Historically High - Easy Company - Band of Brothers

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

The men who would first comprise E Company (Easy) would begin their journey at Camp Taccoa, Georgia. Parachute Infantry or Paratroopers were a new concept in WW2. They would be the pioneers. Jumping from planes behind enemy lines, they were supposed to fight surrounded. Engaging the enemy with limited weaponry and fighting with without vehicles or tanks required them to be in exceptionally well trained. They took part in some of the most pivotal events of the war and through it all leaned on each other for survival. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It's so nice to come in here knowing that we're doing a war episode, but also an episode where when we do these teaching episodes, there is a certain amount of mystery as far as the overall subject to what's going to happen. But when we get to do a teaching episode like this, we did it also with Miracle on Ice to where the other person has a pretty good knowledge of kind of some of these things that happened to where it's less of a shock. There's still a huge shock value to this because there's just stuff that I'm not going to know

about the band of brothers and Easy Company, but also at the same time, when you tell me a place, I can put it in my mind because we've talked about it before. Yeah. I can't remember which episode it was that we were discussing Easy Company and you'd ask me, because when you'd lay out kind of what they did,

it does sound like you're inventing, a unit to try to create a story that gets like a greatest hits as much as where as it is to call that of World War II. And I think that's also why Stephen Ambrose, who wrote the book, then Tom Hanks, Spilberg, that did the series, I can't even, the series was done back when I was like in high school, maybe a little bit before. So I'm going to say like maybe like 98, 99, maybe 2000. Wow. Still one of the greatest miniseries that's ever been made from even a technical standpoint about making you feel what these guys were going through.

A lot of our war episodes have to encompass such a large, just covering of topics that you don't get to like kind of look into the personal stories. And you start to kind of just view all soldiers as the same. Like an amalgamation, there's just a movement of troops and everything. But I love this, I love this book, I love this topic so much because it just gets to show you a bunch of guys. from different backgrounds, how they reacted to this war differently, but how, as cheesy as sounds, within each other,

they did find like a band of brothers. And this unit, I think, was picked because when they were like, well, who was in this? And they're like, well, the 101st Airborne was in a lot of shit. So maybe start looking into that. And then they're like, well, who was in the 101st? You know, they're like, well, easy company did this and did this. And a guy's have written books and everything.

So you focus on this company and you find out like they were they were just moving where all of the stuff was going in Europe. And so that's kind of what we're going to cover today, the story of easy company, band of brothers, and kind of fill in some of the gaps that didn't make it into the series. And let Adam understand that this was a real company of guys, normal guys and how they went through this shit is one of the most fascinating aspects of it, though. Do you think that this was a major swing for HBO to take on this mini series back in the 90s? No. Just the content is clearly there. But I imagine that there was probably a decent amount of money sunk into doing the series correctly. And the same amount of money, but this is also coming off of Spielberg winning the Academy Award for Saving Private Ryan.

Yeah. And seeing what him and Tom Hanks could do with that shot or that time frame and like what they could do. from a authenticity standpoint. Same reason why they've done the Pacific, same reason why they've done Masters of the Air, because they can take it and really focus in and kind of show you what the human element of war was for these guys. Was there really a...

I guess I was a little bit younger at the time, but I can't think of a word that's really mini-series in the 90s. Yeah, it was doing it this way. I still have the DVD set that came in like a metal 10 and everything, and I remember getting that and wearing the shit out of that thing. Well, late 90s, I don't exactly remember,

but you know that there were definitely tape versions, right? There was VCR series of Band of Brothers. Yeah, it's like when you had to buy Titanic in the tapes, and it came as two VHS as because it was such a big movie. Yeah. But, so that's what we'll be discussing today. Remember everyone, Patreon.com slash historically high. where you're going to get your bonus content.

It's good shit. Trust us on that. You've trusted us enough to listen to these episodes. And if you've been with us for a long time, you know we like to have fun, but you know we like to do a good job at it, hopefully. And got anything else? Yeah, keep pushing.

Ratings were hanging out in that top 50 on Spotify for history stuff. And it's so cool to know that. That's driven by you guys, giving us five-star ratings, commenting on our stuff, keeping us in the algorithm to just keep growing. I feel like 2026, we are just following the same path of 2025, is finding some of these extra fun stories,

but also trying to mix in some things that you wouldn't think about as far as just straight history down the pipe. And that's where I think something like this fits in. Band of Brothers fits in so well because it's off the beaten path of World War II, but it also is something if you're into World War II, you know who easy company is. Yeah. So keep just giving us the love out there and we keep growing.

And you know that we're still going to keep doing the fun stuff, but there's extra things that we would enjoy doing too. All right. And without further ado, let's get into Easy Company and the Band of Brothers. So Easy Company was part of the 506th parachute or parachute infantry regiment. There wasn't 505 of them beforehand.

I don't get the military naming numbers, stuff like that. Yeah. So it has to be a number. number range, right? Like 500, 600, 700, 700. Are you talking about like how linemen have to have certain numbers? Receivers have to, it might be something like that. So you have the 50, easy company is part of the 506, which is part of the 101st airborne who are known as the Screaming Eagles. You then had the 82nd Airborne, who were another United States airborne division or whatever. And then we talked about it during Market Garden as well. You then had the British, you had like the first,

in the first parachute retryment or whatever it was. So in World War II, you know, it kicking off in 39, the U.S. has an idea that there's going to be a possibility we're going to be in this war, made even more certain in December of 1941. And looking at both Europe, looking at both the Pacific, there, of course, airplanes are a thing now readily available. What happens with every invention? Militarily speaking, it gets co-opted to try to find out how we can use this to make it more efficient to kill people, basically.

So part of the thing, instead of just putting guns on airplanes, you could also get soldiers into areas where you didn't have to march them through certain areas. You could just simply drop them on strategic targets. They could harass, gain footholds. And then your army, you march up behind because all the guys that should be fighting against your army are busy dealing with all these guys that didn't draw behind their enemy line. It's a crazy move to go from, we can strap guns on these things, and we can strap bombs in these things, and we can go attack behind.

enemy lines to be like, you know what, forego the guns. If we just pack a bunch of people inside this with guns. Yeah, don't forego the guns. What you're simply doing is you're adding another element to it. So we got the planes. We put the guns on the planes.

What else can planes do? Well, planes can transport guys? Yeah. So we put the guys and strap the guns to the guys and have them jump out of the planes. What's better than having three guns attached to an airplane? Having 35 guys inside this airplane that all have their own guns. Exactly.

And they can move freely once they hit the ground. They can be on the ground. So when this thing was kind of brought up to people When they were applying, you know, and volunteering, they would be telling them, hey, you can go to the army, infantry, You can go to the tank core, you can go to the airborne. And they're like, well, what's the airborne? I'm like, well, it's this thing where you could jump out of planes,

carry your gear on you and you kind of like, you know, jump behind enemy lines. People are like, that's the no. Like we're jumping where there's enemy and he's like, well, it's $50 a month more. And out of the $100 that they'd be making otherwise, they're like, well, fuck, yeah. Okay, so people would sign up for it. So Camp Dakota, Georgia is where Easy Company and I believe the whole 506 were trained. Now they separated this thing out to where paratroopers had a different type of training. And this is where it differs from the infantry, whereas infantry would be marching together in these large groups of formations where you would have force in mass.

Paratroopers can only fight with what they have bringing in with them. So you're not going to be bringing in tanks. You're not going to be bringing in. We talk about Market Garden. The gliders bring in artillery, but that's not coming out of paratroot infantry planes. And there's only so many things that you can bring in that way. Correct.

So you have to have a very specific way of fighting that's as effective as you can be with the limited, I guess, caliber or arms that you can actually bring in with you. So Camp de Coa was, think of it like the basic training aspect of it, where it was a focus on troop, cohesiveness, physical conditioning was the, biggest thing here because whereas an infantry was marching en masse which means you only marched as fast as you could with a large amount of people you were traveling with tanks trucks all of that when you landed somewhere as a paratrooper you could be miles away from a target that you had to then move to on foot because you had no access to mechanized travel or anything you had to be able

to group together have tactics where you could fight with other units that weren't within your thing because you guys might be dropping in other areas and kind of get mixed up. So the tactics were much different, but that emphasis on being able to be like, you have to be able to reposition and travel long distances because you're not going to get picked up by a vehicle and you have to do it quickly. You need to be able to move fast to secure objectives. I'm sure a fair amount of their training more so than anybody else had to be survival training too, right? You would think. Yeah.

But the whole thing with parachute infantry is we're never going to drop you further than we can't get to you within a day or two or maybe three. Remember, Market Garden kind of stretched that out. We know different. Yeah. But think of Normandy, too. They dropped in there like, we're expecting to get into these areas within one day, if we can get a good push, two days. Market Garden kind of was just like, oh, three or four, whatever. But you didn't train them for survival because you would pack them enough material or food to survive for.

those three days that they would be there. In theory. You were packing theories. Yeah, exactly, in theory. So the emphasis first was on physical training. Their first CO commanding officer was a guy named Herbert Sobel. And if anyone has seen the miniseries is the guy that David Schwimmer plays and the guy that everyone fucking hates. So this guy was based on the real guy that was in their memoirs and everything like that. This guy was a fucking asshole. This guy was obsessed with essentially,

having the best company, which I fully get, but to the nth degree and was obsessive to the point where would revoke weekend passes where guys couldn't go off base during the weekends. I'm talking infractions where, like, there would be a spare thread on their jacket or something, or there was a little bit of rust on the bayonet, or there was just anything he could find. There was a thing where you couldn't, they called it blousing your trousers. So normally if you were in the army, your pants would go on. on the outside and be creased on the outside of your boots, right? Yeah. If you were a paratrooper, you got to tuck your pants into your boots because it looked like, you know, kind of more badass.

Bad ass for sure. You couldn't do that until you actually were confirmed as a paratrooper. So guys would try to maybe do it kind of on the sly. He would see the wrinkles on the pants and be like, no. Oh, so not while they were being inspected, but as they were off doing other things, that's when they would tuck in. Okay. Also, we're just doing it to see how it looks and it wrinkled the pants. a little bit.

Yeah. With this series that's going on for HBO, is this prime Ross Geller? Yeah. So you're getting that weird juxtaposition, like, oh, he's playing a serious guy. He plays a doucheback so well. He does. As this rule, yes. I think it comes pretty naturally.

He plays an awesome douchebag and curb, too. But it's interesting when you talk about, like, who these guys are, because that's a character where you would think you just go a guy that. it's a prick, pretty much completely and everything else that he plays. But you can read about this guy and everybody's impression of this guy, and then you get to act based upon that. Yeah, universally hated. That's got to be such a nice character to go into.

So this guy would have them, there was a hill outside, kind of outside of the camp called Curahee. And so Curahee end up becoming the airborne, or at least the 506 model. And it was a word derived from a Cherokee word that means stand alone. So thinking about that from an airborne aspect, you're dropping in there, your units by itself, you're standing alone. So it's pretty apt.

Now, from the camp to Curhie, it was three miles up, three miles down. It wasn't a huge elevation change, but you were going uphill a pretty decent portion of the way. Packing everything that you need. You would do it during PT, wearing just shorts.

And again, this is 1940s. Think of the footwear. Yeah, not good. It's Army boots. You would then have times when you were running up in full pack carrying all of the stuff that you would normally drop in with, your weapon, all of that kind of stuff.

And Sobel was having them do this all the time. There was an instance where they would have them do night marches because you would have to find your way in march around at night, especially if you dropped in some more. So, I mean, it's realistic stuff, but he's doing it to the extreme where he's revoking weekend passes. He's having them stay. Enough to the point, too, is when he's revoking these passes,

if there's enough of these little made-up bullshit infractions, he's just like the unit has had its weekend pass revoked. and would just have people marching at night. There were instances where he didn't allow them to drink from their canteens during these long marches, and he would then have them stand in formation when they arrived back up in their canteens and pour them out, and he'd be looking for who's emptied faster. Does anybody have a universal respect for this guy afterwards for maybe overtrending them? It's really interesting that you say that because the one reoccurring theme of the positive aspect is that the survival of this company

was due in part to this guy preparing us in this manner. Okay. Of being physically able to survive. Yes. It also lends to the fact where we just talked about it kind of, you know, when we were talking about the miracle on ice, Herb Brooks, give them a common enemy and they're going to bond together. Sobel didn't intend that.

He didn't know that was his personality. Yes, it turned the men, especially those where they're originally at, they call them Takaoa men. They were at Tocoa to become very bonded. because they had this shared struggle. So the physical aspect was much higher than like a regular infantry division or anything like that.

At one point, I think he allowed them like an afternoon off because there was supposed to be some rain. And he was like, I think we should do like a special treat that guys have been doing really well. Let's do spaghetti. So he has the mess hall do spaghetti and everything.

As they're finishing up, he comes in and is like, our afternoon classes are canceled. We're running up Curry. So basically loads them up and pasta and then makes them run three miles up, three miles down. And this was done in 50 minutes. I already hate this guy. Yeah. You can't do that. You can't feed him a delicious spaghetti dinner and then make him run. He would go into their barracks because they had no personal property because they

weren't paratroopers yet. And he would search through their stuff. He would search through correspondence. Be like, why is this guy riding so much? How does he have so much spare time? He found contraband that he would consider non-regulation army clothing. If he found porn, which he found a lot of porn, actually. He found a guy that was hoarding condoms. Someone had stolen like a can of peaches from the mess hall, and he actually got rid of the guy for thievery, kicked him out of the unit.

And when you're kicked out, you're kicked out of the... It's not like you just go to another unit. You're kicked out of the airborne. You're going back to the infantry. So now what you're describing is just prison. Kind of. Contraband. He's doing...

He's doing the extreme version of thinking, I need to break these guys completely down and make them, which again from the conditioning aspect and from their closeness like he succeeded in doing it unintentionally basically had this been his intent it would be one thing but this was just something he kind of happened upon yes so in in this training for to be part of the airborne you had 500 officer volunteers now officers or guys had gone to officer school things like that that came into the military with an officer commission. I think we've talked about this during other episodes. Those these guys named

NCOs who are non-commissioned officers that came in as enlisted men, but then climbed their way up to the rank of officers. Then you just have the enlisted men. You had 500 officer volunteers that ended up getting you 148 officers. So it weeded out 352. They didn't make it. At a 5,300 enlisted men, you ended up with 1,800 graduates of this school. So that shows you how hard this training was that those guys then went back to the infantry and were probably, and I'm not saying there's a knock on the infantry. No. I'm just saying I'm trying to get across what high level of training just from a physical fitness standpoint you had to get in here. Because again, this is before jump school even happens.

So how it actually the organizational makeup of one of these companies was is in a company, you would have, three rifle platoons. So three groups of guys, 45 men in each one. Now, that included the guys that were like their officers, things like that. A platoon included three 12-man rifle squads.

So out of these 45, three 12-man rifle squads, a six-man mortar team, and a machine gun on each of these squads. So they had three machine gun squads, basically. And then you'd have a platoon leader, and then you'd have like your XO, executive officer, then you would have your commanding officer. So Sobel being your commanding officer.

I'm going to make references to some guy's names during this several times. So one of the main guys and a lot of the information comes from is a guy named Richard Winters, Dick Winters. And he ends up, he starts as a, I want to say a platoon leader. So he's leading one of these 45 man groups that has these three 12 man rifle squads. And he's one of the guys that is right underneath Sobel. He's like Sobel's executive officer or something. Him and Sobel, winners outwardly does not butt heads with him, but you can tell that there is some animosity because Sobel looks at winners because he's very competent as someone that can try to kind of steal his thunder.

Is the way that these different squads are trained similar to like, what was it, the fortress flyer in the air as far? far as those crews worked for, is you were superior at what you did, but you were cross-trained to be able. So like, if you were in one of these rifle squads and your machine gun guy went down, are you pulling from those areas to go on machine guns? Yes, it was very much so no, every man's job. Okay. This is your job. But if you're called upon to do another job, you're going to be able to do it. And you would have a combination of different, also different, like, arms in the squad.

So you'd have some guys with like Thompson machine guns for close quarters, that kind of stuff. So you would have a little bit of everything. And then you would have most of the guys with like the M1 rifles, like the automatic rifles. So competent with everything specialized in your feet. Correct. Mortars might be a little trickier because that's a fucking science of being able to set one of those things up, get it ranged, and start making adjustments as you're launching mortars and stuff. You could be the guy that comes in and drops the mortar in the tube, though.

Yeah. So Tocoa was for. basic training and there had been a Japanese, something that came out in Japan about a Japanese company or unit that had marched 100, like 100 miles in, I want to say like 72 hours or like 75 hours. Oh no. So they were like, fuck that. We're going to go ahead and beat it. So easy company, and I believe it was the rest of the 506, March 118 miles from Toccoa to Atlanta in 75 hours. In their full packs and everything, they camped out and did the Bivouac thing that we've talked about, where they just kind of camp out wherever they're at. But they basically wanted to say they did that. We did more miles and we did it faster.

It was a kind of a publicity type stunt. They're then sent to Fort Benning in, I want to say, North Carolina. And this is where they went through jump training. Now, this takes place from December, 1942, to March, 1943. So for parachute and jump training, you had to first do ground school. They packed their own shoots. Oh, how do you feel about that? I see why. Yeah. Because to pack this many shoots when they're doing jumps and everything like that,

you would have to have a lot of people to be packing those shoots. I think if you're putting the responsibility in the guy's hand, no one is going to take greater care in pack. packing that shoot, then the guy whose life relies on the shoot being packed correctly. And then having the confidence to be the one that's packing your own shoot. Yes. And they didn't specify this in the series, which I thought was crazy. This would have been awesome to put in there.

But yes, they learned to pack their own shoots. They would learn how to land to avoid injury. Simple shit, like a mock-up plane where they jump from five feet out and have to be able to land and roll. They would then kind of step up and have tower training. where they had like a 34 foot high tower where they would kind of like jump off it to train and a zip line. So it would kind of simulate the shoot

unfurling and slowing you down. They had a 250 foot tower where they would then step up and do it from that range so you were kind of getting a feeling of height. They said they would do training from that tower where you would actually jump off the tower and the shoe would deploy and you would get the float coming down.

That eventually would lead to doing five jumps from a C-47, same plane that they used to transport them on D-Day, four-day jumps and one-night jump, and that would earn you your jump wings. It's a lot to get to your jump wings, but you have to, I mean, it's nice that they did break it down into the steps instead of just kicking them out and being like, okay, just run through the whole course. And they're still booting guys out because most of these guys have never been in a plane before.

And let alone one of the first times they're in a plane, you're jumping out of the plane. so it was huge about not freezing in the plane. If you gave any resistance, you're out. There was one instance that they talked about where a guy got to the door. He was one of the, I think he was the last guy, and they called them in a stick. So a stick was the number of guys

that were in one plane. So it was 17 guys. So if it was like, whose stick is in, he's in Lieutenant Winner's stick. He's in his plane. So might have been the last guy. He gets to the door. He refuses.

And he's like, I can't do it. And as soon as the plane starts peeling around, he's like, I have to do this. I have to do it. And he's like, I'm going to give you one more chance. So the plane comes back around and the guy ends up doing it. So he doesn't get booted. But the trainer was like, in a weird way, that takes, I think a little bit more bravery. Yeah.

To be so scared that you didn't do it. But then in that moment, be like, I have to and just make that decision. But if you were to freeze in the doorway, I mean, and really refuse to go, they would just take you out. Because it wasn't going to be something that you were going to be allowed to do or something that could come up when you were doing it for real. It doesn't sound correct, but there is something to having the mental fortitude to push through, like saying something, you're just not going to do it. Like push through fear is almost better than having just no fear. Yeah. And being aware of the fear, but being able to over it because he's like, well, if he can overcome this, then he can overcome in other situations.

They said the key was to when you got to it, never put your hands. on the inside of the door. You never touched the inside of the door. You put your hands instantly around the outside where you gripped it and you threw yourself out. You never gave yourself a chance to try to resist. Push back, yeah. So after you did those five jumps,

you earned your jump wings. Of course, when they're graduating and stuff like that, they're getting to have unit parties and things like that. The guys that are graduating from jump school that had graduated from Tocua are then sent to do training, basically in tactics, and this is where you're doing your battlefield tactics. You're learning how to actually, like, yeah, you probably did some rifle training and stuff

at Toccoa, but this is where it's now going to be unit maneuvers, how to navigate, how to dig trenches, all this kind of stuff. And this is, I think, taking place at, like, Camp, or Camp McCall in North Carolina. I want to say maybe Jump School was also in Georgia. I might as in North Carolina. Four Bennings in Georgia. Four Benning's in Jordan. Okay.

So while they're at Toccoa, it's probably mainly just airborne training, right? It's the physical fitness aspect of it, yes. And then Fort Benning is it a multi-purpose base? That one's mostly jump school. Okay. And then this next camp, what I'm asking almost is, are there like infantrymen that are also stationed at these forts that are seeing what these other guys are going through? I don't know.

I don't think so. I think they're completely separate. So this is just kind of like a boys club. This is, we've earned our right to be on this base. The guys that are on this base training are the guys that have gone through the same training we have and have passed the same stuff we have. They said that was that's also one of the reasons a lot of people, one of the guys specifically, his name's Carwood Lipton. He's a Tocomac, man that makes it all the way through. But he was talking about how he had read a article about paratroopers in like,

Time magazine or something like that before he signed up like what made him volunteer and they were talking about the training and how rigorous it was and he was like I don't want to be in a situation where I am sitting next to a conscript in a foxhole someone that was pulled into this without volunteering someone that went through a lower grade of training if I'm going to be next to somebody I wanted to be someone who's gone through the rigor the hell and everything, to know that they're going to be there when shit hits the fan. That's somebody that I can trust, has the fortitude to have gotten through what I got through. You want somebody to be there because they want to be there, not because they're forced to be there. Yeah, you want to be with a volunteer versus a conscript.

Yeah, 100%. So while they're starting to kind of do these tactical trainings at Camp McCall, they're starting to kind of see the holes in Sobel's leadership, whereas he was excellent at the physical fitness aspect and getting them conditioned. When it comes to actual tactical leadership, he is very jumpy. He's very indecisive. And he lets those decisions end up making bad calls that during certain exercises are getting his guys ambushed.

And there's grumblings within the crew already that like if he's struggling with this just under practice tactical training, like what's, what in, you know, what confidence does this inspire that he's going to be able to lead us in actual combat? Like, he's getting us killed in training by people who are trying to kill us, but not actively doing it. It's one thing to be a great practice coach and bad in games, because at least you've trained these guys to be good on their own. Yeah. It's not good when you're a great training coach and then a bad practice coach and then an even worse. It's the difference between a strength and conditioning coach and the head coach.

Yeah. The strength conditioning just gets them to the point where they can perform. The head coaches who actually puts them into the plays and dictates how they're going to play the game. Guys, great at breaking people. He's not awesome at building them back up. Yeah, exactly. So during this train, this is when this first starts to come up March to June. The Easy Company was finally joined with the 101st Airborne Division in July of 1943.

So this was also news to me that like these makeups of these divisions weren't always set in stone. It was just like, how many guys do we have ready? Let's all constitute them into this. Because they also knew that they were going to need them soon because this is also going to kind of be when D-Day is in its initial planning phases for the invasion of Europe and what options they have. So this is an experimental arm sort of. I have an experimental form of combat sitting right here. That's exactly what it was. This is the first time that this type of warfare was ever going to be waged. Huh. So September 1st, kind of first through the the fifth, kind of there's been reports of either day.

Easy Company is put on a train. 43? Yes, in 43. So very, very beginning of September. They're put on a train and there's all of a sudden this question of where are we going. It's not like they just come out and say, hey, the 506 or the 101st is going to the Pacific. Hey, you guys are going to Europe. They, there's a lockdown that is like, if there's German spies here in the States,

and they have information, even from guys talking about, hey, we're heading to Europe. That information gets back and it's about troop buildup and movements and starts to give away plans. So all of this stuff is kept on the down low. Now, Sobel's still in charge of Easy Company. You have winners that's kind of under him. I believe you have a guy named Harry Welsh who's in charge of another platoon who's really good friends with winners. And then you have certain officers that fulfill other roles that are like supply officers or more like tactical guys. or administrative guys.

There's a guy that winners came through training with, and his name is Lewis Nixon. And Nixon came from like a really prominent family. I want to say, oh, fuck, it was somewhere in New England. But enough so to where the name of the town was Nixon. Oh, wow. Yes. That's pretty prominent.

Yes. And he had traveled to Europe and everything like that, but he was a rich kid who was kind of like, I'm going to sign up. He didn't, he kind of butted heads with his dad and with his family. So him and winners were really good friends. And so. Oh, God, where my hat?

Ron Livingston's a pretty interesting character choice. Plays it fucking perfectly, dude. That, yeah, fucking watch the series. So anyway, so because he is like up in kind of the regiment, higher up in the regiment from a strategic standpoint, kind of more in that like administrative staff. He has information. So he's like, where do you think we're going?

Atlantic, Pacific, Atlantic, Atlantic. So basically kind of lets him in and they end up taking the train. First, it goes north. So they're like, don't know because it could go north and then head to the Pacific. And you've got to imagine what is this kind of your mindset. If you're one of these guys in the company that you know what's been going on in the Pacific, our guys have already been fighting. And you know about the island hopping all of that, how fucking crazy brutal is.

And you're just like, fuck, is this where we're going? Are they going to send us to the West Coast? And then we're heading over it. And then they're not going to use this as infantry. Are we dropping in on these fucking islands? And then you find out, you just keep heading north. And you find you're way to New York, get put on a troop ship, and you start heading over to England. There's a point in the United States where once you cross it going up north far enough,

It's like the malaria line. You know that there's no way that they're sending you somewhere that's going to potentially give you malaria. Yeah. But then you also move up into an area like, shit. It's going to be muddy. It's going to be wet. There's going to be rain all the time. We're going to be in forests instead of jungles.

You don't know that. You've been told that. You've trained in forests and stuff like that. But at the same time, you're also comparing uninhabited or sparsely-habited South Pacific Islands and all of this stuff. to what you've heard of stories of Europe, of Paris, of England, about a place you've seen pictures of, and it's picturesque and everything. That's where you're hoping you're going. Well, there's also a huge thought.

I just thought about that. If you're training in Georgia, you're not going anywhere tropical to train. There's no rainforest for you guys to go figure out how to live in, but there's forests that are similar enough in Georgia to be sent over to Europe where it's probably going to be a little bit more. I don't think that was ever a thought. I think it was just like we need to train them in a certain place. I think it's just where the infrastructure was available.

Okay. I still think that there was a huge possibility of these guys thinking they were being sent to the Pacific because that was currently where we were at the time. It was where our focus was after. Correct. Look at it from this standpoint. We don't touch boots down in Europe until 44, until D-Day, right? This is back in 43 where the war is actively going on in the Pacific.

and if they need troops right now, that's where you're going to be going. You don't know anything about the planning for D-Day. You have no idea why you would even be going to England. A relief probably, though. Yep. So the ship goes from New York to Liverpool. I think he gets to Liverpool on the 15th.

Also something I didn't really think about. You're probably going with other troop transports. You're in a convoy. There's destroyers around you. But you still know that there's U-boats in the water. and that at a certain point during this sailing over there, you're pretty, you know, if you're talking about they're put on a train at the beginning

and they get Liverpool to 15th, they're on a boat for, I think it was like 10, 10 days, maybe a little bit more. It's faster than I would expect, but I bet it felt like a lifetime. Especially when you're cramped, the converted liner that they used, I can't remember what the name of it was,

originally meant to hold 1,000 people, it had 5,000 guys on it. God damn. And so you're coming up on top to get air and then you're going back down and there are just stacks and stacks of like cots that are just, and guys are having to climb up on other ones to go five or six cots high. And when they were going over there, they would have them sharing cots. So you're up for eight hours. Hot caught. You get to sleep.

They're hot caught in it. So is this a situation like a wind talker situation where they're on these boats and their mission is top secret? They can't tell anybody? or is there enough of them on the boat to be like, okay, these are the airborne boys that are with us? I don't think that they were able to really talk about their specialties and stuff. They kept everything really, really close to the chest. So they get over their send to this place called Aldbourne in Wiltshire

for training and prep for D-Day. So this is where they're going to continue to train actually in the UK. Sounds lovely. Oh, dude, it was beautiful. Sobel at this point, kind of has it out for winners a little bit too hard. And there are two instances that this occurs. One of them, and I'm trying, I'm going to try to mix them up,

because only one of them is featured in the show. So there's an attempt by Sobel to basically not court martial winters, but a way to kind of put him in his place with a, not demotion, but just to punish him for something. So what he ends up doing is he, assigns, Winters is assigned by a guy above Sobel to basically censor the men's mail that they're sending out. He basically just goes through all their letters to make sure they're not giving out any information in these letters that can be used against them in a military term. So he's doing that from 930 to 9.55.

He was ordered to do this by a guy that was higher up. Sobel had told him from 10 o'clock to 1015, you're on latrine inspection. You have to go inspect the toilets and everything. So Winters is staying with a family that doesn't have a phone. He's housed with the family that doesn't have a phone. And Sobel basically, when Winner shows up to inspect this thing, Sobel's already there. And the guy that he's watching,

because it wasn't Winner's cleaning it. He was overseeing it to make sure it was done. He's already, Sobel's already there and is acting like it's done. Like it took place 15 minutes before. And he's like, what's going on? He's like, I gave you an order to show. here at 945. He's like, no. He's like, I had orders from a colonel to be censoring the men's mail from 930 to 955, which I was doing at 10 o'clock when you told me and my orders were I was here to do

this. You were just here before me. And he's like, I had changed it to 945. And he's like, I didn't get that information. And he's like, regardless, when you're provided something by a commanding officer, it was your job to delegate having to either do the train inspection or do the letters. And he's like, how did you notify me? He's like, well, I called. And he's like, I'm with a family that doesn't have a phone. He's like, I also sent a runner. And he's like, runner didn't get to me. He's like, regardless. So he's like, you can either go ahead and take the punishment, which is the loss of your weekend pass, or you can request a trial by court martial. And, and, There was an instance that happened before this, I think, where he tried to get him up on a trumped-up charge, too.

But the guy that was ahead of Sobel was like, this is fucking garbage. And he just dismissed it. So Sobel tried to get Winners again. So this ends up going to causing kind of an issue where Winners is then transferred out of his platoon leadership to be put in charge of like the kitchen staff, like the commissary and everything. Now, during their training that they've been doing here, Sobel has continued to fuck up and just the guys have zero confidence. He's getting them in the wrong locations. He is, again, he's jumping in the field where he's ordering them to do these like countermaneuvers that are going to leave them wide open. And there's an instance where one of the dudes is really good at impressions.

And Sobel ends up getting them lost. He tells the men to like kind of go back into cover. the dude that does the impressions, if they're doing these training exercises, commanding officers will be going from unit to unit and kind of walking around to see how they're doing. So this guy knows the voice and can mimic the voice of one of the commanding officers.

And he's like, what's the holdup, Captain Sobel? And he's like, who's that? He's like, who's breaking silence? And one of the guys with him, he's like, I think that's like General or like Colonel Horton or something. And he's like, what would he be doing out here? And he's like, you know, maybe he's going between the units. And he's like, what's the hold up captain? Sobo? He's like, there's a fence here, sir. It's a barbed wire fence.

Meaning that they're not supposed to be there. It's some farmers feel that they wouldn't be running exercises. And he's like, oh, that ain't going to cut it. You get through that fence and get this platoon on the move. And he's like, yes, sir, has him cut the fence. These guys, cows get out and everything. And so then it makes Sobel look like an asshole because he comes back and he's like, why did you cut that guy's fence? He's like, Major Horton told me to do. He's like, Major Horton told you to cut the fence. He's like, yes. He's like, the guy that's in London right now ordered you to cut the fence. And so after this, this is when this court martial thing comes up because he's basically looking for someone to take the heat off of him. Yep. He needs somebody else to sit in the fire.

So at this point, Sobel is pretty much outlived his usefulness. According to the guys, yes, but to command, he's put together one of the finest regiments or finest companies in the regiment. they're excelling despite him because they have such good other guys like the NCOs and the sergeants and everything Dick winners And yes So 12 to 14 of these NCOs

Non-commissioned officers Basically make the decision to turn in their stripes They're going to go and turn in their commissions And they're going to go back to being just like privates These guys have been put in this position Because they've displayed leadership skills That no one else has displayed So these guys are very crucial.

It's also, while they're training for the invasion of Europe. Not the right time. They feel so strongly against Sobel. These guys are all an easy company. They feel so strongly about his bad tactics and lack of leadership that they all threaten to resign their commissions. Now, this is mutiny, technically. This is a line you up against a wall because we're in wartime

and shoot you type of offense. and these 12 to 14 guys still make the decision to do this. They go in front of the guy's name is Colonel Sink, and basically he's like, this is dishonor, I ought to have you all shot. He picks out the two guys, he thinks to the ringleader transfers,

one of them out of the regiment, and then takes the other guy and assigns him to another company and bust him down to like a private. The other guys, he's like, you better be thankful that we need you guys right now, and we're on the eve of the invasion of Europe, or else this would be a lot worse.

You put me in a bad position. What this does, though, is this shows him that there were 12 to 14 of these guys, the leadership guys in his company, that all said the same thing. So he basically calls Sobel in, and he's like, we're opening, he's like, you've been doing fantastic

with the training of easy company. You're doing so good that there's, a parachute training school a few miles up the road that they're going to be training chaplains, doctors, people that are vital to the war effort that we need to get into positions. And I can't think of anyone better to run that than you. And he's like, you're taking the company. And the guy's like, doesn't flat out tell him. But he's basically like, yeah, I'm taking you out of the leadership role of this company.

And I'm giving you this parachute school that you can go ahead and run. We're not taking the company from you. We're reshuffling assets. Well, as soon as he's out, Winners is back in as the leader of First Platoon. They find a guy that was a senior officer. Unless it's on the battlefield, what they normally don't do is take a guy that is in a company and put him into a position of high, high leadership in that company because they feel like the guys won't respect him. They won't listen to his authority because he was previously on the same room. Exactly.

it's assonite. Those are the guys you're going to trust the most. And those are the guys that you're going to see get promoted and say, I see why he got promoted. I watched him sacrifice when we were next to each other. He's, he's worthy of this. So there's a first lieutenant in Baker Company who's part of that. And he's like, he's the senior guy. We're going to move him over and promote him into Sobel's place. This guy was pretty competent. So they're like, we got a guy out of here. Or, yeah, Thomas Mehan was the guy that took over. and he starts kind of like they're already whipped into shape.

He doesn't need to do anything. He just needs to be a competent leader and he displays that he is. All right. So they're continuing to train in England and everything like that. We're going to go ahead and give the lead-up up to June 6th of 1944. So they've been training since the 15th of September or been in England since the 15th of September. Almost a year later, they're getting ready to jump into Normandy. 1 a.m. on the day of days, this is when the 101st and the 82nd, all of the parachute jump aspect of D-Day is supposed to be landing troops in Normandy, middle of the night.

I'm assuming they've done night training at this point. They've jumped in... They did the one night jump. Oh, it was just the one? They did four day to qualify. I do think that they probably did, because they did jump training and also did that kind of stuff while they were still over in England. So yes, I want to say, sorry, yes, they had to have done night drops at that point just to get the aim down for where the pilots are going to drop them and kind of finding out how to get your guys together. It's not even necessarily about the airborne.

It's about the pilots knowing where to drop at that point, too. So as they're flying over the coast, kind of a commonality between the guys that were able to look out the windows or were sitting near the rear door. A lot of them took the rear door off the plane. Just because it would have been easier. They're like, it's louder, but you're going to have fresh air. you're going to be able to get the fuck out if the plane gets hit or something. So the guys that could look out the windows sitting by the door, they were able to look down and see the Normandy fleet for the invasion all starting to head toward Normandy.

They were like, I have never been able to comprehend seeing that amount of ships altogether, and we were just flying over them toward the coast. Confidence has to be at an all-time high. You're terrified. You are, but at the same time, you're seeing the guys that are. in theory supposed to be getting to you first, right? Yes. You see how strong that force is going to be.

And yes, I think that inspires that confidence. I don't know how much that outweighs the confidence or that feeling of you're still about to jump out of an airplane in enemy territory. So they end up, um, flak ends up being a thing. So like there's flak shooting at these planes. There's anti-aircraft fire going off and everything. And they're having to fly through this. to get to the drop zones where these guys beforehand pathfinders, I think we talked about that during Market Garden a little bit,

the guys that came in to set up the beacons that tell them, those guys had already dropped in to set this stuff up. And so you're hitting flack and having to fly through it in formation until you get to this drop zone, at which point they had a red light in the back of the plane. And that was what basically when that turned on, they got up, they hooked up their static cords to the little line in the middle of the plane.

They did an equipment check, they're checking their buddies back and saying five okay four okay three okay and they're then just standing there waiting until that light turns green and they jump out now what they're jumping with i'm going to go ahead and read off a list of what they packed with them when they jumped during d day so three days worth of k rations which were the survival rations two d rations which were chocolate a compass a bayonet an entrenching tool which was the like little shovel type digging pick thing light so far yep all the ammo that they were going to be fighting with for those three days. Gas mask, a musette bag,

which I guess is kind of like a side bag, side song bag, uh, webbing that they could put on their uniforms to like tack stuff on like their helmets and everything. Uh, their sidearm, which was normally a 45. Some people got issued one if they were an officer. Other guys were like, I'm just going to get one. So they would have it. Yeah. So some guys had revolvers. Some had like, um, like a cult. Canteen, cigarettes, mine, grenades, smoke grenade, what's called a gammon grenade, T&T, a couple blocks of T&T, rope, their uniform, their shoot, their reserve shoot, the May West, which was an inflatable life jacket that they had to wear because they were flying over the channel and a plane could go down, and then they're a rifle.

There's a level of explosiveness that I become in that situation that makes me uneasy. You're wearing your shoe, so that takes up most of what's on your back, so you can't wear a backpack, so all of it's around kind of this low slung kind of belt. You got a Fupa. You're wearing a Fupa on your supplies. It's a, you got a big ass. And they introduced, like, right before the jump. They're like, we've actually developed this thing.

It's a leg bag that can hold some of your equipment, and you guys can put it in to kind of take the load. The rifle can go in there. That way you're not holding it when you have to jump. And so a lot of guys were like, okay, yeah, we're going to strap this big ass bag that was about from their foot up to mid thigh. They're going to strap it. What happens when we jump out is it lets some line out. It hits the ground about 20 feet before you do. you land near the bag and you can get all your stuff out.

Well, when they were kind of testing this out, planes can only go a certain altitude that they're going to drop them. They have to be going very slow. When planes start getting shot at by flack and all this kind of stuff, and they have to fly through it to get to their drop zone, they're speeding the fuck up. They're still low to the ground because they can't get any higher because they have to get these guys to the ground in a certain amount of time.

but a lot of them are going pretty fast. And as these guys jump, the prop blast, because they're jumping right behind the engine, rips the leg back completely off of them, and most of them land without these leg bags, which in a lot of cases have their rifles in it. That part's bad. I have to say, though, if that leg bag is any sort of heavy and you're dropping it and it's hitting the ground before you are, is that not just going to pull you face down, like an anchor, like a literal anchor hitting the ground

and just basically forcing you front first? I think, I mean, the way I kind of see it, if it hits first, it starts like that's where your pivot is. Yeah. And then as the shoot either brings you straight down, you're landing within 20 feet of it, so it's not getting taught. And if your shoe kind of guides you to the side,

it helps bring you down a little bit more and keeps it to where you're not being dragged by your shoot. So less forward momentum. It was a last minute thing, dude. And they obviously didn't think through it. So, I mean, it was just a way for them to be like, a lot of the guys, when they're trying to get in the plane wearing all this, they can't climb up into the plane.

The guys behind them are pushing them up and dragging them into the plane just to sit them down. So they can go jump out. So they can go jump out, yeah. Golly. Not to mention keeping all that stuff organized in a fashion that it doesn't get tied up on the ground as you're shuffling through to the door and all of that. So their objectives, easy company objectives, They were all spread out in eight aircraft, 17 to a stick, basically.

Now, during the jump, I'm not sure if anyone actually saw it, but the entire command staff, so Lieutenant Meehan and his command staff and everything, the guys that weren't the platoon leaders in the planes with their platoons, they were all in one plane. His plane ends up getting hit over Normandy and ends up blowing up before anyone can get out. So within before you even landing, easy company loses its command staff. So as they all end up landing,

because of the flack and everything, a lot of these guys, this isn't like Market Garden where they hit their targets, like during a daylight drop where they concentrated their guys right where they should be. Guys got spread all over.

Planes were swerving to miss flak, which means the other planes in formation had to veer off and everything and try to avoid collisions. Are we talking gliders at this point or no? There were gliders that came in. During D-Day, I think we did talk about it during the D-D-D episode, but not in the amounts, I believe. Not with Easy Company, definitely.

Yeah, they were going out the door, not landing. They were all going to parachutes. So they were going to secure Causeway 2, which was basically the area between Utah Beach and Omaha Beach. That would basically allow the invasion troops to work their way in from the beaches. It was the area of like where the roads were concentrated. So they had to secure that. destroy any artillery or positions that they came across. So this isn't just like, hey, we know this is here, here, and here.

It's in the time of your guys' mission when you're trying to go secure Causeway 2, take out whatever you guys run across or make the decision that your troops' strength isn't enough and try to bypass it or wait until you build up some more troops. Like, again, this is where it's like, this is what we're telling you to do. How you do it is kind of for you to determine once you're on the ground. they had to capture key areas around a place called San Marie Dumont. They're dropping at 1 a.m. Takes a while for everyone to get dropped in everything.

Yeah. Guys are trying to meet up just in these little hodgepodge units. A lot of guys, not even from the same company. You might have two guys from the same company, but other guys are from the 82nd airborne or from other companies within the 101st. So you've been trained to basically be like, hey, we're not going to just wait for all our guys to get together.

all of us are going to stick together. We all know how to fight the exact same. And then we'll try to get to areas where there's more guys. And then we can then split up into our groups if we need to. We'll handle that when the time comes. Yep. So the first part of the, as soon as they land, they're scattered all over. It's all about trying to kind of like find each other.

They were given these little clicker things, like little cricket clickers, that would just make a little popping sound a little bit. And if you saw somebody moving and you were kind of hidden, you could click it. And then the response was supposed to be two clicks. So click, click, click. You then had a code word where the person would say flash and the responder would say thunder. So that was so you could identify if the person hiding and everything was an American. Yeah, it's also if you say flash and you hear a gunshot, he's probably not a good guy.

So on D-Day, they get together a little bit of easy company, ends up getting together. some of the stuff they run into on D-Day is, as they're making their way toward essentially like a designated gathering area for the 506 to kind of them break up and start doing their little missions, they run into a carriage drawn by horses that's taking guns and stuff or ammo and probably a pretty decent size force

of maybe like 10 to 12 Germans with it. They end up taking those out in kind of a sneak attack. And then as they're kind of traveling to try, You know, they're going miles through enemy territory. It's starting to get light again and everything. They're finding, you know, dead paratroopers. They happen to kind of scrounge ammo because they know, they don't know when they're going to be resupplied.

So there's this weird kind of focus of like, we can deal with the emotional aspect of this later, seeing these guys dead, guys hanging from trees that have been bayoneted and everything. And they're just like, take what you need from these guys. We'll deal with this later. But we have missions that we have to accomplish right now. or this whole invasion is not going to work.

And as they're being dropped in these sticks that you were talking about, you have guys that are going out with, like, parts of a machine gun that you have to assemble on the ground if you're a part of that group or mortar tubes. Okay, so mortar tubes would usually be carried by, could be carried by one guy. The stand and then the tube, and then the legs would flip out from the tube.

A machine gun, the machine guns that were sent were the 30-caliber machine guns that a guy could carry over his shoulder. He jumped with it, and his guy that was like with him, that was like part of his crew, would jump out with the little tripod stand and probably some cans of ammunition. Important things to not drop, but also very heavy things to go with. Yeah, but at the same time, like with Winters and everything, you had soldiers that they were running into that were like, do you have a gun?

He's like, I had it in my leg bag. It's gone. I have my combat knife and I have a couple of grenades. So you had guys that were running with these crews that were coming along these other allied soldiers and taking their guns. one thing I forgot to mention during the training these guys when they were prepping for D-Day would be shown

the sections on sand tables that they were going to be jumping into every guy's job was to memorize these cities, towns, railway lines so when you dropped and you saw a railway line and you saw a river and you saw a bridge you would look at that and say I know where there was a line, a bridge and a river

I know we're here and I know that our objective is to this site or if you saw the name of a village and you're like, I know exactly where we are based on that village. It's a lot of shit to remember under stress. It is. One of the other things they did was they studied German weapons. These guys were trained that if they needed to pick up a German weapon or if they ran out of ammo but they had German weapons and German ammo how to use these weapons and what

they could do. So you had during engagements like after they took out this patrol and this like horse-drawn carriage, they were able to guys that didn't have weapons, they were like, here you go. you can get the ammo and everything and now you have a weapon. That's got to be a good feeling. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure you want to use the ones you're more familiar with, but any weapon has got to be. Anything that's going to keep you alive is going to be a plus.

So Easy Company ends up making its way to like a gathering point. And it's not long before they're essentially tapped to try to kind of start doing missions because there's a little bit of command staff there. Let's take a bathroom break and then we'll get into that. Okay. All right. So still on D. day where they're gathered up like where the 506 decides to try to kind of meet up they can hear again because they don't know you know where these like gun emplacements are like 300 yards from them are these

88s that are going off that are bombarding Utah Beach and so their job is to take these things out so the guy that's kind of in command there of the division goes and finds easy pulls them front and center and says hey we think there's some guns over here No one's really had eyes on him. From what we can tell, it sounds like there's probably three to four of them. And so he's like, take him out. That's, I mean, Brock can tell you how to do it. Yeah.

So Winners goes back at this point because everyone in Lieutenant Means' plane is dead. It makes Winner as kind of the de facto leader of Easy Company as the highest ranking officer. So they don't know about Lieutenant Meant or anything like that. It's going to be a while before they discover that. They just think he might have dropped somewhere else. but no everyone they meet up with is have you seen anyone from his stick and they're like no it seems like such a bad idea to have the entire command staff on one plane yeah it's in in the sense of like him his assistance and like things like that it's not the platoon leaders so and that's

why they're split because things like this happen they have plans for it so winners ends up taking like a group of guys like a squad of guys and goes approaches this area kind of has an idea with how it's going to be laid out based upon information and tactics of how Germany has laid out its artillery. He's like, I know there's two here, assume there's another one here and another one here in this position because we've gotten information back from France and everything about how they set up their formations and all that. So expect that with trenches around it to allow access. It's at this place called Braycourt Manor. And so as they approach it, he kind of sees what's going on. He can see a machine gun nest covering the rear. He can see a machine gun nest covering the rear. He can

see the guys not really paying attention to like they're firing these artillery pieces because the invasion's going on right now. Yeah. They're less focused on them and more focused on the big picture. And they might know that there's been allied guys dropped in, but they don't know there's any kind of in their area or anything like that. So Winners is able to basically position his machine guns in a way that will give covery fire to and distraction. And he ends up going in with guys, I'm not going to give the full details of the battle, but it's so tax. tactically sound that it is still shown at, I want to say, West Point today as the perfect tactical example of a smaller force defeating an entrenched enemy position.

If you're going to leave a legacy, I feel like that's the legacy you want to leave behind. Yeah. Some things that, there's a guy that's a, I don't know if he's a platoon sergeant or he's someone's a little lower, but his name is Buck Compton. He was a catcher for USC. Hell yeah. And there's an instance during this when they're able to get in and take the trenches, but not like the full stretch just enough to like capture one gun. What they basically do is they capture one gun at a time.

They have a guy with T&T, throw it down the barrel, throw a grenade down the barrel, spike the gun and destroy it. Holy shit. Yeah. So as they're taking these guns and everything, they're also forcing these Germans out of position. And Buck takes a grenade, pulls the pin, and throws it at a retreating German, and hits him in the back of the head and it explodes as it hits him. He's a catcher.

I get that. That's a guy trying to steal second. That's a grenade. They have a timer, dude. Yeah. But again, this is so tactically done. He ends up coming back and he's like, there were actually 105. He's talking to command.

He's like, they were actually 105 millimeters. We were able to actually take, you know, take them all out. We probably end up killing about 20 Germans, maybe another 20 wounded. and I think there might be some back a little further, maybe some mortars or some artillery. He's just so matter of fact about it. So for this, winners gets the Distinguished Service Cross.

The Silver Star recipients are Compton, a guy named Bill Garnier, and then a guy with the last name Lorraine. Bronze star winners from this are Carwood Lipton. They call him Popeye. Popeye win. A guy named Petty, Hendrix, Donald Malarkey, a guy named Bill Rainey,

Joseph Lieb got Plesha as his last name Joe Toy Hall and Halk and Halk were both killed during that mission so he lost two guys So in a number of hours

Say the first Six hours of combat These guys have already ranked up All of these Yeah it doesn't rank you But like an award Yes Wow

So on yeah on D-Day Pretty quick earners I would say So the next mission Is to be taking Karen Tan and Karen Tan is basically kind of like Bastone was. It seems like a little bit of a crossroads town. It's what's going to actually link up Omaha and Utah Beach

and allow all the troops and armor coming in to join up to keep pushing that pocket in for the Normandy invasions. So they're sent with a couple other companies to attack the town. Germans obviously have the town occupied and fortified. There's individual instances of all of this stuff where this is where it's cool to hear people telling their stories about it. Lipton

is there in town at one point and Lipton is trying to like move guys like out of the way because the German artillery has been centered on him. He's like spread out, spread out. And he ends up taking a rocket propelled grenade that explodes out in front of him and blows him backward and it throws shrapnel into his

upper thigh and he thinks it hits something to his junk. And then he takes a big chunk of it in the face. And so like his guy comes up to him, one of his guys and he's like, hey, hey, and you could tell he's like, where he took one through the hand, too. And he was also, I think, a baseball player. He took it through his right hand. And so he was like, my hand, my thigh. He's like, touching his face. And he looks down. He's like, there's a lot of blood down there. So the guy takes a citizen open. He's kind of like everything's where it's at,

buddy, like you're, you're going to be okay. Not only his cock, but it didn't hit his artery. It didn't hit either of those. And he, then he was checking for both. Like that's, I mean, brother, like, these guys are close enough that that wasn't even afterthought. He's like, this guy's freaking out, I need to help this guy. If I got shot in the thigh, I would have no problem being like, hey, is my cock still there to you? Yeah. That's a pretty primal thing, I think, to just give me a little heads up.

So they end up taking Karen Tan, but because, again, this is still during the initial battles during D-Day, there's going to be counterattacks. So they're sent out a little ways outside of Karen Tan to basically meet and delay or stop any type of German counterattack counterattack when it comes in. So they're at this place. So the Battle of Carantan basically takes place between June 10th and June 14th. June 13th, they've been sent out and they're in this position where they're in like a hedgerow and then a little bit up a bit of a hill is another hedgerow.

And as they're marching through that first one, they come under fire of basically a counterattacking German position up on top of the hedgerow. So they get in theirs, the Germans are in theirs. and this thing called the baddie Jesus Christ I can't talk Battle of the Bloody Gulch happens So you have E Company And then on I'm trying to remember which side

You have F Company and D Company And as they're fighting all of a sudden Some German armor starts to come in Some tanks and everything like that start to roll in And it pushes back one of the I think F Company first They just see them shoot out of the tree line Because the command staff is back up the hill

Always they see them Around the tree line and start retreating. They're like, no one ordered that. What's going on? Well, because they left someone else's flank undefended. D Company, who was right next to them, starts pulling back too. And so E Company is the only ones in their hole in the line right now.

During this, like, push for this, like, these tanks coming down this hill, there was a guy, and I want to say it was Harry Welsh, which is one of the platoon leaders, ends up running out with another guy with a bazooka. And as the tank kind of like... like is moving in on him, it scenes them and goes to adjust its gun and fires an actual like the tank ground at him. I mean, it didn't hit him because it's hard to hit us on. But I mean the concussion like in the trees that it blew back behind them, they load this thing up

and as the tank rises up in front of them and exposes its belly, they fire the bazook and take this tank out and then just run back for cover. So they're basically being kind of overrun at this point. And as they're being overrun, all of a sudden, I believe it. it's the second armored shows up on one of their flanks and basically just comes in with shermans from the side and flanks these Germans and like routes them and everything. But just listening to the book and the guys like what they said about this event, they were just like, you go from this feeling of, oh my God, we've only been in this for

a couple days. Is this going to be it? Like there are tanks in front of us. Like we don't. And then all of a sudden you see this, you hear this gun from your life. left and you look and you see these Sherman's mowing down these trees as they come out and start pushing back the Germans. He's like, you've never been so happy to see something so ugly in your entire life. He's like the beautiful babies. Also, I think there's a big point of that

being like, they were here this time. Is there going to be a next time when they're not there? Oh, yeah. Just the doubt in your mind of thinking these guys came in and saved my ass today. but if I'm in this situation again is this going to happen the same way you have to live in such an hour to hour life almost to try to survive this I'm gonna get the guy's names wrong not so much the guys in easy but like the command staff

above them I can't remember if it was a guy named General Taylor or something but he told them before they jumped he's like remember boys give me three days and three nights of hard fighting and you will be relieved Easy Company has finally taken off the line Normandy that they've been fighting on June 29th after 23 days of combat.

God, damn it. So that already tells you like what level these guys are out where they were supposed to be in there for three days and they've been here taken towns and everything for 23 days. So I believe they're taken because infantry's job

is now to move in and that's airborne's job is done. Specialized is over with. Yep. So I believe that once they're taken off the line, they ended up jumping with 139 officers and men total. They ended up leaving with 69 men and five officers. Now, that's not to say everyone that wasn't counted there was killed.

But if you're a casualty, you're no longer able to contribute to the operating strength of that company. So they left with men able to fight 69 men and five officers. During the operation, the 506th took 983 casualties, which was the highest of any regiment during D-Day. out of like the airborne. It kind of makes sense. I mean, I guess not out of the entire airborne because everybody's put in that situation, but that's going to be where the casualties are going to happen,

the guys that don't have anywhere to retreat to. Yeah, exactly. So there was a guy I'm trying to remember his name, but he was who they considered the master scrounger for the company. This guy could find anything. He found his way into, because stuff's starting to stack up on Omaha Beach,

You know, all that we talked about Red Ball Express and all that kind of stuff. They were bringing all that in. Well, when easy up pulled off the line, you don't just get pulled off somewhere and stuck into a town. You get pulled back to the beach first, and then you get sent back over to England, where you can kind of rest, reconstitute, and get ready for the next operation that's going to require paratroopers. So this master scrounger had found, like, food for them, like canned fruit, all this kind of stuff that they didn't, you know, 23 days, they only had rations for a few days. So he'd been finding food and all that stuff.

He ends up finding a motorcycle with a sidecar in the motor pool, and he's just like, I'm taking this. Ends up taking it, knows that they're going to be loading up on a troop ship to head back to England and goes and hides it behind like a sand dune on the beach. And as Easy Company is going up on this landing, you know, one of the ones that has the landing thing that comes down. One of the other guys gives tells the landing crew, he's like, hey, we have a motorcycle too. We're going to bring it over. And the guy's like, yeah, bring it, bring it. So he gives him a signal. and this guy comes haul and ass around the sand unit and drives the motorcycle right up onto it.

A German motorcycle. No, no, an American one. It was already over? Oh, okay. All right. I see. This is this way. Back towards D-D.

They're like just piling up vehicles and supplies on through the old war harbors. Something he certainly wasn't probably supposed to be taking. Oh, definitely not. So they end up getting back to England. I think they go, they're not, they don't go back to Aldbourne because, initially because it's not on the coast. it's I think 80 miles outside London they go and wherever they get off the boats at they get onto a train that's going to take them back to Aldbourne

and this dude and Dalman Malark you're like we actually got a ride and they end up driving the motorcycle all the way back to Aldbourne and just being able to use that and you know cruise around in it like during their time when they're back there. A rare instance of freedom that these guys got. It kind of in a way

kind of how the airborne guys were able to every time they were done with a mission if they made it back they were back in England. These guys get to kind of hang out in England not for very long because again, they're getting back there June 29th. Market Garden coming in September. You got Market Garden. Yeah, exactly. Sorry, I was trying to figure out that date. Well, during the time frame, you have guys that just came out of battle. They now know after seeing friends get shot, friends get killed, that next time they go in, it's not a given, like what the dangers are here.

So they said that there was a lot of trouble that they caused in London and everything. Just because they were, you know, they had money that they had collected after they had come back and everything. And they had that mentality of like, if we get sent back in here again, there's a chance that we're not going to make it back. So fucking live it up. Prostitutes and booze. I'm sure there was a lot of that. There was also, if you think about it, a lot of because of the troops that were from Britain that were also over there, there were probably some English. gals that weren't spoken for or anything like that.

I think they had to kind of limit down the passes after the first couple weeks on that. They called it the Solable Method. So that brings us to September 17th, so Operation Market Garden, that with the episode that will have been released by this, yeah. You'll get the sense that this is something that was high risk, high reward. It was kind of thrown together through amalgamation of other. airborne plans, but there was this sense of having this resource of the airborne that had to be used. There was an idea that if they were able to kind of mimic the German invasion of France by

going in the reverse, going through Belgium, being able to cross over the Rhine, they could get into Germany and have this thing won by Christmas. And so Market Garden, in a sense, involved capturing these key bridges, I think nine bridges in total, with the two furthest bridges being the most crucial to this plan. Arnhem and... Naimagan. Yes. So...

I'm proud of you. Yeah, there you go. You fought that one for Most of Market Garden. You nailed in. So at the time, this was to be the largest airborne invasion because it was going to rely heavily on the airborne to be able to hold this salient, which is basically a bulge into the German lines, going kind of narrow but back 65 miles to Arnhem,

and basically had this thing running through. the middle of it that was named Hells Highway. So Easy Company being part of the 101st, they had the job of capturing Eindhoven. So they were going to be the ones closest to where the second armored, who was the infantry in the armored division, we're going to be getting their jump off. They would hit Eindhoven first, then they would jump to the territory that the 101st or sorry that the 82nd was supposed to be covering, which included Nymegan, and then go through Naimagan and meet up with the first British or paratroopers who had the furthest out task of capturing the Arnhem Bridge. So they end up landing in the Sonsei Forest, which was northwest of this place called Sond.

And we talked about during Morga Garden that Sond was one of the bridges that was the rare exception that ended up getting blown. Within eyesight of easy trying to take this bridge, they were delayed just long enough for the Germans to basically light the demo charges and have this thing blown. up. It didn't, it blew it up to where you couldn't get trucks and armor across it, but they said they knocked down some doors and like houses that were around and were able to bridge it enough to start getting like infantry across to try to take the other side and secure it. I believe this was the one where the center pylon was still standing. Yeah. So it was easier to span because you had something in the middle. Something along those lines. So they end up getting past that. They liberate Einhoven, which is people in the streets dancing, waving orange flags and everything.

They're trying to move through the city. Women are grabbing them and kissing them. People are offering food. People are offering booze. They're taking it. They just jumped into another war zone, have been fighting for a little bit. They're trying to move people through town because they still have to try to get further into town because they're kind of the tip of the spear for this armored and this infantry push.

They're the first people that have to start clearing out for the 30th to be following them. So while they're taking part in Market Garden, they take part in fighting outside Noynan, which is I guess where Vincent Van Gogh was from. They have to then retreat after getting pushed back from Noin to this place called Tongleray. They defend these two towns called Vagel and Udin. So this just shows you during this operation how it's not just these guys staying in one place and being like, we're just going to watch this town. It's the Germans are moving this way. you guys need to go respond to this. Now the Germans are moving this way.

Now you guys need to go respond to this. So they're constantly moving. The Easy Company and the 101st joined the 82nd on this thing. They called the island. And the island was north of Nymaghan and south of Arnhem. Now, we talked about it during Market Garden that even though they didn't make it across the bridge in Arnhem to get over the right and into Germany, they still wanted to keep everything that they had captured at that point, to use it as a jumping off point to get a larger force than push into Arnhem.

So the island was basically this area that was separated north and south by two of the rivers that had bridges across them, and then on each side by like canals and like dikes. So they called it the island because it was colored off by water on like... Kind of was an island. Three or four sides, yep. So on October 5th, I believe, in 1944, there was a patrol that was sent out to patrol there

because you couldn't just stay at your command post or where your guys were sleeping because Germans could be moving in from any and all directions. So you would have to have constant patrols. So there was a patrol of three or four guys that were kind of going around the area and ran into a German machine gun nest and then some German troops.

They threw a grenade, the Germans threw a grenade out of him, injured one of the guys, and said they had to retreat back. As soon as they retreated back and reported on this, winners gathered a group of guys together like I think the first platoon and went out to try

to sneak up on this and take out this position so this is an area like we were talking about during Mark Garden where the roads were like on top of dikes yeah and then it was like slants down and then into fields and everything that could be flooded so they're sneaking along this

probably I don't know 20 or 30 foot tall dike in this field and in like a drainage ditch so they're able to sneak up pretty close to this German position who's actually firing a different direction, like down the road. And they're like, what are they firing down the road for? And he's like, I don't know if like regimental command is down there.

And they're just trying to keep them on their toes. So strategically speaking, how this thing goes down is winter sneaks up the hill, gets on the other side of it to where he can see the back of the machine gun nest and all the guys that are around it, calls his men up. They go down the other side of the dike because there's a drainage ditch. He's like, I want the mortars to set up here. This is our fallback position. calls a squad up with him and gets up on top of it

and behind kind of a crater in the road that's close within probably like 50 yards of this machine gun that's and all these guys and as he's talking to the guys getting him in position he's telling him first on the left second on the left machine gun first on the right so that way if guys are moving positions and crossing over each other your target changes but you're always hitting the furthest guy first guy on your right so not people aren't hitting the same guy

I think he ends up knocking out like 7 to 11 Germans takes out the machine gun nest And as soon as he takes it out He has his machine gun open fire Because he doesn't know what's on the other side of it It could be a bunch more guys Has his machine gun open fire And has his mortars kind of cover them

While the guys that that squad pulls back And gets back into the ditch One guy is kind of up moving his troops His name was Dukeman He ends up getting killed by machine gun fire But kind of for the rest of the night they're in their ditch the Germans are over

and theirs on the other side of like a road embankment so they have a much better position they also have the tall dike up to their right and so daylight starts to happen and Winters is sitting there talking to his guys he's like I don't know

how these guys haven't flanked us already all they're going to do is come along the other side the dive can pop up here we're in a ditch they're behind a roadway embankment he's like we need to do something so he's like we're going to fix bayonets we're going to charge

and we're going to try to take them by surprise. I don't know how many you're over there. Just a bayonet charge. Not in the sense of fixed bayonets because we're going to go stab them. It's fixed bayonets because you can't fix it if you end up getting close enough to somebody. You have to make that decision beforehand. Preparing. Exactly.

Just in case. So he sets it up during the night he had radioed back and said, send me another platoon and another machine gunner. So he has more guys now. I think he has between 30 and 40 guys. He takes his two machine gunners and he puts them on each side, like the far side. and he says, fire over that roadway embankment, but keep it low and keep fire on that little hilltopper,

that little roadway embankment the entire time. He's going to charge his guys down the center, and then after his guys get to the roadway embankment and can actually put fire on the other side of it, the machine gunners are going to take off and run to catch up. So he ends up getting everyone on the same page, tells everyone what they're going to do, and as he starts to charge,

he ends up getting out quite a ways in front of his guys before they all kind of take off and get up there. As he gets up there on the other side of it, charges 200 meters, he pops up on top of it and he sees one century sitting there because it's a little bit of an elevated roadway and then it goes back down maybe like five feet into another field. He ends up pulling off one of his grenades and throws it,

pulls the pin and throws it at the guy, forgetting that he had also wrapped tape around the little, I don't know what the flippy part of a grenade is called, but pulls the pin, but the handle doesn't pop off. The guy goes to throw a potato masher, that's what they call them, grenade at him. It doesn't go off,

so he pulls out his gun and fires from the hip and hits the guy. He then sees that there is more than a hundred other soldiers in this field all ducking down. They're wearing their big heavy winter coat. so their mobility is not really that great. But they're all ducking down

because this machine gun fire had been coming over their heads. So as he gets up, he just starts hip firing and taking out these guys as they're scrambling to try to figure out what to do to get up to return fire.

And I think he ends up getting two clips. So I think there's like nine to ten in these clips. He gets off 20 shots before the other guys from easy even catch up to him on this road.

And as they do, they just live. down on this road and start taking these guys out. So as they're taking them out, the machine guns then rush up as quickly as they can and get on each side and just start mowing this field down. As they do from up on their right where the taller part of the dyke is, they see a whole other like company come down. So this is where the machine guns were probably originally firing through Germans the other direction. Another company of Germans. Oh shit.

Uh-oh. Start coming over this. They have been sitting on the other side. of this dike, but where they had to try to evacuate to was a ferry crossing that was almost immediately to their left. So instead of them going one direction to get away from them and then cutting back, they just decided to come over the dike and try to make the run for the ferry crossing right across easy companies like lane of fire. So what ends up occurring is they're driving all these Germans off. He gets on the radio, he starts calling in artillery on what map

segment it is and the British artillery opens up and just starts pounding this retreating like German force. Winners ends up sending a group of them to like pursue them all the way to the ferry crossing and when they get there they find it's kind of like there's actually like a factory there so there's some industrial buildings that are pretty good cover and the Germans start firing on them. Another group of Germans end up pushing in from their rights. So he's like I've overextended. He pulls all his guys back and then kind of the battle is over at that point. So just like you were talking about for the D-Day landings, these guys on these sand tables are memorizing exactly where they are. For Dinky Winters to have to call that in, they had to have done the exact same thing going into Market Garden, correct? So they knew where they were pretty much at all times because it's not like, I mean, they were there for an extended period of time, but they still had to have their bearings to call that in.

Yeah, I mean, the maps that they were using. So, like, let's say you're the artillery battery that's covering that area. aimed in that, you're then only focused on a map that covers that area until you move position and have to pull out another map. So as he's calling it in, you have the same map. He knows where the crossroads is. He knows where the field right next to it is. He's just saying, fire here.

Okay. And they're looking at their map saying, here's the settings. Here's what we need. And if they're good, they're hitting what they need to, which in this situation, they are pretty good at it. So they end up taking 11 P.O. Some guys come out of this drain culvert and are saying that they're Poles, that they're Polish with their SS uniforms. Sons of bitches.

So there's 11 these POWs that he wants to, the winners wants to send back to their battalion headquarters that they have set up for interrogation of everything. There's a guy named Joseph Lieb Gott. And he has taken prisoners back before, but he has a reputation of not bringing back all the prisoners. So. Meaning. He shoots the prisoners. He's Jewish.

So he has a, yeah. As Winners is telling him, he's like, there's 11 prisoners here. I want all 11 back. Leibgott's like, all right, yeah, I'll get him all back. And he starts to move off. And he's like, give me your gun. And he's like, what? And he's like, drop your ammo.

And in the show, he doesn't do this. But in Ambrose, his book about it, anything like that, he's like, I pulled my gun on him. And I told him to drop his stuff. after he did I gave him one round I put it in his gun and I say you got one round

you shoot any of these guys the other ones are going to jump you and he said it within earshot of the commanding officer that was going to be accompanying the senior officer he saw that

and the guy didn't like it wasn't a look of like oh great now we can jump him it was thank God he won't shoot any of us at that point they were kind of resigned when they were captured like that

there were some instances that they run into where like Pudos were trying to turn on him and everything but a lot of the time it wasn't like that. They were just like,

we just came from the Eastern Front. Take us to a fucking camp. Take us to a POW camp. You guys probably don't do those very like, you're not harsh about it. There's a great chance that where you're taking us is going to be better than where we are.

Yeah, especially after what you guys, we just saw what you guys did to us. So during this engagement here, the German artillery, before they take the prisoners back and everything, they were able to fire back on Easy Company. and I think they like inflicted 18 casualties.

I'm not sure what the death was on that, but 18 guys get taken out by this artillery barrage. The end result is 30 to 40 of these soldiers in Easy Company end up routing an SS battalion of about 300 troops that caused 161 casualties and the trade-off was 22 casualties for Easy Company. The only one that died was Dukeman. the guy that

at the very beginning was moving his guys around and him getting shot yeah everyone else was wounded and everything but didn't die so after that I think it was on October 9th Winners is actually given a promotion

made the executive officer's second battalion there was a guy that was previously in that role that was also part of Market Garden and his command where he had set up his command area It ended up getting overrun, and he was trying to kind of get the defenses together and ended up getting killed.

So that shows you that, like, command staff weren't just, like, sitting back behind safety. Like, if they were the command staff for that group or regiment, that they were there, like, trying to run things on the ground. The, just the way that all this stuff has to be in concert and in unison. But just figuring it out as you go. Yeah, and that's what it is. Everything has to be in unison, but at the same time, it's hurting cats. because you're in an area where there's not like a solid place to where you can just all go meet back up. And you don't know where they're going to be coming from any, and in this situation, that was the whole point.

Paratroopers were supposed to be surrounded. So, there's so much. So Werners goes to XO. Someone else needs to actually at this point take over easy company because that's what Winners has been running this entire time. So he ends up, there's this guy that gets pulled in. His name is Moose Heiliger. everyone kind of had known him he wasn't part of easy company but like it was he was part of another company and get brought in winners was like if i was going to pick someone it would be this guy

as they're out him and winners are out doing like a patrol in a relatively safer controlled area um they got bored and moose was like hey i know you're stuck of stuck being in the office and everything like that as the exo do you want to go stretch your legs and you we can take a look at the line and make sure all the troops are doing good. He's like, yeah. Well, Moose ends up getting shot because there was a jumpy century that saw two guys approaching, called out, and before they could understand what he was trying to say to respond, he had shot the guy like twice. Friendly fire. Yeah. And it could have very easily been winners. Yeah. They got shot too. It's not the ideal situation to happen, but if it's going to happen, at least it wasn't winners. So Moose ends up not

dying. I mean, they're able to save his life and everything like that. But then the guy, that gets put in to replace him is his name's Norman Dyke. And Norman Dyke was somebody that had some people that liked him like in command and basically put him in this situation so he could get some battlefield experience. So there was definitely some nepotism about this. So bolster the record a little bit. So easy companies pulled back. We know Market Garden doesn't work and everything.

They're pulled back to this place called Mormelon. France. So they're still there where they can contribute if they need to move them somewhere, you know, in the European theater, but they're not being sent back to England. At this point, they don't get sent back to, I don't believe they get sent back to England. Yeah. So they're in Europe from the time they jump into Market Garden. They're in Europe until the end of the war. And we're talking about this as a matter of three full months, pretty much. Yeah, June, July, August, four months. September Market Guard. And then, I mean, they fought in Market Garden a little bit more so. They actually were the guys that took part in Operation Pegasus, which was October 22nd, 23, where they went and rescued a bunch of the Brits that had been hiding out since Arnhem fell and we're able to get them across the ride in those boats and everything. Easy was the one that was providing cover and that ran that operation. So, and that was the, I think that was the only operation that Moose actually commanded Easy Company for before he was shot. So as they're in More Milan, basically this is supposed to be the time when they've been pretty depleted as far as their unit strength.

They have replacement troops that have been coming in from the states. They've had them come in to get them stronger for Market Garden. So you had people that were jumping into Market Garden where that was their first time of having combat. You lost more guys during Market Garden. So now you have guys while you're in More Milan that are coming in to try to train with your veterans and get up to speed. you know that they've been through the same training that you have with jump school and all that kind of stuff but none of them have combat.

Nobody else went through two rounds of the hell that you've already been. Correct. And some of the guys were talking about like the replacements and everything and they're like, there was interviews with replacements and with the guys who were like the original guys and they were talking about the replacements coming in

and being like, these guys, I mean, were like heroes to us. Like they had stars on their jump wings because you got a star whenever you did a jump so some of them would have two stars from market garden and he's like but and they also took care of us they knew what we were going to be going through they looked out for us and then you would get the flip side of the other guys being like they came in and they you could tell that they were green we just had to try to keep them alive until they could try to get their feet under them and kind of get their bearings and some of the guys

were like some of them thought they had to impress us and would take risks that would end up getting them killed and i got to the point where replacements i didn't even want to get friendly with or know their names because I just didn't want to get, you know, an attachment to somebody just to see him get killed. We talked about a similar sentiment. Was it Battle of Britain as far as the, the pilots wouldn't really be friendly with other, or it was the ground crews wouldn't get friendly with the pilots because there was always a chance that they wouldn't be coming back. Yeah, the first mission could be the last mission. So Dyke doesn't, his, his big problem isn't, Sobel-esque or anything like that.

It's just he seems very bored and uninterested in leading the company and not wanting to make decisions. So they're counting on the time they're in More Milan to basically be able to build their strength back up, get the guys trained up to train the new recruits and not have to rely on Norman Dyke so much.

Winners is technically Dykes superior, but he can't just be like, I got a bad feeling about this guy and there's grumblings with the troops that they started calling him Foxhole Norman really early because he just hid in his foxhole a lot of the time. And he's like, but I can't get rid of this guy. I can't go to command and be like, hey, get rid of this guy because I heard some rumors about him. He's like, my hands are kind of tied. So as they're there, they get

you know, hot showers. First time they've got hot showers since leaving from Market Garden. So they go, buddy, weeks, months without, you know, being able to bathe or anything like that. Clean clothes. They get passes to reams, which end up being canceled after four days. because they're tearing reams up so much. The place that they were at, Mormelon had three movie theaters. It had a Red Cross Club that had, like, great food

what they were saying. And the plan is that, hey, easy's going to be able to kind of take it, no pun intended, easy here, and we're not going to see action until March. That's the next planned, para, you know, airborne,

and it's thinking that it might be a jump into Germany or maybe if we're playing our cards right, it might be a jump into Berlin. Well, December 17th rolls round. The bulge? Yep. Yeah. So December 17th rolls round,

and they are notified of a German breakthrough in the Ardennes. So December 19th, they are rushed by truck to Bastogne to hold the city with the rest of the hundred and first. Oh, God. So they're the airborne, but they're not jumping in this time.

They are trucked in. Now, they weren't expecting, again, until March. So even saying that you're under prepared in December, you still have three months to try it. It's not saying you're going to wait to the last minute in March and get all your stuff together. But March does not include a winter

drop, winter equipment, stuff like that. The company, and I believe the entire 101st, severe lack of winter clothing, does even stuff as simple as wool socks, long underwear, a huge lack of food, a lack of, I mean, anything that they needed, They didn't have enough of. And they're still sent in here to try to hold the line and try to stop the Germans from pushing in here.

Try to defend the sign because we talked about it during the Battle of the Bulge. Bastone is this insane strategic crossroads town that has like 11 roads going in and out. That's basically the key to getting armor all across this section of, I believe it was Belgium. Yes. So they're rushed by truck to Bastone. and the Battle of the Bulge had already been going on since the 16th. That's when the Germans first broke through in the Ardennes. So from the 16th of December till January 25th of 1945, so taking it into the new year,

they are here holding the line in the bulge, in Bastogne, encircled by the Germans, spread thin. Again, no winter clothing. Sometimes they said that the artillery that was supposed to be supporting them was down to three rounds. rounds per gun. Some of the guys that gave that were doing the interviews, Bannon Brothers also includes interviews with the guys. They're talking about how in Bastog, at certain points, some of the guys were down to a round per man.

The fog came in, so air-dropping supplies on them didn't work very well. Half the time when they tried to drop supplies, they ended up dropping the Germans, because Bastogne's not a huge city. I think they said 5,500 people, but it's sizable, but not to the point where you can strategically drop everything, right there, especially if there's fog or anything like that.

I don't exactly remember the number that we were talking about, but the bulge was supposed to be, on the German side, it was supposed to be something like nine days or two weeks. The amount of troops, I think, that they threw it was insane because there's, during the battle of the bulge, I think they said there was like 250,000 allied troops that took place or took part in that. And the reason why the airborne, who is not supposed to be used for infantry, was called in is because the Germans hit it with such force that they just had to plug holes and try to fill gaps on the line. Well, them holding Bastogne for as long as they did shows just how ineffective and they made the timeline for the Germans. Yeah, exactly.

The Germans were expecting to be back at Antwerp maybe two weeks. That was their goal. Yeah. But Bastone was just that thorn in their side that they could not get a hold of because these guys just had a stranglehold on it. So during that time frame between January or December and January, January 1st to 13th, Easy Company was placed in these woods called the Boisjac that were outside of this town called Foy. So Foy was like a city that or a little town that was kind of outside on the outskirts of Bastogne. At this point, this is about pushing the bulge back. so they're tasked with basically capturing this town

and as they reoccupied this position because they had relieved another regiment or whatever that was actually overlooking the town as well they had noticed walking through the woods that they were just like broken off trees everywhere from all the constant shelling tiller fire everything so during this this time that they were at you know

Battle the Bulge outside of FOI that they were getting shelled there were some of the more notable guys within the company that got taken out one of the guys but Compton the guy that was the catcher for USC and everything he was a in charge of a squad I think and had a couple of best friends he had been shot during Market Garden

through the ass where not even shit new it went in one cheek out the crack into the other cheek out so he had one bullet hole one bullet caused four wounds best case scenario if you're going to get shot somewhere you wanted to be in a fatty part of the body to do that. Now, when these guys were wounded, they were sent to like field hospitals, pulled back to safe

places if they could. But they said that going to the field hospital for a lot of these guys was more damaging to them to the actual wounds itself to basically just be constantly surrounded by like the carnage and the suffering and the wounded and everything like that was so just like psychologically taxing, seeing, you know, on a battlefield, it's one thing, but where you just see a constant stream of people and blood and everything being brought in here. They said when Buck ended up coming back, and a lot of these guys, if you were sent to, like, the hospital or you had to get sent back all the way to like England or something like that, it could be months before you were allowed

to rejoin your squad. And at that point, if you weren't, you may be assigned to another squat. So some guys, a lot of the guys, if they got wounded and went back to just the field hospital, Bastone had a field hospital where guys that were injured during that would go back to. You had guys that were getting patched up and just being like, and just disappearing from the hospital and going out to join the lines again with their guys because they didn't want to get reassigned. There was a guy in Easy. His name was, I think, James Webster, and he went to Harvard.

And he's like, my position in this war is, I'm not going to take it. I don't want a promotion. I want to just serve and do what I'm ordered to do and expected to do. I don't want any additional responsibility for other people's lives, and I'm never going to volunteer for anything. And so he got wounded. He was sent, I think during the crossroads battle, he got wounded, was sent to the hospital and was gone for, like, the entirety of the Bastone portion and all of that until the hospital was like, oh, yeah, now you're released. All these other guys had been wounded and came back to the company within that time frame. Who was the field medic that was with them?

Eugene Roe. That's right. Because he was the one that's bouncing around in the episode where they all have the one vial of morphine on them and their go-kits. Or some of them don't because they didn't get resupplied. Because it wasn't put in their kits because they were just sent to Bastone really quickly. And so as he was going around and hitting the different guys, they were voluntarily handing over their morphine because they knew that there were other guys that he was going to have to go see.

Exactly. And this is a situation. over there being in Bastogne in that area where because it's wintertime and because there's snow everywhere, you're not able to dig a proper trench or a hole or anything like that to sit in. So you just have

these guys that are bleeding out in pain as he's coming around to see them and they're just basically in like frozen holes in the ground. There was, so a guy named Joe Toy had been wounded I think twice beforehand and had gone AWOL from the field hospital to come back out.

Another guy I'm Bill Garnier, who him, Toy, and Buck Compton were all really good friends. And there was an instance one day where Toy was out there, an artillery strike happened. He couldn't get to a foxhole in time. And he got hit and basically got like one of his legs blown off. His right leg, I think, was blown off right above the knee. And so after the artillery, he's sitting there. Of course, he's in shock and everything like that. And he's trying to crawl himself to a foxhole. Garnier can hear him being like, I got to get in cover. Runs out to go grab him. It's like, oh, fuck.

Grabs him to pull him into another foxhole and there's another artillery barrage while he's trying to drag him in. Garnier gets hit too, basically shreds one of his legs to where it looks like it's holding on by just the bone, keeping the structure of the foot up. And they're calling for medics. Doc Roe is over there trying to help him. But Buck sees this and basically sees like two of his best friends, a leg blown off, another one, almost blown off. And this is where you start to see kind of the psychological toll that it takes on these guys of seeing your friends mutilated, thinking that they're probably going to die, being cold all the time, shivering just to keep yourself warm,

not being able to start a fire because the light will allow them to dial in on you with artillery fire. Covering up, they said, this is kind of switching gears, but they said one of the guys, his name was, fuck, it was something hefron. I can't remember what his first name is. It might have been Eugene. Zach? No. But everyone called him babe.

And so he's in a foxhole with the guy that he was sharing it with. And they were cuddling for warmth. And the guy put his leg around him and then started rubbing his chest. And he wouldn't wake him up. And he's like, hey, I'm telling you right now. He's like, I'm weighing way too many layers for that to even work. And the guy's like, I'm sorry. He's like, I was dreaming of my wife.

but they were taking their lemon powder that they were to make with like drinks and stuff like that and put it on snow like snow to have like snow cones and stuff they were insanely short of food wasn't this the other area where they were jumping into foxholes and there would potentially be a German soldier

that was already occupied that foxhole So he was walking with another guy and I think they were walking back from Bastone after they had tried they went to go ahead to report something. And as they're walking back, he steps, you were so likely to get lost

because everything looked the same. And all of the positions were supposed to be hidden, so they weren't super easy to see. So he's walking with this other guy and they're talking and he steps in and collapses into this foxhole where there was a blanket over there was covered with snow.

And you hear this guy say, is that you hinkle? But in German, he's like, is that the you hinkle? And they're like, what the fuck? And they take off and start running. This guy pops up and takes a couple pot shots.

They said for the rest of the time during their reunions and everything like that, everyone would go up to baby and be like, hey, babe, how's Hinkle? Have you heard from Hinkle lately? So it was like a running joke. But so they're still needing to take this town of Foy and during their attack on the town,

basically Dyke is leading them in. Not the guy you probably want them leading in. And this guy had been kind of like absentee during like the shellings and stuff. At one point after one of the major. Schellings, Lipton was near Dyke, and he crawled over to him. He's like, you sort out stuff here, Sergeant Lipton. I'm going to go for help. So basically when they need their commander there to check on all the men to get them back in line and everything like that, he's basically like, you do that

staff sergeant. I'm going to go ahead and go back to command to see what they need us to do. I'm going to be a runner instead of sending somebody else. Pretty much. So during this attack on foy, he ends up freezing up and telling everyone to like stop. Out in the, open where they can start the germans can start loving mortars and artillery and stuff on them and winners is kind of back up this field seeing everything going on he's like go forward get him on the radio so you got guys from these two different platoons next to dyke being like don't we're out in the open like where do you want to send us like send us somewhere so he tells one guy he's like go around and attack the village from the rear and he's like you want us to just go around without support

and attack the village from the rear another guy's like putting the radio in his face being like, you need to talk to Captain Winners. He's calling for you. So this guy's like, I don't know what to do. So Winners is finally like turns around and there was a guy from a dog company, so D company. His name was Ronald Spears. He had been a guy that had came in during that first D-Day assault when they were taking those guns and had came to reinforce him and was like, can we take the last gun? He's like, go for it. He's like, I'm not going to risk my men if I don't have to. And that guy kind of took the gun. Or, yeah, took the gun. He also had a reputation. of on D-Day giving like 10 POWs cigarettes and then gunning them all down.

Now, it's a point of debate on if this happened. He did say he killed POWs, but it was during D-Day when they had captured a position of like three. He had nowhere to put them, had nothing to do. And he was like, I had to make a call. The whole thing with the 10 POWs is it was always an instance of like the Miracle on Ice. You heard it from someone that was there. But then you asked that person, they heard it from someone that was there. So he had this reputation, but he also had a reputation as like a stellar soldier as well.

I'm going to kind of backtrack here for a second to also explain something that kind of brings to light a weird aspect of this war. Don Mularky on D-Day or a couple days after D-Day was marching past a group of German POWs and had said something to one of the POWs. I don't know if he said like, hey, son, where are you from just like fucking with him? and the guy's like Eugene Oregon and it stopped him he goes what he goes Eugene he's like what the he's like he's like he's serious and he's like yeah and the guy's talking to him

in English and everything and he's like I'm from Astoria he's like why he's like why why are you wearing a fucking Kraut uniform and he's like uh volstoykin or something like that and he's like I don't know what that means he's like my family responded to the call

all true Aryans have to report to the fatherland he's like I had to he's like I joined up in 41 he's like you're fucking shitting me. And he's like, what? He's like, what were you doing in Astoria or in, um, Eugene? And he's like, I was born there. And they were roughly the same age.

And he's like, well, what were you doing for working? He's like, I was working at an aircraft plant. And then Malarkey's like, I was working in a story of tooling propelling. He's like, how's, we're 100 miles away from us and we were doing basically the same job. But never saw that guy again or anything. But that like also goes to show from his personal standpoint, he, very early on in this war was like every guy that I'm looking across the line from

has the potential to not be what I think or what I'm being told he is. So going back to Spears, Winners basically looks at Spears and he's like, get in there and relieve him of command and take it on. So Spears runs in there, looks at Dyke. He's like, I'm taking over.

Looks at Lipton, looks at the other guys. He's like, tell me what the situation is. He tells me, he's like, all right, forget the flank maneuver, you guys go in here. and he's like, we need to try to meet up with I company, who was another company that was actually taking the village on an attack from the rear.

He's like, I think, Huh? Not foy? That was the village. No, it was on the other side of FOIA. Okay. So, and they have no communication with them or anything. He's like, I think if we don't get in touch with them,

they're going to, the Germans are going to slip away and we're going to lose out closing them in on this, like, pencer attack. So he's like, okay, let's move in. Spears takes off running and just starts running through the German line of these machine gun nest and like tanks that are kind of trying to move along the road. And Lichten was giving account of this. And he's like, we were watching it. And for the first half or three quarters of the way he needed to make it through town, they just looked at him and no one shot at him. Like they didn't.

You don't see that. He's like, like they didn't know what to do. And he's like, we saw him disappear. and he went and hooked up with iCompany and he's like what was even crazier is he came back and he ends up running back through and he's getting shot at and everything

and runs back and they're able to coordinate this attack and end up taking out you know and end up capturing foy um kind of on another side note just kind of little character moments there's a guy in their company named shifty i can't remember what his real name is they call him his last name was powers so shifty powers and he was this dude i want to say

from somewhere in in the south real soft-spoken guy and he had grown up hunting rabbits and hunting in the woods and everything and he was like the marksman used a regular just gun um but there was a sniper situation in foy after they had taken it they were um just kind of walking around the town making sure it was clear and a sniper started taking out guys and so this guy ended up like finding him in a window and put one right through from like a good distance like right through his eyes so he ended up saving a whole bunch of dudes here. He's going to come back into play a little bit later. Wow. He, he fudded him. Yes. So at this point, Dyke's been relieved at command. Spiers is going to go ahead and take over as the Easy Company commanding officer. After they're relieved in February,

so we're February 45, they're sent to this place called Haganow in France. Now, as I remember, Haganow is this city that is separated by a river and it has traded hands in like all major wars. Before World War I, it was French. After World War I, no sorry, before World War I, it was German. After World War I, it was French. After the occupation of World War II, it was back to German. And so now Easy Company gets sent there. And there's the sense that the war is starting to kind of

die down a little bit, but it's not safe. This is also the moment where a lot of the guys that have been through the whole thing start to kind of see their movements, start to see them moving into what would be considered Germany and start to think to themselves, you know, you know, it's possible to make it through this, but I can't let my guard down because at any point this could, you know, this could be over. So while they're in the German 25 right now, we're not in the end zone, but we are in the red zone. And Hacknell had allied artillery on.

one side of the city, other side of the city had German artillery and German presence. They had one of those big ass fucking World War I Railroad guns. Oh. That could fire over and they said that when that thing fired over, you could hear it. One of those shells could take out an entire building. So when you heard it and you heard the

you went down to the basement as fast as possible. So during this time that they're in Haganau, they are sent out on patrols. And these patrols aren't just like, hey, we're patrolling our side. It's we want to send a patrol over to a building that we know has Germans in it. We want to kidnap a bunch, or not kidnap, I guess, take a bunch prisoner, bring them over so we can interrogate them and find out what the other German positions are here. This is also the time in the war where it does look like it's starting on its, you know, downhill slide. And a lot of the command staff are looking for ways to contribute in ways that make them look really good toward the end of the war to kind of bolster their reputation.

and their accomplishments. So patrol gets sent out, Easy Company Patrol ends up getting sent out. They have to cross the river and boats. And their job is to basically sneak into this building that's been deemed as this German outpost, capture these guys, get them back across the line,

back into the boats and back across the river. So they end up sneaking over there. They have to take one guy that speaks German as an interpreter. And they end up sneaking over there. They get into this house. one guy gets wounded because they're throwing grenades in this house before they charge in. He throws it in and then turns and kicks the door down before the thing even went off and takes a face full like shrapnel. Bad timing.

Yeah. They end up capturing, I think, two Germans and one of them is wounded. And as they're taking them back across the line, they blow a whistle and the Allied artillery and machine guns. German blows a whistle? No, the Allies do. To signal start laying down covering fire so we don't get shot in the back as we're trying to get back across the river. they end up getting back across the river they end up getting two prisoners across with them

command is happy they're so happy that another night they're like whoa um and they also demolish that outpost by leaving like T&T in it so they can no longer be used they're so happy that they're like hey we want to send another patrol over we're going to have to send you deeper in though

because you got prisoners though like this intelligence is great so winners ends up um going with like the colonel that had ordered it and everything and goes and meets him with a bottle of whiskey. And Winners doesn't drink. And so it presents him with a bottle of whiskey.

Him and the other command staff, the colonel, everything like that are drinking. Winners knows that this mission has to happen. He's supposed to go send out this patrol. And so he goes to the patrol and he's like, so we want to send out another patrol. You guys apparently did too good last time. We got these prisoners. So it happens at night.

And he's like, so what I want you guys to do is I want you guys to all get a good night rest, night's rest. And in the morning, I want you guys to come to report to me that you sent out the patrol and that you weren't able to find any prisoners. And basically was like, don't worry about command because they've been drinking. They're not going to know what happened tonight or anything like that. And what I report back to them, they're not going to be watching or anything like that. They're just going to hear the report that I give to them. Yeah. Once I tell them that it's too deep and there's not enough, you know, there's not enough incentive to go over there. You know, they'll let it go.

to be able to prove anything. Yeah, exactly. So after they end up getting out of Haganow, winners gets made a major. I think that if he's in that position, he was too low, not too low of rank to actually do it, but traditionally a major, someone that you want as minimum in that rank.

So he's still in charge of like the second battalion. So not just Easy Company, he's in charge of like Fox Company and Dog Company and everything, but he still has that loyalty to Easy Company. This is boys. So the 101st, including easy companies, relieved by the 36 infantry on February 23rd. And during this time, too, as they start to move out of Haganow, they're actually traveling into Germany proper now. They're not traveling through German-held strong zones.

They're going through towns and villages and stuff that don't have a military presence. So there's people there. And they're starting to see that aspect of the German populace that some people are just worn out of war. They're not openly hostile toward them. They're getting along with a lot of the locals and everything like that. And some people's perspective start to be like, that's where the distinction between the Germans and the Nazis starts to kind of get separated in people's minds. And they're like, these are just, you know,

they're people. We're starting to see them as people, maybe some of the propaganda that we've actually been fed about everyone being a member of the SS or a fanatic and everything isn't exactly accurate. Well, that actually kind of changes, and it doesn't take very long, because on in April of 45, the 101st, as they're driving south into Germany, they come across this place called Coffering in Landsberg, Bavaria. So they move into Bavaria. They're deep. Yep. And so I guess it was a few days before this.

I want to say it was the 12th armored that actually moved in first. but this outside of Landsberg, they found a camp. The 12th Armour did. And this was a sub-camp. It was the Coffering Camp, and it was a sub-camp of the Dachau Complex. Now, this camp wasn't a death camp per se, like with the ovens and everything like that.

More work camp. But it was more of a work camp, and then it was actually what they considered to be a sick camp. and a sick camp is basically where they sent the people that were too sick to continue working in the actual work camps to die. So this camp at its peak held about 3,600 prisoners. When they got there, they found 500 dead. A lot of the people were so weak that before the SS pulled out,

and they pulled out a bunch of the prisoners and took them on a forced death march, basically to the main dockout camps. Well, they were already sick. Yeah. So instead of just taking all the prisoners and then the ones they couldn't take, leave them alone, they set fire to one of the barracks where the people were too weak to try to get out. And as they're seeing this, Winners is sending people into town to commandeer and take all the food and bring it out here so we can feed these people. They're walking. I had to skip over. I usually watch that episode. I had to skip over that this time just because I was like, ah. But the, I believe it was the next day they went into Landsberg. And they, They rounded up all the citizens of Landsberg, and they made them come out to bury the bodies. So all of the people that were just in the town, just right over that, you know, Germans are going into that town all the time and everything. There had to have been some type of knowledge of what was possibly going on there, had them basically moving bodies and burying people and then walking back into town. We talked about Landsberg during Nuremberg trials.

Mm-hmm. It's a, I mean, it's, to see the visuals in some of those movies of taking those people into town or taking those people into the camp in Landsberg and they're all wearing like their, their nice clothes. Yeah, like their fur jackets and stuff like that or like dresses and everything. This pretty much any of that feeling that they had about like identifying or or not feeling like maybe the Nazis weren't inherently evil. It flipped right back over after. after seeing something like this. So they're sent to, as they're moving through Bavaria and everything, they are racing against the 506, or the 5.06 is racing against the French second

armor division and the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division to get to Berchus Garden. We talked about Berchus Garden as being also as known as the Overs Salzburg. This is where Hitler had the Berghoff. Basically, whereas the. We talked about during the Rise episode and everything like that. Nuremberg was that spiritual home of the Nazi party where they had the Nuremberg rallies and all that kind of stuff. Birchus Garden was basically the second headquarters of the Nazi apparatus. You had the Berghoff, which was Hitler's house, the Eagles Nest.

We talked about that. You had Gurring had a house there, Bormann, Speer, all of the top brass. There was SS headquarters there and everything. and so there is this drive of some of these divisional commanders and colonels and generals and stuff like that to be like we need to get to we want to get to this first also because there's looting happening oh fuck yeah and as they're the understanding is the people that are furthest away

get the last gasps of the supplies that are getting there because everybody between them is taking their fill and taking tough off all the good stuff and everything like that. So being out in front, you're getting the worst of the supplies, but you're also getting first crack at the loot when you go into these places. And going into the vacation homes of these guys, the colonel is like, um, yeah. So right now they were kind of traveling side by side with that French second armored division.

They came to a road where it had had a bridge blown and they couldn't get across. So they were kind of waiting for the, the engineers, Colonel rolls up and he goes, I think you need to take easy company, second battalion, and you need to try to outflank these French bastards.

So winners and spears and take a bunch of guys and everything. They take easy company, and I think they take, like, the first battalion or second battalion, or would have been the second battalion, and they find a way to loop around. They're not the first to get into Burchas Garden,

but the third infantry division, they actually got there first because they had taken another route. Yeah. But they had moved on very quickly because they were the ones that were chasing after any of the kind of straggling Germans to push them out to make sure that they were trying to get the last pockets. When Easy Company and when the 506 came in, Berchus Garden was just theirs. So when Spears was sending his forward scouts to clear places, he's like, get the best place. I want the best room and everything.

And as they're moving into town, they're commandeering these places and everything like that. They're looting. I'm not to say in a negative way or anything like that. No, it's awesome. I'm smiling and listen to this. Because it's great. You always think you want to be the first one in. But in this case, the first one in still has a job to do in chasing the Germans out.

The first ones in just went ahead and laid out this beautiful palatial estate in these areas for the second ones in. So they get there May 5th. They get to like Birch-garten, the Oberstallisburg, May 5th. Victory in Europe Day is May 8th. So they get there three days before this. They find, they don't find a military presence, really at all. The Nazis that they find are dead, like higher-ranking guys that have shot themselves and everything. So as they're going through Birch's Garden and they're occupying it now, okay, so I want to go through some of the stuff that, like, just some of the crazy that you would never think of, like, in wartime.

So they get to Birch's Garden. They're the first ones to get up to the Eagle's Nest, and I'll start with the Eagles Nest. so they get up there and what some of the guys end up taking from the Eagles Nest is, of course, they take the chips off of the marble fireplace that Mussolini had donated and everything. But they find,

I think the Eagles Nest has a store of, oh God, where is it? I have the numbers. Oh, one second. French wine, I'm assuming. Oh, half a million bottles of wine, champagne, and cognac spread across Burchase Garden in all of these underground cellars and everything.

And this was like good, good shit. Yeah. Herman Gurring's house alone. Oh, yeah, we know Gurring. Had a wine cellar that held between 10 and 16,000 bottles. And it was an insane amount of like high quality French wine, French champagne. He had five Rembrandts that they had looted from France and like the Jewish families that they had taken all their shit and all that kind of stuff,

this is where they were storing and hoarding all of their loot. So back up at the Eagles Nest, one of the guys finds Hitler's personal photo albums of like him at the Berghoff with other dignitaries, having lunch, all this kind of stuff, and he ends up swiping these photo albums. He gets accused of it, denies it and everything like that while they're there, because someone else spotted the photo albums.

He's like, I don't have him. He had hit him. somewhere and ended up taking him back to Wyoming with him. Yes. When he ended up going back. Hitler's photo albums were in Wyoming. There was a ton of engraved AH stuff like T sets and serving platters and all this. Richard Winners and Harry Welsh had found this like three foot by two foot

mahogany polished case that had actual silver cutler in it and they decided to split it. and they used it in their houses up their entire lives. So if you went to Winter's house, it was the German cutlery that you were actually using there. The vehicles that they found in some of these officials' garages, they found a few Mercedes that were like bulletproof glass and everything like that. Buddy, these guys were just driving these things around town. Guys were just claiming them. They had found a huge motorpool with like Volkswagen and staff officer cars and all of this stuff. one of the guys found a Mercedes fire truck,

and that was his ride as he was driving around town. Once you get one of those in your possession, is that like everybody that your boys with gets to take a spin in to? Or is that just something that you keep because you don't want to lose control of it? Oh, no, I think you take your boys around with it. Okay. So they're out there playing firemen on this Mercedes fire truck.

Just probably starting fires to be like, oh, God, does you hear the south end of town's on fire? How old of the fire truck sounds, yeah. So they were told eventually that they had to turn these over as soon as like the higher officers moved into town and everything And so one of the guys was like I want to test the bulletproof windows and goes to shoot it and it like went through because it was armor piercing stuff One of the dudes was like I want to test to see this engine can run without coolant and ended up destroying the engine trying to take this armored Mercedes driving up to the eagle's nest burn the motor out And so So winters never drink either

So there was a problem because there was this huge, you know, three days into this, the war's over. Yeah. They're an occupying force at this point. A lot of downtime. A lot of booze. There were women and everything that weren't hostile or anything like that. So this became a all that they had done for the last year. This was their time to kind of like let loose.

Got to blow off some steam. But it started to lead to issues where people were being drunk and disorderly and all that kind of stuff. So Spears had a rule too. like if you're out and you're drunk, we're going to have problems. If you're just in your like barracks wherever you're staying and you're keeping that shit in there, that's fine and you don't have any responsibilities. Yeah, go for it. Winners, not drinking at all, wasn't like, hey, yeah, go drinking or like, but wasn't at the same time.

Be like, no, no one's drinking. So first thing he ended up doing after discovering all this is he's like, I'm going to go ahead and do a seven day dry period for everyone so I can set some ground rules. he put guards on all of the booze storage and before letting anyone have a crack at Herman Gurring's collection he took Nixon his best friend and Nixon was Nixon had taken a case of alcohol

of like I think it was whiskey and he had a flask with him and would like openly drink he got demoted at one point due to kind of having a drinking problem but he had hidden it in Winter's Foot Locker to try to transport and get it over across these. So he was always scrounging and trying to find stuff. Winners took him down into the cellar and he goes,

take what you want. I'm giving you first crack. After you've taken what you want, I want each platoon or each company to come take a truckload and everything like that too. So I think Nixon took five truckloads. What do you do? Where do you start?

Buddy, they were literally going around this town with a bottle of champagne drinking Hitler's champagne. Hitler hated smoking, which kind of sounds weird, right? Yeah. So he didn't allow any smoking in the Berghoff. They just walked around the Berghoff fucking smoking cigarettes and cigars and everything. They found Ava Braun's fucking home movies and pictures. Wow.

So a lot of war trophies that were taken. And of course, these guys were taking any of the Nazi banners and all that kind of stuff. Anything they can get their hands on to take back. A lot of these guys were collecting, you know, Lugars and, like, Walter guns and stuff like that that they would use to then trade for other things this is where a lot of the war trophies were acquired is that part of it

too is if you grab yourself a case of wine you can probably buy your way back really in any way that you want to get home you didn't have to buy your way back your army did all that but how do you get the rest of your shit back like how does Nixon get five truckloads of wine back to his necessary destination correct

but he's also, and it might not get back there for a while, of course, but you're also an occupation force that's going to be there for a while. So you send it back and you might still be there for six months. It might be there waiting for him when to get home. Well, and you probably sent five truckloads because you expect three truckloads to make it. Spears had married a woman in England before when they had first been stationed there, and he was just sending shit back to her nonstop. Because as soon as like a company or division took a town,

they set up their headquarters and they set up everything from mail service. to make sure the guys were getting the mail, food service, all that kind of stuff, all the infrastructure that you needed. So there were guys there whose job it was to send you stuff home, to send letters, to send packages home. So you walk in there with all this stuff and you're just like, here's the address I want to go to. Their job was, all right, I'll get it done. You slide a $20 bill in there with it and you're like, take extra good care of it. They're like, you got it, sir. The entire time this war is going on with all of these supplies, dude, there's a black market going on for this stuff. It's like a disgusting aspect of this.

But troops at the end of the line weren't getting stuff just strictly because they were at the end in black market stuff was getting skimmed off the top. The food that was coming down to easy, even while they were in the over Salzburg, even when they go to their next place, it wasn't a lot. They had to, and they didn't like resort to it, but they went out hunting. And this place where they were at was like a place that was known for the well to do to actually go hunting. So there were deer and all that stuff. they would just go out and hunt deer and have like venison as part of like their diet. So after they're moved out of Birch's Garden of the Over Salzburg, they're moved to a place for occupation called Zelm-Z. And Zel-M-Z is, look at pictures of it.

It's C-E-L-L-A-M-Z or S-E-E-E. And it is the most picturesque Austrian, I think it's a Bavarian or Austrian city. that is nestled in the mountains with a perfect lake in the middle of it, snow-capped peaks all around it, when they were here as an occupation force. Because, again, it's not just an absence of Germans. It may not be the military, but there are people here still running the city and going about life.

They would go up and take skiing lessons and everything. And some of these guys would learn how to ski. They would be swimming in this beautiful lake. This is where they were doing a lot of processing, where all of the POWs that were coming to surrender, they were having them deposit their arms. I remember Winners was talking to, like, the lead German official there, came to surrender to him and was like,

okay, you're going to take all of your men, you're going to deposit all of your arms at the school, the church, and the airport, and then you're going to report for processing. I was like, yeah, he let him keep his sidearm. He let officers keep their sidearms. He let the German MPs keep their weapons because they were responsible for policing kind of their own guys,

to a degree as well. But that also goes to show you how much people, once the war was over, were just like, fuck it. What do you want me to do? Let's get this thing done. And let's all get back to our lives. It went from a war to almost like business transactions.

Yeah. As far as letting all that go, which I still have a very hard time with because I understand that you can't arrest every single German soldier and hold them all on trial and in prisons just because there's, nothing. I mean, in a perfect world, that would be who would be established in the concentration camps afterwards to process these people and let them taste a little bit of what they were doing, but at the same time, you just can't do that. This is where you had to, during the processing period, where they had to process everyone to sort out the people that they were after for four

crimes. This is where who made it, who made it to Argentina and then was kidnapped in the 60s? Hesse. Snow? Heinrich Himmler? Possibly. One of those guys. We should know the name. Hess was in Nuremberg. It was Angel of Death. Oh, Mangley.

I think it was Mangley. I thought Mangley faked his death over there. Okay. I think you were, I think it might be Himmler. Okay. So Himmler disguised himself as like a corporal and was actually run through the processing here where they were, but was able to escape before they were able to tie and get evidence for who he was. But it just shows you that these guys were trying to blend it and they had to do this processing, you know, thing. war was over in Europe

War wasn't over So there was still a need for these guys That were going to be remaining and that didn't have enough It was a there was a point system Where I believe it was 85 points And you got points for what campaigns you were in Or what operations you were in You got points for Purple Hearts

And I believe you got points for maybe medals And so to get to these 85 points You a lot of guys qualified that especially guys that had been there since the very beginning because you had certain guys purple heartwise Joe Toy had four purple hearts Lipton had three purple hearts this guy named Gordon had three or four

Spears had two you had guys that had a lot of points off of being wounded and everything like that but then you had guys that had maybe not been there for Normandy but had been there for Market Garden had gone through all the other stuff Bastone that still didn't have the 85 points to go home And so they found creative ways also to try to get guys that maybe didn't get wounded but contributed greatly.

There was an instance where Shifty Powers. So Powers was never wounded or anything. He didn't have enough points, but he was a guy that saved a lot of other guys' lives by being a marksman and everything. So they had a lottery where they were allowed, like all the companies were allowed to elect one guy and vote for him and he would get sent home. And so Easy Company basically put names in a hat and they only put one name in there and they drew it and it was Shifty. So he got to end up going home even though he didn't have points just because of his contribution. Because he'd been there since Tocoa. Was this the gentleman that ran across the?

That was Spirts. Okay. Shifty's the guy that was like their sniper basically in their in their company. So they're training also the guys that were going to, didn't have enough points. They started training them like. Or having, I guess, what you would consider like tactical training to continue that for the anticipated possible jump on Tokyo or Japan. Well, thankfully, Japan surrendered on September 2nd before any of that could ever come to fruition. And as they're trying to get guys kind of out of there to maybe start getting guys home as well, you have him assigning guys like there.

was a like an air exhibition that was going to be going around Britain as like a post-war thing. It might have been going around France as well that they would have one of every plane that fought for the Allies in the war. And when I was talking about he's like, how would you like to be the consultant for accuracy on that? He's like, you get to travel around Europe, France, all that kind of stuff. He's like, I think I can handle that, sir. I think Lipton, he was talking to Lipton.

He's like, you know, usually once you're not in battle anymore, guys, that get promoted usually don't stay with the same company because they think like I was talking to you before they won't you know adhere to that guy's authority and everything he's like it's stupid rule he's like but you did get promoted how would you like to get promoted to like battalion staff you don't have to go be with another company you just get to hang around with everyone kind of keep taps on everyone vibes guy yep so as they're in this place Zam ezel you also have guys that were wounded that had to leave the company for burnout just uh but Compton had to end up leaving after Bastone just because it broke him mentally. And he's like, no one ever looked down on him any less. Like anybody that saw their friends torn up like that and everything, all of us, regardless if you got wounded or not in Bastone, all of us carry wounds. And this gave an opportunity for him to like,

he came back and visited while they were stationed here. So he got to see all the guys. They had a fucking baseball field built and all this kind of stuff. Like they were, you know, trying to gather some semblance of their life still with this. the confines of like the army and everything. So there was one more instance before kind of getting to the end of how this ends for these guys. But Sobel had stayed within the 506th.

He was like a supply officer after he had moved on from that parachute training school. And so while there is Zan, fuck, Zell MZ, winners is I think walking down the street and he's walking with two other guys. In the show he's sitting in a Jeep. But as Ambrose tells it, he's walking down the street. He's got two of the other guys that were in the company, and Sobel's walking toward them the other direction.

Now, Sobel's still a captain. Winners is a major. He outranks it. Majors does. Or Winners does. And as they're walking past, Sobel puts his head down and just kind of keeps walking. And Winners kind of stops and turns back to him. And he goes, Captain Sobel.

And he turns around, he goes, we salute the rank, not the man. and has Sobel come back to him and give him a salute as a major and everything. The guy that was with him was one of the guys that had originally been like in Toccoa and had gone through all the shit with Sobel. Just they like we couldn't help but laugh. Like Richard or Winters did it in such a way that it didn't sound degrading or anything like that. But you can tell exactly what he was doing. And you couldn't help but just smile seeing like the justice of that happening. So, out of the 140 Tocoa men that first served, a hundred of them survived.

Now, a lot of them were wounded. That's fucking great odds, though. I know. So over the course, though, with replacements and everything like that, in this company alone, 366 men served in easy company. So that shows you how many replacements were coming in and how many wounded and everything like that. Now, the 140 original, and it's going to sound weird, had 150.

percent casualty rate. What that means is you can be wounded and then come right back. So so many of these guys had multiple wounds and were considered casualties but then came back to continue fighting to get wounded again. It was 150%.

So all of them and then also multiple people that had been wounded more than once. And guys that snuck away from field hospitals to come back again. Yeah, exactly. Because they didn't. want to end up getting assigned and be away from their friends. God damn, man.

That's, yeah, I mean, it's the average amount of casualties for a situation like that one and a half times with that many guys is just, it shows that, like you were talking about, being in those hospitals and being in those infirmaries, you can't, you can't let that get to you. Because if you see a place where there's just nothing but people that are injured, it's almost better mentally to get back out and get fired at. because at least there's hope out there. Yeah.

At least you're not just sitting there watching people waste away dying. You're out there still in the mix and you can still feel alive. And I mean, the gears of government grinds slow, but the gears of war apparently don't because going straight into post-war reconstruction, you don't need all these divisions. You don't need all these specialized troops and everything. You're going to condense it so you have them ready for wartime later, but never in the numbers that you've had here. So I believe it was the 506.

The 101st is still there, but I want to say either the 506 or just that battalion with easy coming included was disbanded in November of 1945. So same year they won the war and everything like that. Guys that were going to stay within the army were moved to other places, guys that were in command, stepped up into other roles. Winners ended up taking up Nixon on an offer to go back to New Jersey and work for him and everything. I think he went back and served as a major or a little bit higher ranking in Korea. But then after that, majors was like, no, he had made a deal, I guess, on the first day of D-Day, that if he survived the war, he was going to find a little nice piece of, you know, land. Yeah.

And just live in peace for the rest of his life, which is in what he ended up doing. So that's nuts. Just you talking about that. Ronald Spears ends up going and serving in the Korean. war. There were multiple members of these guys in Easy Company. Blythe, Spears, uh,

Richard Winners doesn't like you were talking about, but you just went through World War II. I think, yeah, I think Winners gets, uh, they approach him to serve in Korea and he declines. But Spears, did you see what Spears does after Korea? Uh,

he goes on to serve as the, uh, superintendent of Dacow. Really? Weird, full circle type thing. Whoa. Yeah. Huh. But, yeah, I highly recommend going and listening to these guys' accounts and their interviews and everything.

Listen to Stephen Ambrose book. Watch the series. It gives you such a unique perspective on just how war was taken through the individual eyes of all these different people and how they viewed it and what they did. And this isn't line-to-line fighting. This isn't lines against lines. this is behind enemy lines. Yeah. Yeah, it's a different kind of warfare.

Something new to this. And yeah, it's just an amazing story. Oh, got any further questions? Any last minute? No, fantastic episode. It gives me more of a desire to watch them. All right, everyone. Well, I hope you guys feel the same way that Adam does.

And we'll catch on the next one. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like button. Follow us. If you didn't like what you heard, still hit that anyway because we'll probably cover something in the future that you do like. Please follow us on our social media. Adam, hit them with it. Our Instagram is historically high pod, historically high POD. And we are on Twitter at historically high. That's historically high. That's historically hI. All right. And if you guys want to send in any feedback suggestions, hit us upon those two or you can even do it on Gmail. It's historically high podcast at gmail. com. Thanks again. Peace.