  For Easy, to get off the front line, even if it was only for a few days, was a deliverance. The thought of an uninterrupted full night's sleep, not being harassed by gun fire or being sent out on patrol, to get something hot to eat, to sleep dry, and most of all to get a shower, was good beyond description.

  Easy had jumped into Normandy on June 6 with 139 officers and men. Easy was pulled out of the line on June 29 with 74 officers and men present for duty. (The 506th had taken the heaviest casualties of any regiment in the campaign, a total of 983, or about 50 percent). The Easy men killed in action were Lts. Thomas Meehan and Robert Mathews, Sgts. William Evans, Elmer Murray, Murray Robert, Richard Owen, and Carl Riggs, Cpls. Jerry Wentzel, Ralph Wimer, and Hermin Collins, Pvts. Sergio Moya, John Miller, Gerald Snider, William McGonigal, Ernest Oats, Elmer Telstad, George Elliott, and Thomas Warren.

  For the 101st, Carentan was the last action of the Normandy campaign. The division was gradually pulled back to a field camp north of Utah Beach, complete with radio, telephone, bulletin board, policing the area, keeping weapons clean, parade ground formations, and a training schedule. To compensate, there were hot showers and nearly unlimited opportunities for scrounging.

  Pvt. Alton More was the master scrounger in Easy Company. He found a way to get into the main supply depot near Utah. On his first foray, he returned carrying two cardboard boxes, one of fruit cocktail and the other of pineapple. "It tasted like the best thing you ever ate in your life," Harry Welsh remembered, "and I was never so sick in my life. We weren't used to that food." Thereafter, More brought in a more varied diet from his daily expeditions.

  General Taylor stopped by, to congratulate the company on its lonely stand on the far right flank at Carentan. The men wanted to know what about his "give me three days and nights of hard fighting and I'll have you out of here" pre-D-Day promise.

  Gen. Omar Bradley appeared for an awards ceremony. Standing on a little platform in the field, he read out the citations for the Distinguished Service Cross for eleven men, including General Taylor, Chaplain Maloney, and Lieutenant Winters. "That was a proud moment," Winters said. He recalled that after the ceremony, Bradley had the troops break formation and gather round him. "Are there any reporters here, any correspondents?" he asked. "If there are, I don't want this recorded.

  "What I want to say," he went on, "is that things are going very well, and there is a possibility at this point, as I see it, that we could be in Berlin by Christmas."

  Winters thought to himself, God, I can make it till Christmas. Just let me go home for Christmas.

  On July 1, Winters received news of his promotion to captain. On July 10, the company moved down to Utah Beach, to prepare to embark for England. "Seeing the beach for the first time," Winters recalled, "with that armada of ships as far as the eye could see in every direction, and seeing the American flag on the beach, left me feeling weak in the knees for a few moments and brought tears to my eyes."

  Private More pulled one last raid on that vast supply dump. He broke into the main motor pool and stole a motorcycle, complete with sidecar. He hid it behind a sand dune, then asked Captain Winters if he could put it on the LST and take it back to England. "Up to you," Winters replied.

  The next day, as the company marched up the ramp of the gigantic LST, More moved the motorcycle up the inland side of the forward dune. He had arranged with Malarkey for a hand signal when everyone was aboard and it was time to go. Malarkey tipped off the Navy personnel. At the proper moment, standing on the ramp, Malarkey gave the signal and More came roaring over the dune and up the ramp.

  On the LST, the skipper said to Welsh, "Lieutenant, what would your men like to have: chicken or steak? ice cream? eggs?" Sailing in convoy, the LST got back to Southampton the night of July 12. The next morning, a train took the men (except More and Malarkey, who rode their motorcycle) to Aldbourne. "It was wonderful to be back," Winters remembered. "Everybody was glad to see us. It was just like home."

  7 HEALING WOUNDS AND SCRUBBED MISSIONS

  * ALDBOURNE

  July 13-Septemberl6,1944

  "It's the only time I ever saw the Army do anything right," Gordon Carson said. "They put us on those LSTs, brought us into Southampton, took us back to Aldbourne, gave us two sets of complete, all-new uniforms, all our back pay, $150 or more, and a seven-day pass, and by 7, 8 in the morning we're on our way to London."

  The men of Easy have little memory of that week in London. The American paratroopers were the first soldiers to return to England from Normandy; the papers had been full of their exploits; everyone in town wanted to buy them a meal or a beer— for the first day or so. But the young heroes overdid it. They drank too much, they broke too many windows and chairs, they got into too many
fights with nonparatroopers. It was one of the wildest weeks in London's history. One newspaper compared the damage done to the Blitz. A joke went around: the MPs in London were going to receive a presidential citation for duty above and beyond during the week the 101st was in town.

  Not everyone went to London. Harry Welsh traveled to Ireland, to see relatives. Winters stayed in Aldbourne to rest, reflect, and write letters to the parents of men killed or wounded. Gordon and Lipton, after recovery from their wounds, went to Scotland to see the sights.

  In the hospital after his evacuation from Normandy, Gordon had been given skin grafts, then had his leg enclosed in a cast that ran from hip to toe. He was the only combat wounded man in his ward; the others were ill or had been hurt in accidents in England. He was therefore "an object of great respect. They were in awe of me." Three times officers came in to pin a Purple Heart on his pillow. "I would lower my eyes modestly and murmur thanks to the small group who had gathered to see the hero." Then he would hide the medal and wait for the next one.

  After eight weeks in the hospital, he returned to E Company. (It was Airborne policy to return recovered men to their original company; in the infantry, when wounded became fit for duty, they went wherever they were needed. The former was, in the opinion of every paratrooper, one of the wisest things the Airborne did; the latter policy was, in everyone's opinion, one of the dumbest things the Army did.)

  Sergeant Talbert got back to Easy at the same time Gordon did. As his wound had been inflicted by Private Smith's bayonet, rather than by a German, he was disqualified from receiving the Purple Heart. Gordon told him not to worry, he could fix him up with one of his extra ribbons. The 3rd platoon got together and conducted an appropriate ceremony for Talbert. Gordon and Rogers had written a poem to immortalize Talbert, Smith, "and the bayonet that came between them." The title was "The Night of the Bayonet"; fortunately for posterity, the poem has not survived (or at least the authors refused to give it to me for this book). The indignant Talbert declared, "I could have shot the little bastard six times as he lunged toward me, but I didn't think we could spare a man at the time."