Band of Brothers

At 10:00 PM on May 8, the 2ndBattalion moved south of Berchtesgaden to Zell am See, Austria, for occupation. The 600 dirty, unkempt Armymen presented a stark contrast with the 25,000 sharply-dressed Germans who surrendered to them (277).

Winters set up his headquarters in Kaprun, just outside of Zell am See. The valley where they were stationed was a popular resort area. The 2nd Battalion’s orderswere to “maintain order, to gather in all German soldiers, disarm them, and ship them off the P.O.W. camps,” but because of the efficiency of the Germans in disarming and organizing themselves, the work moved quickly. When Winters’s German staff officer proposeduniting their armies to fight the Russians (one of the Allies), Winters declined, saying he was only interested in getting home (276). The task of releasing prisoners of war to go home was more difficult than it seemed, however, because all Germans had to be screened to make sure they were not Nazis masquerading as enlisted men to escape punishment for war crimes.

Speirs received word from the displaced persons that “a man who had been the head of the slave labor camps in the area and had committed a great many atrocities” was living on a farm outside of Zell am See. Speirs sent 1st Sgt. Lynch with three men to find and kill the man, the latter being an order that he almost certainly did not have the authority to give (277). Moone, the only one of the soldiers to express doubts, refused to kill the man when they captured him and ascertained that he was the one they were looking for. Another of the troops finished the job as the man fled into the hills, however.

By the end of May, the bulk of the work was complete. Winters built sports training facilities, and the athletes in his battalion enjoyed the chance to train again. Most of the men, however, weren’t interested in training and instead spent their time “as tourists in the Alps, hunting, drinking, and chasing women” (278).

Drinking was one of the more favored pastimes. Captain Speirs’s only rulewas “no drunkenness outside” of the quarters, especially for those who were on guard duty (279). Winters was noncommittal about drinking off duty, mindful as he was about the physicals injuries and psychological injuries his men had suffered (280). Colonel Sink, by contrast, was angry about the drinking and the many practical jokes that occupied even the officers. He had gotten over his anger a week later when he threw a weather-delayed Fourth of July party on July 6.

Despite all the leisure and celebration, the men were eager to get home. The problem for most of the paratroopers was that getting home was based on a points system. The Army “gave a man points for each active duty service month, points for campaigns, points for medals, points for being married. The magic number was eighty-five points” (281). If you had the points, you could go home immediately. If you did not, you were liable to be shipped off to the Pacific, to fight in China or Japan, when the time came. It was almost impossible for paratroopers to win medals because of the nature of their combat roles, so they had no more points than most support staff, who hadn’t engaged in combat.

General Taylor attempted to address the problem by allowing one man to go home after being picked by lottery, but he was injured en route and got home after his peers on a hospital ship. Taylor also managed to make his men eligible for Bronze Stars if they had been in combat for two or more of the campaigns in Normandy, Holland, and Belgium, but the slowness of the process delayed the medals for weeks. This alone made many of the men, including Webster, even unhappier with the Army, and when the Army attempted to recruit Winters and others to join the Regular Army, they declined (283).

These frustrations, coupled with the alcohol and idleness, resulted in many road accidents and deaths when drunken men tried to blow through roadblocks. One of Easy’s own, Sgt. Grant, was nearly killed one night when he attempted to intervene in an altercation with a drunken soldier. E Company men caught the culprit in the act of raping an Austrian girl and brought him back to company headquarters. Speirs pistol-whipped him and other unnamed men “beat him unconscious,” but no one killed him (285). Sink, on finding out about what happened, told them they should have shot him. That Easy Company “had had enough of killing” was probably what preserved the man’s life (286).

The Army began to dismantle the company, finally. Taylor rotated those with the requisite points to Berchtesgaden with the 501st, which was headed back to the U.S. for discharge. The 101st, made up of nearly 75% new recruits, was scheduled to go to the Pacific after a furlough and intense basic training for everyone, even veterans (much to their displeasure). By mid-July, only Webster was left with his unit because he didn’t have enough points to go home. E Company went to Joigny, France, by railcar.

The U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, effectively ending the Pacific part of the war and all plans to transfer men there. The Army shifted the low-points men to the 17th and 82nd Airborne. Sink was promoted, and Taylor left for West Point. On November 30, 1945, the Army deactivated the 101st, dissolving E Company (289).In their letters, and later, in interviews, members of E Company remarked on how the stresses they experienced bonded them together forever.