We are Americans- we lead and are looked to as leaders in the fight for liberty. We dare not shirk this responsibility. - Donald Malarkey

Bastogne was challenging us in ways no other place had. We had no artillery power and no airpower. We were low on ammo and food. The men were cold, fearful, exhausted. I've heard a soldier loses his effectiveness in combat after about 90 days; we'd been in action for 107 since Normandy. This wasn't exactly how any of us had expected to spend Christmas 1944. As if our situation wasn't ominous enough, word filtered through Easy's ranks from a medic back in Bastogne: The Germans had closed the circle. The 101st Airborne was now completely surrounded, but as Winters would remind us, "We're used to that. We're paratroopers."

When General Maxwell Taylor, back in the war zone after conveniently missing a tiny skirmish called the Battle of the Bulge, came through for an inspection, I mentally rolled my eyes. "Sergeant, were you wearing your helmet when it was hit?" he asked, looking at a helmet with a chunk missing after I'd taken a bullet from that P-47 that the krauts had apparently stolen and used to dive-bomb us. I wanted to shake my head and say, "What do you think?" Instead I said, "Yes, sir." "Well, in that case you can continue wearing it." The incident showed how little the pencil-pushing brass knew about frontline duty. Anyone with a helmet with that kind of damage wouldn't have had a friggin' head if the helmet hadn't been on his head when he was hit. I continued to wear it. And would have even if he'd told me I couldn't.

General Taylor spoke but we couldn't hear a word he said; a formation of C-47s passed over about that time. But we heard the names of the dead. All 414. I never talked with any of my buddies about that day, but I wondered if we were all wondering about the same two things: if the list would ever end. And if, down the road, our names would ever be on it.