William on Richard Winters

“Easy Company had a reputation- because of our captains, Herbert Sobel and Dick Winters- as the toughest and best. Since the Army lacked manpower, we were always sent in to take up the slack. As trained as we were, as good as we were, it was chaos, death was all around, you knew any minute could be your last. We froze, we starved, we were covered in filth, we were exhausted, we lost good kids every day, we saw things people don't see in ten lifetimes. When we thought we were beaten down as far as we could go, we were kept on the front lines. I never expected to survive a day, let alone the whole war. We lost a lot of men, but we inflicted more casualties on the Germans than they inflicted on us. In Bastogne, they had three times the men and three times the firepower. I have no idea how we done it. I still can't believe we won the war.”

“Winters gave the order to go. Lieutenant Welsh ran out with a few men from 1st Platoon behind him, and all hell broke loose. The Germans opened up on us with an MG-42 straight up the road. Everybody froze in the ditch. We were pinned down by machine-gun fire. If you lifted your head it would get blown off. Winters didn't care, he wanted everyone to move out, he wanted us right behind Welsh. He was yelling "Go! Go! Go!" but no one budged. He ran into the middle of the road, bullets flying by his head, running from one side of the road to the other and back, screaming and yelling like a lunatic, trying to get us to move out. Everybody was looking at each other saying "Is he friggin' nuts? He thinks we're going to get up?!" I never saw Winters that mad in my life. I think we figured Winters was going to get himself killed, so we better get the hell up. We ran right through the machine-gun fire, and I think Welsh took out the main gun with a grenade.”