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Chapters 15 & 16

Summary: Chapter 15. “The Best Feeling in the World”; Mourmelon, February 25–April 2, 1945 

Easy Company returns to Mourmelon. Recruits from the States replace their comrades who had fallen in battle. The veterans reluctantly train with the enthusiastic replacements to bring them to battle readiness. Former Easy Company officers now occupy key regiment positions. Old grudges emerge, as in the case of Captain Sobel’s failure to salute his superior officer, Major Winters. Winters reminds Sobel, “We salute the rank, not the man” (p. 328). The original Toccoa privates see promotions to sergeant, maintaining continuity of leadership, but the enlisted core of Easy Company continues to shrink. Eisenhower presents the 506th with a first-ever Presidential Unit Citation, and his praise of their performance at Bastogne gives even the recruits a sense of awe and pride at being part of the division.

The division prepares for Operation Eclipse, a drop on and around Berlin, planned for after the Allied armies cross the Rhine. To support their advance, the British-American Operation Varsity drops three airborne divisions into the Ruhr area of Germany, where they encounter stiff German resistance. As support, Eisenhower sends 101st Airborne by truck to Remagen to eliminate this resistance. Easy Company looks forward to meeting the Nazis up close as they will be living in German private homes. But they also determine that their goal is to survive, not be heroes.

Summary: 16. Getting to Know the Enemy; Germany, April 2–30, 1945 

Easy Company moves by truck to the Ruhr pocket, taking up positions on the west bank of the Rhine facing Düsseldorf. This will be more of an occupation than a front line, with the men keeping outposts on the riverbank and staying in homes in small villages. The Army issues a policy of non-fraternization to prevent the GIs from blurring the line between the civilian Germans and the enemy. As they stay in German homes, Easy Company men identify with the German standard of living and industrious approach to life. On April 18, 325,000 German forces surrender, ending all resistance in the Ruhr pocket. Easy Company guards a Displaced Persons camp at Dormagen housing tens of thousands of people from all over Europe who had been liberated from Nazi slave labor camps. The soldiers pity these starving people who have been working for years under the worst conditions.

General Bradley assigns the 101st to the U.S. Seventh Army, and Easy Company departs for Bavaria and the Alps in German boxcars. Their objective would be to get into the Alps before the Germans could fortify a position from which to continue the war. It turned out the Germans lack the will or the resources for such a campaign. As the men of Easy Company make their way to Munich in the amphibious vehicles known as DUKWs, they pass thousands of German soldiers attempting to surrender and witness the senseless destruction of bridges to slow down the capitulation. On April 29, Easy Company witnesses its first concentration camp, part of the Dachau complex. Winters comments, “Now I know why I am here!” General Taylor is so incensed by the horrors of the skeletal survivors and masses of corpses that he declares martial law and has the townspeople of nearby Landsberg clean the site and bury the dead.

Analysis: Chapters 15–16 

Chapter 15’s title, “The Best Feeling in the World,” quotes Winters’s comment on his rush of emotions on the train heading away from the front toward Mourmelon, the sense of security that only a battle-scarred soldier can appreciate. His observation stands in stark contrast to the thrill of conquest he felt in Aldbourne anticipating their first combat experience on D-Day. The feelings about the war among the veteran and new constituents of Easy Company range on a spectrum from cynical to enthusiastic, but all unite in the training so necessary to battle readiness. Winters’s night exercises, indispensable to the recruits but tedious to the veterans, depict a poignant passing of the baton. The youngest men learn the tricks of the soldiering trade essential to survival. Bureaucratic shake-ups change the profile of Easy Company leadership. All must bear in mind the military adage “We salute the rank, not the man.” This saying expresses the life lesson that respect for authority does not depend on the individual who holds it. Easy Company’s attitude about deployment to Operation Varsity shows its professionalism. Heroism holds no lure for these men, who now put a higher priority on returning home alive.

Easy Company has mixed feelings as they head into Nazi Germany for the first time. They have come to respect the discipline and expertise of the German soldiers they have fought and killed and keep an open mind about the German civilians they will encounter. The Army issues a policy of non-fraternization to prevent the GIs from blurring the line between the civilian Germans and the enemy. Fellow feelings would let down their guard and make it harder psychologically to kill combatants. As they occupy their homes, Easy Company men appreciate and identify with the German standard of living and industrious approach to life. During their ride through the German heartland, the beautiful cities untouched by war must have represented a cruel injustice to the American troops who have seen firsthand the destruction wrought in France, England, Belgium, and Holland by the German war machine. The German engineers’ blowing up of bridges followed orders from Hitler to destroy the country’s infrastructure. Having deemed Germany a failure of a nation, Hitler wanted to hasten its complete collapse, like Nero burning Rome.

Whatever good impression of the German populace the men of Easy Company had formed changes at Dormagen and Buchloe. The Displaced Persons camp testifies to the abduction and forced labor of any non-Germans. Poles, Czechs, Belgians, Dutch, French, and Russians had been systematically rounded up to work to the death for the Nazi war machine. All ages are represented from children to the elderly. At the Dachau labor camp at Buchloe, thousands of dazed prisoners barely hanging on to life silently greeted them, and hundreds of skeletal corpses lay unburied where they had fallen. When Winters sees the cruelty and inhumanity of the forced labor camps, the sight justifies all the suffering he endured in battle and gives ultimate purpose to his service. General Taylor’s outrage leads him to press the local townspeople into service to bury the dead and clean up the living conditions. His actions place responsibility for the atrocity on the German people.

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