German machine-gun fire from the hedgerow across the road from Brecourt Manor was building up. Winters put his machine-gunners to answering with some harassing fire of their own. Malarkey found his mortar tube, but not the base plate or tripod. Setting the tube on the ground, he fired a dozen rounds toward the Manor. Guarnere joined him, working another mortar tube. They discovered later that every round hit its target. "That kind of expertise you don't teach," Winters commented. "It's a God-given touch." When Malarkey ran out of mortar rounds, his tube was almost completely buried. An old French farmer got a shovel to help him dig it out.

Along about noon, infantry from the 4th Division began to pass Le Grand-Chemin: Welsh remembered "the faces of the first foot soldiers coming up from the beach while they puked their guts out from the sight of the distorted and riddled bodies of dead troopers and Germans."

There were about fifty E Company men together by then. No one knew of Lieutenant Meehan's fate, but Winters had become the de facto company commander.

Lieutenant Nixon came forward, with four Sherman tanks following. He told Winters to point out the enemy position to the tankers, then use E Company to provide infantry support for an attack. Winters climbed onto the back of the first tank and told the commander, "I want fire along those hedgerows over there, and there, and there, and against the Manor. Clean out anything that's left."

The tanks roared ahead. For the tankers, this was their first time in combat, their first chance to fire their weapons at the enemy. They had a full load of ammunition, for their 50-caliber and their 30-caliber machine-guns, and for their 75 mm cannon. "They just cut those hedgerows to pieces," Welsh remembered. "You thought they would never stop shooting."

By midafternoon, Brecourt Manor was secured. The de Vallavieille family came out of the house, headed by Colonel de Vallavieille, a World War I veteran, along with Madame and the two teen-age sons, Louis and Michel. Michel stepped into the entry into the courtyard with his hands raised over his head, alongside some German soldiers who had remained behind to surrender. An American paratrooper shot Michel in the back, either mistaking him for a German or thinking he was a collaborator. He lived, although his recovery in hospital (he was the first Frenchman evacuated from Utah Beach to England) took six months. Despite the unfortunate incident, the brothers became close friends with many of the E Company men. Michel became mayor of Ste. Marie-du-Mont, and the founder and builder of the museum at Utah Beach.

By late afternoon, the Germans had pulled out of Ste. Marie-du-Mont, as Easy and the rest of 2nd Battalion moved in, then marched south-southwest a couple of kilometers to the six-house village of Culoville, where Strayer had 2nd Battalion's CP. Winters got pie men settled down for the night, with his outposts in place. The men ate their K rations. Winters went on a patrol by himself, outside the village, he heard troops marching down a cobbled road. The sound of hobnailed boots told him they were Krauts. He hit the ditch; the German squad marched past him. He could smell the distinct odor of the Germans. It was a combination of 'sweat-soaked leather and tobacco. That's too close for comfort, Winters thought.

Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that "they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win."

Before Lipton went to sleep, he recalled his discussion with Sergeant Murray before they jumped on what combat would be like and what they would do in different situations. He drifted off feeling "gratified and thankful that the day had gone so well." As Winters prepared to stretch out, he could hear "Germans shooting their burp guns, evidently in the air, for they did no harm, and hollering like a bunch of drunk kids having a party," which was probably what was happening.

Before lying down, Winters later wrote in his diary, "I did not forget to get on my knees and thank God for helping me to live through this day and ask for his help on D plus one." And he made a promise to himself: if he lived through the war, he was going to find an isolated farm somewhere and spend the remainder of his life in peace and quiet.

CARENTAN

June 7-July 12,1944

At first light on June 7, Captain Hester came to see Winters with a message. "Winters," he said, "I hate to do this to you after what you went through yesterday, but I want E Company to lead off the column toward Vierville."

The battalion had achieved its D-Day objectives, the 4th Division was well ashore, the causeways secured. Its next task was to move south, toward Carentan, on the other side of the Douve River, for the link-up with American forces coming west from Omaha Beach. The route was from Culoville through Vierville to St. Come-du-Mont, then across the river into Carentan.

The 2nd Battalion managed to clear Vierville, then move onto Angoville-au-Plain, with Easy now in reserve. The remainder of the day was spent beating off German counterattacks from Colonel von der Heydte's 6th Parachute Regiment. The following day 1st Battalion of the 506th took St. Come-du-Mont, about 3 kilometers north of Carentan, on the last high ground overlooking the Douve Valley and Carentan beyond. Colonel Sink set up his CP at Angoville-au-Plain, with Easy Company taking position to defend regimental HQ. That remained its task for the next three days.

Easy used the time to catch its breath and build its strength. Men joined up in a steady stream, coming from all over the Cotentin Peninsula. Sleep was still hard to come by, because of sniper fire, occasional counterattacks, artillery, and mortar fire. Burying dead bodies, human and animal, was a problem, as the bodies were beginning to bloat and smell.

Another problem emerged, one that was to plague the airborne forces throughout the next year. Every liberated village in France, and later in Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Austria, was full of wine, cognac, brandy, and other fine liquor, of a quality and in a quantity quite unknown to the average enlisted man. Pvt. Shifty Powers and a friend found a wine shop in St. Come-du-Mont. They broke in and began sampling the bottles, "to find the kind we liked." They took a bottle each and went out back to drink in peace. "Every once in a while there's a sniper trying to shoot us, and he's trying to ricochet one in on us, and we would hear that bullet hit and ricochet around, we kind of enjoyed that,"

Lieutenant Welsh found a barrel of cognac, "and I think he was trying to drink it all by himself," Winters recalled. "There were times when I talked to Harry and I realized later that he hadn't heard a word I'd said, and it was not because his hearing was bad. We got that problem straightened out in a few days." It didn't stay straightened out. There was just too much booze around, and the young warriors were under too much tension, for any simple solution.

On June 10 Pvt. Alton More asked Malarkey to join him on an expedition to Ste. Mere-Eglise to look through some musette bags that he had seen stacked up there in a vacant lot. More was a rugged John Wayne type, son of a saloonkeeper in Casper, Wyoming. He had married his high school sweetheart, and their first child had been born while he was in England. Malarkey agreed to go, but when they arrived, he felt a bit uneasy when he realized the musette bags had been removed from dead troopers. Nevertheless he joined More in emptying the bags upside down, picking up candy bars, toilet articles, rations, and money.