On Tap...Recap: Major Richard Winters

Whoa, it was quite a day for Shell Shock Serenade in the blog work...I had more people visit this site today then in the last 3 combined. All mainly to read the Major Winter's post. I'm sure if the majority of those folks checking in on that post did happen to venture on to another page in this blog, they were indeed SHOCKED but what they found...and quickly boogied the heck out of here.

Hey, that's fine, I had a feeling that any mention of his passing on this day that the news really hit the fan would get a ton of search related hits. He was a genuine hero though he absolutely disagreed with that label or assessment. That's OK Dick, the public spoke the truth anyway...it was because of men like Maj. Winters and those who served with him and those like them in our allies' armies, that we ended up defeating the Nazis, Fascists and the Imperial Japanese and their Armies.

Recently, following the success of Band of Brothers (the min-series and the book) their had been a movement to get the Congressional Medal Of Honor (CMH) for Winters for his actions on D-Day and immediately afterward, including actions at Brecourt Manor and Carentan specifically. This decoration is the Highest Award for Valor of country gives. (Medal of Honor Link on Wiki)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor

The Major won the Distinguished Service Cross http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguished_Service_Cross_(United_States) at the time and their was legitimate reason to believe that military politics was limiting CMH decorations. And as a result Winters nomination for the MOH was reduced to the DSC. I don't know how true any of this is but there is a website dedicated to the endeavor of getting the CMH for Maj Winters. http://www.majordickwinters.com/index.html

If anyone reading this post is not familiar with this man, his unit (101st Airborne Division, ECo 2/506th) I would recommend learning a little bit about it. It truly is an important part of our history of our nation and a history that is fading away some as time slips by and we lose these wonderful veterans of that War.