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Winters wandered around, kicking open doors, when "Lord! I had never seen anything like this before." In a vaulted cellar, 15 meters by 10 meters, there were row after row of liquor racks stretching from floor to ceiling. The brand names covered the world. The later estimate was that the room held 10,000 bottles. Winters put a double guard on the officer's club entrance, and another on the cellar. And he issued an order: no more liquor, every man in the battalion was to go on the wagon for seven days.
Commenting in 1990 on this improbable order, Winters said, "Now, I am no fool. You don't expect an order like that to be carried out 100 percent, but the message was clear鈥攌eep this situation under control. I don't want a drunken brawl!"
That afternoon, Winters called Captain Nixon to him. "Nix," he said, "you sober up, and I'll show you something you have never seen before in your life."
The next morning, May 7, Nixon came to Winters, sober, and asked, "What was that you said yesterday that you were going to show me?" Winters got a jeep, and they drove to the officer's club. When Winters opened the door to the cellar, "Nixon thought that he had died and gone to heaven."
He was sure he had when Winters said, "Take what you want, then have each company and battalion HQ bring around a truck and take a truckload. You are in charge."
An alcoholic's dream come true, paradise beyond description. First choice of all that he could carry from one of the world's great collections, then a chance to let his friends have all they wanted, and the perfect excuse to celebrate, the end of the war had come, and he was still alive.
For the consequences, see the photograph of Nixon on the morning of May 8.
For the company as a whole, the celebration was grand and irresistible. Despite Winters' orders, and despite regular guard duty rotation, there was a party. There had to be: on May 7 the Germans surrendered in Reims to General Eisenhower, and word was flashed around Europe to cease fire, take away the blackout curtains, and let the light of peace shine out. News of the German surrender, Winston Churchill said, was "the signal for the greatest outburst of joy in the history of mankind." The men of Easy Company saw to it that Berchtesgaden participated in the party to the full.
Once the distribution of Goering's wine had taken place, Carson recalled that "you could hear the champagne corks going off all day long." As the celebration got noisier, Captain Speirs began to grow a bit worried that it would become excessive. Sergeant Mercier, remembered by Private O'Keefe as "our most professional soldier," got into the spirit of the day when he dressed in a full German officer's uniform, topped off with a monocle for his right eye. Someone got the bright idea to march him over to the company orderly room and turn him in at rifle point to Captain Speirs.
Someone got word to Speirs before Mercier showed up. When troopers brought Mercier up to Speirs's desk, prodding him with bayonets, Speirs did not look up. One of the troopers snapped a salute and declared, "Sir, we have captured this German officer. What should we do with him?"