Band of Brothers

19 POSTWAR CAREERS

*

1945-1991

Forty-eight members of Easy Company had given their lives for their country. More than 100 had been wounded, many of them severely, some twice, a few three times, one four times. Most had suffered stress, often severe. All had given what they regarded as the best years of their lives to the war. They were trained killers, accustomed to carnage and quick, violent reactions. Few of them had any college education before the war,- the only skill most of them possessed was that of combat infantryman.

They came out determined to make up for lost time. They rushed to college, using the G.I. Bill of Rights, universally praised by the veterans as the best piece of legislation the United States Government ever conceived. They got married and had kids as quickly as possible. Then they set out to build a life for themselves.

They were remarkably successful, primarily because of their own determination, ambition, and hard work, partly thanks to what they had taken from their Army experience that was positive. In the Army they had learned self-confidence, self-discipline, and obedience, that they could endure more than they had ever thought possible, that they could work with other people as part of a team. They had volunteered for the paratroopers because they had wanted to be with the best and to be the best that they could be. They had succeeded. They wanted nothing less from civilian life, and there too they succeeded.

They had a character like a rock, these members of the generation born between 1910 and 1928. They were the children of the Depression, fighters in the greatest war in history, builders of and participants in the postwar boom. They accepted a hand-up in the G.I. Bill, but they never took a handout. They made their own way. A few of them became rich, a few became powerful, almost all of them built their houses and did their jobs and raised their families and lived good lives, taking full advantage of the freedom they had helped to preserve.

It seems appropriate to start with the severely wounded. Cpl. Walter Gordon had been shot in the back at Bastogne and paralyzed. After six weeks in hospital in England, lying helplessly in his Crutchfield tongs, he began to have some feelings in his extremities. He had been helped by Dr. Stadium, who would stand at the foot of his bed and provoke him: "You're nothing but a damned goldbrick, Gordon." Gordon would stiffen, snap back, get angry. Because Stadium would not give up on him, Gordon says, "It never occurred to me that I could be a hopeless cripple."

When the tongs came off, Stadium got him to walking, or at least shuffling. In the spring of 1945, Gordon was listed as "walking wounded" and sent by hospital ship back to the States, where he slowly recuperated in Lawson General Hospital in Atlanta. He was there when the war in Europe ended. He walked with pain in the back, he sat with pain in the back, he slept with it. Any physical work was far beyond his capabilities; he was obviously of no further use to the Army. By the middle of June, his father was demanding to know when he would be discharged. "I don't know," was all Gordon could reply.

On June 16, Gordon had an examination. The young doctor then told him he was being transferred to Fort Benning, listed as fit for limited duty. So far as Gordon could make out, his reason was: "Nerve wounds are slow to heal, and to discharge a veteran with my degree of disability would justify a substantial award of compensation. By retaining me for additional months, my condition would no doubt improve."

Gordon called his father to give him the news. His father went into a tirade. "He pointed out to me that I had been wounded twice, and was now, in his words, a cripple. He felt that I had done my fair share and the time had come for me to return home."

Then he gave his son an order to pass along a message to the Army doctor.

Gordon did as told, although with some embarrassment. He began by running on about how this was a message from his father and that he disavowed any connection with it.

"Get on with it!" the doctor barked, indicating how busy he was.

"My father says to tell you that if I am sent to any location other than home, he will come fetch me and fly me to Washington, D.C., and, if necessary, strip me to the waist on the floor of the Senate."

The doc's face fell. Gordon thought it read, "Oh my God, that's all I need is a Mississippi Senator on my case. That's a ticket to the Pacific. Get him out of here."

Aloud he said, "O.K., immediate discharge with full disability." He saw to it that Gordon got a new uniform, took him to the dentist to have his teeth filled, and got him paid off.

Gordon went to law school at Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee. With his 100 percent disability bringing in $200 a month, plus his G.I. Bill benefits, "I was a rich student." A good one, too. He passed the Mississippi Bar even before finishing his law degree, "so I was a licensed attorney still going to school." After graduation, he worked for several major companies in the oil business in south Louisiana. In 1951 he met Betty Ludeau in Acapulco, Mexico, on a vacation. They married a year later, moved to Lafayette, Louisiana, and began what became a family of five children, four of them girls. "I realized that I did not have sufficient salary to support Betty in the manner in which she required," Gordon relates, "so I became an independent."

He went into a high-risk business, buying and selling oil leases, speculating on futures. He was successful at it. The Gordons today have a home in Lafayette and apartments in Pass Christian, Mississippi, New Orleans, and Acapulco. He still has pain, walks with some difficulty, but the Gordons are blessed with wonderful children and grandchildren, they are still in love, they love to tell jokes on themselves, it's been a good life.

"And so what did the Army mean to you?" I asked at the end of our three days of interviewing.

"The most significant three years of my life," Gordon replied. "It had the most awesome effect. I developed friendships which to this day are the most significant that I have. I'm most incredibly lucky that I got through it and even more fortunate that I was with this group of outstanding men."

In December, 1991, Gordon saw a story in the Gulfport Sun Herald. It related that Mayor Jan Ritsema of Eindhoven, Holland, had refused to meet General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, because the commander of the UN forces in the Gulf War had "too much blood on his hands." Ritsema said of Schwarzkopf, "He is the person who devised the most efficient way possible to kill as many people as possible."

Gordon wrote to Mayor Ritsema: "On September 17, 1944 I participated in the large airborne operation which was conducted to liberate your country. As a member of company E, 506th PIR, I landed near the small town of Son. The following day we moved south and liberated Eindhoven. While carrying out our assignment, we suffered casualties. That is war talk for bleeding. We occupied various defense positions for over two months. Like animals, we lived in holes, barns, and as best we could. The weather was cold and wet. In spite of the adverse conditions, we held the ground we had fought so hard to capture.

"The citizens of Holland at that time did not share your aversion to bloodshed when the blood being shed was that of the German occupiers of your city. How soon we forget. History has proven more than once that Holland could again be conquered if your neighbor, the Germans, are having a dull weekend and the golf links are crowded.

"Please don't allow your country to be swallowed up by Liechtenstein or the Vatican as I don't plan to return. As of now, you are on your own."

Sgt. Joe Toye describes his experiences: "After being hit (my fourth Purple Heart) at Bastogne, I went through a series of operations. The main operation being the amputation of my right leg above the knee. Then, later, I had two more operations, these were to remove shrapnel from my upper chest cavity—to remove them the surgeon went in through my back.

"I was married Dec. 15, 1945, while still in the hospital at Atlantic City. I was discharged from the Army Feb. 8, 1946."

He was given an 80 percent disability. Before the war he had been a molder in a foundry, but with a wooden leg he couldn't do the work. He found employment in a textile mill in Reading, Pennsylvania, then worked twenty years for Bethlehem Steel as a bit grinder.

He has three sons and a daughter. "I used to take the boys hunting, fishing, but I never carried a gun—I was worried about tripping. This artificial leg, if something stops it, you're gone, you know. So I never carried a gun. But I took them out deer hunting and fishing. Every year I went camping in Canada with them."

There have been big improvements in artificial legs since 1946. Toye feels the doctors at the VA hospitals have treated him well and kept him up to date with the latest equipment. He does have one complaint. He wants two legs, one slightly larger where it joins the stump. But because the docs say one is enough, "I don't dare gain or lose any weight, else the dam thing won't fit."

Sgt. Bill Guarnere also lost his leg, above the knee, in Bastogne. After discharge in the summer of 1945, he was given an 80 percent disability. He married, had a child, and went to work as a printer, salesman, VA clerk, arid carpenter, all with an artificial leg. There were some mix-ups in his records, which cost him money and led to much dispute with the VA. In 1967 he finally got full disability and was able to retire. He threw away his artificial leg, and for the past twenty-four years he has moved on crutches. He moves faster than most younger men with two good legs. He lives in South Philly, where he grew up, with his wife Fran. They have five children; the oldest son was an Airborne trooper in Vietnam. He is very active in the 101st Association and in getting E Company men together.

Sgt. Chuck Grant, shot in the brain by the drunken G.I. in Austria after the war, had his life saved by a German doctor. He recovered, slowly, although he had some difficulty in speaking and was partly paralyzed in his left arm. After his medical discharge with full disability, he lived in San Francisco, where he ran a small cigar store. Over the years he regularly attended E Company reunions and was active in the 101st Association. Mike Ranney nominated him to be the 506th representative on the Board of the 101st Association; he was elected and served with great pride. He died in 1984.

Lt. Fred "Moose" Heyliger, shot twice by his own man in Holland, was flown to a hospital in Glasgow, then shipped on the Queen Elizabeth to New York. Over the next two-and-a-half years he was moved three more times. He underwent skin and nerve grafts before discharge in February 1947. Taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, he went to the University of Massachusetts, where he graduated in 1950 with a degree in ornamental horticulture. For the next forty years he worked for various landscape companies and on golf courses as a consultant and supplier. He has two sons and a daughter and continues his hobbies, arrowhead hunting, bird watching, and camping.

Sgt. Leo Boyle was discharged on June 22, 1945, after nine months in hospitals in Belgium, England, and the States. He was given a 30 percent disability. He got a job as a railroad brakeman, but his legs could not stand up to the strain. Then he worked in the post office, sorting mail, but again his legs gave out. "By that time I was so ill and confused that I checked into the VA hospital. After several days, a team of three medical doctors declared that I was 50 percent disabled and released me with no career guidance."

Boyle used his G.I. Bill benefits to go to the University of Oregon, where he majored in political science and earned an M.A. degree, with honors. He went into high school teaching and eventually into working with the educationally handicapped. "It was a career that was exceptionally rewarding. There is always a warm and good feeling between the handicapped and their teacher." When he retired in 1979, he was awarded the Phi Delta Kappa Service Key for Leadership and Research in Education for the Handicapped.

Two other members of the company, the last 1st sergeant and the original company commander, were also victims of the war. Sgt. Floyd Talbert had wounds and scars, which he handled without difficulty, and memories, which overwhelmed him. He became a drifter and a drinker. He made a living of sorts as a fisherman, hunter, trapper, and guide in northern California. He had a series of heart attacks.

Talbert was one of the few members of the company who just dropped out of sight. In 1980 Gordon enlisted the aid of his Congressman and of George Luz's son Steve, to locate Talbert. Sgt. Mike Ranney joined the search. Eventually they located him in Redding, California, and persuaded him to attend the 1981 company reunion in San Diego.

Ranney passed around his address. Winters and others wrote him. In his three-page handwritten reply to Winters, Talbert reminisced about their experiences. "Do you remember the time you were leading us into Carentan? Seeing you in the middle of that road wanting to move was too much!... Do you recall when we were pulling back in Holland? Lt. Peacock threw his carbine onto the road. He would not move. Honest to God I told him to retrieve the carbine and move or I would shoot him. He did as I directed. I liked him, he was a sincere and by the book officer, but not a soldier. As long as he let me handle the men he and I got along alright.

"Dick this can go on and on. I have never discussed these things with anyone on this earth. The things we had are damn near sacred to me." He signed off, "Your Devoted Soldier forever."

Talbert had enclosed a recent photograph. He looked like a mountain man. In his reply, Winters told him to shave off the beard and get his hair cut if he intended to come to San Diego. He did, but he still showed up wearing tattered hunting clothes. The first morning, Gordon and Don Moone took him to a men's store and bought him new clothes. Before the year was out, he died.

Gordon wrote his epitaph. "Almost all of the men of Company E suffered wounds of various severity. Some of us limp, some have impaired vision or hearing, but almost without exception we have modified our lives to accommodate the injury. Tab continued in daily conflict with a demon within his breast. He paid a dear price for his service to his country. He could not have given more without laying down his life."

Dick Winters paid him an ultimate tribute: "If I had to pick out just one man to be with me on a mission in combat, it would be Talbert."

Capt. Herbert Sobel had no physical wounds, but deep mental ones. He also disappeared from sight. He married, had two sons, got a divorce, and was estranged from his children. He worked as an accountant for an appliance company in Chicago. Maj. Clarence Hester was in Chicago on business one day in the early 1960s. He arranged for a lunch together. He found Sobel to be bitter toward E Company and life generally. Twenty years later Guarnere tried to locate Sobel. He finally found his sister, who told him Sobel was in bad mental condition and that he directed his rage at the men of E Company. Guarnere nevertheless paid Sobel's dues to the 101st Association, hoping to get him involved in that organization, but nothing happened. Shortly thereafter Captain Sobel shot himself. He botched it. Eventually he died in September 1988. His funeral was a sad affair. His ex-wife did not come to it, nor did his sons, nor did any member of E Company.

Sgt. Skinny Sisk also had a hard time shaking his war memories. In July 1991, he wrote Winters to explain. "My career after the war was trying to drink away the truckload of Krauts that I stopped in Holland and the die-hard Nazi that I went up into the Bavarian Alps and killed. Old Moe Alley made a statement that all the killings that I did was going to jump into the bed with me one of these days and they surely did. I had a lot of flash backs after the war and I started drinking. Ha! Ha!

"Then my sister's little daughter, four-years-old, came into my bedroom (I was too unbearable to the rest of the family, either hung over or drunk) and she told me that Jesus loved me and she loved me and if I would repent God would forgive me for all the men I kept trying to kill all over again.

"That little girl got to me. I put her out of my room, told her to go to her Mommy. There and then I bowed my head on my Mother's old feather bed and repented and God forgave me for the war and all the other bad things I had done down through the years. I was ordained in the latter part of 1949 into the ministry and believe me, Dick, I haven't whipped but one man since and he needed it. I have four children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

"The Lord willing and Jesus tarrys I hope to see you all at the next reunion. If not I'll see you on the last jump. I know you won't freeze in the door."

Easy Company's contribution to the nation's defense did not end with the company's demise. A number stayed in the Army. Lt.S. H. Matheson, an original company officer who had quickly moved up to regimental staff, became a two-star general and commander of the 101st. Bob Brewer made colonel, spending much of his time working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Far East. Ed Shames made colonel in the Reserves.

Sgt. Clarence Lyall made a career out of the paratroopers. He made two combat jumps in Korea and in 1954 was assigned to the 29th French Parachute Regiment as an adviser. The 29th was at Dien Bien Phu. Lyall got out two weeks before the garrison surrendered. He is one of a small number who have made four combat jumps; surely he is unique in having been a participant in both the Battle of the Bulge and the Siege of Dien Bien Phu.

Sgt. Robert "Burr" Smith also stayed in the paratroopers, where he got a commission and eventually became a lieutenant colonel. He commanded a Special Forces Reserve unit in San Francisco. In December 1979, he wrote to Winters: "Eventually my reserve assignment led me to a new career with a government agency, which in turn led to eight years in Laos as a civilian advisor to a large irregular force. I continued to jump regularly until 1974, when lack of interest drove me to hang gliding, and that has been my consuming passion ever since... . For the present I am assigned as a special assistant to the Commander of Delta Force, the counter-terror task force at Fort Bragg. My specialties are (surprise! surprise!): airborne operations, light weapons, and small unit operations.

"My office is on Buckner Road, right across the street from where we were just before leaving for England. The old buildings are exactly as you last saw them and are still in daily use... .

"Funny thing about 'The Modern Army,' Dick. I am assigned to what is reputed to be the best unit in the U.S. Army, the Delta Force, and I believe that it is. Still, on a man-for-man basis, I'd choose my wartime paratroop company any time! We had something there for three years that will never be equalled."

He was scheduled to go on the mission to Iran to rescue the hostages in 1980, but when the CIA learned this, it forbade him to go because he knew so many secrets. "So, I missed what certainly would have been the last adventure in my life," he wrote Winters. "I had lived, worked and trained with Delta every day for nearly two years, Dick, and I Hated to be left behind."

That got Smith going on leadership. He wrote of Winters, "You were blessed (some would say rewarded) with the uniform respect and admiration of 120 soldiers, essentially civilians in uniform, who would have followed you to certain death. I've been a soldier most of my adult life. In that time I've met only a handful of great soldiers, and of that handful only half or less come from my WWII experience, and two of them came from OP Easy—you and Bill Guarnere. The rest of us were O.K... . good soldiers by-and-large, and a few were better than average, but I know as much about 'Grace Under Pressure' as most men, and a lot more about it than some. You had it."

In 1980, riding an experimental hang-glider, Smith crashed and suffered severe injuries. In operating on his lungs, the doctors discovered a cancer. Rader, who had pulled Smith out of a flooded field on June 6, 1944, visited him in the hospital. They played a name game—one would call out the name of a Toccoa man, the other would supply a brief word portrait. Shortly thereafter, Smith died.

Sgt. Amos "Buck" Taylor spent a quarter-century with the CIA, working in the Far East Division of the Covert Operation Directorate, sometimes in Washington, often overseas. He won't say much about what he did, except that "the big threat to our country in that part of the world was Communist China and of course the USSR. That will give you some idea of the focus of my work. So much for that."

When Captain Speirs got back to England in the summer of 1945, he discovered that the English "widow" he had married, and who had borne his son, wasn't a widow at all. Her husband reappeared from a P.O.W. camp. She chose him over Speirs, and the couple kept all the loot Speirs had shipped back from Europe. He decided to stay in the Army. He made a combat jump in Korea and commanded a rifle company on the line in that war. In 1956 he attended a Russian language course in Monterey, California, and then was assigned to Potsdam, East Germany, as liaison officer with the Soviet Army. In 1958 he became the American governor of Spandau Prison, Berlin, where Rudolf Hess was serving his life term. In 1962 he went to Laos with the U.S. mission to the Royal Lao Army.

When old E Company men call him today and open the conversation by saying, "You won't remember me, but we were together during the war," Speirs replies, "Which war?" His son Robert, born in England during the war, is an infantry major in the King's Royal Rifle Corps, the "Green Jackets," and Speirs's "pride and joy."

David Webster could not understand how anyone could stay in the Army. He wanted to be a writer. He moved to California and paid his bills with a variety of odd jobs as he wrote and submitted articles and a book on his wartime experiences. He placed many of the articles, the top being in The Saturday Evening Post, but he could not find a publisher for his book. He became a reporter, first with the Los Angeles Daily News, then with the Wall Street Journal. In 1951 he married Barbara Stoessel, an artist and sister of Walter J. Stoessel, Jr., who became U.S. ambassador to Poland, the Soviet Union, and West Germany.

Webster had always been fascinated by sharks. Barbara writes, "The shark, for him, became a symbol of everything that is mysterious and fierce about the sea. He began gathering material for a book of his own. His research went on for years. He studied sharks first-hand, underwater, swimming among them; and caught many, fishing with a handline from his 11-foot sailing dinghy which he had named Tusitala, which means Teller of Tales.' " He wrote the book and submitted it twenty-nine times, but could not convince a publisher that anyone wanted to read about sharks.

On September 9, 1961, Webster set sail from Santa Monica with squid bait, a heavy line, and hook for shark fishing. He never came back. A search the next day discovered the Tusitala awash 5 miles offshore. One oar and the tiller were missing. His body was never found.

Barbara was able to get his book on sharks published (Myth and Maneater, W. W. Norton &. Co., 1963). There was a British edition and a paperback edition in Australia. When Jaws was released in 1975, Dell issued a mass-market paperback.

Three of the sergeants became rich men. John Martin attended Ohio State University on his G.I. Bill money, then returned to his railroad job. He became a supervisor, had a car, secretary, and pension building and was making money on the side by building houses on speculation. In 1961 he gave it all up and, over the intense protest of his wife and children, then in high school, moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and started building homes. He had $8,000 in total capital, and everyone thought he was crazy. At the end of the first year, he paid more in taxes than he had ever made working for the railroad. Soon he was building apartment complexes and nursing homes. He expanded his activities into Texas and Montana. In 1970 he bought a cattle ranch in the mountains of western Montana. Today he is a multimillionaire. He still likes to take risks, although he no longer jumps out of airplanes. He has resisted tempting offers to sell his business; the president of Martin Construction today is John Martin, while his wife Patricia is the vice president and treasurer. They are also the directors and sole stockholders.

Don Moone used his G.I. Bill benefits to attend Grinnell College, then went into advertising. He rose rapidly. In 1973 he became the president of Ketchum, MacLeod & Grove, Inc., a major New York City advertising firm. Four years later, at age fifty-one, he retired, built a home in Florida, and has lived there since in some splendor.

Carwood Lipton majored in engineering at Marshall College (now University), while his wife Jo Anne was bearing three sons. Lipton went to work for Owens-Illinois, Inc. He rose steadily in the firm; in 1971 he moved to London as director of manufacturing for eight glass factories in England and Scotland. In 1974 he went to Geneva, Switzerland, in charge of operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In 1975 Jo Anne died of a heart attack. The next year, Lipton married a widow, Marie Hope Ma-honey, whose husband had been a close friend of Lipton's, just as Marie was a close friend of Jo Anne's. At the request of the CEO of United Glass, Ltd.; he wrote a pamphlet, Leading People. It was a subject he knew well.

Lipton retired in 1983. He writes, "Currently living in comfortable retirement in Southern Pines, North Carolina, where I had decided when we were training in Camp Mackall that I would someday live. My hobbies are much travel throughout the world, golf, model engineering, woodworking, and reading."

Lewis Nixon had always been rich. He took over his father's far-flung industrial and agricultural empire and ran it while traveling around the world. His chief hobby today is reading.

Lt. Buck Compton stayed in public service jobs, so he became more famous than rich. He was a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department from 1947 to 1951, then spent twenty years as a prosecutor for the district attorney's office, eventually becoming chief deputy district attorney. In 1968 he directed the investigation of Sirhan Sirhan, then conducted the prosecution. In 1970 Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed him to the California Court of Appeals as an associate justice. He and his wife Donna have two daughters, one granddaughter. His reputation is that he remains the best athlete in the company; he is said to play a mean game of golf.

Sgt. Mike Ranney took a journalism degree at the University of North Dakota, then had a successful career as a reporter, newspaper editor, and public relations consultant. He and his wife Julia had five daughters, seven grandsons. In 1980 he began publishing what he called "The Spasmodic Newsletter of Easy Company." Some samples:

March 1982: "The Pennsylvania contingent got together at Dick Winters' place for a surprise party for Harry Welsh. Fenstermaker, Strohl, Guarnere, Guth had a great time."

1980. "The reunion this summer in Nashville is shaping up as one of the great turnouts in E Company history. A partial list of the attendees—Dick Winters, Harry Welsh, Moose Heyliger and Buck Compton from the officers; Chuck Grant, Paul Rogers, Walter Scott Gordon; Tipper, Guarnere, Rader, Heffron, Ranney, Johnny Martin, George Luz, Perconte, Jim Alley, and no less a personage than Burr Smith."

1983. "Don Moone retired from the advertising business and now lives it up down in Florida. He and Gordon and Carwood Lipton had a reunion in New Orleans."

With only a couple of exceptions, these men had no business or professional connections. None lived in the same town, few in the same state (except Pennsylvania). Yet they stayed in touch. In January 1981, Moone wrote Winters to thank him for a Christmas present and to fill him in: "It was great news that Talbert was finally located. I called him immediately and after an exchange of insults, we talked. I've always been fond of Tab. He took great care of me in the old days. On New Year's Day at 6:00 A.M. my time, Tab called to wish me a good new year. He was bombed but coherent. He admits that he had a bottle problem, as we suspected, but was 'on the wagon' except for special occasions. Guess New Year's Eve was one of those 'specials.'

"Don Malarkey called me at 3:00 A.M. on New Years Eve morning and he too was well on his way."

Ranney retired to write poetry and his memoirs, but in September 1988 he died before he could get started.

Beyond Heyliger, Martin, Guarnere, and Toye, a number of men went into some form of building, construction, or making things. Capt. Clarence Hester became a roofing contractor in Sacramento, California. Sgt. Robert "Popeye" Wynn became a structural ironworker on buildings and bridges. Pvt. John Plesha worked for the Washington State Highway Department. Sgt. Denver "Bull" Randleman was a superintendent for a heavy construction contractor in Louisiana. Sgt. Walter Hendrix spent forty-five years in the polishing trade, working with granite. Sgt. Burton "Pat" Christenson spent thirty-eight years with the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, installing new lines, eventually becoming a supervisor and teacher. Sgt. Jim Alley was a carpenter, then worked on high-dam construction on the Washington State-Canada border. Eventually he had his own construction company in California.

Beyond Leo Boyle, a number of men went into teaching. After a twenty-year hitch in the Army, Sgt. Leo Hashey taught water safety for the Portland, Oregon, Red Cross. He became director of health and safety education. Sgt. Robert Rader taught the handicapped at Paso Robles High School in California for more than thirty years. Capt. Harry Welsh got married immediately upon his return to the States, with his bride Kitty Grogan wearing a dress made from the reserve chute he wore on D-Day and carried with him through the rest of the war. He went to college, taught, earned an M.A., and became a high school counselor, then administrator. Sgt. Forrest Guth taught printing, wood shop, electricity, electronics, and managed the sound and staging of school productions in Norfolk, Virginia, and Wilmington, Delaware, until his retirement. Pvt. Ralph Stafford writes: "Graduated in 1953 and started teaching the 6th grade in Fort Worth. Taught for three years and was elementary principal for 27 years, and dearly loved it. It was truly my calling. I was elected president of District V, Texas State Teachers Association (Dallas-Ft. Worth, 20,000 members).

"In 1950, I went bird hunting with some guys from the fire department. I shot a bird and was remorseful as I looked down at it, the bird had done me no harm and couldn't have. I went to the truck and stayed until the others returned, never to hunt again."

Sgt. Ed Tipper went to the University of Michigan for a B.A., then to Colorado State for an M.A. He taught high school in the Denver suburbs for almost thirty years. After retirement, he writes, "I went to Costa Rica to visit one of my former students. There I met Rosy, 34 years old. After an old-time courtship of about a year, we married in the face of great opposition from most everyone I knew, Dick Winters excluded. It was hard to disagree, especially with the argument that marriage to a 61 year old man probably meant sacrificing any hope of having a family, a major consideration for Latin women. Our daughter Kerry was born almost ten months to the day after our wedding. Rosy went to medical school in Guadalajara and in 1989 got her M.D."

He has recently been operated on for cancer. "My wife, daughter and I have just moved into a new house. It may seem strange for a seventy-year-old to be buying a house, but our family motto is, 'It's never too late.' "

Sgt. Rod Bain graduated from Western Washington College (now University) in 1950, married that year, had four children, and spent twenty-five years as a teacher and administrator in Anchorage, Alaska. He spends his summers "as a drift gillnetter, chasing the elusive Sockeye Salmon."

Ed Tipper sums it up with a question: "Is it accidental that so many ex-paratroopers from E company became teachers! Perhaps for some men a period of violence and destruction at one time attracts them to look for something creative as a balance in another part of life. We seem also to have a disproportionate number of builders of houses and other things in the group we see at reunions."

Pvt. Bradford Freeman went back to the farm. In 1990 Winters wrote him, saying that he often came South to see Walter Gordon and would like to stop by sometime to see Freeman's farm. Freeman replied: "It would be a great honor for you to come to see us in Mississippi. We have a good shade to sit in in the Summer and have a good heater for Winter. About all that I do is garden and cut hay for cows in summer and feed in Winter. Fish and hunt the rest of the time. We have the Tombigbee water way close and I watch the barges go up and down the river. Sending you a picture of the house and cows. I have a good place on the front porch to sit. Here's hoping that you will come down sometime."

Winters did. They had a good visit. He asked Freeman to write an account of what he did after the war, for this book. Freeman concluded: "What I wrote don't look like much but I have had a real good time and wouldn't trade with no one."

Maj. Richard Winters also wrote an account of his life after the war: "On separation from the service on November 29, 1945, Lewis Nixon invited me to come to New York City and meet his parents. His father offered me a job and I became personnel manager for the Nixon Nitration Works, Nixon, New Jersey. While working, I took advantage of the G.I. Bill and took courses in business and personnel management at Rutgers University. In 1950 I was promoted to General Manager of Nixon Nitration Works.

"I married Ethel Estoppey in 1948. We have two children. Tim has an M.A. in English from Penn State and Jill a B.A. from Albright College.

"I was recalled to the army for the Korean War. At Fort Dix, New Jersey, I was put on the staff as regimental plans and training officer. After discharge, I returned to Pennsylvania, to farm and to sell animal health products and vitamin premixes to the feed companies. In 1951 I bought a farm along the foothills of the Blue Mountain—seven miles east of Indiantown Gap. That's where I find that peace and quiet that I promised myself on D-Day."

This is typical Winters understatement. He lives modestly, on his farm and in a small town house in Hershey, but he is a wealthy man who achieved success by creating and marketing a new, revolutionary cattle food and other animal food products.

He is also the gentlest of men. In July 1990, when he finished telling me about practically wiping out an entire German rifle company on the dike in Holland on October 5, 1944, we went for a walk down to his pond. A flock of perhaps thirty Canadian geese took off; one goose stayed behind, honking plaintively at the others. Winters explained that the bird had a broken wing.

I remarked that he ought to get out a rifle and shoot the goose before a fox got her. "Freeze her up for Thanksgiving dinner."

He gave me an astonished glance. "I couldn't do that!" he said, horrified at the thought.

He is incapable of a violent action, he never raises his voice, he is contemptuous of exaggeration, self-puffery, or posturing. He has achieved exactly what he wanted in life, that peace and quiet he promised himself as he lay down to catch some sleep on the night of June 6-7, 1944, and the continuing love and respect of the men he commanded in Easy Company in World War II.

In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' " 'No,' I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes.' "