The Private Collection of Major Dick Winters (Band of Brothers) | History Traveler Episode 151

[Music] well if you have watched the past few episodes uh you know that we're in gettysburg and have been touring through the jaw dropping collection here at the gettysburg museum of history we've seen all kinds of things from the battle of gettysburg uh from world war ii rare items from uh from adolf hitler and uh i wanted to save what is my personal favorite thing in this museum for last if you're a fan of band of brothers and of the history of the 101st airborne and easy company in particular this is definitely one to watch to the end [Music] well if you have watched this channel for any amount of time you know that we have visited several of these sites that are tied in with easy company which was of course made famous by the book and series band of brothers obviously the the man who um is the center of most of the tension rightly so with easy companies dick winters great study on on leadership and uh just character and all kinds of different things like that well here at the museum they have probably the best dick winners collection you will ever find [Music] [Applause] [Music] so the major dick winners collection is here and most of the items in these cases are from him and i'm going to take you through those items and basically what has happened since we got the winners collection in 2016 is other items have come our way other family members of easy company and collectors who had easy company items have placed some of those items in our care and our plan is to build a very large easy company dick winners exhibit uh in in next year and so um it started with the dick winners collection and i'm gonna go through a few items here we have his college yearbook here with his picture uh this is the map that he used in paris when he if you remember the scene where he goes on leave at paris right before the battle the bulge and this this photo right here was taken of him he's in the photo towards the left and then he gets called better he goes back and they end up going to the battle of the bulge but that was the map he used um this is a g43 german sniper rifle and it's in almost mint condition he brought that home as a war trophy you know earlier we talked about war trophies major winners brought home a bunch of german guns and he sold them before or right right after the book came out and they're scattered amongst the collectors across the country but he saved a few of them and um but anyway that's the g43 and he captured that in cape prune austria which is where they were after the war for occupation duty but it's just an amazing condition another war trophy that that major winners took was these falsehood maker gloves he took him from a soldier at the battle of carontan from a fifth s uh fifth faltermager regiment soldier and there's a picture of him wearing a pair the pair of uh falsey maker gloves there working our way down one of the most amazing accounts of d-day in my opinion is winner's uh d-day diary and when he was wounded at the battle of karentan he actually sat down and wrote out his thoughts and so you have a very fresh first-hand account of what happened on d-day and the battle of bray court manor and he even drew a little map there which is uh done in old fountain ink and he used a typewriter and and typed that out in an aid station and after the battle of carontan you have the yard long photo of easy company there one of the best pieces in my opinion is winners 1911. that's that's his gun that he's through most of world war ii he did not have it with him at d-day uh the story is that he had two um and he left one in his foot locker and the one that he took with him which was the newer model this is a true 1911. he lost with his other equipment but he had another one in his uh his um foot locker that he used throughout the war and there's some photos of him uh throughout world war ii with a 45 on his hip the knife back there is a british commando knife and that was a gift two winners from lewis nixon it says ln to dw or yeah 1943. so they were training with those weapons a lot of the british commanders who were helping train them when they were in england used those and it was a real expensive weapon and nixon being a a pretty wealthy guy winners would never buy something like that but he bought one for his friend uh dick winters and it's documented in some of the letters that we have this is dick winter's officer's id and it starts out as lieutenant and he crossed it out and it says major and he had that with him throughout the war and it's an amazing piece he put some kind of lamination on it and to think that he had that with him through most of his military career those are his dog tags those are the later versions of the dog tags those are the ones he would have worn in combat his wallet his parachute jump uh manual some more of his insignia this is the distinguished service cross that was given to him by general bradley at a ceremony in normandy so that's the dsc he got for his action at bray court manor if you've seen the series his original jump certificate is back there when he completed paratrooper school at toccoa the officers took jump school at toccoa the enlisted men took it later but he was one of the first guys in fact he was one of the first guys out or i think he was the first guy out actually and it was signed by colonel sink and then going down here here's one of his uniforms uh or shirts and there's some pictures of him wearing that same or very similar uniform at birch's garden up here where he's wearing just a tie and shirt this is the iconic four button class a uniform that you see in this picture right here this picture was taken in december of 1945 when he came home uh and his parents had him take a couple of photos it was this one and this black and white version but it is the same one that's in that photograph and it's an iconic photo and it's an iconic uniform and um the other day i was asked a question what's your favorite world war ii item and boy that was a tough question but i i think i think that's gonna be up there you know i i just i just you know it just is such a phenomenal piece i can see why there's his pants with his name lieutenant winners in there pair of his pants this is infantry in battle that was one of his manuals and has his notes throughout amazing piece um and we get over here this is the um jacket that he's wearing wearing in late 44 or mid september of 44 up through the end um he wore this during the holland campaign he sewed he had a map case stone in the back it has extra pockets it's very heavily modified and he's wearing we think the same one in that picture that famous iconic pitcher taking it scrunderlock in holland and then here is his b15 jacket some of the officers of the 101st were able to get a hold of these aviator jackets and they wore them during the battle to bulge um so that's the bulk of the winter stuff except for the files you know the the the files are amazing you know one of the things that we got were his or besides the hard artifacts were the files we have tons of paperwork and his photo albums and um you know we we published a book based on his letters called hang tough i hope you all get it and we're working on another book about his photo albums which will be out sometime next year so um you know it's a treasure trove of information we thank god the winner saved all this stuff because um it created some of the best stories of world war ii around here are a few more items in the easy company collection uh this is the uniform of one of the guys by the name of edward bernat and then if you watched the series the man who owned this piece of gear might be a little bit more familiar this is the m42 jump jacket of babe hefrien and also his medals [Music] one thing that i do want to mention uh eric he's not just keeping this stuff to himself he has a free museum where people can come and experience and learn from it and he also co-authored a book called hang tough which contains a lot of the personal letters and things like that of dick winter so you can kind of get a little bit more insight into the man through this book and it has some awesome illustrations in it too but yeah definitely a book to add to your library take a look at this this is incredible uh these are items that were recovered from the bois jacques i think i'm saying that right people gigged me whenever i did that episode because i called it the bojack uh but it's the the boishakh uh but you can see here like pieces of a 1911 uh here are some mess tins here's something that's really fascinating here are pieces of wood with bullets and shrapnel embedded in them you can see here's a canteen that looks like it got nicked here are some dog tags that were recovered and then over here you can see some german relics that were covered from that same area unbelievable all of the stuff that is here after we got dick winter's collection as i said other easy company stuff came our way a lot a lot of artifacts and we now have artifacts or photographs or photo albums from over 30 members of easy company it's it's been amazing how this how this has played out but um one of my favorites is ronald spears who is the another officer he originally started in c company was moved to dog company during d-day and then he ended up in headquarters second battalion and then eventually became commanding officer of easy company and it's portrayed really well in the in the book in the series and a few years ago i was able to get a few of his items i only have a few of the items out but we have his his luger his p38 his um luffa dagger that as a war trophy and a bunch of his photos there's his office officer id and a lot of paperwork and photos and we have over 100 original photos of him now so during lockdown during the covid pandemic i decided to write my second book and it's an autobiography of ronald spears and so that's what i did during lockdown with my co-author jared i brought him along um he was my co-author on hang tough and um while writing this i mean it was such a fascinating story i mean he's portrayed as such a mystery man uh the family decided to give me his medals as well and we have not put these out yet but these are ronald spears medals and and and insignia and a lot of them are post-war but the purple heart the silver star the bronze star are world war ii and then of course his 506 insignia we got his dog tag and um i was just blown away i i mean um they had been misplaced and then um they came back out and um family gave them to me and and um the book will come out next year i can't wait for it it was a fascinating thing subject to to research and and i worked with not only his his um one side of his family but i i we worked with his nieces and some of his other families so the family was was involved with this project and very recently i was able to get some of forest goose item now forest goose was not portrayed as much in the series but he is responsible for some amazing items um namely photography he he snuck a camera um into the combat zone in normandy and they weren't allowed to do that but um one of the items i got just recently we haven't put this out yet was his 1911. and this is a true d-day and world war ii used weapon this was used on d-day by forrest guth and we know that because he documented as being his weapon that he used all through world war ii and he took these series of photos i was telling you about but you can see it in this famous photo here and also there's a bunch of other photos this is a book done by michelle ditres about forest but in almost all the normandy photos you can see for us wearing the 1911 in a shoulder rig there it is right here at the at the marmian farm but um probably the most iconic photo from banner brothers is of course the famous photo taken in saint marie de mont that was used on the cover of the book band of brothers and of course um i'm not able to find it but if you want to pan up to there that is the photo boris booth is in that photograph and he is on the far left of the first row and um this is one of forest goose negatives we have some of them and michelle de tres the guy that wrote the book has the rest of them but this is the original negative of this photo and it's kind of hard to see but i'll just put it put it up there so you can kind of see it but that was in his camera that is the original of probably the most iconic band of brothers photo out there and um we we got a bunch of his and i just thought it would be nice to show a couple other items that you don't normally get to see you know like i said we're gonna do this big expansion in the next year but i pulled a couple of items out of the archive um that we have and this is one of the famous color slides of easy coming you got bill garnier and james deal here and that was at um camp mccall and that's a color chrome an original this isn't colorized this is a real color photograph and that's the original here's a famous photo that was taken on the at the beginning of the march to toccoa and this is third platoon of easy company and this is a true original nice large format and you see some of the familiar faces in there frank picante and um this is the original or one of several originals made off of the original negative and this this came from dick's files and um this one is another really iconic photo and um this one was taken in austria in 1945 and i want to pull it out because it has a really great back stamp so when you're in capri in austria a local photographer came out and took this photograph and this was the remaining guys of easy company and you can see a couple of the iconic faces there you know you got babe heffern right there um ron spears is in there somewhere right there and this man here that's grabbing the tip of the guide on that's brad freeman he's the last surviving guy in this photograph and uh he lives down in mississippi he's a good friend of mine i just i was just facetiming with him yesterday i went to see him very recently so um this is the iconic last formation photo and it was taken by a local photographer um in in uh salzburg who came out to photograph those guys it's signed by a few of the men and this belonged to one of the easy company soldiers named tex hale his name's right there huh and he wrote with the gang so this is an original another iconic easy company photo that you know it doesn't get shown a lot in its original form it's all over the internet of course and uh you know we have other easy company stuff in here but most of it's put away but as i said we're building a massive exhibit that will be uh focusing on easy company but i have to do a little plug for the book this is the book i was talking about based on dick winners letters and there's also photographs of some of the artifacts in here so i hope you get the book and check it out and read dick winter's letters it's a whole different side of dick winners that you're not used to hearing he corresponded with a navy wave and there was over 100 letters and it's just just an amazing account and um i was glad you know when we got those letters we thought i got to do something with them and i thought a book would be really a great way to showcase them all right uh well anytime i get the opportunity to actually get my hands on a historical piece uh i want to take a take advantage of that so eric is allowing me to uh put my hands on the personal firearm of dick winters wow this is something special that you have that that is that is something else thank you sure all right well uh that was a little bit from the dick winters collection and easy company collection here at the gettysburg museum of history uh again like i've said in the other videos i haven't showed a fraction there's there's no way uh you have to come here for yourself it's free uh eric has has collected and gathered up all this stuff has has displayed it and and wants to share it because he's like all of us he's passionate about history this this place is like the weather so if you come to gettysburg make sure that this is definitely one of your stops [Music] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 416,073

Rating: 4.9620471 out of 5

Keywords: history, wwii, world war ii, history underground, history traveler, travel, gettysburg, gettysburg museum of history, dick winters, band of brothers, easy company, toccoa, 101st airborne, babe heffron, ron speirs, artifacts, battle of the bulge, war

Id: _MQd0EIBIgg

Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/FlagrantFL]

It looks very recent.

Museums are great, but if you’re passionate about BoB and have the means, nothing beats standing in silent reflection in the Bois Jacques or walking the mountain trails outside Bastogne where Hitler’s residence once stood. I hope to get to Toccoa in the not-too-distant future. The history is there, at the places these things happened, more so than the relics themselves.

[u/alsatian01]

This popped up my YouTube feed and it didn't look familiar. I didn't check the published date, but i think it is pretty recent.

[u/FluentKong]

JD makes phenomenal videos. I highly advise checking out his other videos!

[u/Kate_The_Great_414]

I love JD’s channel.

[u/i-got-a-jar-of-rum]

I’ve met this guy on numerous occasions. I’m just in awe of both his collection and his passion.