In the end, there is some guesswork involved and I could be wrong since I'm ultimately picking one account over another ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.Thanks to the late historian Stephen Ambrose, his book Band of Brothers, and the HBO series of the same title, the legendary, extraordinary exploits of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR), 101st Airborne Division, have become well known to a whole new generation.Īnd one of the most extraordinary men who served with that outfit is Lynn “Buck” Compton.
I suspect Compton had his timeline and ordering messed up in his recollections as he is the odd man out. This model also leaves the platoon sergeants as the acting assistants of their respective platoons, which satisfies both Compton's and Ambrose's retelling of these accounts where Diel and Lipton would at one point become the second in command. When he finally linked up with Easy, I believe Roush was moved over to 3rd Platoon to fill in the vacancy over there. Roush was late to the party, so Compton was the acting leader of 2nd Platoon. The logical move would be to transfer one over. So after D-Day, 2nd Platoon would have had 2 officers while 3rd Platoon had none. Right now, I'm currently leaning on this model based off of Winters and Lipton's account with a little bit of guesswork: 2nd Platoon Malarkey and Guarnere don't even mention Roush at all in their respective books. Sadly, no one directly recounts Roush as 2nd Platoon's leader outside of Winters' passage. We know he had seniority over Compton, so if they belonged in the same platoon it would make sense that Roush would be the leader. He was with Easy Company as early as the the 115 mile march to Atlanta, but he is rarely mentioned in anyone's account. Warren Roush was the leader of 2nd Platoon during D-Day, not Compton. We also learn something new (to me) here as well. Here, Winters corroborates Lipton's account in that Schmitz and Roberts were in the same platoon at the time of the incident. "Our three platoon leaders, Lieutenants Harry Welsh, Warren Roush, and Robert Matthews, who had assumed command from Lieutenant Schmitz, jumped with their respective platoons." - Dick Winters (Beyond Band of Brothers) At this point, who do we believe? For a while, I was stuck between these two quotes when I came across this line in Winters' book: This line essentially mirrors Compton's passage, except the main discrepancy is that Lipton was a member of 3rd Platoon with Schmitz as his leader. Mathews was killed early in the fighting, so I had command of the platoon." - Carwood Lipton (A Company of Heroes)
"I don't remember any officers in the 3rd platoon in Normandy. Opposite to this is Carwood Lipton's account of 3rd Platoon's leadership on D-Day: Robert Mathews, who Compton makes no mention of. The officer in charge of 3rd Platoon by then was Lt.
Heyliger by now should have already been transferred to 2nd Battalion HQ, so Compton is wrong on that account. It was just me and Diehl, my platoon sergeant, leading 2d platoon." - Buck Compton (Call of Duty)Īccording to Compton, leadership of 2nd and 3rd platoon looked like this since his arrival in England until D-Day: 2nd PlatoonĪ few things to note about this. Lieutenants Warren Roush and Fred "Moose" Heyliger led 3d platoon. That meant I didn't have two officers in my platoon as others did. "Hurt as he was, he wasn't able to make the jump. In Compton's book, he recalls Schmitz being his assistant in 2nd Platoon: Shortly before D-Day, Winters and Schmitz got into a wrestling match and Schmitz "cracked his vertebrae." He was unable to make the jump. Sorry for all these super specific questions but I'm pretty close to being satisfied with my roster project.Īnyways, I have question regarding some inconsistencies between Compton and Lipton's account of an incident involving Lt.
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