Band of Brothers_ E Company, 506th Regim - Stephen E. Ambrose [16]
Webster wrote that when he woke the next morning, "I thought I'd passed out on a Hollywood movie set. All around the area were fairybook cottages with thatched roofs and rose vines on their sides. Vast horses shaking long manes stomped down narrow winding cobblestone lanes. A soft village green set off a weathered old grey eleventh century Norman church whose clock chimed the hours just like Big Ben, and five ancient public houses, their signboards swinging in the breeze, bade us welcome to the land of mild and bitter beer." They were in Aldbourne, in Wiltshire, near Hungerford, not far from Swindon, 80 miles due west of London. It would be home for Company E for almost nine months, by far the longest period it stayed in one place.
Aldbourne was vastly different from Toccoa, Benning, or Bragg. There the men of Easy had been in self-contained, isolated posts, completely military. In Aldbourne, they were in the midst of a small English village, where the people were conservative, set in their ways, apprehensive about all these young Yanks in their midst. The danger of friction was great, but the Army put together an excellent orientation program that worked well. Beginning that first morning and continuing most of the week, the men were briefed in detail on English customs, manners, habits. Well-disciplined as they were, the men quickly caught on to the basic idea that they should save their hell-raising for Swindon, Birmingham, or London; in Aldbourne, they were to drink their beer quietly in the pubs, in the British manner.
They also learned to eat what the British were eating: powdered milk, powdered eggs, dehydrated apricots, dehydrated potatoes, horse meat, Brussels sprouts, turnips, and cabbage. The PX goods were rationed: seven packs of cigarettes per week, plus three candy bars, one pack of gum, one cake of soap, one box of matches, one package of razor blades.
Sobel didn't change. At the end of the first week, the men got passes to go to Swindon for a Saturday night dance. Sobel put out a regulation: no man would take his blouse off while dancing. Pvt. Tom Burgess, a farm boy from central Illinois, got to sweating while dancing in a wool shirt with a wool blouse over it, so he took off the blouse.
Monday morning, Sobel called Burgess into his office. "Burgess, I understand you were in town Saturday night with your blouse off at a dance."
"That's right, Captain Sobel," Burgess replied, "but I checked army regulations and it's very plainly written that you can take your blouse off if you've got a wool shirt on and you are moving about or dancing or whatever."
Sobel looked him up and down. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Burgess. You're gonna wear your blouse over your fatigues all week, you're gonna sleep with it on every night."
Burgess wore his blouse during the day, but he figured Sobel would not be checking on him at night, so he hung it on the edge of the bed. The following Saturday he went to Sobel's office to get a pass to go to the dance. Sobel looked him over. "Burgess," he said, "that blouse don't look to me like you slept in it all night." No pass.
They were in England to prepare for the invasion of Europe, not to dance, and the training schedule was intense. Malarkey thought he was back in Toccoa. Six days a week, eight to ten hours a day, they were in the field. They made 15-, 18-, 21-, and 25-mile hikes, went on night operations, spent an hour daily in close combat exercises, did some street fighting, and got training in map reading, first aid, chemical warfare, and the use and characteristics of German weapons. They made a 25-mile hike with full field equipment in twenty-four hours, then a few days later a 25-mile hike with combat pack in twelve hours. There were specialized courses on booby traps, removal of mines, communications, and the like.
Once a week or so they went out on a two- or three-day exercise. The problems were designed not only to give them a working knowledge of the mechanics of combat but to teach the most basic thing