Winters checked his other roadblocks, then at 2200 he returned to the northwest corner for one last look around. The British tank was where it was supposed to be, but there was no on in it or around it. Nor were there any E Company men at the roadblock. Highly agitated, Winters ran over to the manor and knocked on the door. A maid answered. She spoke no English, he spoke no Dutch, but somehow she figured out that he wanted to see “the soldiers.” She escorted him down a hallway and opened the door to a large, lavishly furnished living room.
”The sight that greeted my eyes left me speechless,” Winters recalled. “Sitting on the floor, in front of a large, blazing fire in a fireplace, was a beautiful Dutch girl, sharing a dinner of ham and eggs with a British Lieutenant.” She smiled at winters.
The Lieutenant turned his had and asked, “Is my tank still outside?” Winters exploded. The Lieutenant got moving.
Winters went back to the street to look for Welsh and his men. “Where the hell can Harry be?” He looked at the tavern across the street and his question answered itself. He went in and found Welsh and his men sacked out on top of the bar.
”Harry and I talked this whole situation over,” was the polite way Winters put it. “Satisfied that we would have a roadblock set up to my satisfaction, and that I could get a good night’s sleep and not worry about a breakthrough, I left.”
Source:
Ambrose, Stephen Edward. “Hell’s Highway.” Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2004. 133-34. Print.
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