With our armed forces serving in two wars, I think that it is important to remember our veterans. Richard Winters, the commanding officer on whom both the book and mini-series “Band of Brothers” was based, died recently at the age of 92. From the NYT article: 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.”
