Beyond Band of Brothers by Major Dick Winters, Colonel Cole C. Kingseed Read Free Book Online Page A

best physical conditioning of their young lives. On the day of the test, we began with the obstacle course. Each soldier received ten points if he successfully negotiated the course in three minutes. For every three seconds under three minutes, he earned an extra point.From the obstacle course, Easy Company marched to the push-up area, where each trooper was required to do thirty push-ups for ten points. For each additional push-up, another point was awarded to the contestant. Many members of the company had placed wagers on Captain Sobel’s inability to do thirty push-ups, but he successfully passed this station. Next up was the standing broad jump, also worth ten points with additional points for additional distance.
    Sink’s decathlon continued with the pull-up station, where each trooper had to do six overhand pull-ups to the chin from a hanging position using a horizontal bar. The next event was to run at a ten-foot wall, leap up to catch the top of it, and then pull oneself over for ten points. This was followed by a duck-walk for fifty yards in thirty-five seconds, a feat that was far more difficult than it sounds. The 100-yard dash was next over a field where the green grass was about four inches high. To obtain the required ten points, you had to cover the ground in thirteen seconds, not too hard except by this point each member of the company was near exhaustion. The final event was the one mile run over a half-mile course. When a soldier reached the turnaround point, he shouted his name and received his time. If you completed the mile in six minutes, you received ten points and another ten points if you made the half-mile in three minutes. The men who received the highest scores in Easy Company in the physical competition were Burt Christenson, Gordon Carson, George Rainer, Carwood Lipton, and Robert Van Klinken. Their collective reward included bragging rights in the company and the opportunity to represent the company in the battalion competition the following day.
    Much has also been written about the “Hog and Innards Problem” over Thanksgiving. This sounds gross, but it actually wasn’t that bad. The setup for the exercise consisted of stringing barbed wire on top of stakes about eighteen inches high. This ended up being like a net, covering an area approximately twenty feet wide and fifty to sixty feet long. The ground was covered with hog entrails—hearts, livers,intestines, the works. And then, to make sure you kept your head and butt down, two .30-caliber light machine guns were set up to fire live ammunition over the top of the barbed wire. The barrels of the machine guns rested on 2'' x 4'' supports and the legs of the tripods were sandbagged down. For a basic infantry training exercise, this resembled a real combat atmosphere. We had a real incentive to keep our heads and butts down in the hog guts. I thought it was an excellent exercise, and it’s one everyone remembered.
    The most grueling exercise Easy Company endured during our time at Toccoa was the field march to Atlanta, a distance of 118 miles, during the period December 1 to December 4, 1942. Some reports say the march was 112 miles, others 115 miles. Who cares? It was a killer! Prior to deploying the regiment to Fort Benning, Colonel Sink had discovered a newspaper article that said the Japanese had conducted a forced march of 100 miles in seventy-two hours down the Malayan Peninsula. Determined to demonstrate that his men could better the Japanese mark, Sink selected 2d Battalion to prove his point while 1st Battalion traveled to Columbus, Georgia, by train and 3d Battalion marched directly to Fort Benning from Atlanta to begin airborne training. Lieutenant Sal Matheson, who had joined battalion staff as adjutant, laid out the course for Major Strayer. The march was conducted during unusually severe weather conditions with full field equipment less rolls. Private First Class Smith remembered that the march