[narrating] Where's Dike? I probably heard that question a thousand times. I probably asked it a few times myself. There were long stretches where we didn't know where Lieutenant Dike was. He'd disappear go off on his walks for hours at a time.
The Breaking Point
[narrating] Heyliger might have made a good C.O., but before we got a chance to find out he was accidentally shot by a sentry. Then came Norman Dike. Dike wasn’t a bad leader because he made bad decisions. He was a bad leader because he made no decisions.
[Webb is being introduced around Easy Company]
WWebb
A lot of you guys get injured?
It's called "wounded", peanut. Injured is when you fall out of a tree or something.
Don't worry. There's enough crap flying around here, you're bound to get dinged sometime. Almost every single one of these guys' been hit at least once. Except for Alley, he's a two-timer. He landed on broken glass in Normandy and got peppered by a potato masher in Holland. Now, Bull, he got a piece of an exploding tank in Holland. Now, George Luz, here...has never been hit. You're one lucky bastard.
Takes one to know one, Skip.
Eh, consider us blessed. Now, Liebgott, that skinny little guy? He got pinged in the neck in Holland. Now, right next to him, that other skinny little guy, is Popeye. He got shot in his scrawny little butt in Normandy. And, uh, Buck got shot in his rather large butt in Holland.
Yeah, kind of an Easy Company tradition, getting shot in the ass.
Hey, even 1st Sgt. Lipton over there. He got a couple of pieces of a tank shell burst in Carentan. One chunk in the face, another chunk almost took out his nuts.
How are those nuts, sarge?
Doing fine, Bill...nice of you to ask.
[narrating] Dike was a favorite of someone at Division. He'd been sent down to E-Company to get some combat experience. Sometimes we got the feeling E-Company was an annoyance to him. Something unpleasant he had to get through before he could continue his march up the ladder.
I think I got something that'll help with your leadership problem.
Dike's being transferred?
No, I can't help you with that. But Division has decided to pluck one officer from each regiment that served in the heroic defense of Bastogne, send him back to the States on a 30-day furlough. Get him out banging the drum for the war bond drive, that kind of thing. [Shows paper to Winters] Turns out I've been plucked.
How in the world does your leaving help me?
It doesn't, I'm not going. I've already seen the States, I grew up there, that's why I came to Europe. Just wish they told me there was a war on.
[about Buck] "Don't do anything stupid"? Who the hell is he talking to? A bunch of morons who volunteered to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Can you get any more stupid than that?
Probably not.
I swam across the Niagara once.
[sarcastically] Yeah.
I swear! On a bet.
What, in a barrel?
No... God... I didn't go over the falls, George. I swam across the river.
I don't know.
Ten miles up from the falls. I tell you: that current is damn strong.
Oh, yeah.
Must have carried me at least 2 miles downstream before I got across. But, I got across. Now personally, I didn't think it was all that stupid, but my mom, my sister, Ruth... They gave me all kinds of hell.
Yeah, I bet, Muck.
So did Faye. [his girlfriend]
Aah, sweet Faye Tanner...
Shut it, George.
Well, they had a point - you're an idiot.
[narrating] Fear is poison in combat. Something we all felt, but you just didn't show. You can't. It's destructive, and it's contagious.
[about Dike] Jesus Christ. Gotta go through all this, with a C.O.'s got his head so far up his fuckin' ass that the lump in his throat is his goddamn nose.
[Both Guarnere & Toye have lost legs due to shelling, and both will be sent home. Guarnere's stretcher is lifted first to an ambulance]
Hey, Joe! Told ya I was gonna beat ya back to the States!
[after Lt. Dyke has frozen up in the middle of an attack on the town of Foy]
[from the tree-line] Got to keep moving! [begins to run out toward Easy Company's position]
Col. Sink Captain. Captain! Captain Winters! Goddammit you do not go out there! You're the battalion commander, you get back here! [Winters stalks back past him] Now, Dick, I understand your attachment to Easy Company, but-
Speirs, get yourself over here! [Lt. Speirs runs up] Get out there and relieve Dike and take that attack on in!
[voiceover] On the report it said Compton was being taken off the line because of a bad case of trench foot. It didn’t say anything about him losing his friends. Buck was a great combat leader. He was wounded in Normandy and again in Holland. He received the Silver Star for his part in taking out those German guns on D-Day. He took everything the Krauts could throw at him, time and again. I guess he just couldn’t take seeking his friends Toye and Guarnere torn up like that. No one ever thought less of him for it.
SSpeirs
You wanna know if they're true or not, the stories about me? Did you ever notice with stories like that, everyone says they heard it from someone who was there. Then when you ask that person, they say they heard it from someone who was there. It's nothing new, really. I bet if you went back two thousand years, you'd hear a couple centurions standing around yakkin' about how Tertius lopped off the heads of some Carthaginian prisoners.
Well, maybe they kept talking about it because they never heard Tertius deny it.
SSpeirs
Maybe that's because Tertius knew there was some value to the men thinking he was the meanest, toughest son of a bitch in the whole Roman Legion. [Turns to leave]
Sir? These men aren't really concerned about the stories. They're just glad to have you as our CO. They're happy to have a good leader again.
SSpeirs
Well, from what I've heard, they've always had one. I've been told there's always been one man they could count on. Led them into the Bois Jacques, held them together when they had the crap shelled out of them in the woods. Every day, he kept their spirits up, kept the men focused, gave 'em direction... all the things a good combat leader does. You don't have any idea who I'm talking about, do you?
No, sir.
SSpeirs
Hell, it was you, First Sergeant. Ever since Winters made Battalion, you've been the leader of Easy Company. Oh, and you're not going to be First Sergeant much longer, First Sergeant.
Sir?
SSpeirs
Winters put you in for a battlefield commission, and Sink approved on your behalf. You should get the official notice in a few days. Congratulations, Lieutenant.
The Last Patrol
Sergeant Lipton feeling all right?
He's got pneumonia.
Sorry to hear that.
Ah, what are you sorry about? He's alive, got a couch, a goddamn blanket. Snug as a bug.
CCobb
[to Webster, outside the communal showers] Has it been a long time since your last shower, professor?
In war, soldiers sometimes die in the fever pitch of a fire fight, or by artillery when they’re huddled in a foxhole. Bill Kiehn, a Toccoa man, was killed because he was carrying a sack of potatoes from one building into another.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Band of Brothers pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.