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Winters led the battalion on a backtrack to the autobahn, then east to Bad Reichenhall, where another blown bridge stopped the Americans for the night. The following morning, May 5, with Easy Company leading the way, the 2nd Battalion drove unopposed to Berchtesgaden and took the town without having to fire a shot.
It was like a fairy-tale land. The snow-capped mountains, the dark green woods, the tinkling icy creeks, the gingerbread houses, the quaint and colorful dress of the natives, provided a delight for the eye. The food, liquor, accommodations, and large number of Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht service women, plus camp followers of various types, provided a delight for the body.
Accommodations were the first order of business. Winters and Lieutenant Welsh went to the Berchtesgaden Hof. As they walked in the front door of the hotel, they could see the backs of the service personnel disappear around the corner. They went into the main dining room, where they saw a waiter putting together a large set of silverware in a four-foot-long velvet-lined case.
There was no need for orders. Winters and Welsh simply walked toward the man, who took off. The Americans split the silverware between them. Forty-five years later, both men were still using the Berchtesgaden Hof's silverware in their homes.
After getting what he most wanted out of the place, Winters then put a double guard on the hotel "to stop further looting," as he put it鈥攚ith a straight face鈥攊n one of our interviews. But, he berated himself, "What a fool I was not to open the place to the 2nd Battalion," because when regimental and then divisional HQ arrived, they took everything movable.
Winters picked one of the homes of Nazi officials, perched on the hillside climbing the valley out of Berchtesgaden, for his battalion HQ. He told Lieutenant Cowing, his S-4, to go to the place and tell the people they had fifteen minutes to get out. Cowing was a replacement officer who had joined up in mid-February, back in Haguenau. He had not been hardened by battle. He returned a few minutes later to tell Winters, "The people said no, they would not move out."
"Follow me," Winters declared. He went to the front door, knocked, and when a woman answered, he announced, "We are moving in. Now!" And he and his staff did just that, as the Germans disappeared somewhere.
"Did I feel guilty about this?" Winters asked himself in the interview. "Did my conscience bother me about taking over this beautiful home? No! We had been living in foxholes in Normandy, we had been in the mud at Holland, the snow in Bastogne. Just a few days earlier, we'd seen a concentration camp. These people were the reason for all this suffering. I had no sympathy for their problem, nor did I feel that I owed them an explanation."
Nor did the enlisted men have the slightest problem, physical or psychological, in taking over the SS barracks, an Alpine-style apartment house block that was the latest thing in modern design, plumbing, and interior decoration. Officers and sergeants got sumptuous homes of Nazi officials perched on the mountainsides overlooking Berchtesgaden.