Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
Stephen E. Ambrose
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 074322454X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Stephen E. Ambrose’s iconic story of the ordinary men who became the World War II’s most extraordinary soldiers: Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, US Army.
They came together, citizen soldiers, in the summer of 1942, drawn to Airborne by the $50 monthly bonus and a desire to be better than the other guy. And at its peak—in Holland and the Ardennes—Easy Company was as good a rifle company as any in the world.
From the rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to the disbanding in 1945, Stephen E. Ambrose tells the story of this remarkable company. In combat, the reward for a job well done is the next tough assignment, and as they advanced through Europe, the men of Easy kept getting the tough assignments.
They parachuted into France early D-Day morning and knocked out a battery of four 105 mm cannon looking down Utah Beach; they parachuted into Holland during the Arnhem campaign; they were the Battered Bastards of the Bastion of Bastogne, brought in to hold the line, although surrounded, in the Battle of the Bulge; and then they spearheaded the counteroffensive. Finally, they captured Hitler's Bavarian outpost, his Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden.
They were rough-and-ready guys, battered by the Depression, mistrustful and suspicious. They drank too much French wine, looted too many German cameras and watches, and fought too often with other GIs. But in training and combat they learned selflessness and found the closest brotherhood they ever knew. They discovered that in war, men who loved life would give their lives for them.
This is the story of the men who fought, of the martinet they hated who trained them well, and of the captain they loved who led them. E Company was a company of men who went hungry, froze, and died for each other, a company that took 150 percent casualties, a company where the Purple Heart was not a medal—it was a badge of office.
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Real quick—dead!” On the train going back to Aldbourne, Malarkey told Muck that it sounded to him like Bob Niland had lost his effectiveness. • • • Back in Aldbourne in the first week of May, E Company went through more problems, attacking gun positions, bridges, causeways, and other objectives, once attacking after a real jump, other times simulating the air flight and “jumping” out of trucks. From May 9 to 12, the 101st held its dress rehearsal for D-Day, code name “Operation Eagle.” The.
First—assemble his machine-gun. He tucked himself into a hedgerow and did the job. As he finished, “I noticed this figure coming, and I realized it was John Eubanks from the way he walked.” Shortly thereafter Forrest Guth joined them. Another figure loomed in the dark. “Challenge him,” Gordon said to Eubanks. Before Eubanks could do so, the man called out, “Flash.” Eubanks forgot the countersign (“Thunder”) and forgot that the clicker was an alternative identification option, and instead said,.
First squad of the 1st platoon was “headed by little Johnny Martin, an excellent soldier, a premier goldbrick, and a very fast thinker who could handle any combat or garrison problem that arose, always had the equipment, the food, and the good living quarters.” The second squad leader was “Bull” Randleman, who was constantly bitching but who could “be very G.I., as I once discovered when he turned me in to the first sergeant for laughing at him when he told me to take off my wool-knit hat in the.
Into the outfit, to bring them up to Easy’s standard of teamwork and individual skills, but it was difficult as the veterans could not take field maneuvers seriously. By the end of the second week in December, the company was back to about 65 percent of its strength in enlisted men. Officer strength was at 112.5 percent, with Dike in command, Welsh serving as X.O., and two lieutenants per platoon plus a spare. Put another way, the airborne commanders expected that casualties in the next action.
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.