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apples.
Wiseman got hit in the knee. He stumbled and fell, breaking his bottles. Cobb saved his. The two men ducked into a cellar and started enjoying the schnapps. "You take a bunch of G.I.s," Martin pointed out, "there is no such thing as just taking a shot of schnapps. You have to drink the whole goddamn thing before you quit." Wiseman and Cobb drank a bottle each. When they got back to 1st platoon HQ, roaring drunk, Cobb got into a fight with Marsh.
Lieutenant Foley separated the men. He chewed out Cobb for being off-limits, disobeying orders, being drunk and disorderly, and so on. Cobb became enraged and began mouthing off. He ignored Foley's direct order to shut up. Instead, he charged Foley. Two men grabbed him and threw him down. Sergeant Martin pulled his .45 pistol. Foley told him to holster his weapon, ordered Cobb arrested, and had him taken back to regiment for lockup.
Wiseman, meanwhile, loudly rejected Medic Roe's order to evacuate. He said he was staying with his friends.
Foley got his platoon settled down, then went to regimental HQ to write up court-martial papers for Cobb. It took him several hours. He took the papers to Colonel Sink and told him the details. As Foley was leaving, Sink said to him, "Foley, you could have saved us all a lot of trouble. You should have shot him."
Wiseman, still drunk, refused any aid for his wound. He said he would talk to Sergeant Rader, no one else. Rader tried to talk some sense into him, without success. He too was court-martialed. "This ordeal was another blow to my mind," said Rader, "after Hoobler died and Howell was injured at Bastogne."
On February 20, Easy went into reserve, as the 3rd Battalion, 506th, took over its position. Within hours of Easy's departure, the Germans scored a direct hit on OP 2. Winters got his promotion to major that day. On February 23, the 36th Division relieved the 101st. The airborne division moved to Saverne, in the rear, in preparation for a return to Mourmelon.
The 101st had seldom been in a rear area. What the men saw there made them wonder how any supplies ever reached the front line. Twice in Haguenau they had received a beer ration of three bottles each. The cigarettes they got were Chelseas or Raleighs, much despised. No soap, an occasional package of gum, once some toothpaste鈥攅xcept for C and K rations and ammunition, that was all that reached the front lines. Being near a supply depot in the rear, the men learned why. The port battalions unloading the ships coming from America got their cut, the railroad battalions helped themselves to Milky Way candy bars and cases of Schlitz beer, chalking it up to "breakage," the truck drivers took the cartons of Lucky Strikes (by far the favorite brand), and by the time division quartermaster and regimental and battalion S-4 skimmed off the best of what was left, the riflemen on the front line were fortunate to get C rations and Raleigh cigarettes.
Shifty Powers got a new M-l. That was a mixed blessing. He had been using one issued to him in the States. He loved that old rifle. "It seemed like I could just point it, and it would hit what I'd pointed it at. The best shooting rifle I ever owned. But every time we'd have an inspection, I'd get gigged because it had a pit in it, in the barrel. You can't get those pits out of those barrels, you know. It's pitted in there." He got tired of being gigged, turned it in and got a new M-l. "And I declare, I couldn't hit a barn with that rifle. Awfulest shooting thing there ever was." But at least he wasn't being gigged any longer.