http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11winters.html
Richard Winters Dies at 92; Led ‘Band of Brothers’
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: January 10, 2011
Richard Winters, the commanding officer of Easy Company, the Army unit whose gritty combat from the beaches of Normandy to the capture of Hitler’s mountain retreat was recounted in the book and television series “Band of Brothers,” died Jan. 2 in Campbelltown, Pa. He was 92 and lived in Hershey, Pa.
His death was confirmed by Nikki Soliday, executive director of the Hershey-Derry Township Historical Society, which maintains an exhibit of Mr. Winters’s war memorabilia, including the tiny silk map of Normandy sewn into his uniform pants on D-Day and silverware taken from Hitler’s retreat.
Rising from lieutenant to major, Mr. Winters was commander of Company E, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, from D-Day to V-E Day. Dropped behind enemy lines hours before Allied forces landed on Utah Beach at dawn on June 6, 1944, the unit went on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, through German towns and villages and ended the war by joining in the capture of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden, Germany, near the Austrian border.
Lieutenant Winters became the unit’s commanding officer on D-Day, hours after his superior officer was killed. That day he led 13 of his men in taking out a battery of German gunners that was decimating Allied troops on Utah Beach.
“He was the first one out there, yelling, ‘Follow me!’ ” one of his staff sergeants, William Guarnere, now 88, said Monday. “We knocked out a battery of four guns, 150 millimeters, that was firing on the kids coming on the shore. He got shot in the leg and still kept going.”
“He saved the company a lot of times,” Mr. Guarnere added.
In 1990, Mr. Winters was among D-Day veterans interviewed by the historian Stephen E. Ambrose for a book on the Normandy landings. He suggested that Mr. Ambrose focus on Easy Company, a task made simpler by the facts that its members had regularly held reunions and that many, including Mr. Winters, had kept written records of their war experiences.
“Band of Brothers” — its title taken from an oration in Shakespeare’s “Henry V” before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 — became a best seller in 1992. And in 2001 the 10-part miniseries of the same title, produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, was shown on HBO.
Among many other missions, the book and the miniseries tell how Captain Winters climbed to the top of a dike near the village of Zetten, the Netherlands, on Oct. 5, 1944, and spotted hundreds of German soldiers on the other side.
Had the Germans crossed over the dike, they would have posed a serious threat to American forces.
Although his platoon was vastly outnumbered, Captain Winters ordered his troops to open fire. “With 35 men, a platoon of Easy Company routed two German companies of about 300 men,” the book says. “American casualties were one dead, 22 wounded. German casualties were 50 killed, 11 captures, about 100 wounded.”
In March 1945, Captain Winters, who had previously been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, was promoted to major. Two months later, the 101st Airborne Division received orders to capture Berchtesgaden. After setting out from Thalham, Germany, Major Winters’s unit forced its way through streams of surrendering German soldiers and reached Hitler’s retreat on May 5, 1945. Easy Company was there when the war ended three days later.
Richard Winters was born in Ephrata, Pa., to Richard and Edith Winters on Jan. 21, 1918. Dick, as he preferred to be called, enlisted in the Army after graduating from Franklin and Marshall College in 1941.
After the war, he became a supervisor at a plaster mill in New Jersey. In 1951, he and his wife, Esther, bought a small farm in Fredericksburg, Pa. He later began selling animal feed products to farmers throughout Pennsylvania. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son and a daughter.
Mr. Winters received many other decorations besides the Distinguished Service Cross, including the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. Yet he played down his combat role.
“The cohesion that existed in the company was hardly the result of my leadership,” he wrote in “Beyond Band of Brothers,” his 2006 memoir. “The company belonged to the men, the officers were merely the caretakers.”
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: January 10, 2011
Richard Winters, the commanding officer of Easy Company, the Army unit whose gritty combat from the beaches of Normandy to the capture of Hitler’s mountain retreat was recounted in the book and television series “Band of Brothers,” died Jan. 2 in Campbelltown, Pa. He was 92 and lived in Hershey, Pa.
His death was confirmed by Nikki Soliday, executive director of the Hershey-Derry Township Historical Society, which maintains an exhibit of Mr. Winters’s war memorabilia, including the tiny silk map of Normandy sewn into his uniform pants on D-Day and silverware taken from Hitler’s retreat.
Rising from lieutenant to major, Mr. Winters was commander of Company E, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, from D-Day to V-E Day. Dropped behind enemy lines hours before Allied forces landed on Utah Beach at dawn on June 6, 1944, the unit went on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, through German towns and villages and ended the war by joining in the capture of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden, Germany, near the Austrian border.
Lieutenant Winters became the unit’s commanding officer on D-Day, hours after his superior officer was killed. That day he led 13 of his men in taking out a battery of German gunners that was decimating Allied troops on Utah Beach.
“He was the first one out there, yelling, ‘Follow me!’ ” one of his staff sergeants, William Guarnere, now 88, said Monday. “We knocked out a battery of four guns, 150 millimeters, that was firing on the kids coming on the shore. He got shot in the leg and still kept going.”
“He saved the company a lot of times,” Mr. Guarnere added.
In 1990, Mr. Winters was among D-Day veterans interviewed by the historian Stephen E. Ambrose for a book on the Normandy landings. He suggested that Mr. Ambrose focus on Easy Company, a task made simpler by the facts that its members had regularly held reunions and that many, including Mr. Winters, had kept written records of their war experiences.
“Band of Brothers” — its title taken from an oration in Shakespeare’s “Henry V” before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 — became a best seller in 1992. And in 2001 the 10-part miniseries of the same title, produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, was shown on HBO.
Among many other missions, the book and the miniseries tell how Captain Winters climbed to the top of a dike near the village of Zetten, the Netherlands, on Oct. 5, 1944, and spotted hundreds of German soldiers on the other side.
Had the Germans crossed over the dike, they would have posed a serious threat to American forces.
Although his platoon was vastly outnumbered, Captain Winters ordered his troops to open fire. “With 35 men, a platoon of Easy Company routed two German companies of about 300 men,” the book says. “American casualties were one dead, 22 wounded. German casualties were 50 killed, 11 captures, about 100 wounded.”
In March 1945, Captain Winters, who had previously been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, was promoted to major. Two months later, the 101st Airborne Division received orders to capture Berchtesgaden. After setting out from Thalham, Germany, Major Winters’s unit forced its way through streams of surrendering German soldiers and reached Hitler’s retreat on May 5, 1945. Easy Company was there when the war ended three days later.
Richard Winters was born in Ephrata, Pa., to Richard and Edith Winters on Jan. 21, 1918. Dick, as he preferred to be called, enlisted in the Army after graduating from Franklin and Marshall College in 1941.
After the war, he became a supervisor at a plaster mill in New Jersey. In 1951, he and his wife, Esther, bought a small farm in Fredericksburg, Pa. He later began selling animal feed products to farmers throughout Pennsylvania. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son and a daughter.
Mr. Winters received many other decorations besides the Distinguished Service Cross, including the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. Yet he played down his combat role.
“The cohesion that existed in the company was hardly the result of my leadership,” he wrote in “Beyond Band of Brothers,” his 2006 memoir. “The company belonged to the men, the officers were merely the caretakers.”
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