Beyond Band of Brothers (30 page)

At first only a few veterans attended the reunions, but as the years went by, more Toccoa veterans and their subsequent replacements assembled on an annual basis. Few officers attended the initial reunions, but in 1980, I called Moose Heyliger and Harry Welsh and convinced them to join the men in Nashville. Buck Compton, Clarence Hester, Bob Strayer, and Lewis Nixon completed the officer contingent that attended the Nashville reunion. Few had changed, and “Blackbeard” Nixon still tried to convince everyone, albeit unsuccessfully, that he really did shave every day. In total, thirty members of Easy Company attended the reunion in Nashville. Since it was my first reunion, I was overwhelmed when the men presented me a gold-plated mess kit with an accompanying poem.

In September 1987 I returned to Europe for the first time since the war. Accompanied by Walter and Betty Gordon, Ethel and I dined with Louis de Vallavieille in Paris. The next day Louis and Michel, the brother who had been shot on D-Day, escorted us to Normandy. I was anxious for a tour of the field that had played such an important role in my life and that of Easy Company. Michel, who never harbored any ill feelings at being shot by American paratroopers on June 6, gave me a test to ensure I was who I claimed to be. Taking me to a field near Le Grand Chemin, he inquired if it looked familiar. “No,” I said, “this doesn't look familiar.”

We then went to another field and he repeated the question. I gave him the same response.

After several hours he brought me to the field outside Brecourt Manor and asked again, “Does this look familiar?”

“Now, this is familiar. Number one gun was there, number two gun was here, and so on down the line.”

Nascent memories returned after a half century. Walking across the field that housed the German 105mm howitzer battery created an eerie feeling. In the recesses of my mind, I could see “Popeye” Wynn, “Buck” Compton, Bill Guarnere, Joe Toye, Don Malarkey, Carwood Lipton, and the other members of our small band who had conducted an assault against overwhelming odds. Words simply escaped me as I traversed the area from every conceivable direction. The hedgerows and drainage trenches had largely disappeared, but the tree lines and the locations of each gun remained very distinguishable.

I returned to Brecourt and the other battlefields several times over the next decade, the last time in June 2001 for the premiere of the HBO series
Band of Brothers.
I chose not to participate in the preliminary tour and party in Paris. I didn't want to be part of that—it just wasn't in my nature. I preferred quiet reflection to reminisce about Easy Company's baptism of fire fifty-seven years earlier. Though I always considered Easy Company's performance on the dike in Holland on October 5, 1944, as my apogee as a company commander, Brecourt remained more special to me. Nothing has ever equaled our baptism of fire on D-Day. Ernie Pyle wrote that the first pioneering days of anything are always the best days. That is the way I feel about Brecourt. There was something special about silencing those guns that never was repeated. Brecourt was Easy Company's initial trial by combat and the place where I demonstrated to myself that I measured up to my personal standard of leadership. That is what made it special. Consequently, rather than joining the other veterans in a large hotel, Ethel and I spent eight days and nights at a Norman château near Brecourt so I could return to the battlefield each morning to walk the fields and to study the battle. My wife and I were warmly welcomed by Charles de Vallavieille, the grandson of the French colonel who owned Brecourt in 1944. Nearly six decades earlier, I had been the first American soldier to trespass on the de Vallavieille farm without Charles's grandfather's permission. This
time I asked and received permission to return to Brecourt Manor. Special memories vividly returned as I stood in the remnants of the trench, gazing at the hedgerow across the field from where we received the machine gun fire as we assaulted the artillery pieces. The sapling from which Sergeant Lipton fired on the enemy was still there, though the tree had long since died. One morning I retraced my steps from Le Grand Chemin through the fields and ditches that now presented far greater obstacles than the hedgerows on D-Day. After the formal ceremony on June 6, we returned to Paris in time for the farewell banquet with the other men.

Charles de Vallavieille cordially invited me to return for the sixtieth anniversary celebration, but considering my advanced age, I felt it in my best interest to live within my limitations and watch the celebration at home. Even though I could not return, Charles continues to preserve the memory of the soldiers who liberated his grandfather's farm. “It's like when a friend asks you to watch over his grave,” he says, “You can't ignore the sacrifice.”

Returning to Hershey was bittersweet since I realized that I would never return to the battlefield. Still, I had a lifetime of memories and I remained determined to pass on the “untold stories” from all the men to future generations. Simply tell the stories of the men; the rest will take care of itself. Personal rewards, profits, recognition, and enumeration have never been important to me. Even when the Franklin D. Roosevelt Foundation selected me to represent the U.S. Army veterans of World War II when it presented its 2001 Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms/Freedom from Fear Award, I did so only as a representative of the American G.I.s who won the war. At the ceremony, news anchor Tom Brokaw said that the courage and service demonstrated by the five representatives of the military services “made possible a world of peace and justice and dreams that we continue to fulfill today.”

Brokaw also called us “heroes,” but I have always been uncomfortable with that term. Only a few heroes came back from the war. The real heroes lie under white crosses in North Africa, Europe, and
across the Pacific. I still cannot visit the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach without crying for the men who never had the opportunity of achieving the peace that many of us have enjoyed. I know plenty of heroes, but I am certainly not one. Bill Guarnere is a hero for leaving the safety of his foxhole to help his buddy who had been severely wounded. Floyd Talbert and Joe Toye are heroes of the first order—so are Popeye Wynn, Babe Heffron, and scores of others who carry the wounds of war as badges of honor.

Perhaps the best characterization of what a true hero consists is found in a letter Sergeant Mike Ranney sent me in January 1992 shortly before he went back into the hospital for a series of tests. Historian Stephen Ambrose used the passage to conclude
Band of Brothers
because Ranney encapsulated the cohesion that became the hallmark of Easy Company. “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.”

Mike Ranney then signed the letter “Your Easy Company Comrade.”

Stephen Ambrose, the leading historian of our time, changed my life forever through his friendship and through his writing of
Band of Brothers
. Steve wrote
Band of Brothers
to fill his time as he prepared to write his book on D-Day. To give you an idea of what kind of man Steve Ambrose was, on Christmas morning 1995, he got up early and wrote me a letter that read, “Thanks for teaching me the duties and the responsibilities of a company commander.” Later he gave Easy Company the recognition for what they had done in World War II. I appreciate the recognition and I appreciate the fact that he never forgot me. To make sure that I never forgot him and his friendship, I placed a brass plaque over the door at the house and at the farm that reads:
STEVE AMBROSE SLEPT HERE
.

I first met Steve Ambrose on February 26, 1990. The meeting, which Ambrose hosted in his home in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, included Easy Company veterans Carwood Lipton, Walter Gordon, and
Forrest Guth. Two years earlier, Easy Company had held its reunion in New Orleans. Ambrose took the opportunity to tape-record a group interview to support the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans' project of collecting oral histories from World War II veterans. I decided not to join the meeting in order to let the men speak out without deference to my role in the war. It was a wild interview session. I later mailed my written account to Ambrose. When I read the transcript from the group session, I believed that some important details were missing. I asked Walter Gordon, who was Ambrose's neighbor, to arrange a follow-up interview to set the record straight. Ambrose graciously consented and invited us to his home. Over the course of that afternoon, we discussed Easy Company's attack at Brecourt Manor. I then suggested that Steve consider writing a history of Easy Company, which might prove a nice complement to
Pegasus Bridge
, a book Ambrose wrote detailing a British light infantry company that seized important bridges over the Orne River and Orne Canal on D-Day. Steve jumped at the opportunity and asked us to obtain copies of wartime letters, photographs, newspaper clippings—anything we had on E Company.

The following month Gordon wrote “the intrepid trio” of Lipton, Guth, and myself to discuss a letter that he had recently received from Ambrose. Steve thought we had “a hell of an idea and he was ready to run with it.” I provided copies of my diary and the letters that I had accumulated over the previous two decades. Later that summer, Ambrose came to my farm outside Hershey, where we spent several days discussing leadership and combat fatigue. Ambrose was an accomplished historian in his own right, and he seemed fascinated by Paul Fussell's depiction of the “slowly dawning and dreadful realization” that each soldier experiences three phases of combat depending on the length of his time on the front line. “Two steps of rationalization and one of accurate perception,” is how Fussell describes the factors contributing to combat fatigue. The initial stage is, “This can't possibly happen to me. I'm not going to get wounded; I'm too smart; I'm too young. Quickly
following is the second stage where the soldier rationalizes, “Jesus, this could happen to me if I'm not more careful.” The third stage is, “This is going to happen to me unless I get out of here.” Ambrose seemed surprised when I informed him that I had reached the third stage in Bastogne. Sooner or later, I felt that I was going to get it. I just prayed to God that it would not be too bad. I felt that I was going to be hit sooner or later, but I never felt that I was going to break. I had prepared myself physically and emotionally not to reach the breaking point. Nor did I feel that my judgment was ever too impaired to make the correct decision.

Following three days of one-on-one questioning, Harry Welsh, Joe Toye, Rod Strohl, and Forrest Guth joined us for a group interview. A few months later, Ambrose visited Carwood Lipton, Bill Guarnere, Don Malarkey, and a group of Easy Company West Coast residents. A quick tour of the European battlefield completed his initial research. That is the origin of
Band of Brothers
that hit the book shelves in 1992, in enough time to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of Easy Company at Camp Toccoa, Georgia. Initial sales were modest, but they increased dramatically when Ambrose published
D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II
to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion of Europe. The exploits of Easy Company made national headlines and a number of veterans were invited to relate their wartime experiences to local audiences. Each of us was grateful that Ambrose did such a masterful job in telling our story in his inimitable style.

After the publication of
Band of Brothers
, Steve returned my diary and the stories that I had collected since the war. I immediately made a file for each soldier in Easy Company and I spent the entire next year going through everything. Friends familiar with the official records from the War Department added the operational reports from 2d Battalion and the 506th PIR. I now had the complete story of Easy Company from start to finish in my possession.

Steve Ambrose changed my life even more drastically when he sold
the rights of
Band of Brothers
to Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. The night he negotiated the deal, Ambrose took time to call me and to advise me that Tom Hanks was interested in the project and that he assumed that Hanks wanted to play Dick Winters. The conversation went something like this: “This is Steve Ambrose. I have a letter from Tom Hanks and he wants to buy
Band of Brothers
. He sent me the Home Box Office (HBO) series he did entitled
From the Earth to the Moon.
Hanks wants to produce a twelve-part series along these lines. He feels that
Band of Brothers
will make a magnificently, richly textured story that needs many hours to tell. I presume he wants to play Dick Winters, but I told him that Herbert Sobel was closer to the mark (kidding). Anyway, I just wanted to share the good news with you.”

Just prior to HBO's release of
Band of Brothers
in September 2001, commentator Charlie Rose interviewed Ambrose and asked him directly, “Knowing as much as you do, if you had to serve in World War II and I know that you would have served, where would you have wanted to be? With the pilots? With the soldiers? With the men of the Navy?”

Ambrose instantly responded, “With Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry, 101st Airborne Division.”

When asked why, Ambrose elaborated: “Because the commander of that company, Dick Winters, was almost a Meriwether Lewis. He was that good. If Dick told me then, and if he told me now, to do something, I wouldn't ask why. I would just do it. He has character, of course, but he is honest, he has a firmness of purpose, and a direction. He knows so much: how to lay down a base of fire, what are the strengths and weaknesses of every man, how to lead an attack. He knows what a good company commander should be.”

Needless to say, I was and continue to be flattered by all the attention and the recognition. But just as I said at the Emmy Awards in September 2002 when Spielberg and Hanks received the Emmy for best mini-series, I merely represented all the men of Company E who were present and all who had passed on before us. Spielberg summed up
what we were all thinking when the award was handed to him: “Easy Company won this award back in 1944.” In a sense we have all become celebrities since the release of the series, but I caution myself at the end of the day to remain humble and not to let it go to my head. Ours was merely a story that had to be told.

None of us anticipated the flood of correspondence that followed the release of Easy Company's story. Most correspondents write to express their appreciation for the sacrifices of the World War II generation. Others seek an easy solution to what constitutes effective leadership. Our lives are no longer private, but such is the price of fame. It is now impossible to keep a low profile, as everyone wants a little piece of you, striving to glean a sense of what made Easy Company such a remarkable combat unit. The attention is flattering, but nobody really knows me. The neighbors, the people whom I have known most of my life, now see a different part of me as a result of the television series. Still, it is impossible to convey the horrors of war to someone who has not experienced the crucible of combat. It is not their fault; like most veterans, I have only recently spoken about the war. World War II was, and remains, an intensely personal experience. When I have discussed the events that so shaped my life, I have talked about the war, never about myself. I prefer to keep it that way, but the letters keep arriving.

Voices:

From Sister Marie Andre Campbell and Sister Marie St. Paul, two cloistered members of the Poor Clare Nuns of Perpetual Adoration at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery:

When we read about you, we said to each other: “Ah, here is a good and God-fearing man!” Goodness and beauty lead to truth after all, and no matter what state of life we live, everyone is searching for truth, and maybe that is why so many people are drawn to you after reading about the heroic deeds you and your men performed in France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany during World War II.

I visited Normandy with Mom and Dad when we lived in France. The cemeteries were open when we went. . . . It was an experience I will never forget. . . . One last item: I was particularly moved by the story of Floyd Talbert. He reminded me a lot of some Vietnam Vets who came to speak to my class in college. They were “bikers”: black leather jackets, long beards, rather intimidating, but they were some of the nicest men I ever met. The war deeply affected them in ways that I could never comprehend. Just like you said in one article, it's one thing to read and hear about it, but it's quite another to experience combat.

From Michael Nastasi, a police officer in the New York Police Department, who wrote to me in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001:

. . . At the time, things were pretty bad and all of us were pretty distraught and confused about the whole scene, but we were also determined to do whatever we could to facilitate the recovery effort. By watching the series and reading the book about you and your men, it gave us all inspiration to carry out our duties no matter what the circumstances, and also for me personally, I realized that as in any situation, it could have been a whole lot worse. Reading about your experiences at Bastogne has humbled me and made me realize the true meaning of dedication and courage in the face of almost-insurmountable odds.

From Candace W. McKinley, “Popeye” Wynn's daughter, who gained a greater appreciation of what her father had experienced during the war:

Knowing little about the time all of you spent during the war, watching the mini-series made me wish Daddy had talked more about it. Not the horror you all witnessed, nor the cold and isolation
you suffered, but the camaraderie shared by the men . . . To think of Daddy so young, so fit and so disciplined was a sharp contrast to the way he had begun to fail physically the last two years of his life . . . When he was being interviewed by a crew from Playtone, I heard more about his time in the service than I'd heard my whole life. What he said at the end of the interview has stayed with me . . . when asked if he ever thinks about what you guys did over there, his answer was, “No, I don't think about that. But the guys . . . I think about them every day.” . . . I am thankful that you were a part of my daddy's life, and I truly feel the same respect for you that he did until the day he died.

From Josephine Bruster, an elderly woman from Oklahoma, who recalls watching the 101st Airborne Division land in Holland in 1944:

I want to thank you for saving my life and family. September 17, 1944, in Veghel—a Sunday afternoon the planes came and all the parachutes started opening up. It was the most beautiful sight. I shall never forget. I was a young girl of ten years old and we lived in Veghel. We were so excited and thankful to see all those American soldiers coming to free us from that awful war. Such brave men! It is because of soldiers like you that I am here today. I came to the United States in 1955, married an American, and now live in a small town in Oklahoma. I have two sons and two daughters, eleven grandchildren, and I am so proud to be an American . . . I just want to let you know what your soldiers meant to me, a ten-year-old girl.

From Linda B. Canzona, a lady in North Carolina, who wrote about her greater appreciation of her grandfather:

. . . I cannot express the gratitude I felt for you and your company while watching the series. As a result of the sacrifices made by men like you, my generation was able to grow up and live in
freedom. . . . Because you were willing to tell your story, it not only gave me a greater appreciation for what your generation did for mine, but also a greater appreciation for the actions of my grandfather, who received two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart at the Battle of the Bulge. I have asked him, as has my brother, what he did to earn those medals and his response is, “It was nothing. It was just another day.” I have truly come to appreciate the contributions (of my uncles and grandfather who fought in World War II and Vietnam) . . . and now realize what freedom really means and how very blessed my generation is because of sacrifices made by others.

When I was young my family went to the beaches of Normandy. My father hoisted me up on his shoulder and as we looked out across the field of crosses, he told my brother and me that all those men died for us.