September 6, 1992

The Men of Company E

By HARRY G. SUMMERS JR.

BAND OF BROTHERS E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. By Stephen E. Ambrose.

very man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea," said Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1778. "Were Socrates and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden both present in any company and Socrates to say, 'Follow me and hear a lecture on philosophy'; and Charles, laying his hand on his sword, to say 'Follow me and dethrone the Czar'; a man would be ashamed to follow Socrates. . . . The profession of soldiers and sailors has the dignity of danger. Mankind reverence those who have got over fear, which is so general a weakness."

Whether one would publicly admit to such politically incorrect sentiments today is debatable, but I suspect down deep they are still true. They were certainly gospel for an earlier generation of Americans, as the historian Stephen E. Ambrose makes clear in "Band of Brothers," his book about the exploits of Company E ("Easy" in the phonetic alphabet of the times), 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, during World War II.

Mr. Ambrose, who is the Boyd Professor of History at the University of New Orleans, is best known for his two-volume biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower and his three-volume work on Richard M. Nixon. But in his latest book he has shifted the focus from grand strategy and the commanders in chief to battlefield tactics and the front-line riflemen.

The book was prompted by Mr. Ambrose's visit to an Easy Company reunion in New Orleans in the fall of 1988. He recorded their D-Day battle experiences as part of an oral history project on the June 1944 invasion of Normandy for the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. Mr. Ambrose was struck with the remarkable closeness of these veterans, and became "intensely curious" about how it had developed. "It was something that all armies everywhere throughout history strive to create but seldom do. . . . The only way to satisfy my curiosity was to research and write the company history." By making the company history a group effort, including circulation of the draft manuscript to the company's survivors and inviting their criticisms, corrections and suggestions, Mr. Ambrose writes, "we have come as close to the true story of Easy Company as possible."

It is a harrowing story. It began in July 1942 at Camp Toccoa, Ga., when the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment was formed. "Each of the 140 men and seven officers who formed the original company followed a different route to its birthplace," Mr. Ambrose explains. "They were young, born since the Great War. They were white, because the U.S. Army in World War II was segregated. With three exceptions, they were unmarried." And they had all volunteered for the paratroopers.

The training was intense. "Few of the original members of Easy," Mr. Ambrose notes, made it through Toccoa. "Officers would come and go," recalled a former platoon leader, Dick Winters. " 'You would take one look at them and know they wouldn't make it. Some of these guys were just a bowl of butter. They were so awkward they didn't know how to fall.' This was typical of the men trying for the 506th. . . . It took 500 officer volunteers to produce the 148 who made it through Toccoa, and 5,300 enlisted volunteers to get 1,000 graduates."

"By the late spring of 1944," Mr. Ambrose observes, "they had become an elite company of airborne infantry. Early on the morning of D-Day in its first combat action, Easy captured and put out of action a German battery of four 105-millimeter cannon that were looking down on Utah Beach. The company led the way into Carentan, fought in Holland, held the perimeter at Bastogne, led the counteroffensive in the Battle of the Bulge, fought in the Rhineland campaign and took Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. It had taken almost 150 percent casualties. At the peak of its effectiveness . . . it was as good a rifle company as there was in the world."

Within the ranks of the military, a rifle company is unique. Its prolonged exposure to the horrors of face-to-face combat forges bonds that are virtually unbreakable. Riflemen, as one member of the regiment tells Mr. Ambrose, "would literally insist on going hungry for one another, freezing for one another, dying for one another." As Mr. Ambrose makes clear in the 18 chapters chronicling Easy Company's terrible journey, the result of their shared experiences creates "a closeness unknown to all outsiders. Comrades are closer than friends, closer than brothers. Their relationship is different from that of lovers. Their trust in, and knowledge of, each other is total."

As a member of just such a unit -- the Korean War's Company L, 21st Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division -- which, like Easy Company, still gets together for annual reunions decades after the end of the war -- I am impressed by how well Mr. Ambrose has captured the true essence of a combat rifle company. As the philosopher J. Glen Gray has written, "At its height, this sense of comradeship is an ecstasy."

"I was 10 years old when World War II ended," Mr. Ambrose notes. "Like many other American men my age, I have always admired -- nay, stood in awe of -- the G.I.'s. I thought that what they had done was beyond praise. I still do." Dr. Johnson could not have said it better.

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