Richard Winters

Richard Winters was born in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, to Richard's father and Edith's mother. When Winters was eight years old, his family moved to nearby Lancaster, where he attended a boys 'high school, graduating from preparatory school in 1937 and attending Franklin Marshall College.

In college, Winters was active, and in addition to the fraternity, he also participated in intramural football and basketball competitions, which earned him the Star Medal. However, in order to cover his own tuition expenses, he focused on his studies and sometimes needed to earn money through part-time jobs, which later forced him to give up his personal favorite wrestling and other various college social activities. After four years of study, he graduated from business school with the highest honors in 1941, earning a degree in business. At this time, the European wars of World War II broke out one after another, and he immediately reported to the Army.

On August 25, 1941, Winters reported to the United States Army and enlisted in September. He received basic military training at Camp Croft in Southern California. After completing basic military training, most of his battalion were immediately assigned to fight in Panama. Only he remained in the battalion and was responsible for assisting other enlisted recruits and volunteers. In April 1942, he was recommended to the Candidate Academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he met his close friend Louis Nixon, who had served with the 101st Air Assault Division throughout the war. On July 2 of the same year, he graduated from the Academy and became a platoon leader and one of the original members of Company E, receiving the lowest rank of officer, the rank of second lieutenant. [ [1] After training as a paratrooper at Camp Tacoya in northwestern Georgia, Winters was promoted to lieutenant and became an executive officer of Company E. His supervisor was Captain Herb Sober.

While studying for officer courses, Winters secretly decided to join the airborne force and become a paratrooper. So after graduating, he returned to Camp Croft, where he was familiar. However, there were no vacancies for paratroopers at that time, so he could only continue to train newcomers and wait patiently. Finally, five weeks later, he suddenly received transfer instructions and was able to go to Camp Tacoa in northwest Georgia to join the 506th Paratroopers Regiment for paratroopers training.

In August 1942, Winters arrived at the Tacoya Battalion and was assigned to Company E of the regiment's 2nd Battalion, directly under the command of company commander Lieutenant Herb Sobel (later promoted to captain). In order to avoid misheard similar pronunciation, the army at that time used to assign easy-to-remember titles for troops based on the joint army and navy pronunciation chart. Therefore, Company E generally nicknamed "Easy Company", and this company was the most widely known among the companies with the same name in the same era. As a founding member of E Company, he initially served as one of the platoon leaders in the unit, responsible for commanding the soldiers in the 2nd Platoon. However, in October 1942, about two months after joining the battalion, he was quickly promoted to lieutenant and served as deputy company commander of E Company, but it was not until May 1943 that he received official confirmation of his promotion.

At the time, the 506th Parachute Regiment could be regarded as an experimental force. It was the first military unit in the United States to receive full airborne training. Since many of the sergeants in the regiment had only meager military experience before, every day in the Takoya Camp, the training was necessary to be very difficult and arduous. Therefore, it was inevitable that the loss of personnel in the regiment was very serious. In fact, at the beginning, the 506th Regiment had a total of 500 officers who volunteered to join the army, but only 148 of them successfully completed the airborne course in the end. Similarly, the soldiers recruited into the army also had a difficult time. Only 1800 of the 5300 volunteers were selected as members of the army, reflecting the strict training requirements.

On July 10, 1943, the 506th Regiment was officially formed and joined the 101st Air Assault Division. In order to cope with the Allied plan for a large-scale counterattack on the European continent the following year, they later boarded the warship Samaritan, took it to England, and on September 15, they berthed at Liverpool. They then went to Alderburn in Weizhou County to start another stage of intensive military training to make the 506th Regiment more prepared for a counterattack on Europe.

In November-December 1943, while Company E was planning a counterattack and stationed at Alderburn, a tense atmosphere of confrontation gradually pervaded between Lieutenant Winters and Captain Herbert Sobel, and the two began to confront each other. Before this, he had been privately worried about Sobel's ability to lead the entire company for a long time, but he had not announced it. In the company, many soldiers actually questioned the leadership ability of the company commander Sobel. In contrast, most people thought that Winters, who was practical, was more worthy of admiration.

At the time, Winters tried to cool down the incident. He publicly stated that he had never thought of competing with Sobel for control of Company E. However, Sobel did not miss the opportunity to attack the other party. He accused Winters of refusing military orders and failing to follow the legal instructions he issued, thereby punishing the other party at will. Since then, the situation has become uncontrollable.

Feeling that the punishment was unfair, Winters categorically demanded that the charges be transferred to the military court. Just as the punishment was waiting for the battalion commander to issue and was put on hold, Sobel filed another independent prosecution against Winters only a day later. Subsequently, the military court accepted the arbitration and conducted the relevant investigation, and Winters was temporarily transferred to the command headquarters as the general affairs officer of the battalion headquarters). Then, after Winters's lobbying, a large number of non-commissioned officers in Company E decided to join forces to express their demands. They issued an ultimatum to Colonel Robert Sink, the commander of the 506th Regiment: unless Hobart Sobel was replaced, all non-commissioned officers would leave the team en masse. Colonel Zink was deeply displeased with this violation of discipline. In fact, several of the non-commissioned officers who requested it were immediately demoted and even transferred from Company E. Even so, Colonel Zink did learn from the incident that Sobel was unpopular and had a bad relationship with his company subordinates. Therefore, Zink handled the incident as carefully as possible. After some weighing, he decided that Sobel must be replaced.

Soon after, Sobel was transferred to serve as principal of a newly established paratroopers school, and Winters 'court-martial prosecution was put on hold indefinitely. He returned to Company E as platoon leader of the 1st Platoon. Despite the personality conflicts between the two, Winters later admitted that he felt that Company E's success should be attributed at least part to Herb Sobel, who had high expectations for the troops and made the soldiers accustomed to hard training. In February 1944, the regiment headquarters decided on candidates for a new commander, and the position of company commander of Company E was replaced by Lieutenant Thomas Meehan III. Meehan continued to command E Company until the counterattack on Norman Land.

At about 1:15 a.m. on June 6, 1944, Lieutenant Meehan, Company Sergeant Evans, and some paratroopers from E Company, aboard the leading C-47 transport plane named Jump Stick 66, were hit by heavy German anti-aircraft fire, killing everyone on board. At that time, Winters did not know the news of the company commander's death. After parachuted in the Battle of Normandy, he deviated from the target location of Saint-Mel-Aegles and lost most of his weapons. Lieutenant Winters, who was good at reading maps, gathered several lost paratroopers, and quickly figured out his location. He commanded his subordinates to advance closer to Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. Platoon Commander Winters jumped off the transport plane and successfully landed in the Saint-Meréglis area on the northwest coast of France. His rifle and other weapons were accidentally lost during the parachute, but by interpreting the map, he quickly grasped his position. He gathered a small number of paratroopers, including the 82nd Airborne Division, along the way, and directed them to advance to a predetermined assembly point near Saint-Marie-Dumont. In Saint-Marie-Dumont, troops gradually gathered from all directions, but no one knew about Meehan's whereabouts. Winters became the company commander of Company E and led the company to fight against the Second Wave of Great Lords who were deployed in the counterattack.

After landing on D-Day, Winters led the paratroopers in an assault on the German 105mm howitzer position that was bombarding the Utah beachhead landing force, and destroyed four howitzers. The US military estimates that the battery was guarded by an entire platoon of German troops. Facing about 50 enemy troops, Winters led only 13 people to complete the task. The assault took place south of Le Grand-Chemin, so it was called the Bricourt Assault. Due to the efficiency of this assault, it has been quoted as a teaching example of the US Military Academy (West Point Military Academy) as a model for attacking fixed positions. Another unexpected gain was that when Winters destroyed the howitzer position, he accidentally obtained a German map listing the German defense facilities in the various districts of Utah Beachhead, which was of valuable strategic value. Therefore, after the assault, Lieutenant Winters was recommended to receive the Medal of Honor, but was later downgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross (the second most senior combat medal in the US Army), because the division's policy was to award only one Medal of Honor in a campaign (the 101st Airborne Division's Medal of Honor in the Battle of Normandy was awarded to Lieutenant Colonel Robert G. Cole).

On July 1, 1944, Winters was informed that he had been promoted to captain. The next day, he was officially awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by General Omar Bradley, commander of the First Army of the United States Army. After that, the 506th Regiment briefly withdrew from France and returned to Alderburn Base in England for strategic redeployment.

In September 1944, the 506th Regiment participated in Operation Market Garden, and then airborne into the Netherlands. By October 5, German forces attacked the flank of the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Regiment and threatened to break through the line. At the same time, a four-man patrol of Company E was wounded by enemy attacks while on regular duty. When the four men fled back to headquarters, they reported that a large number of German troops were gathering at an intersection about 1,300 yards (1,200 meters) east of the company's headquarters. Winters judged that the situation was serious and decided to lead one of the squads of the 1st Platoon of E Company (consisting of 8 to 13 men), and soon moved to the vicinity of the intersection, where they observed a group of German machine guns firing at the 2nd Battalion Headquarters of the 506th Regiment not far south. After a round of deployment, Winters launched a charge on the enemy's machine gun position and quickly occupied its position. However, the team was immediately attacked by unexpected German artillery on the other side of the position. They estimated that the position was originally defended by a whole row of German troops. Winters immediately summoned the rest of the soldiers of the 1st platoon to the scene for reinforcements by radio, and finally successfully restrained the enemy. After counting, it was found that the number of German troops near the intersection at that time was actually at least about 300.

On October 9, 1944, due to the death of his former deputy battalion commander Major Oliver Horton, Winters was again promoted by his superiors to become deputy battalion commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Regiment. Although the position of deputy battalion commander was usually held by a major, Winters was still only a captain when he was appointed to this position.

On December 16, 1944, the Germans infiltrated Belgium and raided the Allied forces. The 101st Airborne Division then entered the Bastogne region of Belgium on December 18. Captain Winters and Company E, the executive officers of the 2nd Battalion, guarded the line northwest of Bastogne approaching the town of Foy, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The entire 101st Airborne Division and 10th Panzer Division held several elite German divisions for nearly a week until George Patton's U.S. 3rd Army broke through the German siege of Bastogne. In the cold winter of Bastogne, the situation was extremely unfavorable to the US military, mainly due to the disparity in the strength of the two sides. The entire 101st Airborne Division, together with a part of the 10th Armored Division, needed to confront the German army with a huge army composed of 15 divisions. The German army had advantages in artillery and armor. In contrast, the 101st Airborne Division was very short of supplies such as food, ammunition, and medicine. After nearly a week of hard work, the Third Army under General George Patton succeeded in breaking through the German blockade that trapped the periphery of Bastogne.

On January 9, 1945, after being rescued by friendly forces, the 2nd Battalion launched an attack on Foi and later occupied the town. On March 8, the 2nd Battalion entered Aguenot in the Rhine region of France. Winters was promoted to major. Soon after, because Lieutenant Colonel Streyer was transferred to the regiment headquarters staff, he filled the vacancy and was appointed commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Regiment. However, as the situation on the European battlefield gradually became clear, the 2nd Battalion never encountered a fierce battle like the Battle of the Bulge. Winters was promoted to major after the Battle of the Bulge.

After World War II, Winters worked at the family company of his wartime friend Nixon until he was called back into the Army during the Korean War to train infantry and rangers.

After two tours, Winters returned to Pennsylvania and started his own business selling animal feed to local farmers. Winters and his wife bought a small farm. They have two children.

Winters, a retired resident of Hershey, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg, was cast as "America's Strongest Generation" for Steven Ambrose's 1992 book Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest and the HBO skit series based on the book.

Winters' books on the subject include Biggest Brother: The Life of Major Dick Winters, The Man Who Led the Band of Brothers, by Larry Alexander, published in 2005. Winters' personal memoir, Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoris of Major Dick Winters, was ghostwritten by military historian and retired U.S. Army Colonel C. Cole and published in 2006.

Major Winters died on January 2, 2011, at the age of 92 in Hershey, Pennsylvania. According to Winters' wishes, his funeral was closed to the public. News of Winters' death did not reach the outside world until January 9. His death attracted extensive coverage and attention from major media in the United States and around the world.