We are posting this as another “Story Under a Stone” from Sheldon, ND. Today, June 6, 2026, marks the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, an event for which a hometown boy earned fame as a member of the now famous “Band of Brothers.” Myron “Mike” Ranney became a member of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne in World War II. His father, the publisher of the Sheldon Progress newspaper, wrote this brief, yet gripping mention in his August 20, 1942 issue: “A letter came this morning from my son, Myron, saying he had volunteered for the paratroop division of the army. Myron is nineteen and a former student of the University of N. D. The letter brought a lump in my throat and made it hard for me to work. He was not forced to go. But he loves his own country greater than his own security.”
So begins the story that Stephen E. Ambrose first popularized in his history of the Band of Brothers. The book caught the eye of two Hollywood men - Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg - who brought it further to the forefront with their 10-part HBO miniseries. Both the book and the film tell a riveting tale of men engaging in the prolonged heat of battle.
We’ve learned Company E went through a tough training experience under the guidance of a cruel taskmaster Lieutenant Sobel. The men hated him for it, but on the other hand, some gave him credit for their high degree of fitness when they entered battle. Late in the evening of June 5 the paratroops loaded into 81 C-47s. When they were airborne and looked down to the huge number of invasion ships on the English Channel, one of them remarked “You had to be a little bit awed that you were part of a thing that was so much greater than you.”
Leading E Company was the respected Dick Winters who received the order to destroy a German artillery emplacement of four large cannons that was raining shells down on the landing beach. Those guns were being guarded by a fifty-man platoon, whereas Winters led only a dozen, one of them being Ranney. He divided them into three attacking groups, left, center, and Ranney’s to the right. After some fierce fighting, they succeeded in overcoming the German resistance and disabling the artillery pieces. Company E’s attack has been studied at West Point as a textbook example of an assault on a fixed position by a numerically inferior force. Many medals for bravery were earned by members of the company that day with Ranney receiving a Bronze Star.
The war raged on for several months beyond D-Day. May 8, 1945 (V-E Day) marks the end of the fighting in Europe. In Hitler’s mountaintop hideaway Company E enjoyed drinking Hitler's private collection of cognac and wine. Japan signed its unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945. The next day my wife’s mother gave birth to her and they had a difficult time finding a doctor in Mandan because they were thought to have been celebrating the end of the war the night before.
In 1982, Ranney wrote a letter to his old commanding officer Dick Winters. A passage from that letter become famous after Winters quoted it in the miniseries. “In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, “Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?”
“No, I answered, “but I served in the company of heroes.”
Legendary stories of paratroopers entered the language and imagination of youngsters like myself who adopted a bit of hero worship in the years following the war. As one of their traits they tucked the bottoms of their trousers into their boots. In years following that style of boots became available in the shoe stores and young fellows could buy them outfitted with a large leather top and two buckles on them. Yup, I had a pair.
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