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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWho is Major Dick Winters?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Richard Winters lived an extraordinary life, so much so that his unit, the Easy Company, would be the focus of the JBO television series Band of Brothers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n After being named the commander of his company on D-Day, he led many successful operations and was heralded as being everything that a commanding officer should be. But before he was a legendary paratrooper, he was just a man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As far as childhoods go, Richard D. Winters had a relatively normal one. Born on January 21st, 1918 to father Richard Winters and mother Edith Winters, he started his life in Ephrata, PA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When he was 8, the family moved to Lancaster, PA. Winters enjoyed sports and played many of them during his years at Lancaster Boys High School. He graduated in 1937, heading next to Franklin and Marshall College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In college, he joined a fraternity, Delta Sigma Phi, and at first, enjoyed many of the extracurriculars just like he did in high school. Out of all the sports he took part in, wrestling was his favorite, but unfortunately, he had to give it and everything else extra up before long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Winters worked multiple part-time jobs to pay for school, and it paid off. Graduating in 1941, Winters earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics. It was quite an achievement, but Richard wasn\u2019t blind. He, and every other man his age, knew that war was looming on the horizon for the United States. Little did he know he would play such a pivotal role in World War II<\/a> just a few years later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A dedicated journal keeper, Winters marked the day that he enlisted in the United States Army. He wrote, \u201cI had no desire to get into the war,\u201d but Winters was also a smart man. He knew that if he enlisted voluntarily, he would only have to serve the mandatory 12 months under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. With war so close at hand, this length would undoubtedly be extended soon enough, and Winters saw the writing on the wall. He would rather enlist himself and complete his year instead of being forced into a longer term by the draft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Government proved Winters right soon after he enlisted. He joined up only seven days before the Service Extension Act of 1941 was signed on August 18th by President Roosevelt.<\/a> It would force men drafted under this act to serve a mandatory 30 months instead of the previous 12 months. Since Winters had volunteered himself before the act was signed, he still only had to serve a single year. He lucked out by just a manner of days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that he was joined up, Winters was sent to Camp Croft in South Carolina. At first, he intended to simply go through training, but Winters was a kind, capable man who just so happened to be a natural-born leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These traits weren\u2019t lost on his fellow soldiers, and eventually, were noticed by Camp Croft leadership, too. When his unit was deployed to Panama, Winters was tapped to stay behind as an instructor at Camp Croft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Soon enough, he was chosen for Officer Candidate School, being moved from South Carolina to Fort Benning in Georgia. He excelled at Officer training, but that wasn\u2019t the only life-changing thing to happen to him at Fort Benning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While at Officer Candidate School, he met his lifelong friend, Lewis Nixon. He also made a decision that would shape the next few years of his life irrecoverably\u2013he made the choice to get his paratrooper certification. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At Fort Benning, Winters became a part of the Army\u2019s airborne forces, which had only been around for a short time at that point. He graduated from Officer Candidate School and was subsequently shipped out to Camp Toccoa, also in Georgia, to further his paratrooper education. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In a little over a month, Winters had completed said education and was ready to receive his assignment. The number of paratrooper regiments was low, considering that the entire program was new. So, in August 1942, Richard Winters was assigned to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, where he would stay and rise in the ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of the Army\/Navy phonetic alphabet, Company E was also known as the Easy Company. There Winters started out as a platoon leader, but later that same year he was promoted to First Lieutenant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Training with the 506th was tough. This stemmed from the fact that the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment was actually an experimental unit\u2013they were the first to train for airborne duties as a formed unit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With time flying by, the 506th needed to be ready. A good number of the members were quite new to the military and were unprepared for how tough the airborne unit was going to be on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All in all, 5,300 enlisted men volunteered, with only 1,800 being selected. Similarly, 500 officers volunteered for the program, and only 148 made it through the entire course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Richard \u201cDick\u201d Winters was one of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Once finished, the 506th was sent to Liverpool to join the 101st Airborne under the command of Major General Lee. There, they underwent even more training to prepare them for the Allied invasion of Europe, codenamed Project Overlord. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The training in Liverpool was tremendously exhausting for the 506th, and it wore down some already problematic relationships between soldiers. Easy Company was being led by First Lieutenant Herbert Sobel, who was not the biggest fan of Winters.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n So troubled was the relationship between Winters and Sobel that Sobel tried to have Winters court-martialed. Both attempts failed, and ultimately, Sobel was replaced by First Lieutenant Thomas Meehan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And with that change in command, it was time to get to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Training was done, and it was time to put Project Overload into action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At 1:15 a.m. on June 6th, Thomas Meehan was aboard a C-47 SkyTrain when it was hit by heavy anti-aircraft fire from the Germans. It went down, there in the dark, and everyone on board was killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Winters didn\u2019t know about this tragedy when he jumped that night, losing his weapon but otherwise landing safely. It was here, at the hamlet of Le Grand Chemin, that he could gather several other paratroopers and head toward their assigned position. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When Winters and the rest of his crew arrived at their objective, he finally learned that Meehan and the C-47 were unaccounted for. Knowing that he was likely gone, Richard Winters took on the mantle of the Commanding Officer of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment Easy Company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no time to mourn or grapple with the weight of this change. The Normandy invasion was happening, and Winters had work to do. With only 13 men in comparison to the German\u2019s 50, Winters led an assault on a battery of 105mm Howitzers that were shooting the causeways that made up the primary exit from Utah Beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Howitzers were located at Br\u00e9court Manor, and later, Winter’s success in destroying the battery would come to be known as the Br\u00e9court Manor Assault. While his primary goal was to destroy the Howitzers, Winters also found documents that showed the locations of other German gun positions along Utah Beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWinter\u2019s Life Before the Military<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Enlistment and Military Training<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Training and Penchant for Leadership <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Paratrooper Training and the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Easy Company<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Joining the 101st Airborne and Training for the Allied European Invasion <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Project Overlord and D-Day<\/h2>\n\n\n\n