"One day, my grandson asked me, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' I replied, 'No, I'm not a hero, but I have served in a company full of them.'
Major Dick Winters led perhaps the most legendary U.S. Army unit in all of World War II. On D-Day, he and his "band of brothers" in Easy Company overcame a far larger German force and enabled the Allied advance to continue. At the Dachau concentration camp, they liberated scores of Holocaust prisoners who had endured months, if not years, of hell. And as the war in Europe neared its end, they captured Hitler's personal mountaintop retreat in southern Germany - then celebrated on his terrace in triumph while sipping champagne from his wine cellar.
Yet, for decades, Winters hesitated to share his story, fearing he might be labeled a hero. Eventually, however, Easy Company's harrowing and courageous exploits on the Western front in 1944 and 1945 were immortalized in "Band of Brothers."