With his big flat feet, he ran like a duck in distress. He would shout, “The Japs are going to get you!” or “Hi-ho Silver!”
“I remember many times finishing a long run,” Tipper said. “Everyone at the point of exhaustion and waiting in formation for the command, ‘Fall out!’ Sobel would be running back and forth in front of his men shouting, ‘Stand still, STAND STILL!’ He would not dismiss us until he was satisfied that we had the discipline to impersonate statues at his command. Impossible, of course. But we did what he wanted when he wanted. We wanted those wings.”
Gordon developed a lifelong hatred of Sobel. “Until I landed in France in the very early hours of D-Day,” Gordon said in 1990, “my war was with this man.” Along with other enlisted, Gordon swore that Sobel would not survive five minutes in combat, not when his men had live ammunition. If the enemy did not get him, there were a dozen and more men in Easy who swore that they would. Behind his back the men cursed him, “f——ing Jew” being the most common epithet.
Sobel was as hard on his officers as on the enlisted men. Their physical training was the same, but when the men heard the final “fall out” of the day, they were free to go to their bunks, while the officers had to study the field manuals, then take a test on the assignment Sobel had given them. When he held officers’ meetings, Winters recalled, “He was very domineering. There was no give-and-take. His tone of voice was high-pitched, rasplike. He shouted instead of speaking in a normal way. It would just irritate you.” The officers’ nickname for their captain was “The Black Swan.”
Sobel had no friends. Officers would avoid him in the officers’ club. None went on a pass with him, none sought out his company. No one in Easy knew anything about his previous life and no one cared. He did have his favorites, of whom No. 1 was company 1st Sgt. William Evans. Together, Sobel and Evans played men off against one another, granting a privilege here, denying one there.
Anyone who has ever been in the Army knows the type. Sobel was the classic chickenshit. He generated maximum anxiety over matters of minimum significance. Paul Fussell, in his book Wartime, has the best definition:
“Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige, – sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline,- a constant
‘paying off of old scores’; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. Chickenshit is so called—instead of horse- or bull- or elephant shit—because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously.”(3) Sobel had the authority over the men. Lieutenant Winters had their respect. The two men were bound to clash. No one ever said so directly, and not everyone in Easy recognized what was happening, and Winters did not want it that way, but they were in competition to be the leader.
Sobel’s resentment of Winters began during the first week at Toccoa. Winters was leading the company in calisthenics. He was up on a stand, demonstrating, “helping the fellows get through the exercise. These boys, they were sharp. And I had their complete attention.” Colonel Sink walked past. He stopped to watch. When Winters finished, Sink walked up to him. “Lieutenant,” he asked, “how many times has this company had calisthenics?”
“Three times, sir,” Winters replied.
“Thank you very much,” Sink said. A few days later, without consulting Sobel, he promoted Winters to 1st lieutenant. For Sobel, Winters was a marked man from that day. The C.O. gave the platoon leader every dirty job that he could find, such as latrine inspection or serving as mess officer.
Paul Fussell wrote, “Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.”(4)
3. Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 80.
4. Ibid.
Winters disagreed. He believed that at least some of what Sobel was doing—if not the way he was doing it—was necessary. If Easy ran farther and faster than the other companies, if it stayed on the parade ground longer, if its bayonet drills were punctuated by “The Japs are going to get you!” and other exhortations, why, then, it would be a better company than the others.