I have read "D-Day with the Screaming Eagles" (to find things about Easy Company), so you don't have to (but you should because it's an amazing book).
-Mike Ranney was among those who received pathfinder training, Shortly before invasion, he requested back to his line company. He desired to go into combat with his close buddies.
-A few quotes from Winter's memoir, that everyone already knows xD
-Corporal Ray Taylor witnessed the moment Easy's Headquaters plane (with Meehan) was hit: "We were lined up in the first position in the doorway. As first manm I was knocked backward into the plane by the force of a neighboring plane exploding in the midair. One of its high explosive bundles, which were suspended underneath the plane, blew up as a result of a direct hit."
-HARRY WELSH, PEOPLE! "(...) was dropped from a plane that had been hit several times, he recalled: I came down over a burning plane that crashed previously. The heat made my chute go up and away from the flames and tangled in the hedgerow. I fell alongside the hedgerow and this probably saved my life. The field was infested with machine gunners and completly strung with overhead barbed wire poles".
-Also, it seems Harry's nickname was "Limey", lol.
-Every time Speirs is mentioned he is called Ron. Not Ronald. Ron.
-Also, interesting thing I didn't know about him "(...) Lt. Ron Speirs, who had once served as a British commando".
-"Carwood Lipton reacted calmly to the intense action about him. He had landed in a walled-in backyard in Ste. Mere Eglise with heavy machine gun fire being sent up toward him as he floated down. A building had been burning firecely down the street, lighting the area with eerie dancing shadows. Yet, Lipton remembered: I didn't have any trouble getting out of my chute. I was very calm (don't know why). Unbuckled each leg straps, belly band and chest strap. Checked myself over and saw that the only weapons I had were a trench knife, two fragmentation grenades and a demolition kit".
-"Walter "Smokey" Gordon had joined two men from his stick. He recalled: We heard a noise further down the hedgerow and one of the men went to investigate abd challenged with his cricket. A fragmentation grenade was tossed in our direction and we dived for cover. Shortly, we got moving again. We saw another soldier run across an opening and I went to get the fellow and in looking in the bushes for him found myself staring down the barrel of a 45. caliber pistol held by F. M. Talbert, our squad leader. I will always remember those white eyes in a blackened face behind that pistol!"
-Colonel Sink popularized the "hostiles" term and I find it hilarious.
-"Colonel Sink continued to fume and fuss throughout the morning due to the lack od communiation with any of his units (...)" and he was "brooding" xD and then he got a jeep and had a ride with a few poor souls through German lines, shooting and throwing grenades, running into a group of twenty German officers, and then they came back. And we thought Ron was mad xD
- There is a subchapter called "Strayer's stray battalion" and it made me laugh
-The attack on the battery is described. Aisde of the battle, Lipton remembered and needed to mention he was the one who bandaged Wynn's butt xD
Also, quotting Winters: Compton, who had been fooling around with a grenade let out a yell "LOOK OUT!" We all hit for cover but there was no cover, for you couldn't get out of the trench, and right in the middle of it was a grenade set to go off, which it did, but for some damn reason nobody got hurt." Lol, Buck, lol.
-Confirmed (by Lt. William G. Padrick) there was a statement to not take the prisoners on the first day. On the other hand, some of the parachuters have taken them, and were quite surprised Germans were shaken and sure they were going to be shot. So, I guess communication in American army was not one of the greatest? xD
-Also "Many other things happened from the time we landed, but I prefer to forget them (...) but some of the cruel cold-blooded things that some of the Germans did made us seen red. From that time on, we decided if they wanted to fight dirty we could too. We took very few prisoners compared to the number we could have, just for the reason. This was business is ghastly at best, but it can be terribly horrible" (Captain George L. Lage)
-Concluding, this whole operation is basically what SNAFU and Murphy's law are, but it as the author said "American paratroopers didn't know where they were, but knew what they were doing." AMEN
Ok, and there is a memory of a soldier from different company but I need to share it because it's fuckingly heartwrenching.
"Lt. Chambliss was an army brat - West Point - and the most idealistic person I ever knew. He was my platoon officer, very G.I., very strickt, but fair. He never drank or ran around and all the other officers must have been a little envious because they pumped the men for any lapses which they might used to needle him. There were none. Since he was so West Point, I conceived the idea o asking "Are we army or West Point?" All the guys in the 2nd platoon liked the idea so I stenciled 'West Point' over the breast pocket of all of our combat jump suits. We all showed up in formation expecting an uproar, but the Lieutenant gave no indication, then or in the days which followed, that he never mentioned. That of course was a let down, but we went into Normandy this way. (...) During the fighting in the exposed area near the bridge, he suddenly stood up and was shot twice. As he lay dying, he asked if anyone was there from the 2nd platoon, and when was told there were none, he told the H Company sergeant who was cradling his head that he'd like to know why we put West Point on out jackets. He wondered if we were mocking his background. I cried tears of shock and frustration and shame as his body was carried past my position. I keep wondering how he could have failed to perceive the great pride and affection we felt for him."
Now you can suffer with me ;_;
D-Day with Screaming Eagles by George Koskimaki.
