By Lynn Goya  

Few veterans are as lauded for their military exploits as was Richard Winters. His stoic, intelligent leadership made his team of extraordinary men one of the most admired in World War II history.  Winters led his men into some of the most famous battles of the war including D-day, the Battle of the Bulge, the liberating of Dachau and as the first team to enter Hitler’s Bavarian outpost “Eagle’s Nest” at Berchtesgaden.  The New York Times reported that he died in an assisted living facility near Campbelltown, Pennsylvania from complications from his long-term battle with Parkinson’s disease. He asked that his death remain private until after his funeral so that his family could grieve in private, according to his friend William Jackson. 

This unassuming request was typical.  Winters took over command of Company E, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, known as ‘Easy Company’, on D-Day when the company commander was killed during the invasion of Normandy.  ‘This is it,’ he recalled in a 2004 CNN interview as he looked down at the 7,000 ships, 4,000 landing craft and 250 battleships.  ‘I can’t let my men down…it took your breath. You were looking at a sight no man has seen before or since.”

A child of the Depression, he learned hard work, determination and thoughtful leadership from the difficult circumstances his family and country found themselves in.  Born in 1918 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he enlisted in the Army as an officer candidate after he graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in 1941 with degrees in science and economics.

In the Army, Winters signed on with the elite Screaming Eagles, a special operations unit that was just beginning to train a new kind of soldier — one who would leap out of a flying airplane straight into the heart of enemy territory.  In a time of heavy draft, the unit offered men the chance to serve beside others who had a drive to excel.  E Company flamed into existence from July 1944 to November 1945, and became one of the best light infantry units in the European theater.  The 1,600 men who graduated (out of 5,000 who entered) from the first training became 506th Parachute Infantry Division (PID) of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division.  This force became famous as the “Easy Company” that is featured in the best-selling book “Band of Brothers” and that later became Steven Spielberg’s award-winning HBO series of the same name.  Of the 500 officer volunteers, only 148 made it through Camp Toccoa.  Winters was one.  In the book, Winters is quoted as saying, “You would take one look at them and know they wouldn’t make it.  Some of those guys were just a bowl of butter.  They were so awkward they didn’t know how to fall.” 

They trained together, but “Easy Company” didn’t see action until it was dropped onto Utah Beach on D-Day.  Within hours Winters became its leader when the company commander was killed.  After untangling from the parachute silk, the novice commander led 13 men behind enemy lines to destroy a battery filled with 50 Germans and three enemy cannons.  Historians credit Easy Company’s first action with saving hundreds of Allied soldiers’ lives.  In the battery, Winters found a map of German defense lines along the beach.  In September, he led 20 men who attacked a German force of at least 200 soldiers.  During the famous Battle of the Bulge, Easy Company occupied the Bastogne area of Belgium until the Third Army broke through enemy lines.  That battle garnered a promotion to major for Winters.  When Easy Company liberated the death camp of Dachau, they found rounds of cheese in the storage area that they distributed to the starving camp prisoners.  Looking through the fence at the emaciated, dirty inmates who were so cowed by brutality that they were unable to even look the soldiers in the eyes, shook Winters to the core. “Now I know why I’m here,” he remembers thinking.

The troop didn’t earn its valor easily.  Winters is credited with saying that Easy Company experienced an 150 percent turnover due to battlefield casualties.  A fellow soldier wrote that receiving the Purple Heart wasn’t a “decoration,” but “a badge of office.”

Their final battle led them to Hitler’s Bavarian retreat, Eagle’s Nest.  As the war ended, they held the famous mountainside retreat in the Alps.  The crew toasted the end of the war and the success of their command with champagne from Fuhrer’s 10,000-bottle wine cellar.  But all any of them really wanted to do was to go home.

After the war, Winters refused a request to remain in the service and, instead, retreated – as he said he would – to a pleasant life in rural Pennsylvania where he married his sweetheart and raised his children.  He eventually made his living as a feed salesman and kept his war memories to himself.  Easy Company remained a central part of his life, however.  The bonds forged in battle were unbreakable.

At a D-Day reunion in 1988, historian and author Stephen E. Ambrose was watching a group of veterans who sat together, oblivious of the cacophony that surrounded them.  “There was a closeness among the four veterans sitting at our dinner table that was, if not quite unique in my quarter-century experience of interviewing veterans, certainly unusual,” Ambrose recalled.  “As they talked about other members of the company, about various reunions over the decades, it became obvious that they continued to be a band of brothers.  Although they were scattered all across the North American continent and overseas, they know each other’s wives, children, grandchildren, each other’s problems and successes.  They visited regularly, kept in close contact by mail and by phone.  They helped each other in emergencies and times of trouble. And the only thing they had in common was their three-year experience in World War II, when they had been thrown together quite by chance by the U.S. Army…It is something that all armies everywhere throughout history strive to create but seldom do, and never better than with Easy.”

The veterans’ experiences resulted in the book, “Band of Brothers” that catapulted the retiring Winters and his fellow veterans to international fame.  The book was turned into an award-winning miniseries and the exploits of Easy Company with its strong, quiet leader became the iconic symbol of the World War II American military hero.  The intensely private man found that his life had, uncomfortably, become public property.

The men Winters led never waned in their admiration for their company commander.  At 88, veteran William Guarnere explained, “When he said ‘Let’s go,’ he was right in the front. He was never in the back. A leader personified.”  Edward Heffron, 87, recalled Winters as, “One of the greatest soldiers I was ever under. He was a wonderful officer, a wonderful leader. He had what you needed – guts and brains.”

At a recent dedication of the Army’s Military History Institute in Middlesex Township, 500 veterans rose in unison to give him a standing ovation.  “I wasn’t a hero,” he would say, quoting his World War II buddy, Mike Ranney.  “But I served in a company of heroes.”

In the book, one wounded soldier from Easy Company who writes Winters from a hospital bed in 1945 declares, “I would follow you into hell.” When the veterans of Easy Company ultimately reunite, one doubts that’s where Winters will have lead them. Heroes belong somewhere else.

The AP announced that a public memorial service will be held on March 19 at 2 p.m. at the Hershey Theater in Pennsylvania.