First, I want to send out prayers and best wishes to anyone who is coping with loss or trying to find order in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The world grieves with you.
And now for something completely different.
Just as a refresher, Lt. Meehan replaced the unpopular and nasty Ross as head of Easy Company, the 506th regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. His second in command is Lt. Richard Winters, who has earned the loyalty of most men. Hours before embarking on Easy's first mission, a jump into besieged Normandy, a paratrooper named Bill Guarnere -- nicknamed Gonorrhea by his comrades -- learned his brother was killed in action.
Veteran interviews: When Hanksie Met Soldiers. The survivors recall seeing the drop zone from the air, but not jumping until their plane got hit by flying bullets. Nothing went as planned; chin straps broke and leg bags dropped away, and as the men landed, they knew the enemy was lurking in any and every direction. "We lost a lot of people that night, but...you try to put it all out of your mind," chokes one man, biting his lip and battling fresh tears for old memories. Fade to black.
Schwimmer's out of the credits, but sadly, that didn't slice any time from them.
Ominous in B-Minor plays as we fade up on puffy white clouds rolling past the paratroopers' airplane. The whirr of its engine roars louder as we see it slice through the final patch of clear air space. Inside, Gonorrhea angrily stares at a rosary dangling from his fingers. to him, Toye and Malarkey just look sad. Another man jumpily fusses with his chute straps, making sure his chute is tightly fastened to him. No one speaks. Winters gets a glamour shot -- a close-up of him sitting to the wide-open airplane hatch. It's a complete visual handjob, because he manages to be softly lit and isn't disturbed by anything stronger than a light breeze; his look is meant to be contemplative and serious, but instead it comes off like he's making bedroom eyes at the camera. Aw, he's our l'il Mr. September, a pinup boy in the "Hot Men of World War II" calendar. Hands crusted with black filth clutch maps and cigarette. This montage of dread goes on a tad too long.
Suddenly, a loud blast jolts the men's eyes open, and the clouds begin to glow. Through the windshield, the pilot sees other planes flying ahead of them into a flashing orange sky, signaling their arrival in a danger zone. The red ready light glows near the hatch, so each paratrooper stands and hooks himself to a stability cord that stretches the length of the airplane. "Get ready!" shouts Winters, cast in crimson light.
A plane cruises through the air; then an explosion disintegrates its front half. Easy Company troopers tumble against each other; bits of plane debris assault other jets in the air. "Jesus Christ!" someone screams. A fiery blast of shrapnel zips through the hatch and, with a fearsome crackle, hits one of Easy's men, one of the nameless, faceless many. He shrieks and collapses against the side of the aircraft. Planes are completely throbbing at this point, and if not for the hooks connecting them to the plane, it's unlikely any of the solders would be able to remain upright. Pilots battle flaming engines and try to dodge hazards in the atmospheric chaos.
Here's where it gets confusing. From what I've gleaned after my romance with the Rewind and Pause buttons, it appears Meehan and Winters are on separate planes; however, it's unclear which Easy members are on which plane with which leader, so it's tricky to make sense of the images. Meehan's pilot spies his engine aflame and screams -- using Meehan's name, thankfully -- for immediate evacuation of the troopers. As he says it, fire engulfs the plane bit by bit, and it's hard to tell who, if anyone, escapes. One plane crashes in the countryside. The air is a minefield of shredded metal, bullets, fire, and out-of-control aircraft, but it's computer-generated just enough that, visually, it evokes the old Atari game Asteroids. My sister once got a high score on that game while controlling the joystick with her feet. Not that I'm suggesting WWII pilots should have done the same.
A green light flashes, and paratroopers plunge to the ground. There's TrooperCam action showing how dizzying such leaps can be; the pilot on Winters's craft screams when his windshield is cracked. The co-pilot begs him to flip on the green light. "They can't jump at this speed!" shrieks the pilot, turning to address his partner, who is promptly shot through the head. Terrified, the pilot flips on the go-ahead light and Easy Company commences its jumps. Bullets clog the air; it's incredible anyone made it down without being struck by the whizzing projectiles.
Winters sails over flaming wreckage and lands safely on a barren, bleak field; explosions periodically light the sky. Patting himself down to determine what of his equipment is missing, Winters growls in frustration when he realizes many of his ropes frayed and broke, dropping his supplies over Normandy. Another man falls near him. "Flash," Winters whispers. "Gordon!" answers the man. Except, no, he actually says, "Shit!" Winters wryly notes the incorrect code response, and Hall grudgingly supplies the correct one: "Thunder." As they remove their life vests and disentangle themselves from their chutes, the man whispers, "Coach?" It turns out this kid, called Hall, played on Winters's inter-regiment basketball team. Calmly, Winters dons his helmet; Hall prepares his weapon. "Follow me," Winters says, leading them one way and then doubling back to seek shelter when it becomes apparent that walking upright in an empty field is not the best way to travel covertly. They traverse the brush, stopping to blend with a pair of trees, as bullets continue to pepper the area. Winters spies the guns being fired. "Wait until they reload," he whispers, then curiously regards Hall and realizes he's not from Easy. Hall reveals he's Able Company. "I guess that means one of us is in the wrong drop zone," Hall says sadly. "Or both of us," Winters sighs.
The two start walking, shrouded in darkness and an eerie silence -- the only noise is labored breathing and their boots breaking twigs on the forest floor. Winters admits he has no weapon but a knife. "I lost my radio on the jump," Hall confesses. "I'm sure I'll get chewed out for that." Winters, being our benevolent hero, reassures him: "If you were in my platoon, I'd tell you that you're a rifleman first and a radio man second." Hall is comforted and he and Winters set about looking for landmarks they can use to pinpoint their position. As they inch through the brush, Hall muses, "I wonder if the rest are as lost as we are." Oddly relaxed, Winters replies, "We're not lost. We're in Normandy." Winters's calm here completely creeps me out. The man is almost comatose throughout the entire jump, surreal in his serenity. There's not a scratch on him and his pulse looks to be about sixty beats per minute. I'm in more of a tizzy than that when I'm asleep.
Spying moving foliage across a stream, Winters pauses, hides, and draws his knife, which will obviously be an apt defense against hostile fire because wee pocketknives can probably deflect bullets. "Winters, is that you?" a figure whispers. It's Donnie -- armed with TNT and a knife -- plus a handful of others, including two men from 82nd Airborne. Hall is alarmed, because they're from 101st, so someone's way off-course. Donnie says he saw a sign that could help them determine their whereabouts; the men watch, rapt, as Winters tears open his pants and intones, "Well, I know how we can find true north." Actually, he just pulls a tiny compass from his fly, hunkers down underneath a borrowed trenchcoat, and uses a flashlight to study Donnie's map. "We're seven kilometers from our objective and four hours from when we need to have it secured," Winters reports. They decide to stick together and head straight for Utah Beach, hoping they'll find Allied encampments along the way. The 82nd doofuses -- doofi? -- are dumb and dumbfounded. "That man don't even have a weapon," one gasps. Wow. Say what you will about Ross, but at least his trainees know basic grammar.
Walking alongside a railroad track, the soldiers stumble upon another group that includes Malarkey and Gonorrhea, who is totally unwelcoming to the outsider Hall. I guess Gonorrhea doesn't come easy. You gotta earn it. Detecting noise coming from one direction, Hall motions for silence; Winters, who peeks ahead, commands the group to scamper down a steep decline and take cover until his command. The sound of carousing slowly fills the air, followed by a horse-drawn cavalcade manned by apparent enemy troops. It looks like a mess of German fun, but Gonorrhea can't be contained. He's angry, and it's spreading, and no salve can cure this itching and burning spectre of fury. He opens fire, annihilating the enemy. Winters is completely startled; still, when the cavalcade regains its wits and fires back, someone backs up Gonorrhea with a grenade. Gonorrhea remains the main aggressor, standing right in front of the carriage and firing with a deeply trite, "agonized" barbaric yawp. Suddenly I'm watching a bad, bad movie. If Bill Pullman shows up and gives a speech, I'm quitting.
Long after the last corpse falls, Gonorrhea keeps firing until Winters stalks over to him, snatches the gun, and stares angrily into his eyes. "time I say 'wait for my command,' you wait for my command, Sergeant," Winters says harshly. Gonorrhea looks daggers at his superior and seethes a defiant, "Yes, sir." Toye shoots a suffering horse. Gonorrhea bitches that the "Quaker" Winters has no right to badmouth him for killing "Krauts." Hall asks what his problem is; Malarkey jokingly replies, "Gonorrhea." A confused Hall gets an explanation for the joke; he then asks, "Besides having a shitty name, what's his problem?" Gonorrhea barks, "None of your business, cowboy."
Daybreak. About eight silhouettes walk along the horizon. Toye defends an unarmed Winters for resisting attack -- "What's he gonna do, shout at them?" -- but Gonorrhea spits back, "He doesn't even drink." Well. That changes everything. As they trudge away through the swamp, music is drowned out by the buzzing flies and lonely flute music.
Dissolve into a shot of a water tower and a smoldering barn. The group approaches a pasture with mooing cows, and I think we all know what that means: cow-tipping, Normandy-style. While Donnie and Wynn, nicknamed "Popeye," rush ahead to investigate a burning barn, the others survey closer carnage -- one paratrooper swings gently from a tree, hung by his own chute. Others lie scorched and bloodied, killed either during the descent or after they touched down. A tall, lean guy called McDowell stares at the dead, his jaw hanging agape in an eerily Ross-ish "lights-on-but- no-one-home" expression. Donnie boldly begins raiding the corpses, defending himself by citing their desperation for supplies and weapons. Malarkey eagerly rolls over one body and frisks it in search of a Luger pistol for his kid brother -- and, to clarify, this obsession is new. Malarkey is not the person from Episode One who admired and fondled the British soldier's Luger; this was either poor planning or just a mistake. Before the men can do much plundering, they hear telltale sounds that Winters identifies as the beginning of the Naval invasion on Utah beach. Winters rounds up the gang and leads them away. Gonorrhea storms around in a right tizzy, disdainfully calling Hall a "cowboy" one more time for no real reason other than to look mad. Malarkey informs Hall that Gonorrhea's brother "got it," and that the news is still stinging him. He's vengeful.
Slogging toward their objective, the soldiers come upon a camp of German warriors being held by two Americans with rifles. Relieved to get directions to the battalion's headquarters, Malarkey celebrates by trash-talking one of the German men; he's startled to hear the youth reply in English. Intrigued, Malarkey doubles back and learns the man was born in Eugene, Oregon, right near where Malarkey himself was raised. The man's German father "answered the call that all true Aryans should return to the fatherland," and, as such, he's fighting on the German side. Malarkey basically reacts with an "ooh, bummer, dude" attitude, then sits down to dish Eugene and the neighborhood haunts and the hot little redheaded girl who gave out easy lovin' behind the bleachers. You know, all the important memories.
Outside the Allied encampment, a wall of dead horses oozes blood onto the muddy soil. McDowell gingerly steps around it, looking sick. Winters and Nameless Man #46 reunite. From watching this episode three times and using a very sophisticated process of elimination, which involves transcribing the credits and crossing out names, I've determined NM#46 is actually Buck Compton. Naturally, his name is never clearly used either here or in the hour; for the sake of easy recapping, though, I'm using it from here on out, and I apologize if this moment of clarity detracts from the giant clusterfuck that is this show. Compton seems to be ranked one notch below Winters; he's got very light, close-cropped blond hair and pale eyes, and seems pretty competent and well-liked. He reports that ninety percent of Easy is unaccounted for, including Lt. Meehan. Compton also notes that Winters will be the Easy Company commander if Meehan remains missing. A dark-haired, muddy officer named Speirs from Dog Company stops by and relays that only twenty of his group made it through; he's the only officer who lived.
Malarkey grins up at his German-American pal in the enemy uniform, unable to believe the coincidence that they grew up within miles of each other and ended up in the same job, but on different sides of the battle lines. McDowell moseys over and shouts for Malarkey to hustle to camp; naïvely, Malarkey says, "Gotta run, see you around," and jogs toward the makeshift headquarters. As he does this, the Allied captors distribute candy and smokes to their prisoners before abruptly executing them; suddenly, Malarkey hears the rapid gunfire and whirls around, crushed. "Shit," he breathes, seeing what we don't: the corpse of his new friend. This scene has a weird greenish glow to it; like every shot, it seems like most colors were muted, but it's always a different set of colors. Sometimes red stands out, and other times, green is prominent. Still other scenes had a gold hue. This tiny color palette seems a trademark of war films' "gritty realism," but damned if I know why, because I'm fairly confident that people back then didn't see the world in monochrome.
A Major Strayer sends out word that he needs Easy Company's CO (commanding officer) to report to his area. Compton grins, "That's you, Dick," because Meehan is still missing. Winters resignedly gets up to go over there. At the same time, a depressed Malarkey plops down to Toye and guzzles from his canteen, still startled that war apparently involves killing people in enemy uniforms, no matter what language they speak.
Winters arrives at Strayer's table, his hair perfect, with nary a strand sullied or knocked out of place. Now that's some serious hair product. Winters learns that Easy Company is needed to disable a well-armed German garrison so that the Utah segment of Normandy's beach will be safe for incoming Allied troops. Two known guns are assaulting Utah beach, so they assume the presence of two more, plus an extensive German-occupied trench extending behind the guns. Cut to Winters explaining the plan, using crude pencil sketches: attack the first gun and then systematically destroy the rest, then run a quarterback draw up the middle to set up a field goal. He names his men: Liebgott and Petty will take the first gun; Plesha and Hendrix will take the other. Donnie's in charge of the TNT, and Winters will hang out with the others and go wherever they're needed. Incidentally, he calls out the names Compton, Malarkey, Toye, and Gonorrhea, but they raise their hands in the wrong order, so apparently everyone in the cast is as fucking puzzled as I am sometimes about who the hell everyone is. Although I've finally gotten that core group figured out, I'm thrown by the addition of Plesha and Hendrix. Sigh. Why can't this show be about my needs? Gonorrhea interrupts to ask how many Germans they estimate are manning the area, and Winters can't answer that, so Gonorrhea snorts scornfully; our newest rivalry is born. Gonorrhea now occupies Ross's old position -- which, when you think about it in an altered context, also sounds like a Very Special Episode of Friends.
Winters gives Hall and a trooper called Lorraine -- who mans a Jeep -- permission to join the Easy Company offensive. So add them to the roster.
Easy darts quietly through a decimated cabbage patch, and Winters crawls into a rusted, blown-out vehicle so he can ogle Germans through the windshield but remain relatively protected. Counting three cannons instead of the anticipated four, he bolts to where Compton is hiding and calls over the other men. They hunker down behind spiky bushes only half-full of leaves, having approached the German Battery from behind the trench that the enemy dug to connect its three MG-42s. The plan is this: Petty and the Heartbreakers will divert German fire enough so that Compton, Gonorrhea, and Malarkey can sneak into the trenches and capture the first gun. Donnie and Ranney will hide on another side and divert German fire in that new direction if absolutely necessary; also, they'll deliver the disabling TNT as soon as Gun One is taken. Winters will, uh, "supervise." That's the beauty of being the boss. ["That's damn right." -- Wing Chun]
Gunfire commences against the German trench, which immediately responds in kind. Agitated, Donnie realizes he can't see and climbs up a tree. Then, seeing no point to being there without a really kick-ass tree fort, he decides to go ahead and start shooting, sparking a real melee of metal projectiles nicking branches and scaring up a flurry of leaves and wood chips. Compton inches close to the trench with Malarkey and Gonorrhea, pantomiming his plan for them all to lob simultaneous grenades into the trench and then go for the two-point conversion. Dirt flies and explosions rock the terrain. A dying German fumbles for his gun and puts Compton in momentary jeopardy because his ammo has run out; Gonorrhea saves him by shooting the bleeding enemy. Winters surveys the situation from behind some very resilient shrubbery.
Fleeing Germans are felled by Allied bullets ripping into their backs. More soldiers have joined the Big Three in the trench; Lorraine gamely fires at a lone German but misses badly. Gonorrhea curses, calling him a Jeep jockey, and picks off the soldier with two well-placed shots. They're now deep in the German trench, which is a long tunnel that widens near where the giant guns sit and, in some cases, has sheltered areas for hiding. They're being fired upon by a gun that's pointed at the three Easy is trying to disable; evidently, this was the Germans' way of protecting the trenches from any treat encroaching from behind, but clearly it's not been terribly effective. Wynn, a.k.a. Popeye, moans to Toye that he's been shot and he screwed up and is deeply sorry. Wish we'd seen it happen.
Peeking through a shard of glass, someone spies a German winding up to pitch a grenade, and the Easy man shoots him, causing the grenade to drop just outside the trench instead of in it; it helps but still causes disruption. The explosion kicks up a shower of soil that knocks Toye atop a bleeding Popeye. Rattled, Toye emerges unscathed, and Gonorrhea shouts that he's a lucky bastard. Meanwhile, Popeye is whining in full Southern splendor: "Ah didn't mean to fuuuck uuup. Ah don't thank it's tooo baaaad," he moans with exaggerated inflection. "But ah don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies!" Compton checks the festering ass wound and marvels at its beauty. Winters arrives in the trench, makes sure Popeye is okay and tells him to crawl back to safety. They heave him out of the trench.
A blast drizzles the trench with more dirt; the camera work is more frenetic now. Compton yanks out the key and is about to throw a grenade when another explosion jostles him and he drops it. Screaming for everyone to take cover, Compton flees and the grenade blows just as Toye is trying to pull himself over the trench wall. "Toye!" shrieks Compton, who runs to his fallen acquaintance. Dazed, Toye sits up -- safe again -- and brushes soot from his shirt. "Fucking TWICE!" he says, shakily. Now that is a bad day; it appears Toye broke a few dozen mirrors before landing in Normandy. And here I thought losing my keys six times in one day (yup, it's true) was a streak of bad luck.
German bullets are still flying, this time hitting the giant metal gun with a telltale clang. Up in his tree fort, Donnie tells Ranney that they need to hustle because Easy has captured Gun One. Winters, meanwhile, shouts over the din for Compton to take Gun Two, first with grenades and then with follow-up gunfire. "Go!" he shouts. Compton, Toye, and Gonorrhea take off, with the former prepping a grenade that he launches toward Gun Two. Storming the trenches, they encounter a frightened German soldier begging for mercy. "Don't make dead," he stammers over and over. "Shut the fuck up!" yells a frustrated Toye, smacking him with the butt of a rifle.
This is pandemonium; I've lost track of Petty and the Heartbreakers. Back at Gun One, Winters panics because he can't fathom where Donnie is with the vital TNT; while he checks into it, Winters orders Malarkey to reload and keep up the incessant gunfire. Malarkey eyes a German corpse lying in the battlefield; he decides the "Kraut" might have a coveted Luger pistol, and his kid brother sure does want one for Christmas. The aptly named Malarkey, in a move that's a total load of it, scampers into the devastation and pats down the cadaver, only to find nothing but an air horn. Cursing, and as his comrades protest wildly, Malarkey stands up and runs right back to the trench, diving into it amid a torrent of bullets. "Stupid Mick!" screams Gonorrhea.
Winters panics because he still needs TNT, and Donnie isn't around; we then see Donnie back where he started, treating Popeye's gushing rump wound and trying to comfort the embarrassed soldier. "Think this is a ticket home?" Popeye asks, hopefully. Donnie just laughs. "You just got here!" he grins, then rallies the remaining Easy Company soldiers and makes a push toward Gun One.
Hall heard Winters's cry for TNT, and produces some from his pack. It would've been nice if he'd offered that up a bit sooner, given the apparent scarcity of dynamite, but I suppose someone has to maintain the irony of Easy Company's name. Shoving the TNT down the giant gun barrel, Hall waits for Winters to light it with a flare, and then all men take cover. The cannon is blown into uselessness. Winters commands Hall and Malarkey to defend the area further while he checks up on Compton & Co. at Gun Two. The camera gives us a frontal of Winters's run through the trench, bouncy and jerky and somewhat dizzying to watch. When he catches up with Compton, the duo holes up in the crude trench shelter and watches the Germans; apparently, Easy Company has them so confused that they're firing on their own men, who still operate Gun Three. Compton grins, and they agree to let the Germans destroy each other while they catch up on the whereabouts of their men.
Meanwhile, Hall bolts through the trenches and disappears from sight when an explosion rocks his portion of the trench.
Donnie crawls across the field on his stomach. Liebgott -- trust me on this one -- suddenly balks and sits up, anxious to turn around and head back to the battalion. As Donnie tries to talk him down, a bullet zips through Liebgott's helmet and fells him. Donnie cocks his head and stares curiously at the corpse of his former colleague, as if to say, "That'll sting tomorrow." Finally, he arrives at Gun One triumphantly waving TNT -- only to learn it's not needed anymore.
Running through the Gun Two trench, Winters screeches to a halt when he stumbles over Hall's body. His left cheek torn, cuts and scars slicing his features, Hall looks gruesome, but his eyes are wide open and clear. The breath rushes out of Winters for a split second, and Damian Lewis does an admirable job of conveying his stoic character's obvious distress, yet his keen awareness that he can't dwell on it until the objective is achieved. Abruptly, he shakes it off long enough to spy a map in the sheltered area and pocket the information.
Suddenly, reinforcements arrive from Dog Company, led by Lt. Speirs, who boldly asks for a chance to pop over to Gun Three and have a quick slay-and-capture. Winters and Compton wave him on just as Donnie arrives, panting and apologizing for his delay in getting to and through the trenches, now littered with bodies and debris. Brandishing the TNT once more, he's chagrined to see that Gun Two has also already been reduced to a hollow, smoking mess. Meanwhile, Compton watches and shakes his head as Lt. Speirs executes a sloppy attack on Gun Three, getting most of his Company killed but safely making it to the gun himself, and disabling it.
Or, we presume he does; suddenly, Winters is dashing through the trenches screaming for the men to move out and return to their original positions. As men pour over the walls and out of the trenches, Winters orders his soldiers back to the battalion. The group flees the scene amid a storm of gunfire; slowly, the noises of war diminish.
Corporal Strayer somberly walks beside Winters through the encampment, where wounded warriors meet up with their buddies and attempt treatment of their battle scars. The final tally, Winters reports, was that they killed roughly twenty German soldiers manning three MG-42s; he guesses forty remain, and predicts artillery would cleanly annihilate the Battery. Popeye passes on a stretcher, and Winters waves without smiling. The men stop short when a procession of tanks and armored vehicles arrives, with none other than Nixon riding on the lip of a tank. "Going my way?" he asks. Winters looks relieved, and compliments Nixon on his sweet ride; the tank takes off with Winters riding shotgun, leaving behind a dirt road bathed in blood.
Through voice-over, Winters relays that the German garrison was secured shortly thereafter, and Allied men and material were being directed to various inland operations centers. But with most of the 101st Airborne still scattered across Normandy, "success [is] far from certain," Winters says. The troops are given one hour to madly scour village streets for food and supplies before moving south to secure another town.
Gonorrhea & The Gang hide out in the back of a truck, cooking what they can and warming their limbs. Malarkey is manning the mini-bonfire. Winters spots Gonorrhea peeking out of the flaps covering their little kitchen, and strolls over to investigate. "Evening," he says, pleasantly. "Something die in here?" Now, I understand the concept of graveyard humor, but isn't that just a trifle inappropriate given that half the company got wiped out that day? It's sort of like walking into an Overeaters Anonymous meeting and saying, "Is anyone else here craving a Whopper Meal?" Compton quietly asks whether Meehan has been located; Winters exhales slowly and shakes his head regretfully. Gonorrhea somberly notes that, because Meehan is still missing, Winters is the acting CO (whereas before he was the executive officer --the XO) of Easy Company. The news doesn't please Winters, who obviously agrees that it takes a sick bastard to relish a promotion coming under such horrendous circumstances. And speaking of sick bastards, Gonorrhea nods appraisingly at Winters's still-soiled face and hands. Winters reaches for the roving liquor bottle, much to the shock of everyone. "It's been a day of firsts, don't you think?" Winters smiles tiredly, lifting the bottle to his lips. Gonorrhea nods with kindling respect, then takes the booze and takes a pull himself before passing it down the line. "Oh, and Sergeant?" Winters calls to Gonorrhea as he walks away. "I'm not a Quaker." Pause. "He's probably a Mennonite," Gonorrhea reasons. Everyone laughs, because intolerance is truly hilarious and we all need a bit more merry prejudice in our lives.
Nixon spots Winters pacing through camp, and hails him. Apparently, the plans Winters pocketed from the German garrison depict the location of "every Kraut gun in Normandy." Winters is silent and, when pressed, admits his reticence stems from shock at losing a man in combat. "John Hall, a New Yorker," Winters says. War Is Hell Platitude, coming right up: "A good man...'Man.' He wasn't even old enough to buy a beer," Winters broods, handing off his can of food to Nixon and claiming a lack of appetite. As they part, a worried Nixon attempts to soothe Winters's psychological wounds. "I sent that map up to Division," he says. "I think it's going to do some good." Winters barely nods, then turns and walks into solitude.
Spielberg dips into his "Stirring" CD collection again, this time to frame Winters's lonely walk uphill. Removing his hat, Winters stares at the distant fires of war raging in other parts of the country, casting an orange glow on his stolid face. "It took time to thank God for seeing me through that Day of Days, and I prayed I'd make it through D-plus-one," he narrates. "And if somehow I managed to make it home again, I promised God and myself that I would find a quiet piece of land somewhere and spend the rest of my life in peace." Oh, wow, it is way early in the series for our protagonist to be disillusioned with the brutality inherent in war. This could be a really long eight weeks of introspective voice-overs. Still, secure in his sound bite, certain he's satisfactorily realized that War Isn't Fun, Winters turns and walks away, donning his hat once more and ready to rejoin life as a soldier.
Finally, we learn that Bronze Stars were awarded to Hendrix, Malarkey, Plesha, Toye, Petty, Lipton, Ranney, and "Popeye" Wynn. Silver Stars went to Buck Compton, Bill "Gonorrhea" Guarnere, and Lorraine the Jeep Jockey. Finally, Winters got the Distinguished Service Cross, and so finely done was their ambush that West Point still teaches it as a textbook example of assault on a fixed position.