Band of Brothers

6 "MOVE OUT!" *

CARENTAN

June 7-July 12,1944

At first light on June 7, Captain Hester came to see Winters with a message. "Winters," he said, "I hate to do this to you after what you went through yesterday, but I want E Company to lead off the column toward Vierville."

The battalion had achieved its D-Day objectives, the 4th Division was well ashore, the causeways secured. Its next task was to move south, toward Carentan, on the other side of the Douve River, for the link-up with American forces coming west from Omaha Beach. The route was from Culoville through Vierville to St. Come-du-Mont, then across the river into Carentan.

The 2nd Battalion managed to clear Vierville, then move onto Angoville-au-Plain, with Easy now in reserve. The remainder of the day was spent beating off German counterattacks from Colonel von der Heydte's 6th Parachute Regiment. The following day 1st Battalion of the 506th took St. Come-du-Mont, about 3 kilometers north of Carentan, on the last high ground overlooking the Douve Valley and Carentan beyond. Colonel Sink set up his CP at Angoville-au-Plain, with Easy Company taking position to defend regimental HQ. That remained its task for the next three days.

Easy used the time to catch its breath and build its strength. Men joined up in a steady stream, coming from all over the Cotentin Peninsula. Sleep was still hard to come by, because of sniper fire, occasional counterattacks, artillery, and mortar fire. Burying dead bodies, human and animal, was a problem, as the bodies were beginning to bloat and smell.

Another problem emerged, one that was to plague the airborne forces throughout the next year. Every liberated village in France, and later in Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Austria, was full of wine, cognac, brandy, and other fine liquor, of a quality and in a quantity quite unknown to the average enlisted man. Pvt. Shifty Powers and a friend found a wine shop in St. Come-du-Mont. They broke in and began sampling the bottles, "to find the kind we liked." They took a bottle each and went out back to drink in peace. "Every once in a while there's a sniper trying to shoot us, and he's trying to ricochet one in on us, and we would hear that bullet hit and ricochet around, we kind of enjoyed that,"

Lieutenant Welsh found a barrel of cognac, "and I think he was trying to drink it all by himself," Winters recalled. "There were times when I talked to Harry and I realized later that he hadn't heard a word I'd said, and it was not because his hearing was bad. We got that problem straightened out in a few days." It didn't stay straightened out. There was just too much booze around, and the young warriors were under too much tension, for any simple solution.

On June 10 Pvt. Alton More asked Malarkey to join him on an expedition to Ste. Mere-Eglise to look through some musette bags that he had seen stacked up there in a vacant lot. More was a rugged John Wayne type, son of a saloonkeeper in Casper, Wyoming. He had married his high school sweetheart, and their first child had been born while he was in England. Malarkey agreed to go, but when they arrived, he felt a bit uneasy when he realized the musette bags had been removed from dead troopers. Nevertheless he joined More in emptying the bags upside down, picking up candy bars, toilet articles, rations, and money.

Suddenly Alton dropped to his knees and, in an almost inaudible voice, said, "Let's get the hell out of here." Malarkey glanced over and saw More looking at a knitted pair of baby booties. They dropped what they had collected and returned to St. Come-du-Mont, resolving that in the future they would be more respectful of their dead comrades.

German dead were another matter. Souvenir hunting went on whenever there was a lull. Lugers were a favorite item, along with watches, daggers, flags, anything with a swastika on it. When Rod Strohl finally joined up, on D-Day plus four, Liebgott saw him and came running up. "Hey, Strohl, Strohl, I've got to show you mine." He produced a ring he had cut off the finger of a German he had killed with his bayonet.

By this time the 29th Division, coming west from Omaha Beach, had taken Isigny, 12 kilometers from Carentan. Carentan, with a population of about 4,000, lay astride the main highway from Cherbourg to Caen and St. L6. The Paris-Cherbourg railroad ran through it. The German 6th Parachute Regiment, having failed to hold the high ground to the north, was now defending Carentan. Colonel von der Heydte had orders from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to "defend Carentan to the last man."1

1. Rapport and Northwood, Rendezvous with Destiny, 166.

On June 10, the 29th Division coming from Omaha linked up with the 101st, northeast of Carentan. This made the beachhead secure, but it could not be developed or extended inland until the Americans drove the Germans out of Carentan. Progress was excruciatingly slow, for three major reasons: the lack of sufficient armor or artillery, the skill and determination of the defenders, and the hedgerows. Often 6 feet high or even more, with narrow lanes that were more like trenches, so solid that they could stop a tank, each hedgerow was a major enemy position. And there were so damn many of them. Take one hedgerow, after an all-out effort, and there was another one 50 meters or less away. This was about as bad a place to mount an infantry assault as could be imagined, as bad as clearing out a town house-by-house or room-by-room, as bad as attacking a World War I trench system. But it had to be done.

General Collins had VII Corps attacking north, in the direction of Cherbourg (the largest port in Normandy and a major strategic objective) and west, toward the coast (in order to cut off the Germans in the Cotentin from their line of communications), but gains were limited and little progress could be expected until the bottleneck at Carentan had been broken. The task fell to the 101st.

General Taylor decided to attack from three directions simultaneously. The 327th Glider Infantry Regiment would come in from the north, the 501st from the northeast, while the 506^th would undertake a night march, swinging around the almost surrounded Carentan to the southwest. Coordinated attacks were scheduled to begin at dawn, 0500, June 12.

Captain Sobel had seen to it that Easy Company had spent months of training at night. Forced night marches cross-country, through woods, night compass problems, every conceivable problem of troop movement and control of troops at night. The men were completely at ease working at night, indeed some of them insisted they could see better in the dark than in daylight.

According to Winters (who was by now the acting company commander,- Meehan was still listed as missing in action rather than KIA), the ones who could not handle the night were the regimental staff officers. They had "crapped out" on the training problems and had not done the field work night after night that the troops and junior line officers had undergone. It had shown up on D-Day night, Winters said: "They were the ones who had the problems getting oriented and finding their objectives. They had the big problem getting through hedgerows. The junior officers and enlisted men, completely on their own, had found their way around and found their objective with little problem and no maps."

The deficiency showed up again on the night march of June 11-12. F Company led the way, with E following. They set out for Carentan across a marsh, over a bridge, then west across fields to the railroad. It was rough going through swampy areas and hedgerows. The companies kept losing contact. F Company would hit a tough section, work its way through, then take off at a fast pace, with no consideration for the rear elements breaking through that same bottleneck. Regimental HQ kept changing orders for the boundaries of the 1st and 2nd Battalions. The companies would stop, dig in, set up machine-guns, then get orders to move out again.

There had been major fighting over the route the 2nd Battalion was following. The area was strewn with bodies, American and German, weapons and equipment, difficult to see clearly in the dark. Once over the Douve River, heading toward the railroad track, Easy lost contact with F Company. "I knew we would not be able to find our way to our objective over the strange terrain on our own," Lipton recalled, "and that we were strung out in a defenseless formation."

Winters tried to raise battalion on the radio. The operators spoke in muffled undertones. A German MG 42 (the best machine-gun in the world) opened up with several short bursts from somewhere off to the left. Lipton moved over to his machine-gunner and whispered to him to set up his gun facing toward the incoming fire. As Lipton moved quietly off to position the rest of his platoon, he remembered, "I almost jumped out of my skin when [the man] full-loaded his gun. The sound of a light machine-gun being full-loaded, two times pulling back and releasing the bolt, can be heard a half-mile away on a still night. All our attempts at being quiet and surprising the Germans gone for nothing." But there was no further attack, and Lipton breathed a bit easier.

Contact was reestablished. Easy moved out again. Along the path it followed there was a dead German, his right hand extended into the air. Everyone stepped over him until Pvt. Wayne "Skinny" Sisk got there. Sisk reached out and shook the hand, meanwhile stepping on the bloated stomach. The corpse went

"Bleh."

"Sorry, buddy," Sisk whispered and moved on.

The path took an abrupt turn to the right. Carson recalled that "there was a German there with a rifle pointed right at you. He must have scared half the company. I said to myself, 'Why the hell doesn't he shoot and get it over with?' But he was dead and rigor mortis had set in, he was just like a statue there."

Easy reached the railroad line and set up another defensive position. The word came to expect German armor. Lipton put Tipper and his bazooka on the bank, with no line of retreat possible: a do-or-die situation.

"Tipper," Lipton whispered, "we're depending on you. Don't miss."

"I won't."

Tipper soon had a problem. His ammunition carrier, Pvt. Joe Ramirez, seemed awfully nervous. "We'll be okay, Joe," Tipper told him. "Just be sure you have two bazooka rounds ready to go, with absolutely no time lost, not a fraction of a second." Ramirez went back and returned with two bazooka rounds, stumbling and crashing around. To Tipper's horror, he said he had removed the pins (with the safety pin gone, an armed bazooka rocket would explode if dropped from two or three feet).

"Stick those pins back in," Tipper whispered. "I'll tell you when I want them out."

"I don't know where they are," Ramirez answered, holding the rounds stiffly out away from his body. "I tossed them away."

"Good God Almighty! Find them." Ramirez could not. Tipper got down on his hands and knees to help look. They found the pins. Ramirez's arms were twitching as Tipper carefully reinserted the pins. "When the disarming was accomplished," Tipper said, "Joe calmed down and his twitching stopped. Mine started at that point."

No attack developed. This was because Colonel von der Heydte, short on ammunition after six days of heavy fighting with no supplies reaching him, had pulled most of his force out of Carentan. He left behind one company to hold the city as long as possible, while he got resupplied and prepared a counterattack from the southwest. The fifty-man company in Carentan had a machine-gun position to shoot straight up the road leading to the southwest, and 80 mm mortars zeroed in on the critical T-junction on the edge of town.

Easy moved out again, headed northeast. By 0530, the 2nd Battalion of the 506th was in position to attack Carentan. The objective was the T-junction defended by the company from the 6th Parachute Regiment. The last 100 or so meters of the road leading to the T-junction was straight, with a gentle downward slope. There were shallow ditches on both sides. F Company was on the left flank, with E Company going straight down the road and D Company in reserve. The orders were to move into Carentan and link up with the 327th coming in from the north.

All was quiet, no action. Lieutenant Lavenson, formerly of E Company, now battalion S-l, went into a field to take a crap. The men could see his white fanny in the early dawn light. A German sniper fired one shot and hit Lavenson in the butt. (He was evacuated to England; later, as he was being flown back to the States, his plane went down over the Atlantic.)

By this time, Winters was furious. It had taken all night for regiment to get the men in position. Stop, move out, stop, move out, so many times that the men were worn out. "It shouldn't have been," Winters said: "It wasn't that difficult. We had screwed away the night, just getting into position." There was no time for a reconnaissance,- Easy had no idea what lay ahead. There was no artillery preparation, or air strikes.

The order came down: attack at 0600.

Winters had his old platoon, the 1st, under Lieutenant Welsh, on the left side of the road, just past where the road curved and then straightened out, with 2nd platoon on the right and 3rd platoon in reserve. The men lay down in the ditches by the side of the road, awaiting orders. The German defenders had not revealed their machine-gun position or fired any mortars. Everything was quiet.

At 0600 Winters ordered, "Move out." Welsh kicked off the advance, running down the road toward the T-junction some 50 ' meters away, his platoon following. The German machine-gun opened fire, straight down the road. It was in a perfect position, at the perfect time, to wipe out the company.

The fire split the platoon. The seventh man behind Welsh stayed in the ditch. So did the rest of the platoon, almost thirty men. They were face down in the ditches on both sides of the road, trying to snuggle in as close as they could.

Winters jumped into the middle of the road, highly agitated, yelling, "Move out! Move out!" It did no good; the men remained in place, heads down in the ditch.

From his rear, Winters could hear Lieutenant Colonel Strayer, Lieutenants Hester and Nixon, and other members of the battalion HQ hollering at him to "get them moving, Winters, get them moving."

Winters threw away his gear, holding onto his M-l, and ran over to the left side, "hollering like a mad man, 'Get going!' " He started kicking the men in the butt. He crossed to the other side and repeated the order, again kicking the men.

"I was possessed," Winters recalled. "Nobody'd ever seen me like that." He ran back to the other side, machine-gun bullets zinging down the street. He thought to himself, My God, I'm leading a blessed life. I'm charmed.

He was also desperate. His best friend, Harry Welsh, was up ahead, trying to deal with that machine-gun. If I don't do something, Winters thought to himself, he's dead. No question about it.

But the men wouldn't move. They did look up. Winters recalled, "I will never forget the surprise and fear on those faces looking up at me." The German machine-gun seemed to be zeroing in on him, and he was a wide open target. "The bullets kept snapping by and glancing off the road all around me."

"Everybody had froze," Strohl remembered. "Nobody could move. And Winters got up in the middle of the road and screamed, 'Come on! Move out! Now!' "

That did it. No man in the company had ever before heard Winters shout. "It was so out of character/' Strohl said, "we moved out as one man."

According to Winters, "Here is where the discipline paid off. The men got the message, and they moved out."

As Sergeant Talbert passed Winters, he called out, "Which way when we hit the intersection?"

"Turn right," Winters ordered.

(In 1981, Talbert wrote Winters: "I'll never forget seeing you in the middle of that road. You were my total inspiration. All my boys felt the same way.")

Welsh, meanwhile, was neutralizing the machine-gun. "We were all alone," he remembered, "and I couldn't understand where the hell everybody was." Thanks to the distraction caused by Winters running back and forth, the machine-gunner had lost track of Welsh and his six men. Welsh tossed some grenades at the gun, followed by bursts from his carbine. The men with him did the same. The machine-gun fell silent.2

2. Winters wrote in 1990: "Later in the war, in recalling this action with Major Hester, he made a comment that has always left me feeling proud of Company E's action that day. As S-3, Hester had been in a position to see another company in a similar position caught in M.G. fire. It froze and then got severely cut up. E Company, on the other hand, had moved out, got the job done, and had not been cut up by that M.G."

The remainder of Easy Company drove into the intersection at a full run, and secured it. Winters sent the 1st platoon to the left, the 2nd to the right, clearing out the houses, one man throwing grenades through windows while another waited outside the door. Immediately after the explosion, the second man kicked in the door to look for and shoot any survivors.

Tipper and Liebgott cleared out a house. As Tipper was passing out the front door, "A locomotive hit me, driving me far back inside the house. I heard no noise, felt no pain, and was somehow unsteadily standing and in possession of my M-l." The German rear guard was bringing its prepositioned mortars into play. Liebgott grabbed Tipper and helped him to a sitting position, called for a medic, and tried to reassure Tipper that he would be O.K.

Welsh came up and got some morphine into Tipper, who was insisting that he could walk. That was nonsense; both his legs were broken, and he had a serious head wound. Welsh and Liebgott half dragged him into the street, where "I remember lying at the base of the wall with explosions in the street and shrapnel zinging against the wall above my head." Welsh got Tipper back to the aid station being set up in a barn about 20 meters to the rear.

Mortars continued coming in, along with sniper fire. Lipton led 3rd platoon to the intersection and peeled off to the right. There were explosions on the street; he huddled against a wall and yelled to his men to follow him. A mortar shell dropped about 2 meters in front of him, putting shell fragments in his left cheek, right wrist, and right leg at the crotch. His rifle clattered to the street. He dropped to the ground, put his left hand to his cheek and felt a large hole, but his biggest concern was his right hand, as blood was pumping out in spurts. Sergeant Talbert got to him and put a tourniquet on his arm.

Only then did Lipton feel the pain in his crotch. He reached down for a feel, and his left hand came away bloody.

"Talbert, I may be hit bad," he said. Talbert slit his pants leg with his knife, took a look, and said, "You're O.K."

"What a relief that was," Lipton remembered. The two shell fragments had gone into the top of his leg and "missed everything important."

Talbert threw Lipton over his shoulder and carried him to the aid station. The medics gave Lipton a shot of morphine and bandaged him up.

Malarkey recalled that during "this tremendous period of fire I could hear someone reciting a Hail Mary. I glanced up and saw Father John Maloney holding his rosary and walking down the center of the road to administer last rites to the dying at the road juncture." (Maloney was awarded the DSC.)

Winters got hit, by a ricochet bullet that went through his boot and into his leg. He stayed in action long enough to check the ammunition supply and consult with Welsh (who tried to remove the bullet with his knife but gave it up) to set up a defensive position in the event of a counterattack.

By this time it was 0700, and the area was secured. F Company, meanwhile, had hooked up with the 327th. Carentan had been captured. Lieutenant Colonel Strayer came into town, where he met the commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 327th. They went into a wine shop and opened a bottle to drink to the victory.

Winters went back to the battalion aid station. Ten of his men were there, receiving first aid. A doctor poked around Winters' leg with a tweezers, pulled the bullet, cleaned out the wound, put some sulfa powder on it, and a bandage.

Winters circulated among the wounded. One of them was Pvt. Albert Blithe.

"How're you doing, Blithe? What's the matter?"

"I can't see, sir. I can't see."

"Take it easy, relax. You've got a ticket out of here, we'll get you out of here in a hurry. You'll be going back to England. You'll be O.K. Relax," Winters said, and started to move on.

Blithe began to get up. "Take it easy," Winters told him. "Stay still."

"I can see, I can see, sir! I can see you!"

Blithe got up and rejoined the company. "Never saw anything like it," Winters said. "He was that scared he blacked out. Spooky. This kid just completely could not see, and all he needed was somebody to talk to him for a minute and calm him down."

The Germans were certain to counterattack, and it was sure to come from the southwest, down the road Easy had followed into town. Terrain dictated the axis of the advance; a peninsula of high ground led into Carentan from that direction. To the north, beyond the railroad track, was flooded ground, as also to the south of the road. General Taylor decided to push out several kilometers to the west and set up a defensive position on the high ground.

Winters got his orders. Easy would be on the far right, alongside the railroad track. He checked for ammunition. Leo Boyle and some others from 1st platoon found and "liberated" a two-wheel farm cart loaded with ammunition, and brought it to the barn on the edge of town that was serving as the aid station. As Boyle was preparing to bring it forward, he heard the cry, "Enemy tank!"

"I looked cautiously out of the doorway and saw the vague outline of a turret of a tank in a hedgerow a few yards away. Before I could react, a bullet from the machine-gun in the tank penetrated my left leg above the knee and knocked me to the ground." Boyle was taken by truck back to Utah Beach, for evacuation to England. Along the way, "we met Captain Sobel who was ferrying supplies to the front by jeep."

Bazooka fire drove the tank off. Winters got the company reorganized and pushed off to the southwest, alongside the railroad track. The company moved 3 kilometers without significant resistance. Winters set up a defensive position behind a hedgerow.

The Germans were directly in front, behind the next hedgerow, laying down harassing fire. Anyone who moved drew aimed fire. As the light faded, the company received a resupply of food and ammunition and settled in for the evening. Winters got orders from battalion to jump off on an attack at first light, 0530.

At about 0030 hours, June 13, the Germans sent a patrol into the field between the hedgerows. Not a silent patrol to get intelligence, but a couple of squads, evidently drunk, shooting their machine pistols and shouting oaths at the Americans. "It scared the hell out of us," Winters remembered, "it didn't make any sense." He feared a night attack, but just that quickly the Germans fell back.

Gordon with his machine-gun, Sisk, and Guth were on outpost, on the far right, against the railroad track. Gordon was "uncomfortable and quite frightened," as there was little concealment, and he felt "very exposed." Sergeant Talbert checked on the men, decided they were too exposed, and pulled them back to the main line of defense.

Sergeant Talbert was up and down the line all night, shifting the men back and forth so that they could catch a few minutes sleep. He had the riflemen fix their bayonets. It was a cool evening; Talbert picked up a German poncho and put it on. About 0300 he prodded Pvt. George Smith with his revolver, to awaken him for duty. Smith was almost comatose. When he finally awakened, he saw in the pale moonlight this figure in a German poncho hovering over him and prodding him with a pistol.

Smith jumped up with his rifle with the fixed bayonet and began lunging at Talbert. Talbert tried to stop him, hollering, "Smith, it's Tab, don't!" But Smith kept thrusting until he succeeded in bayoneting Talbert in the chest. Fortunately he missed the lungs and heart, but Talbert was out of action. He had to be dragged away and carried the 3 kilometers back to the aid station.

By 0530, Winters had the company ready to attack. Just as he gave the order to move out, Colonel von der Heydte launched his 6th Parachute Regiment on its counterattack. Both sides cut loose with artillery, mortar, machine-gun, and rifle fire, everything they had. There was mass confusion. Fire coming in, dead-tired men who had used up their adrenalin long since, Taylor urging speed, men shouting, at one point a firefight between Easy and another company of the 101st, some Sherman tanks coming up in support firing into friendly units on the left, chaos.

Under the intense incoming fire, F Company on Easy's left flank broke and fell back. (The C.O. of the company was relieved on the spot by Colonel Strayer.) That exposed D Company's right flank, so it fell back too. That left Easy all alone, isolated, its right flank up against the track, its left flank in the air.

Easy stood to its guns. Gordon set his machine-gun up on a gate at the opening of the hedgerow into the field (he had lost the tripod on D-Day) and blasted away. A mortar round dropped 10 meters in front of him. Gordon went down with shrapnel in his shoulder and leg. The same mortar wounded Rod Strohl. Still they stayed in the line, continuing to fire. Winters, Compton, Welsh, and the other officers were running up and down the line, encouraging the men, straightening things out, making sure everything was done that could be done to stop the Germans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Washington Star, June 25, 1944.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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