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Chapter 14. The Patrol; Haguenau, January 18–February 23, 1945

Summary 

The Germans launch an operation in Alsace along France’s northwest border with Germany to draw American troops from the Ardennes area in Belgium. Easy Company’s task is to hold the line in Haguenau on the Moder River and serve as forward artillery observers. Easy Company settles into structures on the south bank marking the first time anyone in the squad has lived indoors during their time on the front line. The men improve the condition of their quarters, acquiring gas-burning lamps and working stoves and splicing into a German field telephone system to establish communications with the 1st Platoon command post. German forces are positioned on the other side of the wide and cresting Moder River. Both encampments have artillery, and the Germans have a 205 mm railway gun.

On February 12, Captain Nixon asks Captain Winters to arrange a patrol to capture a couple of German soldiers for interrogation and breach a house suspected of being a German outpost. The new recruit and West Point grad Hank Jones leads his patrol into town while Ken Mercier and his contingent advance on the house. They toss grenades into the basement and burst in. Eugene Jackson is in the lead and takes shrapnel. They capture one wounded and two uninjured Germans. Mercier leaves the wounded German at the riverbank, crosses to the friendly side, and turns over the uninjured Germans to Captain Winters for interrogation.

The shrapnel has lodged in Jackson’s brain, and he is fully conscious and screaming with the pain. He begs everyone to kill him until he is given morphine for his agony. Jackson dies on the way to the aid station. Webster reflects on the intense suffering men in combat undergo while back in America people are starting to move on with their postwar lives. The men wonder if their fellow citizens would ever know what it cost the soldiers to win the war.

The injured German on the other side of the river has a collapsed lung, wheezing painfully with every breath. Webster wants to put him out of his misery quietly with a knife, but the others say it’s too dangerous. Cobb kills him with a grenade he lobs across the river. Cobb and Wiseman go on a daytime scrounging mission for booze, disobeying orders, and return roaring drunk and disorderly to the barracks. Cobb charges his noncom Foley when reprimanded, and Sergeant Rader likewise can’t reason with Wiseman. Cobb and Wiseman both are arrested and court-martialed.

Winters disobeys an order from Sink to carry out a second patrol the next night. Conditions are no longer right for a covert operation, and the risk is too great, so Winters pretends to send out the patrol but has the men stand down. Easy Company moves to Saverne on reserve status, where their commanding officer Speirs resists their involvement in unnecessary training and formations. Winters allows himself to believe he will survive the war.

Analysis 

Out of foxholes and into a three-story building is a new kind of fighting for Easy Company. They have some creature comforts such as light, heat, and communications. It’s a fairly large town, so when Cobb and Wiseman go out looking for alcohol, they find plenty. Under the influence, their discipline and character completely break down, and they become aggressively hostile. When they turn on Foley and Rader, it signals a breakdown of the camaraderie among the band of brothers. The men have no other recourse than to hand the men over for a court-martial, the military’s version of a civilian criminal trial.

Easy’s self-appointed chronicler, Webster, comments on other disturbing events. Despite all the carnage he has seen, he is shaken by Jackson’s agony before succumbing to the shrapnel embedded in his brain. His awareness of the mood of America back home moves him to note the lonely sacrifice soldiers make, often forgotten by the civilians for whom they fight. The world has passed them by even as they still lay their lives on the line. Similarly, Webster is affected by hearing the death throes of the wounded German whom the patrol left on the riverbank. He pities this man who dies slowly, alone and helpless. The sound of his death also affects the other men, who try to end his misery from afar with grenades. Despite facing death every moment, they can’t tolerate the pain of someone else.

When Winters disobeys a direct order from Colonel Sink for a second patrol to capture more German informants, he does so indirectly. Easy Company undertook the first patrol under cover of a dark, overcast night. The weather for a second patrol was not conducive to a covert operation under clear moonlit skies, over ice-topped snow that cracked with every footfall. Winters assesses risk carefully, and he judges the order to be cavalier with his men’s lives. He avoids confrontation with Colonel Sink, the regiment commander and West Point grad. Officers and enlisted men alike knew their place in the hierarchy. Winters shows his identification with the men under his command by colluding with them to pretend to mobilize for the second patrol but not leaving the building. In reserve, Spiers likewise makes independent decisions, rejecting the rigorous training schedule and prioritizing rest. Like Winters, he has learned that the chain of command often doesn’t have the best interests at heart for his men.

In reserve in Saverne, the men are in the rear, away from the action. They have the leisure to consider the possibility they might make it out of the war alive. Under the duress of Normandy, Holland, and Bastogne, they had to be single-minded in their commitment to survive and help each other avoid death. Haguenau was a turning point because of the control they had over their environment. Winters has read the signs of the war winding down and allows himself to begin to consider the future.

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