Peacock’s assistant was Lt. Bob Brewer. Very young, a superb athlete, Webster described him as “overgrown, boyish.”
In the summer of 1944, Easy Company had excellent billets. The officers were in a lovely brick house near the village green; in back there were stables, which the men cleaned out and used. The stables consisted of a series of box stalls in each of which four men lived in comfort and a dark, welcome privacy. There they could hide,- so many did so when night training exercises resumed that Winters was forced to make a habit of checking the individual stalls to be certain no one was hiding behind the bunks or standing in the clothes hanging from the hooks. Beyond cover and concealment, each stall had a stove, a large, thick, soundproof door, and a high, airy ceiling. There was sufficient room to hang uniforms and barracks bags and still play poker or craps.
For entertainment, the men listened to Armed Forces Network (AFN) radio. It was on from 0700 to 2300 with an occasional rebroadcast of a Bob Hope show, BBC news every hour, and swing music. The men much preferred it to BBC
broadcasts, even though they had to endure SHAEF exhortations to keep clean, salute more often, or refrain from fighting.
(“Remember, men, if you’re looking for a fight, wait till you meet the Germans!”
When they didn’t like the tune being played on AFN, they could turn to German radio and listen to Axis Sally and Lord Haw Haw. These propagandists played popular tunes, intermixed with messages that were so crudely done they always brought a laugh.
In addition to the radio, there were movies twice a week, usually cowboy thrillers, seldom a recent release.
Occasionally a United Services Organization (USO) show came to the area, but generally the big stars stuck to London.
Glenn Miller was an exception. For Malarkey, “the big thrill of the summer” came on July 25, when he was one of six men in the company to get a ticket to a concert given by Miller and his Army Air Force Band in Newbury. Forty-seven years later, Malarkey could remember the program; Miller started with “Moonlight Serenade” “the most thought provoking theme song ever written,” according to Malarkey), followed by “In the Mood.”
On weekends, when they were not in a marshaling area or on an alert, the men got passes. Malarkey and More would jump on their motorcycle and head for the south coast—Brighton, Bournemouth, or Southampton—for swimming and sun bathing. Upon returning from one such excursion, they got a message from Captain Sobel. He wanted Malarkey and More to know that he knew they had the motorcycle and that it was stolen, but he was not going to do anything about it, except that he intended to confiscate it when the company next went into combat. Malarkey figured that Sobel’s relatively reasonable attitude was a result of his unwillingness to confront Captain Winters.
What was not so pleasant as the billets or the radio or the weekends was the training. “I got the impression we were being punished for going to Normandy,” Webster wrote. There was a dreary list of parades, inspections, field problems, night problems, and trips to the firing range.
Winters had smuggled some live ammunition back to Aldbourne from Normandy. He used it to give the replacements the feel of advancing in an attack under covering fire. There was a risk involved, obviously to the men on maneuvers, but also to Winters himself, as it was unauthorized, and if anyone had been wounded, it would have been his fault. But he felt the risk was worthwhile, because he had learned on June 6 at Brecourt Manor that the key to a successful attack was to lay down a good, steady base of fire and then advance right under it. Done correctly, the job got accomplished with few casualties.
The training exercises were necessary in order to give the replacements in the company (nearly half the company was made up of recruits by this time, just over from the States after completing jump school), the feel of live fire, and to integrate them into the company. But, necessary or not, they were hated. Still, compared to the 1943 experience in