A Band of Brothers
During the Second World War, the United States Army issued that an elite unit of paratroopers be assembled that would be able to fight in a light and swiftly manner. Their objective would be to drop behind enemy lines and cause turmoil to enemy forces and pave the way for an infantry invasion. In 1942, members of the newly formed 101st Airborne division gathered at Camp Toccoa, Georgia. The orders of the officers in charge were to take a group of young city and farm boys and train them into hard-fighting soldiers worthy of the name paratrooper. One such group was Easy Company of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne. Most of the men with the exception of the officers, had little schooling and barely any training with a rifle.
For two years, the men were instructed in the ways of hand-to-hand fighting and squad formations. They were shown how to fight quickly and with to use little supplies as possible. The Army planned to use these troops for the invasion of France. These soldiers along with other divisions of paratroopers would be dropped behind the German lines on the Normandy coast and pave the way for the biggest invasion in military history. So the boys of Easy Company were shipped off to England. There they were trained on how to fight against the well-entrenched German soldiers. Britain’s country-side was very much like that of France’s. This gave Easy an advantage of training.
The invasion was originally scheduled for June 5 of 1944. Yet, weather problems forced the invasion to be postponed. The next day, the invasion was officially set. The young paratroopers along with thousands of other service men and women boarded planes and boats that would bring them across the English Channel to the coast of France. As the paratroopers flew over the English Channel, they observed the biggest armada ever assembled for an invasion. Yet, soon they were lost in a cloud bank. High above the skies of France, the planes drifted this way and that and were scattered. This cloud bank proved deadly for the paratroopers.
By the time, the fog was gone, German artillery and machine-guns were firing everything at the planes. Hundreds of troops were killed before they even had the chance to jump. Those that managed to get out of the planes in time were scattered all over the country-side. They were off from their assigned objectives. But this confusion proved helpful for the Americans. The Germans were in a total state of shock. They did not know if this was the real invasion or simply a diversion from another attack. Easy Company managed to get enough men together and under the command of Lt. Richard Winters, they attacked a group of German-controlled artillery guns that were firing on men landing on the beaches.
Within less than an hour, the guns were destroyed and the members of Easy Company were soon assembled in the next few days. The Company moved out and took the town of Carentan which was guarding the linkage point between two of the Allied beachheads. After the capture of the town, the soldiers headed south to hold off a counter-attack. Here they dug in and faced the fiercest sighting they had ever witnessed. German tanks came out of clearing and began firing at them. It took a long while, before Allied tanks came up and forced the Germans into a retreat.
This show of courage set of a chain of heroic acts that would make Easy Company one of the most respected and honored units in the history of the paratroopers.
