Richard David "Dick" Winters (1918-2011) is one of the best-known American officers of World War II, largely thanks to the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers based on the book by Stephen E. Ambrose. He famously commanded Easy Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division (The Screaming Eagles), fighting in Normandy, the Netherlands (Operation Market Garden), Belgium and Germany, and seeing the end of the war in Austria. Most people's knowledge of the life and deeds of Winters are restricted to what's in the miniseries; this article hopes to give you a few extra nuggets of information about this extraordinary man.
1: Winters didn't actually want to be a soldier. Even though he, according to his memoirs, "felt a strong sense of duty," he did not actually desire to fight in the war. He attended Franklin and Marshall College, one of the oldest colleges in the United States, and was planning on a business career. He graduated in June 1941 with a bachelor's degree in economics. He chose to let himself be drafted out of practical considerations: he wanted to fulfill the one-year requirement of draftees rather than the three-year requirement of Regular Army volunteers; he also wanted to do his service year and be done with it, rather than risk being drafted later, when it would have impacted his business career.
2: He went on his first date because he was forced to. Winters was in the Upsilon chapter of the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity, and the fraternity had a rule about new members going on a date. As he later recounted in a letter: "It wasn’t until the year 1937 when our hero first entered college that he had his first date – and that was compulsory – by order of his fraternity brothers. As it turned out, the date was a nightmare because of a combination of circumstances. The party was a dance. I couldn’t dance, didn’t even know how to hold the girl. They told me to just go out there and walk to the music. So, I did, but most of the time it was on her feet. That was the first and last dance I went to, for soon afterward I dropped out of the fraternity – too much money for a guy working his way through college."
3: He faced not one, but two court martials. Fans of Band of Brothers will already know that First Lieutenant Herbert Sobel, Easy Company's unpopular commanding officer during training, leveled trumped-up charges against Winters after the latter failed to show up for an inspection – but only because Sobel changed the time at the last minute and claimed to call Winters (who was lodged at a home with no phone). Winters chose to take the court martial.
What you probably didn't know was that once the battalion commander set aside Winter's punishment, Sobel wrote up a second, similarly baseless charge against him the very next day. Naturally, that one didn't go anywhere, either.
It should be noted that Winters did have serious reservations about Sobel's ability to lead the company in battle. He wasn't the only one, and a group of sergeants from Easy Company mutinied against Sobel in writing. The show depicts them as acting on their own accord. This could have been how it happened for all we know, but notable Easy Company member Don Malarkey later said he believed the mutiny was quietly orchestrated by Winters to force Sobel out – not for his own gain, but to prevent the company from going into battle with an incompetent commander.
On a slightly lighter-hearted note, Winters once sent a letter home with a pair of photographs: one of himself, and one of Sobel, with a little mustache drawn on it with a pencil. The photos were accompanied by some unflattering words about his commander: “Nowadays I am holding the new title of executive officer for Co. E, 506th, a position I’ve been holding for three months without title. My job is to take charge of the company when the captain isn’t around, and he never is, and do the paper work. Don’t ask me what the captain does." Such criticism was a risky undertaking, as Sobel was known to screen the mail.
4: Winters was not the company commander on D-Day. Easy Company was actually commanded by First Lieutenant Thomas Meehan on the evening of June 5, 1944, when the planes took off to drop their sticks in enemy-held territory before the D-Day landings. (Jumping Into Chaos) The C-47 carrying Meehan and most of the company Headquarters Section was shot down by anti-aircraft fire with no survivors. With Meehan missing and his fate unknown, Winters became the de facto company commander. His position, however, was only made official after the Normandy Campaign.
5: He almost got the Medal of Honor. If you've seen the miniseries, you're already familiar with the first battle commanded by Winters, the assault on a German artillery battery at Brécourt Manor (Winter's First Battle), leading 13 men against a force of about 50 Germans. The action earned him a promotion to captain, and the nation's second highest military decoration, the Distinguished Service Cross, which was presented to him by Lieutenant General Omar Bradley. (Omar Nelson Bradley)
What you might not have known was that Winters was also considered for the Medal of Honor (The Medal of Honor). He did not get it because the Army had a quote system in place at the time which dictated that only one medal could be issued per division. The 101st already had one issued to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cole, who led a famous and bloody charge down an exposed causeway during the Battle of Normandy. (Cole's Bayonet Charge) After Winters and his story became famous thanks to the miniseries, a bill was introduced in Congress to give Winters the medal, but the bill died in the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Military Personnel 2007.
6: Winters never felt comfortable among other officers. He was drafted as a private, and was only sent to Officer Candidate School in April 1942, after his leadership qualities were noticed. As a result, he never truly felt at home in the social life of officers. In March 1944, he wrote: “You may envy the social life of an officer. Personally, that’s my only holdback to future advancement. I have no desire, and refuse to, join in the parties and social gatherings [...] I am a half-breed, an officer, yes, but at heart an enlisted man. So I work and do my duty as I should, but when it comes to play I am in a bad position and only in athletics with the men do I enjoy myself.” In a later letter, he also described himself as "a Class A flop" in social activities.
7: His views on fraternalization between enlisted men and officers changed over time. This one is probably also down to the fact that Winters entered the army as a private and went on to reach the rank of major. In August 1942 he wrote: “At first I hated to leave Croft* for I was well acquainted, both with my old outfit and the new company to which I was assigned. There I had four boys from home in my platoon. The one I went to college with and wrestled with while in school. So we continued to pal around for I didn’t believe a little hardware should stand between us. Other officers frowned on it all, I know, but what did that mean to me – nothing.” (*Camp Croft being where he underwent basic training.)
Two years later, in July 1944, he described a different sentiment in another letter: “I’ve been a buck private, and when I was I didn’t want to fool around with the officers. All I wanted from them was good leadership. Now I am a captain and I find that buddy stuff is out. I am all in favor of knowing each and every man, getting in bull sessions with them, etc., knowing their background, likes, dislikes, capabilities, and weak points. I want to be their friend and the guy they go to when they want a favor or they’re in trouble. But I am not their buddy, I am their captain, and when I say something, that’s it, you jump. [...] You can’t make a decision as quickly and thoroughly if your buddies are concerned in a life and death situation. I’ve seen it, kid.”
8: Winters sometimes came up with battle plans in dreams. He wrote about this in a letter in January 1945: “Now, next and last, you want to know what I dream of. Oh my aching back! Well – there are many kinds of dreams, some this way, some that way. Since I am in the army, I daydream of fights, fighting Jerries, out-maneuvering, out-thinking, out-shooting, and out-fighting them. But they’re tense, cruel, hard and bitter. They consist of about 80% of my dreams, but they pay off. You’d be surprised. Sometimes when you dream over and over a problem, you get the solution, and by gosh, crazy as it may seem in the cold light of morning light, it usually works. In fact to date, they’ve always worked.
9: He was seriously considering going to the Pacific after the war in Europe was over. This only comes up in the miniseries once, and it's presented as if Winters had only been thinking of it for a short while. In actual fact, however, he already had plans to transfer to the Pacific as early as August 1944, two months after D-Day. He wrote at the time: “Say look, Squirt, I don’t want to disappoint you, but I doubt very much if this captain will make it back to the States this fall. You see, it’s going to be a little late in the year when this job’s done. Then, being the type that likes to stick to a job till it’s done before I quit, I think I’ll try and go down to the South Pacific, either with the paratroops or without them, all depending on what they decide to do with them, and help finish that job.”
Later, in May 1945, he expanded on the notion further: “Now that this war is over in Europe I’ve been thinking what’s the use of sitting around over here for six months or so as occupational troops. So my friend, Capt. Nixon, and I plan to take off for the C.B.I.* or at least tomorrow we’re going to ask for a transfer to some parachute unit in the C.B.I or any good infantry unit for it’s going to be no good sitting around here. You gotta die sometime, so why not? Besides, I can’t stand to see somebody tell me all about how tough it was down there. So we’ll have a grass skirt for you, maybe.” (*"China-Burma-India theater") It would appear that the scene in the show where he is interviewed by a general and the matter of the transfer comes up took place sometime shortly after he wrote this letter.
10: Winters was not only a paratrooper, but also a U.S. Army Ranger. You probably didn't know this, as Winters never wears a Ranger patch in the miniseries – which is historically correct, since he was not a Ranger... during World War II.
Winters was discharged from the Army in January 1946, and he could finally embark on his business career, first working for his wartime friend Captain Lewis Nixon in the latter's family business, then running his own small farm. In June 1951, however, Winters was recalled to active duty because of the Korean War. He was ordered to join the 11th Airborne Division, but was given six months to report for service. Feeling he had seen enough war, he went to Washington D.C., and spoke to General Anthony McAuliffe (The Man who Said "Nuts!"), who was the acting commander of the 101st during the Battle of the Bulge. McAuliffe was understanding, but was adamant that the Army needed Winters's experience. He changed his assigned to a non-combat one as a regimental planning and training officer.
Winters gave the job his best shot, but grew disillusioned of trying to train undisciplined officers who did not show up for their classes. Considering even a combat posting better than this, he volunteered and successfully completed Ranger School. He was ordered to deploy to Korea, but was given an opportunity to resign his commission and retire before shipping over, which he accepted.
11: He had long held a document about the truth of Lieutenant Speir’s alleged shooting of POWs. Ronald Speirs (Ronald Speirs: Badass paratrooper of war criminal?), who would later become commanding officer of Easy Company, allegedly shot six German prisoners of war in Normandy. (The miniseries strongly alludes to the event, though does not depict what happened exactly, and has also changed some details.) When the publisher Simon & Schuster was preparing to publish Stephen Ambrose’s book, they became afraid of the possibility of lawsuits over any war crime allegations, and consulted Winters. In a later interview, Winters said that he asked Speirs about it, and Speirs not only openly admitted to the act, but even wrote a letter to testify to it. The letter was kept safe in a file cabinet in Winters’s home.
12: Winters once had an attack of PTSD (The Terror that Lingers) on the set of Band of Brothers. He once visited the set of the miniseries in England. Several actors, already in uniform, were sitting in the back of a truck in preparation for a scene, when Winters walked up, pulled aside the canvas and looked in. According to eyewitnesses, his face went white, he said something to the producer standing next to him, then turned around, left the set, and flew home to America. He later said that "looking into the back of the truck was like looking into a truck full of ghosts."
13: He did not want a statue dedicated to him. A 12-foot-tall bronze statue depicting Richard Winters stands at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont in Normandy, near Utah Beach. Though the statue was only erected in 2012, the year after Winter's death, he was approached about it when he was still alive. Winters only agreed to the statue after he was promised it would be dedicated not just to him, but to all junior officers who led the way on D-Day.
(Courtesy of the Beaches of Normandy Tours, Band of Brothers Tour)
