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Mr Woodadge-
It seems you've read the concerns in my BoB critique and already headed-off or at least identified
potential 'issues' in advance. Good job and nice to see my friends Herb Suerth and Ed Shames at
the ceremony. Bill Maynard is also a good sort, although I've only met him once, in 2004.

As to this latest BoB marker, it would've been more appropriate to list the names of those who died
at that location, regardless of their company, than to list 2 former Easy members who were not
even there and no longer members of E/506th when KIA.
Nobody, including the US Army, counts KIAs twice-they get listed with their company of assignment at
the time of their death.
Terrence Harris was with B/506th-(in a different battalion) at the time of his death and Benjamin Stoney
belonged to 2nd Bn S-2 , in Headquarters Company, when he fell at Vierville the morning of 7 June, 1944..

People don't realize this, but the 101st rifle company with the least number of KIAs in Normandy was
E/502, with one officer and 2 EM killed in that campaign. If you subtract Stoney & Harris, along with
those who perished in the plane crash, you'll find that Easy 506th is about tied with E/502 for the fewest
company KIAs of the three 101st PIRs in Normandy. That number (3 or 4) reflects how much ground combat Easy 506th actually saw in Normandy.
Is Easy's low casualty figure for Normandy ground combat solely attributable to their superior prowess in battle?
I think not.
But it is an indication of the COMPARATIVE AMOUNT OF CONTACT WITH THE ENEMY
that various units experienced.
That circumstance was not p r e d i c a t e d nor determined by any initiative of the various companies, but rather
was a unpredictable and random result of the vagaries of war.

I fully believe that the units which lost the most men KIA did the MOST FIGHTING.

One example would be F/501, which did NOT take-out a famous gun battery on D-day, but DID face
hundreds of Germans between Angoville and St Come du Mont and prevented them from reaching the
coast at Utah Beach. F Company 501 lost 21 killed in Normandy-even with 6 killed accidentally by the
US Navy, there were 15 others lost in ground combat-THREE TIMES AS MANY as Easy 506th lost.

Adding Stoney and Harris to the Easy KIA lists is just an attempt to disguise this disparity in ground fighting losses
as was the end caption in the Carentan episode of BoB, which stated that Easy 506th lost 60 men in Normandy-this
was meant to deceive the unknowing into thinking it was 60 KIA, not a total figure, including all the WIAs as
well.
Paul W. wrote: "the world is still going Easy Company crazy".
This is evidently true, because the placement of this marker and the info contained thereon, reinforces the popular public misconception that Easy 506th did more and was more special than the other 26 rifle companies of the 3 PIRs of the 101st which fought in Normandy. To believe this flies in the face of the TRUTH.

Regarding the story referenced above, in which the ghost of Captain Peters visited
Buck Dickson at St Martin d V on the afternoon of 7 June, 1944, when Dickson first told
me the story around 2003, I immediately phoned Ed Peters Jr and urged him to call Buck and
hear the story for himself.
He did phone Mr Dickson, but I never heard any feedback from Ed Jr until he emailed me the
following TODAY:

"Thanks Mark. I spoke with Captain Dickson shortly after you let me know about him. I intended to let you know and say Thanks. It was just so weird I didn't know how to react or what to say. It is still wandering around in my mind and I still don't know what to think. I have thought of calling him back to simply talk to him about my father when they were in college together. I just still don't know how to think about it".


Having known Buck for over 20 years, I can understand Ed Jr's bewilderment over such a bizzarre story
I have to say that the hair stood-up on the back of my neck, when Buck described this meeting over the phone to me.
For years Buck had been telling me he never saw his D-day objective until June 7th-then knowing that Captain Peters had died 8 miles away on June 6th, it was spooky to hear Buck relate this tale (he had no idea of the date on which Captain Peters had been KIA and had assumed for decades that it was some time after June 7th).
The story appears in 'Avenging Eagles' for those of you who haven't already read it.
I believe Buck Dickson has passed his 90th birthday and Ed needs to talk to him again soon, as I've heard he is experiencing
significant health issues.