Winters felt as strongly about the men as they did about him. In 1991 he summed up his company's history and its meaning: "The 101st Airborne was made up of hundreds of good, solid companies. However, E Co., 506 P.I.R. stands out among all of them through that very special bond that brings men together.
"That extra special, elite, close feeling started under the stress Capt. Sobel created at Camp Toccoa. Under that stress, the only way the men could survive was to bond together. Eventually, the non-coms had to bond together in a mutiny.
"The stress in training was followed by the stress in Normandy of drawing the key combat mission for gaining control of Utah Beach. In combat your reward for a good job done is that you get the next tough mission. E Company kept right on getting the job done through Holland—Bastogne—Germany.
"The result of sharing all that stress throughout training and combat has created a bond between the men of E Company that will last forever."
19 POSTWAR CAREERS
*
1945-1991
Forty-eight members of Easy Company had given their lives for their country. More than 100 had been wounded, many of them severely, some twice, a few three times, one four times. Most had suffered stress, often severe. All had given what they regarded as the best years of their lives to the war. They were trained killers, accustomed to carnage and quick, violent reactions. Few of them had any college education before the war,- the only skill most of them possessed was that of combat infantryman.
They came out determined to make up for lost time. They rushed to college, using the G.I. Bill of Rights, universally praised by the veterans as the best piece of legislation the United States Government ever conceived. They got married and had kids as quickly as possible. Then they set out to build a life for themselves.
They were remarkably successful, primarily because of their own determination, ambition, and hard work, partly thanks to what they had taken from their Army experience that was positive. In the Army they had learned self-confidence, self-discipline, and obedience, that they could endure more than they had ever thought possible, that they could work with other people as part of a team. They had volunteered for the paratroopers because they had wanted to be with the best and to be the best that they could be. They had succeeded. They wanted nothing less from civilian life, and there too they succeeded.
They had a character like a rock, these members of the generation born between 1910 and 1928. They were the children of the Depression, fighters in the greatest war in history, builders of and participants in the postwar boom. They accepted a hand-up in the G.I. Bill, but they never took a handout. They made their own way. A few of them became rich, a few became powerful, almost all of them built their houses and did their jobs and raised their families and lived good lives, taking full advantage of the freedom they had helped to preserve.
It seems appropriate to start with the severely wounded. Cpl. Walter Gordon had been shot in the back at Bastogne and paralyzed. After six weeks in hospital in England, lying helplessly in his Crutchfield tongs, he began to have some feelings in his extremities. He had been helped by Dr. Stadium, who would stand at the foot of his bed and provoke him: "You're nothing but a damned goldbrick, Gordon." Gordon would stiffen, snap back, get angry. Because Stadium would not give up on him, Gordon says, "It never occurred to me that I could be a hopeless cripple."
When the tongs came off, Stadium got him to walking, or at least shuffling. In the spring of 1945, Gordon was listed as "walking wounded" and sent by hospital ship back to the States, where he slowly recuperated in Lawson General Hospital in Atlanta. He was there when the war in Europe ended. He walked with pain in the back, he sat with pain in the back, he slept with it. Any physical work was far beyond his capabilities; he was obviously of no further use to the Army. By the middle of June, his father was demanding to know when he would be discharged. "I don't know," was all Gordon could reply.
On June 16, Gordon had an examination. The young doctor then told him he was being transferred to Fort Benning, listed as fit for limited duty. So far as Gordon could make out, his reason was: "Nerve wounds are slow to heal, and to discharge a veteran with my degree of disability would justify a substantial award of compensation. By retaining me for additional months, my condition would no doubt improve."
Gordon called his father to give him the news. His father went into a tirade. "He pointed out to me that I had been wounded twice, and was now, in his words, a cripple. He felt that I had done my fair share and the time had come for me to return home."
Then he gave his son an order to pass along a message to the Army doctor.
Gordon did as told, although with some embarrassment. He began by running on about how this was a message from his father and that he disavowed any connection with it.
"Get on with it!" the doctor barked, indicating how busy he was.
"My father says to tell you that if I am sent to any location other than home, he will come fetch me and fly me to Washington, D.C., and, if necessary, strip me to the waist on the floor of the Senate."
The doc's face fell. Gordon thought it read, "Oh my God, that's all I need is a Mississippi Senator on my case. That's a ticket to the Pacific. Get him out of here."
Aloud he said, "O.K., immediate discharge with full disability." He saw to it that Gordon got a new uniform, took him to the dentist to have his teeth filled, and got him paid off.
Gordon went to law school at Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee. With his 100 percent disability bringing in $200 a month, plus his G.I. Bill benefits, "I was a rich student." A good one, too. He passed the Mississippi Bar even before finishing his law degree, "so I was a licensed attorney still going to school." After graduation, he worked for several major companies in the oil business in south Louisiana. In 1951 he met Betty Ludeau in Acapulco, Mexico, on a vacation. They married a year later, moved to Lafayette, Louisiana, and began what became a family of five children, four of them girls. "I realized that I did not have sufficient salary to support Betty in the manner in which she required," Gordon relates, "so I became an independent."
He went into a high-risk business, buying and selling oil leases, speculating on futures. He was successful at it. The Gordons today have a home in Lafayette and apartments in Pass Christian, Mississippi, New Orleans, and Acapulco. He still has pain, walks with some difficulty, but the Gordons are blessed with wonderful children and grandchildren, they are still in love, they love to tell jokes on themselves, it's been a good life.
"And so what did the Army mean to you?" I asked at the end of our three days of interviewing.
"The most significant three years of my life," Gordon replied. "It had the most awesome effect. I developed friendships which to this day are the most significant that I have. I'm most incredibly lucky that I got through it and even more fortunate that I was with this group of outstanding men."
In December, 1991, Gordon saw a story in the Gulfport Sun Herald. It related that Mayor Jan Ritsema of Eindhoven, Holland, had refused to meet General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, because the commander of the UN forces in the Gulf War had "too much blood on his hands." Ritsema said of Schwarzkopf, "He is the person who devised the most efficient way possible to kill as many people as possible."