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As a platoon leader of Dog Company, part of the 101st Airborne, Speirs has a reputation as a brave, decisive, but brutal leader. Fellow officers call him Sparky, and enlisted men call him Bloody. He earns a Silver Star in Normandy for leading a bayonet attack. Speirs’s bravery and behavior help inspire several stories about him. One rumor claims he shot a drunken noncommissioned officer between the eyes just for giving him back talk. Another apocryphal story claims he machine-gunned a group of German POWs digging a ditch under guard. Speirs becomes a cautionary tale about the lengths rifle company combat soldiers will go to preserve sanity and discipline. Winters picks Speirs to replace Norman Dike as Easy Company’s commanding officer after Dike freezes during the Bastogne engagement. A man of action and courage, Speirs immediately springs into action without any hesitation. Winters and Speirs share that decisiveness, but Speirs’s tendency to devalue German soldiers highlights Winters’s deep respect for human life that transcends nationality or affiliation.

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