band of brothers小说[分享]

yuemuping

while on the road, sergeant lipton became ill, with chills and a high fever. at drulingen he went to see the medical officer, who examined him and declared that he had pneumonia and had to be evacuated to a hospital. lipton said he was 1st sergeant of e company and could not possibly leave. as the doctor could not evacuate him that night anyway, he told lipton to come back in the morning.
lieutenant speirs and sergeant lipton had a room in a german house for the night. (alsace, on the border between france and germany, changes hands after every war. in 1871 it became german territory; the french got in back in 1919; in 1940 it became german again, in 1945, french.) the room had only a single bed. speirs said lipton should sleep on it. lipton replied that wasn't right; as the enlisted man, he would sleep in his sleeping bag on the floor. speirs simply replied, "you're sick," which settled it.
lipton got into the bed. the elderly german couple who lived in the home brought him some schnapps and apfelstrudel. lipton had never drunk anything alcoholic, but he sipped at the schnapps until he had finished a large glass, and ate the strudel. he fell into a deep sleep. in the morning, his fever had broken, his energy had returned. he went to the medical officer, who could not believe the improvement. the doctor called it a miracle.
speirs, delighted by the recovery, said that he and winters had recommended lipton for battlefield promotion and that colonel sink wanted to talk to him. lipton went to regiment, where sink gave him a one-hour grilling on his combat experiences.
easy stayed in reserve for nearly two weeks, moving almost daily from one village to another. the weather warmed. the sun shone, and the snow began to melt. the ground got mushy. a supply truck arrived carrying an issue of shoepacs complete with arctic socks and felt insoles. "where were you six weeks ago in bastogne, when we needed you?" the men shouted at the drivers. dirty clothes, blankets, and sleeping bags were picked up by the quartermaster company and sent to a g.i. laundry. portable showers capable of handling 215 men an hour were brought in; easy moved through them as a company. the water wasn't hot, but at least it wasn't ice cold either. soap and lather, scrub and scrub—it took a major effort to remove six weeks of dirt and sweat.
movies arrived, including rhapsody in blue, buffalo bill, and our hearts were young and gay. stars and stripes, yank, and kangaroo khronicle brought news of the outside world (not as welcome as one would have supposed, because the news from the pacific showed that the war there had a long way to go; this ignited rumors that the 101st was going to be shipped to the pacific for "the big jump" on japan).
on february 5, easy moved into the line as the 506th relieved the 313th infantry of the 79th division in the city of haguenau. the population was nearly 20,000, which was big time for the paratroopers in europe. carentan had about 4,000 residents, mourmelon about 4,500, and bastogne maybe 5,500. haguenau lay astride the moder river, a tributary of the rhine. easy's position was on the far right flank of the 506th, at the junction of the moder and a canal that ran through town to cut off the loop in the moder.
"our position was somewhat like a point into the german lines," lieutenant foley recalled. easy occupied the buildings on the south bank, the germans held the buildings on the north bank. the river was high, out of its banks, the current swift. it varied from about 30 to as much as 100 meters wide, it was too far to throw grenades across but close enough for machine-gun, rifle, and mortar fire. both sides had artillery support. a few kilometers behind their lines the germans had a huge railway gun (probably a 205 mm) from world war i. it fired shells as big as the 16-inch naval guns that had supported the americans at utah beach.
the paratroopers moved into buildings that had been occupied by the 79th division. webster and five other members of 1st platoon took over a building at the juncture of the moder and the canal. "in keeping with the best airborne tradition of relying on madmen instead of firepower," webster wrote, "six of us with one b.a.r. relieved eighteen 79th division doggies with a water-cooled 50 and an air-cooled 30-caliber machine gun." the 79th division men told 1st platoon that this was a quiet sector, no offensives by either side, but webster noted that they left in a hurry after the briefest of briefings.
the building the 1st squad of 1st platoon occupied was a wreck. sections of walls had been blasted away, the roof partially removed by mortar shells, all the windows broken, the floors ankle deep in plaster, bricks, and broken glass, the banisters ripped off for firewood, the toilets choked with excreta, the basement a cesspool of ashes, ordure, and ration cans.
looking the place over, cpl. tom mccreary expressed the general sentiment of his squad: "we got it made."
this was the first time anyone in the squad had lived indoors on the firing line. the men set out to improve their quarters. they rearranged the cellar, putting the bunks and c rations in one room, throwing the trash in another. they found some gas-burning lamps and a working stove. they spliced into a german field telephone system and established communications with the 1st platoon cp. when they needed to relieve themselves, they went to the third floor, "where the toilet bowl was only half full."
george luz, radio man for the 1st platoon cp, paid a visit. mccreary's squad showed off their accommodations with pride. "if you think this is-good," luz responded, "you should see company hq. they're living like kings." he looked around again, and added, "them bastards."
(webster shared luz's feelings. he went back to the company cp as seldom as possible because "there was altogether too much rank in that place and a private didn't stand a chance.")
as on the island, movement by day was impossible. snipers were always ready to blast anyone caught in the open. the least movement would bring down mortars; two or three men outside would justify a couple of rounds of 88s. so, webster recorded, "our major recreation was eating. we spent more time preparing, cooking, and consuming food than in any other pursuit."
the company's task was to hold the line, send out enough patrols to keep contact with the germans, and serve as forward artillery observers. mccreary's squad held observation post no. 2. two men, one at the third floor window, the other in the basement with the telephone, were on duty for an hour at a time. from the window, the men had a beautiful view of the german section of town. they could call for artillery fire just about whenever they wanted, a luxury previously unknown. the germans would reply in kind.
it was hard to say which was more dangerous, mortars, aimed sniper fire, machine-gun bursts, 88s, or that big railway gun. one thing about the monster cannon, although it was so far to the rear the men could not hear it fire, they could hear the low-velocity shell coming from a long way off. it sounded like a train. shifty powers recalled that he was an observer in a third-floor window. when he heard the shell, he had time to dash downstairs into the basement before it landed.
although the men lived in constant danger—a direct hit from the railway gun would destroy whole buildings—they were in a sense spectators of war. glenn gray writes that the "secret attractions of war" are "the delight in seeing, the delight in comradeship, the delight in destruction." he continues, "war as a spectacle, as something to see, ought never to be underestimated."1
1. gray, the warriors, 28-29.

gray reminds us that the human eye is lustful; it craves the novel, the unusual, the spectacular.
war provides more meat to satisfy that lust than any other human activity. the fireworks displays are far longer lasting, and far more sensational, than the most elaborate fourth of july display. from op 2 webster could see "the shells bursting in both friendly and hostile zones of haguenau and watch the p-47s strafing right and left." at night, the antiaircraft batteries miles behind the line turned their searchlights straight into the sky, so that the reflections from the clouds would illuminate the front. both sides fired flares whenever an observer called for them; a man caught outside when one went off had to stand motionless until it burned out. every machine-gun burst sent out tracers that added to the spectacle.
the big artillery shells would set off fires that crackled and flamed and lighted up the countryside. "there's something eerie about a fire in combat," webster noted. "the huge, bold flames seem so alien and strident in a situation where neither side dares show the tiniest match flame."
war satisfies not only the eye's lust; it can create, even more than the shared rigors of training, a feeling of comradeship. on february 9, webster wrote his parents, "i am home again." his account of life in op 2 mentions the dangers endured but concentrates on his feelings toward his fellow squad members. "how does danger break down the barriers of the self and give man an experience of community?" gray asks. his answer is the "power of union with our fellows. in moments [of danger] many have a vague awareness of how isolated and separate their lives have hitherto been and how much they have missed. . . . with the boundaries of the self expanded, they sense a kinship never known before."2
2. gray, the warriors, 43-46.

(webster and pvt. bob marsh had orders one night to set up the machine-gun on the porch of his building, to provide covering fire for a patrol if needed. they were exposed in such a way that if they fired, a german self-propelled gun directly across the river would spot them without the aid of observers. but they decided that if the patrol was fired upon, they would open up with everything they had, "because the lives of some twenty men might depend on us." webster, who never volunteered for anything, commented, "this was one of those times where i could see playing the hero even if it meant our death.")

yuemuping

gray's third "delight" provided by war is delight in destruction. there is no gainsaying that men enjoy watching buildings, vehicles, equipment being destroyed. the crowds that gather in any city when a building is about to be demolished illustrates the point. for the soldier, seeing a building that might be providing shelter to the enemy get blasted out of existence by friendly artillery is a joyous sight. in his world war i diary german soldier ernst juenger wrote of "the monstrous desire for annihilation which hovered over the battlefield. ... a neutral observer might have perhaps believed that we were seized by an excess of happiness."3
3. quoted in gray, the warriors, 52.

the soldier's concern is with death, not life, with destruction, not construction. the ultimate destruction is killing another human being. when snipers hit a german on the other side, they would shout, "i got him! i got him!" and dance for joy. pvt. roy cobb spotted a german walking impudently to and fro before a cottage a couple of hundred meters away. he hit him with his first shot. pvt. clarence lyall, looking through his binoculars, said the hurt, perplexed expression on the german's face was something to see. as the soldier tried to crawl back to the cottage, cobb hit him twice more. there were whoops and shouts each time he got hit.
as always on the front line, there was no past or future, only the present, made tense by the ever-present threat that violent death could come at any instant. "life has become strictly a day to day and hour to hour affair," webster wrote his parents.
replacements came in. this was distressing, because when an airborne division, which was usually brought up to strength in base camp in preparation for the next jump, received reinforcements while on the front line, it meant that the division was going to continue fighting. at op 2, "four very scared, very young boys fresh from jump school" joined the squad. webster commented: "my heart sank. why did the army, with all its mature huskies in rear echelon and the air corps slobs in england, choose to send its youngest, most inexperienced members straight from basic training to the nastiest job in the world, front line infantry?"
one of the replacements was 2nd lt. hank jones, a west point graduate (june 6,1944, john eisenhower's class) who had completed jump school at benning in late december. he left new york in mid-january, landed at le havre, and arrived in haguenau in mid-february. as lieutenant foley commented, "teach them how to say 'follow me' and ship them overseas was the quickest way to replace the casualties." jones was cocky, clean-cut, likable. he was eager for a chance to prove himself.
he would quickly get his opportunity, because the regimental s-2, captain nixon, needed some live prisoners for interrogation. on february 12 he asked winters to arrange to grab a couple of germans. winters was still a captain, a distinct disadvantage in dealing with the other two battalion commanders, who were lieutenant colonels. but he had friends on the regimental staff, where colonel strayer was x.o. and nixon and the s-4 (matheson) were old e company men. matheson scrounged up some german rubber boats for winters to use to get a patrol over the river. winters picked e company for the patrol.
it would be a big one, twenty men strong, drawn from each platoon plus company hq section, plus two german-speaking men from regimental s-2. lieutenant foley picked cobb, mc-creary, wynn, and sholty from 1st platoon. once across the river, the patrol would divide into two parts, one led by sgt. ken mercier, the other by lieutenant jones.
the men selected for the patrol spent two days outside haguenau practicing the handling of the rubber boats. on february 14, winters and speirs visited op 2, much to the dismay of the 1st squad, because they stood in front of the op studying the german position with binoculars, gesturing with their hands, waving a map. "we inside cursed heartily," webster recalled, "fearing that a german observer would spot them and call down artillery fire on our cozy home."
the plan winters and speirs worked out would call on easy to display many of its hard-earned skills. the lead scout would be cpl. earl mcclung, a part indian who had a reputation for being able to "smell krauts." the patrol would rendezvous at a d company op, where the men would drink coffee and eat sandwiches until 2200. they would come to the river under cover of darkness and launch the first rubber boat. it would carry a rope across the river to fasten to a telephone pole on the north side so that the others could pull their boats across. once in the german lines the patrol would split into two sections, the one under lieutenant jones going into town, the other under sergeant mercier to a house on the bank of the river suspected of being a german outpost.
whether or not the patrol succeeded in capturing prisoners, it would have plenty of support for its retreat back across the river. if either section ran into trouble, or got its hands on prisoners, the section leader would blow a whistle to indicate that the withdrawal was underway. that would be the signal for both sections to gather at the boats, and for lieutenant speirs and sergeant malarkey to start the covering fire.
the covering fire had been worked out down to the smallest details. every known or anticipated german position was covered by designated rifle fire, machine-gun, artillery, and mortar fire. a 57 mm antitank gun was borrowed from division and emplaced to shoot into the basement of a house that could not be hit by indirect artillery fire. d company had a 50-caliber machine-gun (stolen from the 10th armored at bastogne) set up to rake the german positions. the 1st platoon would have its 30-caliber machine-gun set up on the balcony of op 2, ready to spray the german dwelling across the river, if necessary (the crossing would be made right in front of op 2).
the night of february 15 was still and dark. the german mortars shot only a couple of flares and one or two 88s. the american artillery was silent, waiting for the whistle. the searchlights were out, as speirs had requested. the americans shot no flares. there was no small arms firing, there was no moon, there were no stars.
the first boat got across successfully. two others made it. the fourth boat, with mccreary and cobb in it, capsized. they drifted a hundred meters or so downstream, managed to get out, tried again, only to capsize once more. they gave it up as a bad job and returned to op 2.
jones and mercier gathered the men who had made it over, divided them, and set out on their tasks. with mercier was a just-arrived replacement from company f. without speirs or winters knowing it, the young officer—gung-ho and eager to prove himself—had attached himself to the patrol. as he followed mercier up the north bank of the river, he stepped on a schu mine and was killed. he had been on the front line barely twenty-four hours.
mercier continued toward his target, eight men following him. when he got close enough to the german outpost, he fired a rifle grenade into the cellar window. as it exploded, the men rushed the building and threw hand grenades into the cellar. as those grenades exploded, mercier led the men into the cellar, so close behind the blast that pvt. eugene jackson, a replacement who had joined up in holland, was hit in the face and head by fragments of shrapnel. in the cellar, the americans found the still-living germans in a state of shock. they grabbed one wounded and two uninjured men and dashed back outside. mercier blew his whistle.
the signal unleashed a tremendous barrage. it shook the ground. heavy artillery from the rear was supplemented by mortars and the antitank gun. webster, watching from the balcony of op 2, described the scene: "we saw a sheet of flame, then a red ball shoot into the basement of a dwelling across the creek. the artillery shells flashed orange on the german roads and strongpoints. half a mile away to our direct front a house started to burn. d company's 50-caliber opened up behind us in a steady bark. a solid stream of tracers shot up the creek, provoking a duel with a german burp gun which hosed just as steady a stream of tracers back at d company from the protection of an undamaged cellar."
mercier and his men dashed back to the boats, where they met jones and his section. as they started to cross, they decided that the wounded german soldier was too far gone to be of any use, so they abandoned him by the river bank. one of the replacements, pvt. alien vest, drew a pistol to kill the man, but was told to hold his fire. the wounded german was not going to do them any harm, and there was no point to revealing their position. some men swam, using the rope to pull themselves back across; others used boats.
once across, the patrol members ran to the cellar at op 2, pushing the two prisoners in front of them. as they reached the cellar, german artillery shells exploded in the backyard, the beginning of a barrage by the germans all across e company's line.
down in the cellar, the patrol members crowded around the prisoners. the americans were excited, many of the men chattering—or rather shouting over the tremendous noise— trying to describe individual experiences. their blood was up.
"lemme kill 'em, lemme kill em!" shouted vest, rushing toward the prisoners with his pistol drawn. some stopped him.
"get outta here, vest. they want these bastards back at battalion," someone else yelled.
the prisoners, according to webster, "were a pair of very self-possessed noncoms, an unterofflzier (buck sergeant) and a feldwebel, or staff sergeant. they stood calm, like rocks, in a hot, smelly room full of men who wanted to kill them, and they never moved a finger or twisted their expressions. they were the most poised individuals i've ever seen."
as the explosions outside increased, private jackson, who had been wounded on the patrol, began screaming, "kill me! kill me! some kill me! i can't stand it, christ i can't stand it. kill me, for god's sake kill me!" his face was covered with blood from a grenade fragment that had pierced his skull and lodged in his brain.
sergeant martin related, "of course no one was going to kill him, because there is always hope, and that goddamn prisoner made me so goddamn mad i started kicking that goddamn son-ofabitch, and i mean i kicked that bastard every way i could." he concluded lamely, "emotions were running real high."
someone telephoned for a medic with a stretcher, quick. roe said he would be there in a flash.
jackson continued to call out. "kill me! kill me! i want mercier! where's mercier?" he was sobbing.
mercier went to him and held his hand. "that's o.k., buddy, that's o.k. you'll be all right."
someone stuck a morphine syrette in jackson's arm. he was by then so crazed with pain he had to be held down on the bunk. roe arrived with another medic and a stretcher. as they carried the patient back toward the aid station, mercier walked beside the stretcher, holding jackson's hand. jackson died before reaching the aid station.
"he wasn't twenty years old," webster wrote. "he hadn't begun to live. shrieking and moaning, he gave up his life on a stretcher. back in america the standard of living continued to rise. back in america the race tracks were booming, the night clubs were making their greatest profits in history, miami beach was so crowded you couldn't get a room anywhere. few people seemed to care. hell, this was a boom, this was prosperity, this was the way to fight a war. we read of black-market restaurants, of a manufacturer's plea for gradual reconversion to peacetime goods, beginning immediately, and we wondered if the people would ever know what it cost the soldiers in terror, bloodshed, and hideous, agonizing deaths to win the war."

yuemuping

during a pause in the german barrage, guards escorted the prisoners back to captain winters at battalion hq. mercier was smiling from ear to ear as he handed over the two live prisoners. the buck sergeant talked a lot, the staff sergeant remained silent.
the night was no longer peaceful. both sides fired everything they had. fires blazed up and down the river. tracers criss-crossed over the water.
whenever there was a lull, the men at op 2 could hear a wheezing, choking, gurgling sound from across the river. the wounded german soldier abandoned by the patrol had been shot in the lungs. webster and his buddies debated what to do, kill him and put him out of his misery or let him die in peace. webster favored killing him, because if he were left alone the germans would send a patrol to fetch him, and he could report on all the activity around op 1. "then they will shell us even more," webster predicted.
webster decided to haul himself across the river, using the rope, and knife the man. mccreary vetoed the idea. he said the germans would use the wounded man as bait for a trap. webster decided that he was right. a hand grenade would be better.
accompanied by pvt. bob marsh, webster moved cautiously down to the river bank. he could hear the german gasping and slobbering in ghastly wheezes. "i pitied him," webster wrote, "dying all alone in a country far from home, dying slowly without hope or love on the bank of a dirty little river, helpless."
marsh and webster pulled the pins on their grenades and threw them beside the german. one exploded, the other was a dud. the wheezing continued. the americans returned to their outpost, got more grenades, and tried again. the wheezing continued. they gave it up; let him die in his own time.
when the shelling finally ceased, just before dawn, the wheezing went on, getting on everyone's nerves. cobb decided he could take it no more. he grabbed a grenade, went to the river bank, heaved it over, and finally killed the german.
during the night sergeant lipton had been hit by a mortar shell, one fragment on his right cheek close to his ear and the other in the back of his neck. he went to the aid station and got patched up. (thirty-four years later he had the metal in his neck removed when it started giving him trouble.)
the following day, february 16, winters called lipton to battalion hq, to present him with his honorable discharge as an enlisted man, effective february 15, and a copy of the orders awarding him a battlefield commission as a 2nd lieutenant, effective february 16. "when i was wounded i was a civilian!" lipton remarked. "i had already been discharged, and my commission had not yet been effective. i've often wondered how it would have been handled if i had been killed by that mortar shell." he added, "i have always felt that the battlefield commission was the greatest honor that i have ever had."
lieutenant jones, by all accounts, performed well on his first patrol—meaning, apparently, he wisely let mercier make the decisions. within a week, jones was gone, having been promoted to 1st lieutenant. "after one patrol!" lieutenant foley commented. "jones was a west pointer, a member of the wppa, the west point protective association, known by the ring they all wore. 'it don't mean a thing if you don't have that ring!' " jones moved onto a staff job at regiment. malarkey wrote, "it was rumored that the conclusion of the war was fast approaching and that west pointers, who would staff the peacetime army, were being protected."
colonel sink was so delighted with the successful patrol, he ordered another one for the next night. in the meantime, however, it had snowed, then turned colder. the snow was frozen on top, crunchy, noisy. the cold air had cleared out the sky and the moon was shining. winters thought a patrol under such circumstances was suicidal, so he decided to disobey orders.
sink and a couple of staff officers came to 2nd battalion cp to observe. they had a bottle of whiskey with them. winters said he was going down to the river bank to supervise the patrol. when he got to the outpost, he told the men to just stay still. with the whiskey working on him, sink would soon be ready for bed. the patrol could report in the morning that it had gotten across the river and into german lines but had been unable to get a live prisoner.4
4. glenn gray writes, "to be required to carry out orders in which he does not believe, given by men who are frequently far removed from the realities with which the orders deal... is the familiar lot of the combat soldier. ... it is a great boon of front-line positions that disobedience is frequently possible, since supervision is not very exact where danger of death is present. many a conscientious soldier has discovered he could reinterpret military orders in his own spirit before obeying them." the warriors, 189.

some of the men wanted liquor too. cobb and wiseman went out on a daytime scrounging mission, even though orders were never to show yourself in daylight. they found a cellar filled with schnapps. they grabbed two bottles each and, shot at by german snipers, ran down the street like schoolboys with stolen
apples.
wiseman got hit in the knee. he stumbled and fell, breaking his bottles. cobb saved his. the two men ducked into a cellar and started enjoying the schnapps. "you take a bunch of g.i.s," martin pointed out, "there is no such thing as just taking a shot of schnapps. you have to drink the whole goddamn thing before you quit." wiseman and cobb drank a bottle each. when they got back to 1st platoon hq, roaring drunk, cobb got into a fight with marsh.
lieutenant foley separated the men. he chewed out cobb for being off-limits, disobeying orders, being drunk and disorderly, and so on. cobb became enraged and began mouthing off. he ignored foley's direct order to shut up. instead, he charged foley. two men grabbed him and threw him down. sergeant martin pulled his .45 pistol. foley told him to holster his weapon, ordered cobb arrested, and had him taken back to regiment for lockup.
wiseman, meanwhile, loudly rejected medic roe's order to evacuate. he said he was staying with his friends.
foley got his platoon settled down, then went to regimental hq to write up court-martial papers for cobb. it took him several hours. he took the papers to colonel sink and told him the details. as foley was leaving, sink said to him, "foley, you could have saved us all a lot of trouble. you should have shot him."
wiseman, still drunk, refused any aid for his wound. he said he would talk to sergeant rader, no one else. rader tried to talk some sense into him, without success. he too was court-martialed. "this ordeal was another blow to my mind," said rader, "after hoobler died and howell was injured at bastogne."
on february 20, easy went into reserve, as the 3rd battalion, 506th, took over its position. within hours of easy's departure, the germans scored a direct hit on op 2. winters got his promotion to major that day. on february 23, the 36th division relieved the 101st. the airborne division moved to saverne, in the rear, in preparation for a return to mourmelon.
the 101st had seldom been in a rear area. what the men saw there made them wonder how any supplies ever reached the front line. twice in haguenau they had received a beer ration of three bottles each. the cigarettes they got were chelseas or raleighs, much despised. no soap, an occasional package of gum, once some toothpaste—except for c and k rations and ammunition, that was all that reached the front lines. being near a supply depot in the rear, the men learned why. the port battalions unloading the ships coming from america got their cut, the railroad battalions helped themselves to milky way candy bars and cases of schlitz beer, chalking it up to "breakage," the truck drivers took the cartons of lucky strikes (by far the favorite brand), and by the time division quartermaster and regimental and battalion s-4 skimmed off the best of what was left, the riflemen on the front line were fortunate to get c rations and raleigh cigarettes.

yuemuping

shifty powers got a new m-l. that was a mixed blessing. he had been using one issued to him in the states. he loved that old rifle. "it seemed like i could just point it, and it would hit what i'd pointed it at. the best shooting rifle i ever owned. but every time we'd have an inspection, i'd get gigged because it had a pit in it, in the barrel. you can't get those pits out of those barrels, you know. it's pitted in there." he got tired of being gigged, turned it in and got a new m-l. "and i declare, i couldn't hit a barn with that rifle. awfulest shooting thing there ever was." but at least he wasn't being gigged any longer.
colonel sink sent down orders to follow a rigorous training schedule while in reserve. speirs thought this an idiotic proposal and made no effort to conceal his sentiments. he told the men of easy that he believed in training hard and sensibly back in base camp and in taking it easy in a reserve area.
speirs could not get the company out of two compulsory formations. the first was to hold a drawing for rotation back to the states. one man from every company would go home for a thirty-day leave; he would be chosen in a company lottery. the winner had to have been in normandy, holland, bastogne, and a total absence of black marks on his service record. no vd, no awol, no court-martial. only twenty-three men in easy were eligible. speirs shook up the names in a steel helmet and drew out forrest guth's slip. there was a polite cheer. speirs said he hated to lose guth but wished him luck. a couple of men shook his hand. the remainder walked sadly away, according to webster, "like men who had glimpsed paradise on their way to hell." the second formation was a battalion review. speirs's philosophy was to avoid the unnecessary but to do properly and with snap the required. he told the men he wanted them to look sharp. rifles would be clean. combat suits had to be washed. a huge boiler was set up; the men cooked their clothing with chunks of soap. it took a long time,- private hudson decided he would skip it. when he showed up for the formation in his filthy combat suit, speirs berated him furiously. foley, his platoon commander, jumped on him. sergeant marsh, his acting squad leader, tried to make him feel the incredible magnitude of his offense. hudson grinned sheepishly and said, "gosh, gee whiz, why is every picking on me?"
general taylor came for the battalion review, trailed by a division pr photographer. as luck would have it, he stopped before hudson and talked with him. the photographer took their picture together, got hudson's name and home-town address, and sent the photo to the local newspaper with a copy to hudson's parents. of course the general looked great talking to a battlehardened soldier just off the front lines rather than a bunch of rear echelon parade-ground troopers. "so," webster commented, "the only man in e company with a dirty combat suit was the only man who had his picture taken with the general."
"we didn't realize it yet," winters said, "but we all started walking with more care, with eyes in the backs of our heads, making sure we didn't get knocked off." after haguenau, he explained, "you suddenly had a gut feeling, 'by god, i believe i am going to make it!' "

):15 "the best feeling in the world"
*
mourmelon
february 25-april 2,1945
on february 25 the men of easy company had a unique experience for them but commonplace for their fathers, riding through france on "40-and-8s," french railway boxcars that held either forty men or eight horses. it was the company's first train ride during the war, and it was properly appreciated. the weather was warm and sunny, the 40-and-8s were knee-deep in straw, there was plenty to eat, and no one shot at them.
"as we jolted through france," webster wrote, "swinging our feet out the door, waving to the farmers, and taking a pull on the schnapps bottle, i thought there was nothing like going away from the front. it was the best feeling in the world."
they were returning to mourmelon, but not to the barracks. this time they were billeted in large green twelve-man wall tents, about a mile outside what webster called "the pathetically shabby garrison village of mourmelon, abused by soldiers since caesar's day, consisting of six bars, two whorehouses, and a small red cross club." in webster's scathing judgment, "mourmelon was worse than fayetteville, north carolina."
the first task was to get clean. there were showers, although the water was lukewarm at best. but for men who had not had a proper shower since leaving mourmelon ten weeks ago, the chance to soap and scrub, scrub and soap, lather, rinse, and repeat was pure joy. then they got clean clothes and new class a uniforms. but when they got to their barracks bags, left behind when the company went to bastogne, their joy turned to fury. the rear echelon "guards" had opened the storage area to the 17th airborne as that division moved into the bulge, and the boys from the 17th had pillaged as if there were no tomorrow. missing were jump suits, shirts, regimental insignia, jump boots, british airborne smocks, panels from normandy and holland parachutes, lugers, and other priceless souvenirs.
the regime imposed by major winters added to their discontent. new recruits had come in, and to integrate them into the companies, winters instituted a rigorous training program. it was like basic all over again, and hated. webster was so fed up "that i sometimes, in forgetful moments, wished to return to the relative freedom of combat."
one of the recruits was pvt. patrick s. o'keefe. he had joined the army when he was seventeen, gone through jump school, and shipped out from new york on the queen elizabeth in late january. "i was sound asleep when we passed ireland," o'keefe recalled, which disappointed him as both his parents were born in county kerry, the first landfall for cross-atlantic traffic. he arrived in mourmelon shortly after the company returned there. his first impression of the men was that "they were all tough, old and grizzled. i thought, 'you have bitten off more than you can chew, o'keefe.' " he was assigned to 1st platoon, under lieutenant foley and sergeant christenson.
his third night in mourmelon, o'keefe went out on a night problem, starting at midnight. walking in the dark in single file, he lost sight of the man in front of him and drew a sharp breath. he tensed, looking around.
a quiet voice from behind said, "you're o.k., son. just kneel down and look up and you can catch sight of them against the sky." o'keefe did, saw them, muttered "thanks," and moved on. later he discovered that the advice had come from major winters. so here was winters, his battalion staff cavorting in paris, leading an all-night exercise for recruits.
o'keefe took the lead scout position just before dawn. at first light there was to be a simulated attack against a fixed enemy position on the other side of an open field. o'keefe got to the last ridge before the target. he signaled with his hand for the battalion to stop. he was nervous at the thought of an eighteen-year-old kid leading a group of combat-wise veterans. he signaled for the second scout behind him to come forward, with the idea he would ask to trade places. private hickman came up with a rush and before o'keefe could say a word blurted out, "boy, am i glad you are up here. i only joined this outfit three weeks ago."
realizing the battalion was full of replacements restored o'keefe's gift of gab. "that's o.k., kid," he said to hickman. "i'm going over the ridge to see what's on the other side. you go back and be ready to pass my signal when i give it."
in a couple of minutes o'keefe was back on the ridge line, holding his rifle up with both hands as a signal, "enemy in sight." foley moved his platoon up to the starting line, shouted "lay down a field of fire!" and the attack began. after a few minutes of blasting away, joe liebgott jumped up, gave an indian war whoop, rushed toward the objective and attacked the machine-gun pit with his fixed bayonet, ripping open the sandbags, playing the hero. o'keefe and the other replacements were mightily impressed.
on march 8, colonel sink got around to making permanent assignments to officers who had been serving in an acting capacity for as long as two months. lieutenant colonel strayer became regimental x.o. major winters became 2nd battalion c.o. there was some realignment, as major matheson shifted from regimental s-4 to s-3, replacing captain nixon, who went from regimental s-3 to s-3 for 2nd battalion. lieutenant welsh, recovered from his christmas eve wound, became 2nd battalion s-2. captain sobel replaced matheson as regimental s-4.
nixon's demotion from regimental to battalion staff came about because of his drinking. like everyone else who knew him, sink recognized that nixon was a genius in addition to being a brave, common-sense soldier, but sink—an uninhibited drinker himself ("bourbon bob" was his behind-his-back nickname)— could not put up with nixon's nightly drunks. he asked winters if winters could handle nixon. winters was sure he could as they were the closest of friends.
former easy company officers were by march occupying key positions in regiment (s-3 and s-4) and battalion (the c.o. of 1st battalion was lieutenant colonel hester; winters was c.o. of 2nd battalion, where the s-2 and s-3 were from easy). one of their number, matheson, eventually became a major general and c.o. of the 101st airborne in vietnam. one is bound to say, one last time, that captain sobel must have been doing something right back in the summer of '42 at toccoa.
you could never prove it with winters, whose feelings for sobel never softened. indeed, sobel's return provided winters with one of the most satisfactory moments of his life. walking down the street at mourmelon, major winters saw captain sobel coming from the opposite direction. sobel saw winters, dropped his head, and walked past without saluting. when he had gone a further step or two, winters called out, "captain sobel, we salute the rank, not the man."
"yes, sir," sobel answered as he snapped off a salute. webster and martin, standing nearby, were delighted ("i like to see officers pull rank on each other," webster commented), but not half so much as winters.
(winters had another pleasure in mourmelon, this one on a daily basis. german p.o.w.s were working in the hospital; at dusk each evening they would march back to their stockade. as they marched, they sang their marching songs. "they sang and marched with pride and vigor," winters wrote, "and it was beautiful. by god, they were soldiers!")
the man who had replaced sobel and winters as c.o. of easy, captain speirs, continued to impress both officers and enlisted men. "captain speirs promises to be as good an officer as winters," webster thought. he realized that many disagreed with him, men "who loathed speirs on the ground that he had killed one of his own men in normandy, that he was bull-headed and suspicious, that he believed there was no such thing as combat exhaustion." but to webster, "he was a brave man in combat, in fact a wild man, who had gotten his silver star, bronze star, and three purple hearts legitimately. speirs swears by common sense, combat noncoms, and training with the emphasis on battle, rather than the book. i like speirs."
there were shake-ups among the noncoms. sergeant talbert replaced lieutenant lipton as 1st sergeant. a genial man, talbert was appreciated by the enlisted men because he ignored red tape and did things by common sense rather than the book. carson became company clerk; luz became a platoon runner; the platoon sergeants, all original toccoa privates, all wounded at least once, were charles grant (2nd), amos taylor (3rd) and earl hale (1st).

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hale's promotion caused some mumble-mumble in 1st platoon. the men had nothing against him except that he was an outsider (he had been in company hq section as a radio man).
the men of the platoon circulated a rumor to the effect that hale had complained to winters that his wife was after him to get another stripe, and winters had given him the platoon as a result. what made the men of the platoon unhappy was the way johnny martin got passed over. "i guess the officers didn't like his flip attitude," webster commented, "yet he was the quickest thinker, the best leader among us, and a natural for a platoon sergeant."
martin thought so, too. having survived three campaigns without a wound, he decided to let the medics know that he had a trick cartilage in his knee that incapacitated him for combat. he was soon on his way back to the states.
"the toccoa men were thinning out like maple leaves in november," webster wrote. "a sense of hopelessness and exasperation filled the old men in mourmelon. here we were, still hiking over meadow and marsh, still trampling the rutabagas and breaking the fences, still in the field on training exercises."
the veterans tried goldbricking to get out of field exercises. they would report on sick call in the morning. speirs would ask the trouble, grunt, and send them to the aid station. there they could get admitted to the hospital for a day. a day of just lying around, reading magazines. it was easy to pull. they all did it, but never more than twice. even webster preferred pretend war to reading or doing nothing.
the ides of march brought a well-deserved reward to the men of the 101st airborne. there was a division parade before the most brass the men had ever seen. general eisenhower was there, along with general taylor, lt. gen. sir frederick morgan, lt. gen. lewis brereton, president roosevelt's secretary stephen early, maj. gen. matthew ridgway, and others.
in preparation, "every scrubbed and washed, polished and shined, disassembled, cleaned and reassembled all weapons," as lieutenant foley recalled. "ribbons were dug up and positioned precisely on the blouse." the men painted their helmets, stenciled the insignia of the 506th on the side, and when they were dry, oiled them until they glistened in the sun. there was a practice parade in anticipation. of course, the officers got the men on the parade ground three hours before ike and his party arrived; of course the men cursed the army and its ways.
eisenhower finally arrived. he drove past the whole division, then climbed up on a reviewing stand to give a speech. he announced that the division had received a presidential distinguished unit citation, the first time in the history of the army that an entire division had been so cited, for its performance at bastogne. in a short speech, ike was effusive in his praise: "you were given a marvelous opportunity [in bastogne], and you met every test. ... i am awfully proud of you."
he concluded with a mixture of praise and exhortation: "with this great honor goes also a certain responsibility. just as you are the beginning of a new tradition, you must realize, each of you, that from now on, the spotlight will beat on you with particular brilliance. whenever you say you are a soldier of the 101st division, every, whether it's on the street, in the city, or in the front line, will expect unusual conduct of you. i know that you will meet every test of the future like you met it at bastogne."1
1. rapport and northwood, rendezvous with destiny, 697-99.

webster, who was becoming ever more the cynic about the army and who was exercising vigorously the soldier's right to grouse, was impressed in spite of himself. private o'keefe commented, "even the new replacements like myself felt enormous pride in marching in that review."
for lieutenant foley, there was "the surprise to end all surprises." standing behind general taylor was his senior aide, none other than capt. norman dike.
sergeant hale, who had had his throat slashed in the ardennes and who had medical permission to go without a tie, had his bronze star presented to him by general eisenhower. ike wanted to know why he was not wearing a tie. hale explained. when general taylor confirmed hale's story, ike gave his big laugh and said hale was the only man in the entire european theater of operations to pull this one off.
there were furloughs and leaves, to england, the riviera, paris, brussels, and evening passes to reims. captain speirs got to go to england, where he had married a british woman who believed her husband had been killed in north africa. foley got to paris and on return confessed he could not remember a thing. there were some uso shows, with big-name performers, including marlene dietrich.
garrison life was soft, but it had its price. to bring discipline and appearance up to a proper rear echelon standard, the army had to have some method of enforcing rules and regulations. threatening members of a rifle company that had just come off the line and was about to go back in with a visit to the stockade was less a threat than a promise. taking hard cash out of the hands of men who were anticipating a pass to paris, however, caught their attention.
a private in the 101st received $50 per month base pay, a $50 bonus for hazardous duty, and an additional $10 for being in a combat zone. general taylor set up a summary court in mourmelon, and it began imposing heavy fines for violations. a man found in improper uniform was fined $5.00. carrying a luger in one's pocket cost $25. speeding in a jeep or truck cost $20. disorderly conduct was a $25 offense.
training continued. it progressed through squad and platoon to company and then to battalion level. the division was preparing for a daylight airborne mission, operation eclipse, a drop on and around berlin.
no one was going to drop on berlin until the allied armies had gotten across the rhine. for months, the men of easy had been anticipating a jump on the far side of the river, but when it came, easy did not participate. eisenhower decided to give the 17th airborne a chance at a combat jump and assigned it to operation varsity, the largest airborne operation of all time (the 17th plus the british 1st and 6th airborne divisions) and to save the 82nd and 101st for berlin.
nonparticipation in operation varsity was a disappointment to many of the replacements, who had gone through the rigors of jump school, joined the most famous airborne division in the world in belgium or germany, and never taken part in a combat jump. at mourmelon a unit of troop carrier command made it possible for men who wished to do so to make a few jumps, to qualify for their paratrooper bonus or just for the fun of it. lieutenant foley made two. but that wasn't like the real thing.
so on march 24 the members of e company watched with mixed feelings as one c-47 after another roared down the runway at the nearby airfield, circled, formed up into a v of vs, nine abreast, and headed northeast. "it was a beautiful sight," foley recalled. "it made your heart pump faster and for a guy like me, having been integrated into a company that had been on two combat jumps, i did feel that i had missed the last opportunity."
some of the old soldiers felt the same way. to his amazement, webster found himself wishing that he was jumping with the 17th. "it would have been fun." instead, he stood on the ground with his buddies, cheering, giving the v-for-victory sign, shouting, "go get 'em, boys! give 'em hell!" then, webster wrote, "i watched them fade in the distance with a dull drone and i suddenly felt lonely and abandoned, as though i had been left behind."
one 506th man who was not left behind was captain nixon. general taylor selected him to jump with the 17th as an observer for the 101st. fortunately for nixon, he was assigned to be jump-master of his plane. the plane was hit; only nixon and three others made it out before it crashed. nixon was attached to the 17th for only one night; on march 25 he was sent back over the rhine and flown by a special small plane back to the 2nd battalion in mourmelon. the jump qualified nixon to be one of two men in the 506th eligible to wear three stars on his jump wings— normandy, holland, and operation varsity. the other was sergeant wright of the pathfinders, who had been in easy company back at toccoa.
german resistance to operation varsity was fierce. meanwhile infantry and armored divisions of the u.s. first army were pouring across the rhine via the recently captured ludendorff bridge at remagen, then swinging north to encircle the german army defending germany's industrial heartland in the ruhr.
eisenhower needed to bolster the ring around the ruhr. the 82nd and 101st were available. the orders came at the end of march. the company was moving out, back to the front, this time on the rhine river.
the veterans resolved not to take any chances. the end of the war was in sight, and they now believed what they could not believe at bastogne, that they were going to make it. safe. more or less intact. they wanted to escape the boredom of garrison, they knew how to take care of themselves, they were ready to do their job, but not to be heroes.
in contrast to the veterans, the replacements thought mourmelon was a super place. they trained with veterans, day and night, in realistic problems, all under the watchful eye of a man who was a legend in e company, major winters. they had learned lifesaving lessons. they had gotten to know and be accepted by the veterans. they were proud to be in the company, the regiment, the division, and were eager to show that they were qualified to be there.
so easy was ready at the end of march, when orders came to prepare to move out. it would be by truck, to the rhine. webster was delighted to be getting out of mourmelon, apprehensive and excited about going back into combat, and disappointed that he was not jumping into battle. "i had hoped to make another jump," he wrote, "rather than ride to the front in trucks, for there is an element of chance in an airborne mission—it may be rough; it may be easy; perhaps there will be no enemy at all—which appeals to me more than a prosaic infantry attack against an enemy who knows where you are and when you're coming."
private o'keefe was about to enter combat for the first time. he has a vivid memory of the occasion. "we wore light sweaters under field jackets, trousers bloused over combat boots, trench knife strapped on right leg, pistol belts with attached musette bags, one phosphorus grenade and one regular hand grenade taped onto our chest harness, canteens, first aid kit, k-rations stuffed into our pockets, steel helmet and rifle. we carried cloth bandoliers for our rifle clips in place of the old-fashioned cartridge belts. our musette bags carried a minimum of shorts, sox, shaving gear, sewing kit, cigarettes, etc." after hearing mass celebrated by father john maloney and receiving a general absolution, o'keefe pulled himself into a truck and was off for germany.
easy company was about to enter its fifth country. the men had liked britain and the english people enormously. they did not like the french, who seemed to them ungrateful, sullen, lazy, and dirty. they had a special relationship with the belgians because of their intimate association with the civilians of bastogne, who had done whatever they could to support the americans.

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they loved the dutch. brave, resourceful, overwhelmingly grateful, the best organized underground in europe, cellars full of food hidden from the germans but given to the americans, clean, hard-working, honest were only some of the compliments the men showered on the dutch.
now they were going to meet the germans. for the first time they would be on front lines inside enemy territory, living with enemy civilians. and if the rumor proved true, the one that said instead of living in foxholes they were going to be billeted in german houses, they would be getting to know the germans in an intimate fashion. this would be especially true once the ruhr pocket was eliminated and the advance across central germany began. then they would be staying in a different house every night, under conditions in which the occupants would have only a few minutes notice of their arrival.
they would be coming as conquerors who had been told to distrust all germans and who had been forbidden by the nonfraternization policy to have any contact with german civilians. but except for liebgott and a few others, they had no undying hatred of the germans. many of them admired the german soldiers they had fought. webster was not alone in feeling that most of the atrocities they had heard about were propaganda. anyway they would soon see for themselves whether all the germans were nazis, and if the nazis were as bad as the allied press and radio said they were.

16 getting to know the enemy
* germany
april 2-30,1945
the reactions of the men of easy to the german people depended on their different preconceptions and experiences. some found reasons to reinforce their hatred; others loved the country and the people; nearly every one ended up changing his mind; all of them were fascinated.
the standard story of how the american g.i. reacted to the foreign people he met during the course of wwii runs like this: he felt the arabs were despicable, liars, thieves, dirty, awful, without a redeeming feature. the italians were liars, thieves, dirty, wonderful, with many redeeming features, but never to be trusted. the rural french were sullen, slow, and ungrateful while the parisians were rapacious, cunning, indifferent to whether they were cheating germans or americans. the british people were brave, resourceful, quaint, reserved, dull. the dutch were, as noted, regarded as simply wonderful in every way (but the average g.i. never was in holland, only the airborne).
the story ends up thus: wonder of wonders, the average g.i. found that the people he liked best, identified most closely with, enjoyed being with, were the germans. clean, hard-working, disciplined, educated, middle-class in their tastes and life-styles (many g.i.s noted that so far as they could tell the only people in the world who regarded a flush toilet and soft white toilet paper as a necessity were the germans and the americans), the germans seemed to many american soldiers as "just like us."
g.i.s noted, with approval, that the germans began picking up the rubble the morning after the battle had passed by, and contrasted that with the french, where no one had yet bothered to clean up the mess. obviously they noted with high approval all those young german girls and the absence of competition from young german boys. they loved the german food and beer. but most of all, they loved the german homes.
they stayed in many homes, from the rhine through bavaria to austria, sometimes a different one each night. invariably they found running hot and cold water, electric lights, a proper toilet and paper, coal for the stove.
webster wrote of this period, "coming off guard into your own home was a sensation unequaled in the army. we left the hostile blackness behind when we opened the outside door. beyond the blackout curtains a light glowed and, as we hung our rifles on the hat rack and shed our raincoats, idle chatter drifted from the kitchen and gave us a warm, settled feeling. a pot of coffee would be simmering on the stove—help yourself. reese would be telling about a shack job he had in london, while janovek, hickman, collette, and sholty played blackjack. wash your hands at the sink. this was home. this was where we belonged. a small, sociable group, a clean, well-lighted house, a cup of coffee—paradise."
even better, the men were not getting shot at, or shooting. no wonder so many of them liked germany so much. but as webster commented, "in explaining the superficial fondness of the g.i. for the germans, it might be well to remember the physical comforts which he enjoyed nowhere else in the army but in the land of his enemies."
the experiences of the men of e company in germany illustrates how much better off during the war the german people were than the people of britain, france, belgium, and holland. of course in the big cities in germany it was, by mid-april of 1945, gotterdammerung, but in the countryside and small villages, where, although there was usually some destruction at the main crossroads, the houses generally were intact, complete with creature comforts such as most people thought existed in 1945 only in america.
by no means was every g.i. seduced by the germans. webster went into germany with a complex attitude: he didn't like germans, he thought all germans were nazis, but he discounted as propaganda the stories about concentration camps and other atrocities. he found the german people "too hard-faced." he thought the french were "dead and rotting," but germany was only "a crippled tiger, licking its wounds, resting, with a burning hatred in its breast, ready to try again. and it will."
despite himself, webster was drawn to the people. "the germans i have seen so far have impressed me as clean, efficient, law-abiding people," he wrote his parents on april 14. they were churchgoers. "in germany every goes out and works and, unlike the french, who do not seem inclined to lift a finger to help themselves, the germans fill up the trenches soldiers have dug in their fields. they are cleaner, more progressive, and more ambitious than either the english or the french."1
1. writing of the g.i.s' experience with the german people and of the effect of feeling that they were "just like us," glenn gray points out, "the enemy could not have changed so quickly from a beast to a likable human being. thus, the conclusion is nearly forced upon the g.i.s that they have been previously blinded by fear and hatred and the propaganda of their own government." gray, the warriors, 152.

orders from on high were nonfraternization. g.i.s were not supposed to talk to any germans, even small children, except on official business. this absurd order, which flew in the face of human nature in so obvious a way, was impossible to enforce. officers, especially those who hated the germans, tried anyway. webster was amused by the intensity of lieutenant foley's feelings. he wrote that foley "had become such a fiend on the non-fraternization policy that he ordered all butts field-stripped (i.e. torn apart and scattered) so that the germans might derive no pleasure from american tobacco."
webster also recalled the time he and foley were picking out houses for the night. "as we walked around to the backyard for a closer inspection, we were greeted with a horrifying spectacle that aroused all the non-fraternization fervor in foley: two infantrymen sociably chatting with a couple of fraulein. unspeakable, outrageous, unmilitary, forbidden. lt. foley gave them hell and bade them be on their way. with the resigned air of men who knew the barren futility of the non-fraternization policy, the gallants sulkily departed."
it is worth pausing here to see the americans as conquerors through the microcosm of e company. they took what they wanted, but by no means did they rape, loot, pillage, and burn their way through germany. if they did not respect property rights, in the sense that they commandeered their nightly billets without compensation, at least when the germans moved back in after they left, the place was more or less intact. of course there were some rapes, some mistreatment of individual germans, and some looting, but it is simple fact to state that other conquering armies in wwii, perhaps most of all the russian but including the japanese and german, acted differently.
webster told a story that speaks to the point. "reese, who was more intent on finding women than in trading for eggs, and i made another expedition a mile west to a larger village where there were no g.i.s. like mccreary, reese tended to show an impatience with hens and a strong interest in skirts,- regardless of age or appearance, he'd tell me, 'there's a nice one. boy that's a honey. speak to her web, goddamn!' since i was shy, however, and those females invariably looked about as sociable as a fresh iceberg, i ignored his panting plaints. besides, the fraus weren't apt to be friendly in public, where the neighbors could see them. maybe indoors or at night. finally we came to a farm where a buxom peasant lass greeted us. reese smiled. after i had gotten some eggs, reese, who kept winking at her, gave her a cigarette and a chocolate bar, and, as love bloomed in the garden of d ration [a newly issued food package] and chelseas, i backed out the door and waited in the sun. no dice, reese later reported. i returned home with a helmetful of eggs, reese with a broken heart. but it was, as he said, 'good fratranizin' territory.' he tried again that night before the six o'clock curfew went into effect. no luck."
had reese been a soviet, german, or japanese soldier, this little nonincident probably would have turned out differently.
the company moved by truck from mourmelon to the ruhr pocket. the 101st took up positions on the west bank of the rhine, facing düsseldorf. the 2nd battalion's sector was from sturzelberg on the north to worringen on the south, with the 82nd airborne on the battalion's right flank. the 82nd faced cologne.
it was more an occupation position than front line. the platoons kept outposts down on the river bank, while the men stayed in homes in various small villages. there was some artillery shelling, back and forth, but not much. there was no small arms fire.
the men were on outpost each night. here private o'keefe got his initiation. one night he was on outpost with pvt. harry lager, who had also just joined the company at mourmelon, in a ready-made foxhole beside the dike. they heard a thump, thump, thump. o'keefe whispered to lager, "stay in the hole but make room for me to drop in a hurry. i'm going up on that dike to see if i can make out what that is approaching."
up on the dike, o'keefe recalled, "i couldn't see a damn thing but the noise was almost on top of me. suddenly the nose of a small tank stuck out through the fog. i yelled, 'halt, who goes there?' and ready to dive off that dike into the hole with lager."
a voice came out of the tank: "it's just a couple of limeys, and we're lost." o'keefe ordered the man to come down to be inspected. a british sergeant did so, saying, "by god, yank, are we glad to see you! we started out on that bloody dike at midnight, and we can't find our way off."
"what's making that noise?" o'keefe asked.

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"oh, that," the brit replied. "it's one of our treads. it broke. we can only travel about two miles an hour. the tread goes around but hits the ground on each rotation." o'keefe suggested that the sergeant put his crew mate out in front, walking ahead, else they might get plastered at the next check point. the sergeant said he would. o'keefe rejoined lager, glad to note that lager had them covered with his m-l the whole time. the little incident gave lager and o'keefe confidence in themselves and one another. they decided they had the hang of it.
another night, at another place along the river, o'keefe was on outpost with a recent recruit, pvt. james welling. from west virginia, welling was thirty years old, making him just about the oldest man in the company. o'keefe was the youngest. although welling had just joined the company, he was a combat veteran who had been wounded in the battle of the bulge, volunteered for paratroopers after discharge from hospital in england, made all five qualifying jumps in one day, and was now a member of the 101st.
on the outpost, they were standing in a waist-deep foxhole when a ten-ton truck came barreling along the road. "halt," o'keefe yelled, three times. no one heard him. a convoy of nine trucks, bumper to bumper, passed him by, engines roaring.
"what do you do when you yell 'halt!' and you realize that they'll never hear you?" o'keefe asked welling.
"not much you can do," he replied.
half an hour later the trucks came back, full speed, except now there were only eight trucks.
"jim, what's down that road?" o'keefe asked.
"i don't know, no said."
a quarter of an hour later captain speirs showed up, "madder than hell." he shouted at welling, "why didn't you stop those trucks? the bridge is out down there and one of those trucks is now hanging over the edge." having heard various stories about speirs's temper, o'keefe expected the worst. but welling shouted right back:
"how the hell were we going to stop nine trucks going full-bore? and why didn't someone tell us the bridge was out. hell, we didn't even know there was a bridge there."
"where's the other guard," speirs demanded.
o'keefe stepped out of a shadow with his m-l pointed about waist high and said as menacingly as he could, "right here, sir." speirs grunted and left.
a night or so later, a jeep came along, no lights. welling called out "halt!" the jeep contained captain speirs, another captain, and a major in the back seat. welling said the password. speirs gave the countersign in a normal conversational tone. welling couldn't make out what he had said and repeated the challenge. speirs answered in the same tone; welling still didn't hear him. tense and a bit confused, o'keefe lined up his m-l on the major in the back. he looked closely and realized it was winters.
welling gave the password for the third time. the captain who was driving finally realized welling had not heard and yelled out the countersign. speirs jumped out of the jeep and started to curse out welling.
welling cut him off. "when i say 'halt!' i mean 'halt!' when i give the password, i expect to hear the countersign." speirs started sputtering about what he was going to do to welling when winters interrupted. "let's go, captain," he said in a low voice. as they drove off, winters called out to welling, "good job."
there were patrols across the rhine, seldom dangerous except for the strong current in the flooded river, nearly 350 meters wide. when winters got orders on april 8 to send a patrol to the other side, he decided to control the patrol from an observation post to make certain no one got hurt. winters set the objectives and controlled the covering artillery concentration, then monitored the patrol step by step up the east bank of the river. lieutenant welsh, battalion s-2, accompanied him and was disgusted with the safety limits winters insisted on. "we went through the motions of a combat patrol," winters remembered, "and found nothing. everyone returned safely."
most patrols were similarly unsuccessful. malarkey reported that a replacement officer took out a patrol, got across the river, advanced several hundred yards inland, drew fire from a single rifleman, reported over the radio that he had met stiff resistance, and withdrew to friendly territory, to the mingled relief and disgust of his men.
a couple of days later, things didn't work out so well. the patrol leader was maj. william leach, recently promoted and made regimental s-2 by sink. he had been ribbed unmercifully back at mourmelon when his gold leaves came through: "when are you going to take out a patrol, leach?" his fellow officers asked. he had never been in combat and consequently had no decorations. characterized by winters as "a good staff officer who made his way up the ladder on personality and social expertise," leach wanted to make a career out of the army. for that, he felt he needed a decoration.
the night of april 12, leach set out at the head of a four-man patrol from the s-2 section at regimental hq. but he made one fatal mistake: he failed to tell anyone he was going. easy company men on outpost duty heard the splashing of the boat the patrol was using as it crossed the river. as far as they were concerned, unless they had been told of an american patrol at such and such a time, any boat in the river contained enemy troops. they opened up on it; quickly the machine-guns joined in. the fire ripped the boat apart and hit all the men in it, including leach. ignoring the pitiful cries of the wounded, drowning in the river, the machine-gunners kept firing bursts at them until their bodies drifted away. they were recovered some days later downstream. in the judgment of the company, leach and four men had "perished in a most unnecessary, inexcusable fashion because he had made an obvious and unpardonable mistake."
that day the company got the news that president roosevelt had died. winters wrote in his day book, "sgt. malley [of f company]—good news—made 1st sgt. bad news—pres. roosevelt died."
"i had come to take roosevelt for granted," webster wrote his parents, "like spring and easter lilies, and now that he is gone, i feel a little lost."
eisenhower ordered all unit commanders to hold a short memorial service for roosevelt on sunday, april 14. easy company did it by platoons. lieutenant foley, who "never was much enamored with roosevelt," gathered his platoon. he had a st. joseph missal in his musette bag - in it he found a prayer. he read it out to the men, and later claimed to be "the only man who ever buried franklin d. as a catholic."
overall, easy's time on the rhine, guarding the ruhr pocket, was boring. "time hung so heavily," a disgusted webster wrote, "that we began to have daily rifle inspections. otherwise, we did nothing but stand guard on the crossroads at night and listen to a short current events lecture by lieutenant foley during the day." with their high energy level and the low demands on them, the men turned to sports. they found some rackets and balls and played tennis on a backyard court, or softball in a nearby field. webster was no athlete, but he had a high level of curiosity. one day he realized "the fulfillment of a lifetime ambition," when he and pvt. john janovek scaled a 250-foot-high factory smokestack. when they got to the top, they had a magnificent view across the river. to webster, "the ruhr seemed absolutely lifeless," even though "everywhere we looked there were factories, foundries, steel mills, sugar plants, and sheet-metal works. it looked like chicago, pittsburgh, and st. louis decentralized."
on april 18, all german resistance in the ruhr pocket came to an end. more than 325,000 german soldiers surrendered.
easy was put to guarding a displaced persons' camp at dormagen. there were poles, czechs, belgians, dutch, french, russians, and others from different parts of nazi-occupied europe in the camp, tens of thousands. they lived in a common barracks, segregated by sex, crowded, all but starving in many cases, representing all ranges of age. once liberated, their impulse was to catch up on their rest and their fun, so sadly lacking for the past few years. webster reported that they "were contentedly doing nothing. they had worked hard under the germans, and eaten little. now they would rest."
their happiness, singing, and willingness to do favors for the soldiers endeared them to the men of easy. kp was now a thing of the past. no member of easy ever peeled a potato after this point or swept a room or washed a mess kit or policed the area. there were always d.p.s for that, especially as the americans were so generous in paying.
more than a few men took along a combination son and servant. luz practically adopted a thin little boy, muchik, who wore battered shoes much too large. his parents had died in the slave labor camp. muchik's big dark eyes and bright energetic demeanor were irresistible to luz. he got muchik a uniform of sorts and brought him along for the tour of germany, teaching him the fundamentals of army profanity as they rode along. as the division history notes, "though strict orders were given that no d.p.s were to be taken along, some of the personnel spoke very broken english, never appeared in formations, and seemed to do a great deal of kitchen police."

yuemuping

2. rapport and northwood, rendezvous with destiny, 715.

in short, easy was about to depart on a tour of germany that would be first-class in every way. comfortable homes each night, great food and wine, free to take almost whatever they wanted, being driven along an autobahn reserved for them, riding at a leisurely pace on big rubber tires, with wondrous sights to see, the dramatic alps on one side, the dramatic disintegration of what had been the most feared army in the world on the other, with servants to care for their every need.
except one. they would have loved to have brought some of the dp girls along, but they did no better with them than they had with the german girls. like g.i.s everywhere, they assumed that a d ration and a couple of chelseas were the key to any woman's heart, only to be disappointed.
the second-generation czechs and poles in the company had been especially excited. they spent all their spare time, night and day, using their limited language ability to court the stocky, balloon-chested peasant girls of their fathers' native lands. but contrary to their expectations, the girls, with their catholic upbringing and central european background, were chaste.
for webster, the effect of the d.p. camp was to stir up his hatred of the germans. "why were these people here?" he asked himself about the d.p.s. they had done nothing, had no politics, committed no crime, possessed nothing. they were there because the nazis needed their labor.
"there was germany and all it stood for," webster concluded. "the germans had taken these people from their homes and sentenced them to work for life in a factory in the third reich. babies and old women, innocent people condemned to live in barracks behind barbed wire, to slave twelve hours a day for an employer without feeling or consideration, to eat beet soup, mouldy potatoes, and black bread. this was the third reich, this was the new order: work till you died. with cold deliberation the germans had enslaved the populace of europe." so far as webster was concerned, "the german people were guilty, every one of them."
the guard duty lasted only a few days. back on the rhine, winters instituted a training schedule that included reveille, inspection, calisthenics and close-order drill, squad tactics, map reading, and so forth. the day ended with retreat. it was like being back in basic training, and much resented.
as always in a rear echelon area, rank was being pulled, widening the distance between the enlisted men and the officers. lt. ralph d. richey, a gung-ho replacement officer serving as battalion s-l, was particularly obnoxious. one day he had the company lined up for inspection. an old german woman rode her bicycle innocently through the ranks. richie became so enraged that he fetched her a blow that knocked her off her bicycle. she burst into tears; he stormed at her and ordered her to move on. the men were disgusted by his behavior.
the following day the company made a forced 5-mile speed march, lieutenant richey leading. the men rolled up their sleeves and carried their weapons as comfortably as possible. richey was furious. he halted the company and gave the men hell. "i have never seen such a sloppy company," he shouted. "there are 120 men in this company and i see 120 different ways of carrying a rifle. and you guys think you're soldiers!"
the incident set webster off on a tirade. "here was a man who had made us ashamed of our uniform railing at us for being comfortable on a speed march," he wrote. "here was the army. officers are gentlemen, i'll do as i damn please. no back talk. you're a private. you can't think. if you were any good, you'd be an officer. here, carry my bedroll. sweep my room. clean my carbine. yes sir. why didn't you salute? you didn't see me! well, by god, go back and salute properly. the loonies, god bless 'em. privileges before responsibilities."
not all officers were like richey, captain speirs, for all his bluster and reputation, cared for the men. sensing their boredom, he arranged a sightseeing trip to cologne. he wanted them to see the city and the effects of air bombardment (cologne was one of the most heavily bombed cities in germany).
two things most impressed the men. first, the extent of the destruction. every window was shattered, every church had been hit, every side street was blocked with rubble. the magnificent cathedral in the center of town had been damaged but had survived. the giant statue of bismarck on a horse was still standing, but bismarck's sword, pointing toward france, had been cut off by flying shrapnel.
a group of easy men wandered to the rhine, where they began pointing and laughing at the grotesque ruins of the hedngebüicke, or suspension bridge. an elderly german couple stood beside them. to the shame of the americans, the germans began to cry and shake their heads. all their beautiful bridges had been twisted and mangled, and here were american boys laughing.
the second impression was not of destruction but of people. lieutenant foley noted that "the residents, on their own volition, were determined to clean up and sweep out the ruins of war. along most of the streets there were neat stacks of salvageable cobble stones. house were worked on to remove the debris. they were still in bad shape, yet they appeared almost ready to be rebuilt. amazing."
april 19 was a big day for the company. the division quartermaster handed out thirty-four pairs of socks per platoon, or about one pair for each man, plus three bottles of coca-cola (accompanied by stern orders to turn in the bottles) and two bottles of american beer per man. the men got paid for february and march, in the form of allied military marks; these were their first marks and they were ordered to turn in all their french, british, dutch, belgian, and american money for marks.
on april 22 the company loaded up in the german version of the 40-and-8s. the cars had been sprayed with ddt and filled with straw. each man got five k rations.
they were off to bavaria and the alps. bradley had assigned the 101st to u.s. seventh army. its objectives were munich, innsbruck, and the brenner pass. the purpose was to get american troops into the alps before the germans could create a redoubt there from which to continue the war. hitler's eagle's nest in berchtesgaden was the presumed hq for this combination last stand and the beginning of a guerrilla war against the occupiers. eisenhower's biggest fear was that hitler would get to the eagle's nest, where he would be well protected and have radio facilities he could use to broadcast to the german people to continue the resistance or begin guerrilla warfare.
it turned out that the germans had neither serious plans nor sufficient resources to build a mountain redoubt, but remember we are only four months away from a time when everyone assumed the german army was kaput, only to be hit by the bulge. so the fear was there, but the reality was that in its drive to berchtesgaden, easy was as much as 100 miles behind the front line, in a reserve position, never threatened. the company's trip through germany was more a grand tour than a fighting maneuver.
the tour began with a 200-kilometer train ride through four countries. so great was the allied destruction of the german rail system that to get from the ruhr to southern germany it was necessary to go through holland, belgium, luxembourg, and france. the men rode in open cars, sleeping, singing, swinging their feet out the doors, sunbathing on the roof of the 40-and-8. popeye wynn led them in endless choruses of the eto theme song, "roll me over in the clover."
the train passed within 25 miles of bastogne. the division history commented, "the occasional evidence of the bitter fighting of three months before made the hair rise on the necks of many of the veterans of bastogne. but at the same time, remembering only snow, cold, and dark and ominous forests, they were surprised at the beauty of the rolling lands under the new green of spring."3
3. rapport and northwood, rendezvous with destiny, 723.

they got back into germany and then to the rhine at ludwigshafen, where they got off the train and switched to a vehicle called dukw: d (1942), u (amphibian), k (all-wheel drive), w (dual rear axles). these dukws had come in with the invasion of the south of france. these were the first e company had seen.
the dukw was outstanding in every respect, but because it was a hybrid, neither the war nor the navy department ever really got behind it. only 21,000 were built in the course of the war.
the men of e company wished it had been 210,000, or even 2,100,000. a dukw could carry twenty fully equipped riflemen in considerable comfort. it could make 5 knots in a moderate sea, 50 miles per hour on land riding on oversized rubber tires. it was a smooth-riding vehicle, without the bounce of the deuce-and-a-half g.i. truck or the springless jarring of the jeep. webster said the dukw "rides softly up and down, like a sailboat in a gentle swell."
they crossed the rhine on the ernie pyle bridge, a pontoon structure built by the engineers, and headed toward munich. they went through heidelberg, and webster was entranced. "when we saw all the undamaged buildings and the beautiful river promenade, where complacent civilians strolled in the sun, i was ready to stay in heidelberg forever. the green hills, the warm sunlight, the cool, inviting river, the mellow collegiate atmosphere—heidelberg spelled paradise in any language."
from then on the convoy traveled a circuitous route southeast, skirting mountains, on main roads and side paths. all the while, webster wrote, "we marveled at the breathtaking beauty of germany. as a writer said in the 'new yorker,' it seemed a pity to waste such country on the germans."
in midafternoon, speirs would send sergeants carson and malarkey on ahead to pick out a company cp in such-and-such a village. they were to get the best house and reserve the best bedroom for captain speirs.
carson had high school german. he would pick the place, knock on the door, and tell the germans they had five minutes to get out, and they were not to take any bedding with them. give them more than five minutes, speirs had told them, they will take everything with them.
once the advance party came on an apartment complex three stories high, perfect for hq and most of the company. carson knocked on doors and told tenants, "raus in funf minuten." they came pouring out, crying, lamenting, frightened. "i knocked on this one door," carson recalled, "and an elderly lady answered. i looked at her and she stared at me. god, it was a picture of my own grandmother. our eyes met and i said, 'bleib hiei,' or stay here."
malarkey picked up the story. "then speirs would finally show up and you wouldn't see speirs for about two or three hours. he was the worst looter i ever saw. he couldn't sleep at night thinking there was a necklace or something around." whenever he got a chance, speirs would mail his loot back to his wife in england. he needed the money it would bring; his wife had just had a baby.
nearly all the men of easy, like nearly all the men in eto, participated in the looting. it was a phenomenon of war. thousands of men who had never before in their lives taken something of value that did not belong to them began taking it for granted that whatever they wanted was theirs. the looting was profitable, fun, low-risk, and completely in accord with the practice of every conquering army since alexander the great's time.

yuemuping

lugers, nazi insignia, watches, jewelry, first editions of mein kampf, liquor, were among the most sought-after items. anything any german soldier had was fair game; looting from civilians was frowned upon, but it happened anyway. money was not highly valued. sgt. edward heffron and medic ralph spina caught a half-dozen german soldiers in a house. the germans surrendered,- heffron and spina took their watches, a beautiful set of binoculars, and so forth. they spotted a strong box on the shelf. spina opened it; it was a wehrmacht payroll in marks. they took it. in spina's words, "there we were two boys from south philly who just pulled off a payroll caper with a carbine and a pistol." back at their apartment, heffron and spina debated what to do with the money as they knocked back a bottle of cognac. in the morning they went to mass at the catholic church and gave the money away to the worshippers, "with the exception of some bills of large denominations which we split up," spina confessed. "we weren't that drunk not to keep any for ourselves."
they took vehicles, of all types, private and army. pvt. norman neitzke, who had come in at haguenau, remembered the time his squad started to drive away in a german ambulance only to find that a german doctor with a pregnant woman was in the back trying to deliver a baby. the americans hopped out. one morning lieutenant richey grabbed the camera of a german woman photographing the convoy. but instead of taking it, he threw it on the ground and shot it with his pistol. this earned him the nickname "the camera killer."
contact with the enemy picked up as the convoy moved southeast, but not in the sense of combat. the men began to see german soldiers in small groups, trying to surrender. then larger groups. finally, more field gray uniforms than anyone could have imagined existed.
easy company was in the midst of a german army in disintegration. the supply system lay in ruins. all the german soldiers wanted was a safe entry into a p.o.w. cage. "i couldn't get over the sensation of having the germans, who only a short time ago had been so difficult to capture, come in from the hills like sheep and surrender," webster wrote. when the convoy reached the autobahn leading east to munich, the road was reserved for allied military traffic, the median for germans marching west to captivity. gordon carson recalled that "as far as you could see in the median were german prisoners, fully armed. no one would stop to take their surrender. we just waved."
webster called the sight of the germans in the median "a tingling spectacle." they came on "in huge blocks. we saw the unbelievable spectacle of two g.i.s keeping watch on some 2,500 enemy." at that moment the men of the company realized that the german collapse was complete, that there would be no recovery this spring as there had been last fall.
there was still some scattered, sporadic resistance. every single bridge was destroyed by german engineers as the allies approached. occasionally a fanatic ss unit would fire from its side of the stream. it was more an irritant than a threat or danger. the americans would bring forward some light artillery, drive the ss troops away, and wait for the engineers to repair the old or make a new bridge.
winters was struck by the german fanaticism, the discipline that led german engineers to blow their own bridges when the uselessness of the destruction was clear to any idiot, and "the total futility of the war. here was a german army trying to surrender and walking north along the autobahn, while at the same time another group was blowing out the bridges to slow down the surrender."
on april 29 the company stopped for the night at buchloe, in the foothills of the alps, near landsberg. here they saw their first concentration camp. it was a work camp, not an extermination camp, one of the half-dozen or more that were a part of the dachau complex. but although it was relatively small and designed to produce war goods, it was so horrible that it was impossible to fathom the enormity of the evil. prisoners in their striped pajamas, three-quarters starved, by the thousands; corpses, little more than skeletons, by the hundreds.
winters found stacks of huge wheels of cheese in the cellar of a building he was using for the battalion cp and ordered it distributed to the inmates. he radioed to regiment to describe the situation and ask for help.
the company stayed in buchloe for two nights. thus it was present in the morning when the people of landsberg turned out, carrying rakes, brooms, shovels, and marched off to the camp. general taylor, it turned out, had been so incensed by the sight that he had declared martial law and ordered everyone from fourteen to eighty years of age to be rounded up and sent to the camp, to bury the bodies and clean up the place. that evening the crew came back down the road from the camp. some were still vomiting.
"the memory of starved, dazed men," winters wrote, "who dropped their eyes and heads when we looked at them through the chain-link fence, in the same manner that a beaten, mistreated dog would cringe, leaves feelings that cannot be described and will never be forgotten. the impact of seeing those people behind that fence left me saying, only to myself, 'now i know why i am here!' "

17 drinking hitler's champagne
*
berchtesgaden
may 1-8,1945
on the first two days of may, the company drove south from munich, moving slowly through streams of german soldiers walking in the opposite direction. often there were more german soldiers with weapons going north than there were americans going south. "we looked at each other with great curiosity," winters remembered. "i am sure both armies shared one thought—just let me alone. all i want is to get this over with and go home."
on may 3, colonel sink got orders to have the 506th ready to move out at 0930 the following day, objective berchtesgaden.
berchtesgaden was a magnet for the troops of all the armies in southern germany, austria, and northern italy. south of salzburg, the bavarian mountain town of berchtesgaden was valhalla for the nazi gods, lords, and masters. hitler had a home there and a mountain-top stone retreat called the aldershorst (eagle's nest) 8,000 feet high. thanks to a remarkable job of road building, cars could get to a parking place within a few hundred feet of the aldershorst. there a shaft ran into the center of the mountain to an elevator which lifted into the aldershorst. the walls of the elevator were gold leaf.
it was to berchtesgaden that the leaders of europe had come in the late 1930s to be humiliated by hitler. daladier of france, mussolini of italy, schuschnigg of austria, chamberlain of britain, and others. they had feared hitler, as had the whole world. now that hitler was dead, the fear was removed, but that only highlighted the fascination with hitler and his favorite retreat, which seemed to hold one of the keys to his character.
it was to berchtesgaden that the highest-ranking nazi leadership had flocked, to be near their führer. himmler, goering, goebbels, martin bormann had houses in the area. there was a fabulous apartment complex for the ss.
it was to the berchtesgaden area that much of the loot collected by the nazis from all over europe had come. the place was stuffed with money, in gold and in currency from a dozen countries, with art treasures (goering's collection alone contained five rembrandts, a van gogh, a renoir, and much more). it was bursting with booze, jewelry, fabulous cars.
so berchtesgaden was really two magnets: the symbolic home of hitler's mad lust for power, and the best looting possibilities in europe. every wanted to get there—french advancing side by side with the 101st, british coming up from italy, german leaders who wanted to get their possessions, and every american in europe.
easy company got there first.
on may 4, the 101st moved out by convoy down the autobahn between munich and salzburg, with 2nd battalion in the lead. the americans passed rosenheim and the chiem see. at siegsdorf they turned right on the direct highway to berchtesgaden. about 14 kilometers down the road, they ran into the tail of the french 2nd armored division, the first division to enter paris, with its famous commander gen. jacques philippe leclerc.
the 2nd armored supposedly had been on the right flank of the 101st for the past week, but the americans had not been able to keep in touch with it. the french were there one minute, gone the next. so far as the americans could make out, they were looting their way through germany. whenever they got a truck load or two of loot, they'd send it back home to france. now they were lusting to get into berchtesgaden, only an hour's drive or so up into the mountains to the south. but the french were stopped by a blown bridge over a deep ravine. they did not have bridging equipment, and some ss fanatics were holding out on the south side of the ravine, using automatic weapons and mortars.
easy company and the remainder of 2nd battalion began mixing in with the french, everyone standing around watching a long-range, useless exchange of fire while waiting for the 101st engineers to come forward. winters asked sink if he wanted to send a platoon to outflank the german roadblock. "no," sink replied, "i don't want any to get hurt."
that was sensible. there was no point to taking casualties at this stage of the war. but there was berchtesgaden, just on the other side of the roadblock, almost in hand. sink changed his mind. "take the 2nd battalion back to the autobahn," he told winters, "and see if you can outflank this roadblock and get to berchtesgaden." if he succeeded, sink wanted him to reserve the famous berchtesgaden hof for regimental hq.
winters led the battalion on a backtrack to the autobahn, then east to bad reichenhall, where another blown bridge stopped the americans for the night. the following morning, may 5, with easy company leading the way, the 2nd battalion drove unopposed to berchtesgaden and took the town without having to fire a shot.
it was like a fairy-tale land. the snow-capped mountains, the dark green woods, the tinkling icy creeks, the gingerbread houses, the quaint and colorful dress of the natives, provided a delight for the eye. the food, liquor, accommodations, and large number of luftwaffe and wehrmacht service women, plus camp followers of various types, provided a delight for the .
accommodations were the first order of business. winters and lieutenant welsh went to the berchtesgaden hof. as they walked in the front door of the hotel, they could see the backs of the service personnel disappear around the corner. they went into the main dining room, where they saw a waiter putting together a large set of silverware in a four-foot-long velvet-lined case.
there was no need for orders. winters and welsh simply walked toward the man, who took off. the americans split the silverware between them. forty-five years later, both men were still using the berchtesgaden hof's silverware in their homes.

yuemuping

after getting what he most wanted out of the place, winters then put a double guard on the hotel "to stop further looting," as he put it—with a straight face—in one of our interviews. but, he berated himself, "what a fool i was not to open the place to the 2nd battalion," because when regimental and then divisional hq arrived, they took everything movable.
winters picked one of the homes of nazi officials, perched on the hillside climbing the valley out of berchtesgaden, for his battalion hq. he told lieutenant cowing, his s-4, to go to the place and tell the people they had fifteen minutes to get out. cowing was a replacement officer who had joined up in mid-february, back in haguenau. he had not been hardened by battle. he returned a few minutes later to tell winters, "the people said no, they would not move out."
"follow me," winters declared. he went to the front door, knocked, and when a woman answered, he announced, "we are moving in. now!" and he and his staff did just that, as the germans disappeared somewhere.
"did i feel guilty about this?" winters asked himself in the interview. "did my conscience bother me about taking over this beautiful home? no! we had been living in foxholes in normandy, we had been in the mud at holland, the snow in bastogne. just a few days earlier, we'd seen a concentration camp. these people were the reason for all this suffering. i had no sympathy for their problem, nor did i feel that i owed them an explanation."
nor did the enlisted men have the slightest problem, physical or psychological, in taking over the ss barracks, an alpine-style apartment house block that was the latest thing in modern design, plumbing, and interior decoration. officers and sergeants got sumptuous homes of nazi officials perched on the mountainsides overlooking berchtesgaden.
winters set up the guard around town, mainly to direct traffic and to gather up surrendering german troops to send them to p.o.w. cages in the rear. private heffron was thus in command at a crossroads when a convoy of thirty-one vehicles came down from the mountain. at its head was gen. theodor tolsdorf, commander of the lxxxii corps. he was quite a character, a thirty-five-year-old prussian who had almost set the record for advancement in the wehrmacht. he had been wounded eleven times and was known to his men as tolsdorf the mad because of his recklessness with their lives and his own. of more interest to e company men, he had been in command of the 340th volks-grenadier division on january 3 in the bitter fighting in the bois jacques and around foy and noville.
tolsdorf expected to surrender with full honors, then be allowed to live in a p.o.w. camp in considerable style. his convoy was loaded with personal baggage, liquor, cigars and cigarettes, along with plenty of accompanying girlfriends. heffron was the first american the party encountered. he stopped the convoy; tolsdorf said he wished to surrender; heffron summoned a nearby 2nd lieutenant; tolsdorf sent the lieutenant off to find someone of more suitable rank; heffron, meanwhile, seized the opportunity to liberate general tolsdorf's luger and briefcase. in the briefcase he found a couple of iron crosses and 500 pornographic photographs. he thought to himself, a kid from south philly has a kraut general surrender to him, that is pretty good.
everyone was grabbing loot at a frantic pace. german soldiers were everywhere—wehrmacht, waffen ss, luftwaffe, officers, noncoms, privates—looking for someone to surrender to, and dog, easy, and fox companies of the 506th were the first to get to them. from these soldiers, webster wrote his parents on may 13, "we obtained pistols, knives, watches, furlined coats, camouflaged jump jackets. most of the germans take it in pretty good spirit, but once in a while we get an individual who does not want to be relieved of the excess weight of his watch. a pistol flashed in his face, however, can persuade any. i now have a luger, two p-38's, a schmeissere machine pistol, two jump smocks, one camouflaged winter jacket, several nazi flags about three feet by two, and a watch."
the eagle's nest had been thoroughly worked over by the army air force. the elevator to it had been put out of action. but to men who had been up and down currahee innumerable times, the climb to the top was more a stroll than a challenge. alton more was one of the first to get there. in the rubble, he found two of hitler's photo albums filled with pictures of the famous politicians of europe who had been hitler's guests. an officer from the company demanded that more turn over the albums to him. more refused. the officer threatened to court-martial him.
more was in malarkey's platoon. malarkey ran to battalion hq to see winters. he explained the situation. winters told his jeep driver to "take malarkey back to his quarters and return with private more and all his gear." when more arrived, winters made him a driver for battalion hq. thus was more able to take the albums home with him to casper, wyoming.
with lodging taken care of, and having looted more than they could carry or could ever hope to get home, the next thing these young americans needed was a set of wheels. no problem: in the vehicle parks in and around town there were german army trucks, sedans, volkswagens, and more, while scattered through town and in the garages attached to the hillside homes were luxury automobiles. sergeant hale got a mercedes fire engine, complete with bell, siren, and flashing blue lights. sergeant talbert got one of hitler's staff cars, with bulletproof doors and windows. sergeant carson got hermann goering's car, "the most beautiful car i have ever seen. we were like kids jumping up and down. we were kings of the road. we found captain speirs. he immediately took over the wheel and off we went, through berchtesgaden, thru the mountain roads, thru the country with its picture-book farms.
as more brass poured into berchtesgaden on may 7 and 8, it was more difficult for a captain to hold onto a mercedes. speirs got orders to turn it over to regiment. carson and bill howell were hanging around the car when speirs delivered the sad message.
carson asked howell if he thought those windows really were bulletproof. howell wondered too. so they paced off ten yards from the left rear window, aimed their m-1s and fired. the window shattered into a thousand pieces. they gathered up the broken glass and walked away just as a captain from regiment came to pick up the car.
before talbert turned over his mercedes, he too did some experimenting. he was able to report to winters that the windows were bulletproof, but that if you used armor-piercing ammo, it would get the job done. winters thanked him for his research, agreeing that one never knew when this kind of information would come in handy.
the men tried another experiment. they drained the water from the radiator of the mercedes, to see if it could run without it. with a third luxury car, they decided that before turning it in they would see if it could survive a 30-meter crash, so they pushed it over a cliff.
so the brass got luxury automobiles without windows or water, or wrecks (talbert's mercedes burned out the engine trying to climb the road to the eagle's nest). the men ended up with trucks, motorcycles, volkswagens, scout cars, and the like, which were good enough, and anyway the fuel came as free as the vehicle. the americans would just fill up and drive off.
"it was a unique feeling," winters recalled. "you can't imagine such power as we had. whatever we wanted, we just took."
with lodging and wheels taken care of, the next thing was liquor. every cellar held some wine, but the greatest cache of all was discovered by one of the few nondrinkers in the battalion, major winters. on may 6, scouting on his own, he found goering's officers quarters and club. in one room he found a dead german general, in full dress uniform, a bullet through his head, ear to ear, a pistol in his hand. he was a two-star general later identified as kastner.
winters wandered around, kicking open doors, when "lord! i had never seen anything like this before." in a vaulted cellar, 15 meters by 10 meters, there were row after row of liquor racks stretching from floor to ceiling. the brand names covered the world. the later estimate was that the room held 10,000 bottles. winters put a double guard on the officer's club entrance, and another on the cellar. and he issued an order: no more liquor, every man in the battalion was to go on the wagon for seven days.
commenting in 1990 on this improbable order, winters said, "now, i am no fool. you don't expect an order like that to be carried out 100 percent, but the message was clear—keep this situation under control. i don't want a drunken brawl!"
that afternoon, winters called captain nixon to him. "nix," he said, "you sober up, and i'll show you something you have never seen before in your life."
the next morning, may 7, nixon came to winters, sober, and asked, "what was that you said yesterday that you were going to show me?" winters got a jeep, and they drove to the officer's club. when winters opened the door to the cellar, "nixon thought that he had died and gone to heaven."
he was sure he had when winters said, "take what you want, then have each company and battalion hq bring around a truck and take a truckload. you are in charge."
an alcoholic's dream come true, paradise beyond deion. first choice of all that he could carry from one of the world's great collections, then a chance to let his friends have all they wanted, and the perfect excuse to celebrate, the end of the war had come, and he was still alive.
for the consequences, see the photograph of nixon on the morning of may 8.
for the company as a whole, the celebration was grand and irresistible. despite winters' orders, and despite regular guard duty rotation, there was a party. there had to be: on may 7 the germans surrendered in reims to general eisenhower, and word was flashed around europe to cease fire, take away the blackout curtains, and let the light of peace shine out. news of the german surrender, winston churchill said, was "the signal for the greatest outburst of joy in the history of mankind." the men of easy company saw to it that berchtesgaden participated in the party to the full.
once the distribution of goering's wine had taken place, carson recalled that "you could hear the champagne corks going off all day long." as the celebration got noisier, captain speirs began to grow a bit worried that it would become excessive. sergeant mercier, remembered by private o'keefe as "our most professional soldier," got into the spirit of the day when he dressed in a full german officer's uniform, topped off with a monocle for his right eye. someone got the bright idea to march him over to the company orderly room and turn him in at rifle point to captain speirs.
someone got word to speirs before mercier showed up. when troopers brought mercier up to speirs's desk, prodding him with bayonets, speirs did not look up. one of the troopers snapped a salute and declared, "sir, we have captured this german officer. what should we do with him?"
"take him out and shoot him," speirs replied, not looking up.
"sir," mercier called out, "sir, please, sir, it's me, sergeant mercier."
"mercier, get out of that silly uniform," speirs ordered.
shortly thereafter, he called the company together. he said he noted that the men who were relatively new to the company were celebrating out of proportion to their contribution to the victory. he wanted it toned down. no more shooting off of weapons for example, and especially not of german weapons, which made everyone jumpy when they went off.
but trying to stop the celebration was like trying to stop the tide. not even speirs could resist. back in company hq, he and sergeant carson sat in the orderly room, popping champagne bottles, throwing the empties out the french doors. soon there was a pile of empties outside. speirs and carson went to the balcony for some fresh air. they looked at the bottles.
"are you any good with that .45 pistol?" speirs asked. carson said he was.