Band of Brothers

From December 1942 through September 1943, the men completed training that focused more on their role as paratroopers, including five jumps from a real C-47 plane. They transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia, first, where their superior physical fitness allowed them to skip the initial training stage.

Although most of the men had never flown on an airplane before, most completed their jumps. 94% of the 506th completed the first jump (a record), and one of the two men in E Company who didn’t make it on the first circle of the plane managed to overcome his fear enough to jump on the second circle (32).

While the men completed the first two jumps singly, they completed the third jump in groups of twelve. They completed the fourth jump on Christmas Eve, took a break at Christmas, and did a last jump on December 26, after which those who completed the jump earned their silver wings and certificates as qualified paratroopers. With a training completion rate of 60%, they were an elite group of soldiers (33).

The men then went on a ten-day furlough after receiving a lecture from Colonel Sink about comportment while they were on break—to “walk with pride and military bearing, take care of their personal appearance,” and to remember their motto, “‘Currahee,’ and its meaning: ‘Standing Alone.’ We Stand Alone Together’”(33). The men were also told to “[s]tay out of jail” (33) and without exception to return to Fort Benning at the end of the furlough. The first hard lesson of their full membership in the paratroopers came after furlough: ten latecomers were stripped of their wings and sent to the infantry in an official drumming-out ceremony.

In January 1943, the men transferred to the Alabama portion of Fort Benning, which was much more comfortable, and completed training that “concentrated on squad problems, especially house-to-house combat” (35). Ambrose reproduces diary entries of a solder named Carson to show what the men did after hours—pillow fights in the barracks and socializing with women in Columbus, Georgia, well into the wee hours of the morning (35).

In March 1943, the men transferred to Camp Mackall, North Carolina. The training at Mackall included jumps with rifles and small arms, sometimes with up to 100 pounds of supplies. The men also completed days-long exercises in the woods to simulate “quick troop movements and operating behind enemy lines” at night (35).  Sobel’s men intentionally sabotaged him during these exercises, hoping these efforts would make him appear to be too incompetent to lead them into combat. Sobel’s responses—yelling at the men only to discover he was addressing the wrong company, confiscating items of the men and declaring them contraband—only served to make more of the men hate him (37).

Easy Company excelled at Mackall. The 2nd Battalion of E Company received the highest score ever on the Army’s physical fitness test, and many of the men promoted to officers rose through the ranks of E Company. The leadership of E Company, exemplified by 2nd Lieutenant Harry Welsh believed that leadership based on the idea that “[o]fficers go first” (38).

In May 1943, the 506th went to Sturgis, Kentucky, which served as the launch site for realistic combat exercises in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana from June to July. Theyperformed well. The men then transferred to Camp Beckingridge, Kentucky, took a ten-day furlough, then went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. It was obvious that they were being prepared for deployment because of how comfortable the barracks were and because they were given all new gear and weapons.

In August, the men went north to Camp Shanks, New York. Sobel sent form letters to encourage the mothers of his men to write to them while they were overseas. After a night of drinking whiskey that led to hangovers the next morning, the men shipped out in overfull transport ships (41).

The 506th traveled aboard a poorly-equipped, overcrowded ship and survived on two bad meals per day. They arrived at Liverpool, England, on September 15, and then travelled to Aldbourne, west of London. Aldbourne was a picturesque English village and a substantial change for the men, who were accustomed to staying in military outposts. To avoid friction with the townspeople, the Army provided training to orient the men to English culture, with the most important aim of teaching the men to behave conservatively unless they were in a large English city like Birmingham or London. Sobel played his part in maintaining this discipline by punishing one of the men for taking off his blouse at a dance.

The 101st’s “training schedule was intense” (45), with long hours spent completing highly-specialized training to prepare them to invade Europe. They learned important infantry tactics that were crucial if they were to survive. The training gave them a deep knowledge of the area around Aldbourne. They learned to dig in for armored combat attacks, learned total trust in their peers during night training, learned to jump without landing on obstacles, and became experts at assembling their gear quickly after landing.

Sobel’s personality soured even further as he heard about the experiences of the 82nd, which had already spent time in North Africa and Italy in combat. Men regularly took potshots at him during training exercises, and he pretended not to notice. A private imitated his battalion executive officer’s voice to convince Sobel to cut fences they encountered during an exercise, and an embarrassed Sobel was forced to apologize the next day when the fences he cut turned out to belong to farmers who were very angry about their livestock wandering through the cut fences (47). His men, especially his executive officers, hated his lack of subtlety when it came to tactics, and they were convinced that following Sobel into combat would end in disaster. They didn’t have many good options: direct confrontation would be “insubordination or mutiny in time of war; to fail to act could get the whole company killed” (48).

The men were able to blow off steam on the weekends with passes that allowed them to travel out of Aldbourne, and the money in their pockets, coupled with the lack of responsibility, allowed the men to mingle with troops from all over the world in London and live it up with “an excess of drinking, whoring, fighting”( 49) while the more conservative British people among whom they lived looked on in disapproval.

On October 30, Sobel ordered Lt. Winters to clean the latrines at 1100 hours in preparation for an inspection by Colonel Strayer. Moments later, Winters was also assigned the task of censoring the men’s mail. After he finished the task, Winters went to clean the latrines at 1100 as ordered but found that Sobel was already there supervising, Private Melo in cleaning the latrines.

Sobel then used Winters’ supposed failure to clean the latrines on time as an excuse to punish Winters. He wrote a letter asking Winters what punishment he wanted for failing to inspect the latrines. Winters later responded in writing to ask for a court martial trial as his punishment, but Sobel responded by assigning a relatively minor punishment. An angry Winters protested the punishment, and Sobel responded by explaining in writing that he would not lift the punishment. Winters’s request for a court martial instead put the officers in a difficult position since Sobel had denied the request, but Strayer, Sobel’s superior, ultimately decided to declare the case closed with no court martial.

Not satisfied with this outcome, Sobel wrote to ask Winters to explain why he had failed to instruct the private who cleaned the latrines. An exasperated Winters responded that there was no excuse. Strayer subsequently transferred Winters out of E Company to make him a battalion mess commander, a job usually reserved for incompetent soldiers. His actions angered the non-commissioned officers (NCOs) under him, who decided that either they or Sobel had to go. They all decided to resign to make their point, but Winters dissuaded them. By this point, everyone was aware of the conflict between Sobel and his officers. Colonel Sink berated the NCOs days later for their actions. Sink ultimately resolved the conflict by transferring Sobel to a parachute-jumping school in nearby Chilton Foliat, much to the men’s relief. Sink shuffled the officers, bringing in 1st Lt. Patrick Meehan to replace Sobel as the executive officer (X.O.) and reinstating Winters.

Meanwhile, training intensified. The men completed exercises designed to train them to survive without their regular commanders. General Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of 101st’s Army group, had high praise for them after his inspection. The days got warmer, signaling that fighting would begin soon, and by February, the men began large-group training for an invasion of Normandy, France. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and all the top military commanders (including Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, Dwight D. Eisenhower) inspected the men. They performed well and were gratified to receive praise and attention from their leaders. They were ready to become a part of the larger army.