Band of Brothers

On February 25, the men traveled across the French countryside in railway cars. They were on their way to Mourmelon, this time to billets in twelve-man tents, instead of barracks. The men showered for the first time in ten weeks and got new clothes and uniforms. Winters’ use of a rigorous training schedule to integrate and train the replacements angered the men. The new recruits were, as usual, impressed and terrified by the hardened veterans of the company.

On March 8, Sink made permanent officer assignments. Many Easy Company men—including Sobel, who was appointed to S-4 (Operations)—were among them. Ambrose argues that the high number of officers appointed from the company is a testament to the training the men received under Sobel. In interviews, Winters disagreed with Ambrose and recounted with pleasure forcing Sobel, whom he outranked by this point, to salute him in Mourmelon. Speirs, Winters’s replacement as commanding officer of Easy Company, continued to be distrusted by those who believed he had killed one of his own men and admired by others who pointed to his actions during battle and the number of medals he’d won. Overall, however, there were fewer and fewer men left out of those who had trained together at Toccoa, and those who were left had been out so long that they were burned out, and would make up illnesses to get a break from field exercises.

On March 15, the 101st participated in a division parade for the upper echelons of military leadership and White House Press Secretary Stephen Early. The men practiced their formations and prepared their weapons and uniforms. During the parade, Eisenhower awarded the entire division the Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation for their service at Bastogne. This was the first time such an honor was given to an entire division, and the men were surprised, gratified, and encouraged by the gesture and Eisenhower’s words.

The 101st passed the time in various ways. They received passes, leaves, and furloughs. Speirs went to England to marry a woman whose husband was presumed killed in action in North Africa. Foley went to Paris. Other men simply stayed put in the garrison, a “soft” life in which the company’s behavior was only checked by having their pay docked when they broke rules. They trained from squad up to battalion level for Operation Eclipse, an airborne mission over Berlin that would happen only once the Allies crossed the Rhine; meanwhile, the 17th Airborne, British 1st, and 6th Airborne did Operation Varsity, a jump on the far side of the river and the largest such operation of all time.

The replacements of the 101st were particularly disappointed that they didn’t get the chance to participate in Operation Varsity, so they had to find other means to qualify for their paratrooper bonus. The veterans were also disappointed as they watched the 17th fly off for the mission. Nixon, who by now had been demoted to battalion staff because of his drinking, did get to go with the 17th as an observer for the 101st and a jumpmaster. His plane was hit, killing all but Nixon and three others. He came back to Mourmelon with three stars to indicate that he’d completed one more combat mission than everyone else in the 506th but Sgt. Wright, a Pathfinder, who was also in Easy Company

Operation Varsity, the 101st and 82nd’s next jump, was part of Eisenhower’s plan to encircle Germany’s industrial zone in the Ruhr Valley. In March 1945, the men received orders to move out to the Rhine River by truck, back to the front. Conscious that the war had to be close to the end, the men resolved to do whatever they could to make it out of the war alive, while the replacements were still eager to prove themselves.

The veterans had been to five countries and had a wide range of opinions about the people of those countries. This time, however, they were going to Germany to live and fight among the enemy. Their contact with Germans would be even more intimate this time if the rumor that they would be billeted in the homes of Germans who received very short notice that they were coming. Fraternizing with Germans was forbidden by military policy, and the men were “coming as conquerors who had been told to distrust all Germans” (247). Nevertheless, these men didn’t really hate the Germans. Some of them admired the German soldiers for their bravery and dismissed the reports of German atrocities as Allied propaganda.

Ambrose opens Chapter Sixteen by describing the national stereotypes circulated by American G.I.s about the people they encountered. Out of all the groups, however, the Germans had the best reputation. They had a very high standard of living and access to amenities not available in other countries in Europe during the war. The American soldiers who lived in their homes during the war got the benefit of all this physical comfort, and so many—but not all—were “seduced” by German culture (249).

Webster, one of those who was not, didn’t like the Germans because he believed them all to be Nazis, thoughhe didn’t believe the stories about the Holocaust. Nevertheless, he was impressed by the Germans and saw them as “‘clean, efficient, [and] law-abiding’” (250). Others, like Foley, were almost fanatical about the strict non-fraternization policy. Ambrose also claims that “as conquerors,” Easy Company took what it wanted but was less likely to “rape, loot, pillage, and burn their way through” the conquered territory than other national armies of the period (250-251).

The 101st, 2nd Battalion, and 82nd camped around the Ruhr Valley, which included the industrial cities of Düsseldorf, Stürzelberg, and Cologne. They were occupying the territory as opposed to defending or advancing a front, so while some men were dispersed into outposts on the Rhine, most were in the villages, where there was only occasional shelling from artillery. Replacements in those outposts got the chance to get greater experience as they defended their posts and challenged people coming by, including their officers on one occasion (253).Back home in the U.S., Roosevelt died in office on April 12, and the units held memorial services for him on April 14. Aside from this event, the men’s time in the Ruhr was mostly uneventful.

The Germans in the Ruhr surrendered en masse on April 18, four days later, and for a few days Easy Company took over guarding the multinational camps for displaced persons (DPs). There were “tens of thousands” of people from “Nazi-occupied Europe,” many of whom were “all but starving” (255) and had been forced to work by the Germans, a fact that angered and horrified Webster. They took up the regular tasks of the soldiers, like cooking, in exchange for pay. Fraternizing with the displaced persons was especially common, with some men all but adopting boys or striking up relationships with women (256).

When the temporary guard duty was over, the men were occupied with training. Speirs took the men to see the Cologne, where their laughing about the destruction of the city was quickly cut off when they saw natives of the city crying about it. Some of the men were impressed by how quickly the Germans began rebuilding.

On April 19, the men received supplies from the quartermaster, got paid for February and March, and turned in all their currency for Allied Military Marks. They were headed to Bavaria and Alps by railway car, having been assigned to the U.S. Seventh Army, which was tasked with preventing the Germans from establishing a base for a last stand in the Alps. Eisenhower was especially eager to prevent Hitler from establishing a base for resistance at the Eagle’s Nest, a mountain retreat near the town of Berchtesgaden. The Allies didn’t know at the time that there was no such plan and no resources for it, in any event. For Easy Company, their time there, far away from the front, was “more a grand tour than a fighting maneuver” (259).

To get to their destination, the men went 200 kilometers, passing at one point by their old stomping grounds of Bastogne. They got off their trains once in Germany and rode in DUKWs, fast moving, amphibian, all-wheel drive vehicles with dual rear axles (259). Along the way, the men would look at the beautiful vistas of Germany, commandeer billets from Germans, and loot.

As they traveled to the south, the Americans began to encounter larger and larger groups of German soldiers attempting to surrender as the German forces crumbled. In the autobahn leading east to Germany, there were so many surrendering soldiers that the median had to be reserved for them to march. Such sights intimated to the company that the war was virtually over, although there was occasional resistance in the form of bridges blown up, to slow the surrender.

On the night of April 29, in Buchloe, the men saw their first concentration camp, a small work camp near Landsberg. The skeletal frames of the survivors and corpses of those killed was horrifying to them. The company stayed there for two nights. Winters declared martial law in the nearby town and used his authority to force its inhabitants to bury the dead and clean the camp. These sights left an indelible impact on Winters.

On May 1-2, day’s after Hitler’s death, the company was south of Munich, and on May 3, Sink was commanded to move the 506th to Berchtesgaden, home of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, the Aldershorst. The Eagle’s Nest was an important symbol of “Hitler’s mad lust for power” and a “magnet” because it was the repository for the wealth the Nazis had stripped from Europe (265). Easy Company got there first, on May 5, after Sink sent the 2nd Battalion to get ahead of the French and all the other armies of Europe that were converging there.

Berchtesgaden, a “fairytale land” with “snowcapped mountains, the dark green woods, thetinklingicy creeks, the gingerbread houses, the quaint and colorful dress of the natives, provided a delight for the eye” (266). Winters commandeered a fine hotel for the regimental headquarters, but not before looting what he wantedand then setting a guard to prevent more looting.

Winters selected a former Naziofficial’s home for his own headquarters and felt no guilt at all as he considered why he was in Germany. Nor did his men when they took over the clean, comfortable former barracks of the SS. Winters then setup a guard in the town to direct traffic and the gathering of surrendering troops. Ambrose notes, “Everyone was grabbing loot at a frantic pace” (268), including luxury cars, alcohol, and weapons. According toWinters, “‘You can’t imagine such powers as we had. Whenever we wanted, we just took’” (270).

On May 7, after the Germans surrendered at Reims, celebration was widespread not only across Europe but also in Berchtesgaden. The officers, including Winters and Speirs, attempted to impose some order and discipline. Speirs, for example, noting that the new men “were celebrating out of proportion to their contribution to the victory,” forbade them to shoot off weapons, especially German ones. These restrictions failed: Speirs himself broke his own rule. Webster, Luz, and O’Keefe celebrated by drinking champagne recovered from Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. “Everyone in Europe was celebrating” notes Ambrose, “victor and vanquished” because the war was over (273).