The state Senate passed a resolution Monday urging Congress to posthumously award the Medal of Honor to Maj. Richard ‘Dick’ Winters, the U.S. Army officer and longtime Hershey-area resident upon whose career the book and miniseries Band of Brothers was based.
Winters, who died in 2011, “believed that leadership was about leading by example, and when duty called, he answered,” said Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin County, the resolution’s author.
Winters grew up in Lancaster County and graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in 1941, after which he enlisted in the military, attended officer candidate school, and qualified as a paratrooper.
In the early morning hours of D-Day, Winters parachuted into Nazi-occupied France as part of the 101st Airborne Division, becoming the commander of Company E of one of the unit’s infantry regiments after the company’s original leader was killed by German anti-aircraft fire.
Winters’ career during the final year of the Second World War was the focal point of the book Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose, which was later adopted into an award-winning HBO series in 2001.
Several of Winters’ combat actions are still taught today in military tactical training, and he “understood that courage, decisiveness, and faith could overcome impossible odds,” Mastriano said Monday.
After leaving the military, Winters worked in the chemical industry and later as a broker for grain and animal feed. In 1971, he founded his own feed supply company, living and working in the Hershey area.
Memorials to Winters exist in Ephrata, where he grew up, and in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, France, where he first landed on D-Day. The Hershey History Center also houses an exhibit featuring many of his personal artifacts.