Major Richard Winters, hero

Like just about all of you, I imagine, I first became aware of Dick Winters through Hanks and Spielberg’s Band of Brothers HBO series about the exploits of Easy Company, 506th PIR of the 101st Airborne in the latter stages of the Second World War.

Parachuting behind enemy lines on D Day, Winters managed to gather enough men from the hopelessly scattered paratroopers to lead an attack to destroy a battery of German 105 mm Howitzers that were targeting the main invasion force’s escape route from Utah Beach. The guns were defended by about fifty German troops, while Winters had just thirteen men. Their impressive success is still taught at the military academy at West Point as an example of a textbook assault on a fixed position.

You can find out more about Major Winters on many other sites, so I’ll not blather on about all that here. Rather, I just wanted to pay tribute to a quiet and humble man who also just happened to be a great leader and a hero to his men, and just about everyone who read about him. Despite this hero worship, Winters himself always said that his men, especially those who died in World War II, were the real heroes. One of those men, Joe Lesniewski, said a few years ago “Every one of us, we’d follow him to hell. That’s the type of guy he was.”

Dick Winters died yesterday, twelve days before his 93rd birthday. The world is a sadder place.