MAJ Richard 'Dick' Winters dies at age 92

PHILADELPHIA -- Richard "Dick" Winters, the Easy Company commander whose World War II exploits were made famous by the book and television miniseries "Band of Brothers," died last week in central Pennsylvania. He was 92.

Winters died following a several-year battle with Parkinson's disease, longtime family friend William Jackson said today.

An intensely private and humble man, Winters had asked that news of his death be withheld until after his funeral, Jackson said. Winters lived in Hershey, Pa., but died in suburban Palmyra.

The men Winters led expressed their admiration for their company commander after learning of his death.

William Guarnere, 88, said what he remembers about Winters was "great leadership."

"When he said, 'Let's go,' he was right in the front," Guarnere, who was called "Wild Bill" by his comrades, said Sunday night from his South Philadelphia home. "He was never in the back. A leader personified."

Another member of the unit living in Philadelphia, Edward Heffron, 87, said thinking about Winters brought a tear to his eye.

"He was one hell of a guy, one of the greatest soldiers I was ever under," said Heffron, who had the nickname "Babe" in the company. "He was a wonderful officer, a wonderful leader. He had what you needed, guts and brains. He took care of his men, that's very important."

Winters was born Jan. 21, 1918, and studied economics at Franklin & Marshall College before enlisting, according to a biography on the Penn State website.

Winters became the leader of Company E, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division on D-Day, after the death of the company commander during the invasion of Normandy.

During that invasion, Winters led 13 of his men in destroying an enemy battery and obtained a detailed map of German defenses along Utah Beach. In September 1944, he led 20 men in a successful attack on a German force of 200 soldiers. Occupying the Bastogne area of Belgium at the time of the Battle of the Bulge, he and his men held their place until the Third Army broke through enemy lines, and Winters shortly afterward was promoted to major.

After returning home, Winters married his wife, Ethel, in May 1948, and trained infantry and Army Ranger units at Fort Dix during the Korean War. He started a company selling livestock feed to farmers, and he and his family eventually settled in a farmhouse in Hershey, Pa., where he retired.

Historian Stephen Ambrose interviewed Winters for the 1992 book "Band of Brothers," upon which the HBO miniseries that started airing in September 2001 was based. Winters himself published a memoir in 2006 entitled "Beyond Band of Brothers."


Associated Press Maj. Richard "Dick" Winters in December of 1945. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Sgt. Maj. Herman W. Clemens, Ret.)
Two years ago, an exhibit devoted to Winters was dedicated at the Hershey-Derry Township Historical Society. Winters, in frail health in later years, has also been the subject of a campaign to raise money to erect a monument in his honor near the beaches of Normandy.

Winters talked about his view of leadership for an August 2004 article in American History Magazine:

"If you can," he wrote, "find that peace within yourself, that peace and quiet and confidence that you can pass on to others, so that they know that you are honest and you are fair and will help them, no matter what, when the chips are down."

When people asked whether he was a hero, he echoed the words of his World War II buddy, Mike Ranney: "No, but I served in a company of heroes."

"He was a good man, a very good man," Guarnere said. "I would follow him to hell and back. So would the men from Easy Company.

Feedback From The Front

Michelle Rose recently received the attached letter from SFC Weirick a Wayne County native serving in Afganistan. His words say it all!

Veteran's Day Activities 2010

Here is a list of activities and dates the 555th will be involved with.

Sat. Nov. 6, 11:00 A M
Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery
Veteran Day Program, Hal Fulton speaker
555th will post colors.
All personnel needed have volunteered

Mon. Nov 8, 11:30 A M
Community Covenant, supporting those who serve. Sponsored by Army Recruiters
University of Akron, Wayne College Orrville OH.
Student Life Building (lower level)
"FOOD" ALL VETERANS WELCOME! Wearing of unifom is encouraged.
PLEASE PLAN TO ATTENDED!

Tues. Nov. 9, 7:45 A M
Waynedale High School
Veterans needed to talk with classes, lunch will be provided.
Contact Michelle Rose, 330-345-5561

Thur. Nov 11, Wayne County Veteran Day Program, Wayne County Fair Grounds.
10:00 Coffee and donuts served by Cutler Realators.
11:00 Program.

Fri. Nov 12, 7:30 P M Ebenezer Lodge Wooster.
Veteran recognation with posting of colors.
All personnel needed have volunteered.

Thru. Nov. 18, 7:00.
Wayne County Republican Womens, Pines Golf Course.
Posting Colors by 555th, all personnel needed have volunteered.

Military Pay Raises

Military Pay Raises
As a civilian in the business world who, once had nearly 200,000 people reporting to me, I am unable to recall any job where one is on-call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year : where one may be expected at any moment to move anywhere in the world and often to leave one's family behind; where one's children must change schools every two or three years: where one often must live in substandard housing: where one can't simply quit and find another job; and where during one's career, there is almost a certainty that someone will try to kill you. Now, let's see, what civilian job is the equivalent of that .

Norman R. Augistine, retired chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin, in a speech May 12, 2010

TRICARE Sets Gray Area Retiree Premiums

Week of August 09, 2010
Last year, Congress approved the creation of the TRICARE Reserve Retired program, a premium-paid TRICARE Standard coverage plan for "gray area" Reserve retirees. The program is planned to start in October. The Premium rates were unveiled on Aug. 6. The premiums -- $388.31 per month for single coverage and $976.41 a month for family coverage -- have been set high enough to cover the full cost of the program because the benefit is not subsidized by the government.

Military.com surveys found that most servicemembers and their families are confused by TRICARE. Get the facts and latest news on TRICARE.

A MUST READ FOR ALL!!!!!!

LEGISLATIVE ALERT #10-10 May 17, 2010


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The Issue: Reverse the 21% Reduction in Medicare/TRICARE Physician Payment Rates set to occur June 1, 2010



Immediate Action Required: Contact your Senators and Representative and urge them to take immediate legislative action to reverse the planned 21% reduction in Medicare/TRICARE physician payment rates now scheduled to occur June 1, 2010



The temporary Medicare rate reduction fix enacted by Congress last month expires June 1, 2010. This was the second temporary fix this year. Once again we need to act quickly and decisively. Passage of health care legislation on March 23, 2010 left this critical business unattended.



Payment rates in the TRICARE program for our members of the military are tied directly to Medicare rates. To control growth in Medicare payments to physicians, a complicated programmed formula, designed to keep Medicare payments to physicians in line with a targeted Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) is now scheduled to reduce Medicare/TRICARE physician payment rates by 21% on June 1, 2010. Congress must take immediate legislative action to reverse this scheduled reduction.



According to an AARP poll, nearly 90% of people age 50 and older are concerned that the Medicare physician payment cuts will threaten their access to care. Congress must provide more than a short-term fix to this troubling process.



Contact your Senators and Representative again and ask them to take immediate action to permanently reverse the planned 21% cut in Medicare/TRICARE payments now scheduled to occur June 1, 2010.





TAKE THE FOLLOWING ACTION:

By using the "Write to Congress" feature on the NGAUS Web site at www.ngaus.org/writetocongress, you can IMMEDIATELY e-mail your elected representatives. A sample letter is included in our "Write to Congress" feature. You can e-mail the pre-written message or edit the sample letter as you desire. This is the quickest and most effective method of expressing your views to Congress. Also, contact your friends and family and urge them to "Write to Congress" as well. For more in-depth information and background visit our web site at www.ngaus.org. Please direct any questions concerning this issue to Pete Duffy, NGAUS Deputy Legislative Director at 202-454-5307 or via email at pete.duffy@ngaus.org.

Bill Mauldin Stamp Release

The post office gets a lot of criticism. Always has, always will.

And with the renewed push to get rid of Saturday
mail delivery, expect complaints to intensify.

But the United States Postal Service deserves a
standing ovation for something that's going to
happen this month: Bill Mauldin is getting his own postage stamp.

Mauldin died at age 81 in the early days of
2003. The end of his life had been rugged. He
had been scalded in a bathtub, which led to
terrible injuries and infections; Alzheimer's
disease was inflicting its cruelties. Unable to
care for himself after the scalding, he became a
resident of a California nursing home, his
health and spirits in rapid decline.

He was not forgotten, though. Mauldin, and his
work, meant so much to the millions of Americans
who fought in World War II, and to those who had
waited for them to come home. He was a kid
cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military
newspaper; Mauldin's drawings of his muddy,
exhausted, whisker-stubbled infantrymen Willie
and Joe were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front lines.

Mauldin was an enlisted man just like
the soldiers he drew for; his gripes were their
gripes, his laughs were their laughs, his
heartaches were their heartaches. He was one of them. The y loved him.

He never held back. Sometimes, when his cartoons
cut too close for comfort, his superior officers
tried to tone him down. In one memorable
incident, he enraged Gen. George S. Patton, and
Patton informed Mauldin he wanted the
pointed cartoons -- celebrating the fighting
men, lampooning the high-ranking officers -- to stop. Now.

The news passed from soldier to soldier. How was
Sgt. Bill Mauldin going to stand up to Gen. Patton? It seemed impossible.

Not quite. Mauldin, it turned out, had an ardent
fan: Five-star Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower,
supreme commander of the Allied
forces in Europe . Ike put out the word:
Mauldin draws what Mauldin wants. Mauldin won. Patton lost.

If, in your line of work, you've ever considered
yourself a young hotshot, or if you've ever
known anyone who has felt that way about himself
or herself, the story of Mauldin's young
manhood will humble you. Here is what, by the
time he was 23 years old, Mauldin had accomplished:

He won the Pulitzer Prize. He was featured on
the cover of Time magazine. His book "Up Front"
was the No. 1 best-seller in the� United States .

All of that at 23. Yet when he returned to
civilian life and he grew older, he never lost
that boyish Mauldin grin, he never outgrew his
excitement about doing his job, he never
big-shotted or high-hatted the people with whom he worked every day.

I was lucky enough to be one of them; Mauldin
roamed the hallways of the Chicago Sun-Times in
the late 1960s and early 1970s with no more
officiousness or air of haughtiness than if he
was a copyboy. That impish look on his face remained.

He had achieved so much. He had won a second
Pulitzer Prize, and he should have won a third,
for what may be the single greatest editorial
cartoon in the history of the craft: his
deadline rendering, on the day President John F.
Kennedy was assassinated, of the statue at the
Lincoln Memorial slumped in grief, its
head cradled in its hands. But he never acted as
if he was better than the people he met. He was
still Mauldin the enlisted man.

During the late summer of 2002, as Mauldin lay
in that California nursing home, some of the old
World War II infantry guys caught wind of it.
They didn't want Mauldin to go out that way.
They thought he should know that he was still their hero.

Gordon Dillow, a columnist for the Orange County
Register, put out the call in Southern California
for people in the area to send their best wishes
to Mauldin; I joined Dillow in the effort,
helping to spread the appeal nationally so that
Bill would not feel so alone. Soon more than
10,000 letters and cards had arrived at Mauldin's bedside.

Even better than that, the old soldiers began to
show up just to sit with Mauldin, to let him know
that they were there for him, as he, long ago,
had been there for them. So many volunteered to
visit Bill that there was a waiting list. Here
is how Todd DePastino, in the first paragraph of
his wonderful biography of Mauldin, described it:

"Almost every day in the summer and fall of 2002
they came to Park Superior nursing
home in Newport Beach , California , to honor
Army Sergeant, Technician Third Grade, Bill
Mauldin. They came bearing relics of
their youth: medals, insignia, photographs, and
carefully folded newspaper clippings. Some wore
old garrison caps. Others arrived resplendent in
uniforms over a half century old. Almost all
of them wept as they filed down the corridor
like pilgrims fulfilling some long-neglected obligation."

One of the veterans explained to me why it was so important:

"You would have to be part of a combat infantry
unit to appreciate what moments of relief Bill
gave us. You had to be reading a soaking wet
Stars and Stripes in a water-filled foxhole and
then see one of his cartoons."

Mauldin is buried in Arlington National
Cemetery . This month, the kid cartoonist makes
it onto a first-class postage stamp. It's
an honor that most generals and admirals never receive.

What Mauldin would have loved most, I believe,
is the sight of the two guys who are keeping him company on that stamp.