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Sergeant Talbert was in the hospital at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, on September 30, 1945. He wrote a letter to Winters. He was no Webster as a writer, but he wrote from the heart and he spoke for every man who ever served in Easy Company.
He said he wished they could get together to talk, as there were a lot of things he wanted to tell Winters. "The first thing I will try to explain is ... Dick, you are loved and will never be forgotten by any soldier that ever served under you or I should say with you because that is the way you led. You are to me the greatest soldier I could ever hope to meet.
"A man can get something from war that is impossible to acquire anyplace else. I always seemed to strengthen my self-confidence or something. I don't know why I'm telling you this. You know all that.
"Well I will cut this off for now. You are the best friend I ever had and I only wish we could have been on a different basis. You were my ideal, and motor in combat. The little Major we both know summed you up in two words, 'the most brave and courageous soldier he ever knew.' And I respected his judgment very much. He was a great soldier too, and I informed him you were the greatest. Well you know now why I would follow you into hell. When I was with you I knew everything was absolutely under control."
Winters felt as strongly about the men as they did about him. In 1991 he summed up his company's history and its meaning: "The 101st Airborne was made up of hundreds of good, solid companies. However, E Co., 506 P.I.R. stands out among all of them through that very special bond that brings men together.
"That extra special, elite, close feeling started under the stress Capt. Sobel created at Camp Toccoa. Under that stress, the only way the men could survive was to bond together. Eventually, the non-coms had to bond together in a mutiny.
"The stress in training was followed by the stress in Normandy of drawing the key combat mission for gaining control of Utah Beach. In combat your reward for a good job done is that you get the next tough mission. E Company kept right on getting the job done through Holland鈥擝astogne鈥擥ermany.
"The result of sharing all that stress throughout training and combat has created a bond between the men of E Company that will last forever."
19 POSTWAR CAREERS
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1945-1991
Forty-eight members of Easy Company had given their lives for their country. More than 100 had been wounded, many of them severely, some twice, a few three times, one four times. Most had suffered stress, often severe. All had given what they regarded as the best years of their lives to the war. They were trained killers, accustomed to carnage and quick, violent reactions. Few of them had any college education before the war,- the only skill most of them possessed was that of combat infantryman.
They came out determined to make up for lost time. They rushed to college, using the G.I. Bill of Rights, universally praised by the veterans as the best piece of legislation the United States Government ever conceived. They got married and had kids as quickly as possible. Then they set out to build a life for themselves.