81 years ago yesterday, Easy Company makes an all out charge on the SS in Holland

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Four things were apparent:

The Germans were behind a good solid embankment
They were in a shallow ditch, soon to be broad daylight, with no safe route to withdraw
The Germans would be able to outflank them by moving unseen along the South side of the dike and catch them in the open.
There was nothing between the Germans and the 2nd Battalion HQ at Hemmen
Winters decided he had no other option than to attack and keep the initiative with Easy company, rather than wait and let the Germans come up with a plan.

Assault on the Germans

Crossroads 6 Attack
With the arrival of the 1st platoon Winters organized the men in 3 assault columns that would be supported by light machine guns that would fire in between the groups.

Blue 1, 1st Squad commanded by Lt Peacock
Blue 2, 2nd Squad commanded by Capt Winters
Blue 3, 3rd Squad commanded by Staff Sergeant Talbert

Then the during World War II seldom heard order: “Fix Bayonets” was given by Winters.

On a smoke signal, the base of (machine gun) fire commenced, and the three columns started to move across the open field towards the Germans.

As fast as they could, they ran the 200-300 yards to the slightly elevated road, sometimes tripping over hidden low barbed wire fences.

Winters ran faster than the others and arrived at the road first.

At this point, the Band of Brothers episode is deviating from the written version.

There was no delayed smoke signal causing the rest of the assault groups to wait.

Overwhelming the Germans

As said above, Winters arrived at the road. First, he almost jumped straight over it and found himself face to face with a German sentry.

Then when he was turning his head, he saw around 100 German troops.

They were taking cover to avoid the Americans supporting machine gun fire.

Winters dove for cover and threw a hand grenade, as did the German.

However, Winters forgot to take off the safety tape he put on to avoid accidents so the grenade could not explode and for some reason, the German’s grenade did not explode either.

Winters, realizing this, quickly got up and shot the sentry at point blank range from the hip with his M1 Garand.

He then turned right and started firing into the solid mass of Germans.

They were being hampered in their movement by their heavy overcoats and reacted very slowly.

Winters, still alone, fired two clips of M1 ammo before diving back to cover.

He looked around and still the three groups had not reached the road.

Winters put in the third clip and popped up, fired 2 or 3 shots and got back into cover.

The Germans started to run away from Winters along the foot of the dike (Red 2) when Talbert and his group arrived at the road Winters ordered them to open fire.

It was a duck shoot straight into the backs of the Germans that were still hampered in their movements by their thick long overcoats.

Lt. Peacock and his group then arrived having had trouble to pass a wire fence in their field.

The machine guns had moved forward to the road when another German Company crossed the dike no more than 100 yards away.

They were engaged, and soon they joined the first group being routed as well and fired upon all the way back to the river.

Winters called in artillery support, and they maintained a steady fire during the German retreat.

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