History Underground - Did Ronald Speirs shoot and kill one of his own men?

Give us the damn spoilers. Did he do it or not?

quote:

---

Did he do it or not?

---

He did. But it was in self-defense. Essentially, what happened was the sergeant was given a cider by one of the French locals on the evening of D-Day. He, not knowing that it was alcoholic, drank it. The sergeant being an alcoholic himself, went on a bender as more and more French citizens continued to hand the Americans drink after drink after drink. Finally the dude was drunk out of his mind.

Dog Company was ordered to stay in place for the night but the sergeant wanted to take the platoon out and "kill Krauts." Speirs told him to stand down as their orders were to hold for the night. The sergeant became more and more belligerent, Speirs became more and more defensive and angry, and that's when the sergeant pulled a pistol on Speirs. Speirs then said rather coolly that if he was going to pull a pistol on him then he had better use it. More threatening words were exchanged, Speirs swung out his Thompson, and then shot the sergeant dead.

The incident was reported immediately to the higher ups, the whole platoon witnessed the incident and backed Speirs, saying he acted in self-defense, and the matter was swept under the rug. To this day, the identity of the sergeant remains hidden and the family still believes he was "Killed in Action" by enemy fire.

quote:

---

Um, wouldn't the company/platoon roster at the time of D-Day invasion make that blatantly obvious, or at worst narrow it down to a handful of people?

---

Dog Company suffered pretty heavy losses on D-Day, especially at Brecourt Manor when they attacked those 105mm guns with Easy Company. You can obviously narrow down the person it was, but the family will never know with any absolute certainty. Also...they might not have listed exactly when he was killed on the official death report. Or they could have said he was killed on June 9 or 10 or another random date early on in the Battle of Normandy.