EASY COMPANY contains an original 20,000-word text from surviving company veterans. It features a Foreword by Tom Hanks and Afterwords by Stephen Spielberg and James Madio.

The extensive text contains many previously untold stories and follows the men from their gruelling training in Georgia, North Carolina, and in England, through the physical and mental onslaught of D-Day, to Operation Market Garden in Holland, the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, and the victorious capture of Hitler’s alpine fortress, ‘The Eagles Nest’, in Germany.

Toccoa - Company E, along with D, F and Headquarters Company, formed the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, United States Army, an experimental unit designed to transform civilian volunteers into an elite pedigree of soldier.

Hundreds of volunteers from all walks of life were to make up the initial ‘Easy’ Company at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, USA, with seven officers under the battalion command of Major Robert Strayer, and the regimental command of Colonel Robert Sink. They volunteered on the basis that they were prepared to jump from an airplane into a combat situation; they volunteered to take a greater risk of becoming a casualty and they volunteered to fight with the most proficient outfit in the Allied army.

Easy Company was divided into three platoons and a headquarters section, with three 12-man rifle squads, a machine-gun, and a six-man mortar team to a platoon. On December 1st 1942, each platoon marched with full field equipment and weapons in a record-setting march to Atlanta, Georgia.

When Colonel Sink heard about a record march carried out by the Japanese and published in Reader’s Digest – 100 miles in 72 hours – he chose Strayer’s 2nd Battalion – the best in the regiment – to succeed the record. The result was 118 miles in 75 hours and 15 minutes on mud-clogged roads, in rain and in freezing temperatures. Men were said to have slept-walked parts of the journey, others couldn’t get their boots back on as their feet were too swollen.

Norm Neitzke: 'We had a 45ft tower that you’d jump off and then come down on a line, ending up in a pile on the ground. This was not too much of a problem, but after that you ended up with the 250ft tower, and those things are scary. First they’d put you in a harness. At the top you’d jiggle, and down you’d come on a wire – you were directed. But then later they’d put you on your own, and that chute was not connected to anything and the thing that you were always worried about – what they were kind of cautious about too – was if the wind came from the wrong direction. If it did you’d float into the tower and the jump masters had to climb up to get you down. I never had a problem but you’d always pull, just in case. They would teach you how to pull the four lines, and you could go in any direction you wanted to. But you would get to the top and you’d look down and go ‘Aah, 250ft, that’s a long way up,’ and then you get up there and it’s kind of held for a little bit and then ‘pchew!’ – that’s the scary part, then you knew you were out on your own.'

Richard Winters’ map of Normandy. This particular map was only issued to certain personnel prior to the jump on D-Day. 

It includes information on the drop zone at Ste-Marie-du-Mont, the crash site of Plane 66 and landing details on the areas many of the paratroopers were forced to land (Ravenoville and Ste-Mère-Eglise). Also shown is Brécourt Manor, site of the German battery firing down on Utah Beach, and ‘Dead Man’s Corner’, on the road leading into Carentan, the site where Easy Company set up defensive positions before the main assault on the town itself. The town of Carentan was a crucial juncture in the battle for Normandy.

22nd June 1944 - Richard Winters' diary extract: 'E Company now consisted of 2 L.M.G., 1 bazooka (no ammunition), 1 - 60 mm mortar, 9 riflemen and 2 officers. We were running across a lot of dead Boch as we moved down the road for our objective, but very little fire. Suddenly some heavy stuff opened up on the head of the Bn. as they moved into a small town called LeGdChemin. The column stopped, we sat down content to rest. In about ten minutes Lt. Geo. Lavenson came walking down the line and said "Winters they want you and your Company up front." So off we went. Up front I found Capt. Hester, Nixon and Kelley in a group talking it over. Seemed like Kelley had taken his Company up to a position where he could see the 88's but couldn't do anything about their fire. Capt. Hester showed me where a machine gun was and about where an 88 was situated. That was all I knew.'

Forrest Guth: 'Bastogne was the lowest point in the war for a lot of us. We had no defences, and they began shelling us for days. This was the point of the war when I thought it might be lost, I thought to myself, ‘We are going to have to fight a little harder to win this.’'

Rod Strohl: 'I wasn’t concerned about whether we were going to win at Bastogne because in my mind I knew damn well I wasn’t going to live through it. They just kept pounding, day after day. We couldn’t fight back, all we could do was try and protect ourselves. We just tried to build on each other’s morale.'

Easy Company took up residence near the town of Berchtesgaden proper, below Hitler’s teahouse on Der Kehlstein. The buildings were formally constructed to house the families of Gestapo police, and as Easy were the first of the Allied forces to occupy the buildings, they began a process of ‘souvenir hunting’; consolidating on the fact that they were bunking in the epicentre of the Reich’s riches. With Hitler’s mountain retreat still 1,200ft above, Easy Company would first settle for the Berghof, Hitler’s secondary chalet and the point from which an elevator rose to the Eagle’s Nest, the shaft of which had been disabled by SS troops. Winters then assigned Easy Company to climb the road by the only means possible – by scaling the mountain face – and liberate the deserted retreat.