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On June 3, Winters and the other platoon leaders walked their men through the briefing tent, showing them the sand tables and maps, telling them what they had learned.
Sergeant Guarnere needed to use the latrine. He grabbed a jacket and strolled over to the facility. Sitting down, he put his hand in a pocket and pulled out a letter. It was addressed to Sergeant Martin鈥擥uarnere had taken Martin's jacket by mistake鈥攂ut Guarnere read it anyway. Martin's wife was the author; they had been married in Georgia in 1942, and Mrs. Martin knew most of the members of the company. She wrote, "Don't tell Bill [Guarnere], but his brother was killed in Cas[s]ino, Italy."
"You can't imagine the anger I felt," Guarnere said later. "I swore that when I got to Normandy, there ain't no German going to be alive. I was like a maniac. When they sent me into France, they turned a killer loose, a wild man."
On June 4, Easy was issued its ammunition, $10 worth of new French francs just printed in Washington, an escape kit containing a silk map of France, a tiny brass compass, and a hacksaw. The men were given an American flag to sew on the right sleeves of their jump jackets. Officers removed their insignia from their uniforms and painted vertical stripes on the back of their helmets; N.C.O.s had horizontal stripes. Everyone was given the verbal challenge, "Flash," the password, "Thunder," and the response, "Welcome." They were also given small metal dime-store crickets, for alternative identification: one squeeze (click-clack) to be answered by two (click-clack . . . click-clack).
The men spent the day cleaning weapons, sharpening knives, adjusting the parachutes, checking equipment over and over, chain-smoking cigarettes. Many of the men shaved their heads, or got Mohawk haircuts (bald on each side, with a one- or two-inch strip of short hair running from the forehead to the back of the neck). Pvts. Forrest Guth and Joseph Liebgott did the cutting, at 15c per man.
Colonel Sink came round, saw the haircutting going on, smiled, and said, "I forgot to tell you, some weeks ago we were officially notified that the Germans are telling French civilians that the Allied invasion forces would be led by American paratroopers, all of them convicted felons and psychopaths, easily recognized by the fact that -they shave their heads or nearly so."
First Lt. Raymond Schmitz decided to ease the tension with some physical activity. He challenged Winters to a boxing match. "Come on, Winters, let's go out there behind the tents and box." "No, go away."
Schmitz kept after him. Finally he said, "O.K., let's wrestle." "Dammit, enough, you've been egging me long enough, let's go."
Winters had been a wrestler in college. He took Schmitz down immediately, but he threw him too hard. Schmitz suffered two cracked vertebrae, went to the hospital, and did not get to go to Normandy. His assistant leader of the 3rd Platoon, 2nd Lt. Robert Mathews, took his place, with Sergeant Lipton as his second in command. The rest of that day and night on up to the time the men strapped on their parachutes, Winters had a constant line of troopers asking him, with smiles on their faces, to break their arms or crack their vertebrae.