Beyond Band of Brothers (4 page)

As the training progressed, leaders honed Easy into a well-disciplined unit within an extraordinarily cohesive regiment. Most of the credit belonged to Colonel Sink, Major Strayer, Captain Sobel, and my fellow platoon leaders. Easy Company met every challenge, exceeded every requirement, as both Sink and Sobel demanded that each company meet the exacting standards that they had established. Those troopers who could no longer bear the strain that our commanders subjected Easy Company were rapidly shipped out. The survivors merely endured.

In early fall, the riflemen in the company traveled to South Carolina and bivouacked and slept in pup tents near Clemson University, where they qualified on the university rifle ranges. Machine gunners remained at Toccoa where they slept in their own barracks and ate in their own mess halls. Lieutenant Salve Matheson ran the machine gun ranges and proved himself an incredible instructor. Both groups spent a full week on the ranges. Every soldier was required to become intimately familiar with each of the company's weapons, ranging from the M-1 Garand rifle to the .45-caliber pistol to the 60mm mortar. Additional training focused on the assembly and disassembly of light machine guns. When inclement weather confined us to the barracks, map and compass reading became the order of the day.

One of the reasons that Easy Company excelled was undoubtedly Captain Sobel. Born in Chicago in 1912, Sobel graduated from Culver Military Academy and became a reserve officer upon his graduation from the University of Illinois. He arrived at the 506th from Fort Riley,
Kansas, where he had been serving as a military police officer. Historian Stephen Ambrose describes Sobel as a “petty tyrant who exuded arrogance.” Ambrose wasn't far from the mark. Placed in a position of absolute power analogous to the captain of a ship, Sobel was a strict disciplinarian who ruled Easy Company with an iron fist. To officers and soldiers alike, Sobel became known as the “Black Swan,” which soon evolved into “Herr Black Swan” due to his tyrannical methods of command. As company commander, he tolerated no breach of discipline or loyalty, either real or imagined.

I have always felt that for the eyes of the enlisted men, a junior company officer should try to be a reflection of his company commander. Easy Company's junior officers found they simply could not emulate the image of Sobel and live with themselves. Sobel was not just unfair; he was plain mean. As time went by and the pressure shifted from the training of the citizen soldiers to the proving and testing of the leadership in the company, Sobel started to wilt and his disposition grew increasingly impossible. In a bad mood he could go down a line of men during an inspection and find five or six dirty stacking swivels or weapon slings in a row. Then he might switch to finding three or four soldiers with “dirty ears.” A man could not pass inspection if Sobel had a grudge against him, and it seemed that our company commander held many grudges.

Every soldier who served in Easy has his share of Sobel stories, many of which are recounted in Ambrose's
Band of Brothers
. Private First Class Burt Christenson recounted his initial meeting with Sobel, which was not unlike my own. Reporting to the commander's office, Christenson recalled that Sobel said: “Each man in this company will learn the importance of discipline and practice it or he won't remain in this unit for long. If you don't complete your assignments or pass inspections, you'll receive company punishment. If you continue to fail to accomplish what I consider is your duty, you'll be disqualified from the parachute infantry.” Never an admirer of his company commander, Christenson remembered one incident when Sobel viciously humiliated
a soldier whose principal crime was nothing more than it was his turn to be the object of the company commander's scorn. Once during a routine inspection, Sobel was standing in front of Private First Class (PFC) William Dukeman, a model soldier. Dukeman was a strapping six-foot, one inch, well-built trooper. His uniform was always immaculate. Yet Sobel stood there and continued to scrutinize Dukeman. Then suddenly Sobel thrust his face within inches of Dukeman's face and in a normal tone asked, “What size shirt do you wear, soldier?”

Dukeman replied, “Size 15, sir!”

With a scowl on his face, Sobel shouted, “G—damn it, I can put two fingers between your neck and your shirt!”

Dukeman merely responded, “Yes, sir,” as Sobel quickly moved to the next man and found similar fault with him.

Yet even Sobel had to chuckle about some of the men's antics on furlough or on weekend passes. Take Private Wayne “Skinny” Sisk, one of the first soldiers to join Easy Company. To win over the girls in the 1940s, Sisk used his smile, wit, and the glamour of being a paratrooper. On one occasion the military police arrested “Skinny” on a Saturday afternoon for making out with his girlfriend along the railroad tracks. When asked by Sobel to explain his conduct, Sisk replied, “The train was coming, she was coming, and so was I.”

Suffice it to say Herbert Sobel was a complex and volatile officer, difficult to serve over, impossible to serve under. For those of us who served in the company, he treated us with equal disdain, officers and enlisted men alike. His constant raving that “The Japs are going to get you,” and his “Hi-Yo Silver,” led to widespread snickering behind his back. Never comfortable in a tactical environment, our commander could not read a map, was constantly lost, and tended to panic when confronted with an unexpected situation. As a result, Captain Sobel rapidly lost the respect of the men. The men did what he ordered because they wanted those wings. Yet they never respected him. If he could not lead men on a hike or on a military maneuver, how could he lead Easy Company in combat? His inability to lead by example or
remain calm in a crisis soon became questions that permeated the entire company.

Despite his personal shortcomings, Sobel drove each member of the company to become an elite soldier capable of taking the war to Hitler's Germany. In that sense, Herbert Maxwell Sobel “made” Easy Company by producing a combat company that acted with a single-minded purpose. Carwood Lipton, who would later receive a battlefield commission in Europe, noted that Easy Company was very similar to the groups of men in every company in Sink's 506th save one. Yet there was a difference because Easy coalesced to protect itself against Sobel. In that way, Easy ended up a different way than Sobel intended. Sobel drove us hard and he continued driving us when other companies had already fallen out and gone to the showers. While the other commands within the 506th were getting the hot showers and the early food, we were still out there working, taking an additional lap around the track, and standing at attention to see if anybody was moving. Soon other companies knew of Captain Sobel, including the officers throughout the regiment. No one envied us, but Sobel was producing a magnificent company. Having said that, I would be remiss to disregard the contributions of Easy's first batch of noncommissioned officers who emerged from the ranks: the Carwood Liptons, Joe Toyes, Bill Guarneres, Floyd Talberts, and others.

In Sobel's defense he was equally demanding on himself. Charged with converting “civilians” into an effective fighting force in a relatively short time, he permitted himself few luxuries. Shortly after he assumed command of the battalion, Major Strayer remembered one instance when he disciplined the company commanders for not showing up on time for staff meetings. To demonstrate his point, he confined the company commanders to the camp area for an entire weekend. Their wives raised holy hell. Sobel was the only company commanding officer who was always on time and did as he was instructed, therefore he was not penalized. To his credit he also stood up for his men to higher headquarters. Prior to Easy Company's movement to the port of
embarkation, our battalion commander had the authority to leave any officer behind whom he felt was unsuitable for deployment. When Sobel heard Major Strayer was going to drop one of his officers from the manifest, he went to battalion headquarters and made such a spirited defense that Strayer agreed to keep the officer in the unit and actually pulled him to battalion staff in order to keep him away from troops.

What bothered Easy Company's officers, me included, was not Sobel's emphasis on strict discipline, but his desire to lead by fear rather than example. Each evening he quizzed us on our field manual assignments, which he gave us daily. In his critiques, Sobel was very domineering. There was no give and take. His tone of voice was high-pitched, rasplike. He shouted rather than spoke in a normal way. It just irritated us to no end. Iron discipline the officers could tolerate, but armed with the ultimate authority to dismiss any man in the company, Sobel exceeded the boundaries of acceptable conduct in dealing with citizen-soldiers. If infractions of discipline were not found during inspections, he manufactured deficiencies to prove a point or to emphasize his authority as company commander. To the individual soldiers, Sobel's propensity to find fault was pure chickenshit, so-named by former infantryman and noted author Paul Fussell because “it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously.”

At other times, our commander deliberately embarrassed the platoon leaders in front of their men. Not surprisingly, Sobel rapidly emerged as the central target of hate and scorn within Easy Company. One officer summed up our collective appraisal by stating that Sobel was dedicated to doing everything by the book, but he seemed to possess tunnel vision. He could not, or would not, see or anticipate the results of his disciplinary measures on the men. As a result Easy Company gave their loyalty and devotion to their platoon leaders, who in turn took care of their men the best they could and who softened Sobel's dictatorial behavior. Several troopers, including Richard “Red” Wright, Terrence “Salty” Harris, and Lieutenant Walter Moore,
however, sought an escape from Sobel's wrath and they volunteered for the pathfinders.

Any relationship between company commander and company officers that existed in Easy Company remained strictly professional. Captain Sobel had no friends within the company and few within the regiment. At the end of the day, he went one way, and we officers went the other, hoping not to run into him at the officers' club. As training progressed through the first half of 1943, Sobel's tactical ineptitude, coupled with his increasing paranoid behavior as our overseas deployment neared, led to the total loss of any confidence that remained in his leadership. So traumatic was my own relationship with Captain Sobel that sixty years after the war, it's still painful remembering my initial meeting with him.

Why then was Captain Sobel retained in command by Colonel Sink and Major Strayer? I suspect the answer lies in Easy Company's performance vis-à-vis the other companies within the regiment. Sobel's hard hand, for better or worse, resulted in a well-disciplined and physically conditioned airborne company. Senior officers tolerated Sobel's erratic behavior because he produced the desired results. One indicator of Easy Company's success within the 506th was reflected in the number of company officers who were pulled up to battalion and regimental headquarters. Senior commanders only assign the most talented officers to headquarters staffs. Colonel Sink and Major Strayer were no exception. Within the first eight months of the company's existence, Lieutenants Matheson, Lavenson, Nixon, and Hester were all reassigned to 2dBattalion staff. Hester, Matheson, and Nixon remained on Strayer's staff until Colonel Sink advanced them to regimental staff. For Matheson, the call to regiment occurred before D-Day. Hester was transferred to 3rd Battalion in Holland, while Nixon joined regimental staff during Bastogne. Lavenson was severely wounded outside Carentan. For the remainder of the war, every vacancy in battalion staff was filled by an officer from Easy Company. For that, Sobel deserved a portion of the credit. He was a satisfactory training officer, but he was definitely
not a leader of troops. I suspect he did his best, but he was in the wrong job and that was hardly his fault. Having grown up in urban Chicago, he was ill-suited for the outdoor life required for the leader of an elite infantry unit. Nor was he cut out for the field grade officer. Better suited for administrative duties, Sobel stayed in Easy Company until imminent combat conditions dictated his reassignment—but that was all in the future.

Interpersonal relationships and command problems aside, training at Toccoa remained as demanding as ever. After several weeks of intense physical training, Colonel Sink lined up a C-47 Dakota aircraft to qualify his officers before the bulk of the troops arrived for basic infantry training. The airstrip at Camp Toccoa had been constructed by leveling the top of “Dick's Hill,” a medium-sized hill that the Le Tourneau Earth-Moving Company had lopped off about halfway up and flattened for an airstrip. The landing strip was very short and built to take care of Piper Cubs, not Army C-47s. The length of the runway required that a C-47, in taking off with a load of jumpers, could just barely get airborne by the end of the strip. To reach flying speed, the pilot had to dive the plane parallel to the downward slope of the mountain. That was a real thrill. To land the plane, the pilot could not stop while going in a straight line, so, as he came near the edge of the mountain, he had to turn left or right, as the wing of the plane extended over the edge of the slope. It was much safer to jump from the plane than to land in it.

To determine who would serve as jumpmaster of the first contingent of officers, Sink conducted a “Junior Olympics.” The competition consisted of the best time up and down Currahee, most push-ups, most chin-ups, and the best time through the obstacle course. First Lieutenant Wally Moore was the only man to beat me on that run up Currahee when my legs cramped. I won the overall competition, however, and was rewarded by becoming number one jumper in the first stick to jump at Toccoa. As the aircraft climbed to 1,000 feet, it circled over the drop zone and decelerated to around ninety miles per hour. A Regular
Army sergeant instructed us to “stand up and hook up.” Hooking my static line to the anchor cable, I placed my left foot on the edge of the open door. Gazing down to the drop zone, I looked over the cornfields below and placed both hands on the outside edge of the plane. The green light came on and the sergeant yelled, “Go!”