Dick Winters Memorial Dedication

[Frederick303]

The problems with the book were.........well epic.

I will mention only 2 areas, both of which seem to cause a lot of debate and a willingness of folks to get ****ed at the one who mentions the facts:

1) The shooting of prisoners in Normandy by men in that company. While much of the actual details were scrubbed out of the book, there is a brief mention of one Frenchmen who was shot in the back of the head by the paratroopers and lived to tell about it (they thought he was a German). There was more.

The book "Currahee" goes into the details as well of to some of the prisoner shooting by the 506 PIR in Normandy. Those who want to read about it can.

Know folks don't like to hear that but the my source was Jack Agnew, he used to run the Langhorne DCM club in the late 1980s. It was listening to him discuss the early days in Normandy, prisoners and the attitudes that existed in the first tense day with a Czech (Toni Neamic) who was in the 10th Fallschirmjager regiment, 4th Fallschirmjager division. Listening to those two was an education for a young man, opposite sides of the war, both very good friends. Toni was not so clean himself, he had done anti-partisan work in Belorussia in the spring of 1944, he never discussed what occurred there in specific detail, but was wanted by the Czech government post war.

link to source:

Jack Agnew - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2) The entire story of the 506 capturing Berteschgarten was pure bunk, the 506 was the third unit to get to the site, a US infantry unit, and a French unit and then the 506th PIR. I point that out to show that Ambrose was by the time he wrote that book no longer a serious historian but one who popularized history and was not above omitting or embellishing a narrative to make a good story. Mr. Ambrose did a lot to popularize history, but at the same time his books must be taken with a grain of salt, much like Cornelius Ryan's books.

Both of those Paratroopers were quite impressive and I am sure all of the vets in the 101 were. But fame in the hands of a storyteller tends to get stretched and "tales told with advantages". No disrespect meant or implied to the men of that unit or any of the vets of that era.