In episode 8 of Band of Brothers (WW 2) the company captures a few Germans one night and loses a man. They are ordered to repeat the mission the next night. Captain Winters tells everyone to sleep and ignore the order which came from above him. Winters thought the mission was not needed.
Did this kind of thing happen in real life? My Dad a WW 2 vet said he thinks it could happen.
If we take Major Dick Winters at his word that specific event happened, as in literally, for some background for anyone who doesn’t know, at the time Band of Brothers was filmed a decent chunk of those guys were still alive. Many were consulted in the production of the show. Dick Winters is probably the best source of information about the exploits of the unit, he has many, many hours of documentary interviews recorded, and he was extensively interviewed for multiple books written by professional historians. Winters himself also had his own authoritative memoirs co-written with a professional military historian.
On top of that I’ve never heard a single person indicate Winters was anything but an exemplary American and human being, and don’t believe he’s ever been accused of even minor deliberate inaccuracy or exaggeration about anything he’s said concerning his or his unit’s conduct in WWII. There are a few examples where Winters thought X happened, but Y happened. Confusion around that for example is why one member of the unit was believed to have died shortly after the war from wounds sustained during it, and an episode of the show reflects this. In reality he made a full recovery and served in the Army until the 1960s, when he passed away of unrelated natural causes. That was something researchers corrected after Band of Brothers completed filming, but for some reason HBO has never fixed the interstitial card at the end of the episode in question (which currently says the soldier died shortly after the war, of his wounds.)
Anyway, Dick’s specific memory of the event you’re talking about is that fresh snowfall had occurred since the time he was ordered to go on a second patrol. He knew as an experienced infantryman, the crunch of the snow under his men’s feet would make their movements audible to any Germans in the area, and put his men at grave risk. He considered it a serious ethical dilemma, and basically responded as the show portrays.
As a matter of military discipline and law, he was not in the right. The “technically correct” response would have been for him to raise his concerns about fresh snow with his commanding officer and express his doubts about the patrol, which he did not do. But Winters also was navigating a system that is intrinsically political, and chose behavior that protected his men’s lives. If he went to his CO with his concerns and was rebuffed, he would be right in the firing line for serious trouble. If he told his men to get some rest and just declined to mention he didn’t do the patrol, he likely left himself some “wiggle room” if a higher-ranking officer got a burr about it later (if they ever found out, which they didn’t.)
Generally speaking, in WWII and today, when executing an order, you aren’t turned into a slavish automaton, you can and are expected, especially as an officer like Winters was, to use your best judgement as the situation develops. A lot of the specifics of the situation in question will determine if your judgement runs afoul of the concept of following orders. In Winters case where he could have easily communicated concerns to a CO, that was his obligation to do so, so he was in the technical wrong. My suspicion is very few officers who served in the Army in WWII would take serious issue with his actions.
BTW, here’s a previous thread that discussed whether he could still be prosecuted for violating orders, years after the event. The consensus was that he couldn’t, because he was no longer in the military and the UCMJ no longer applied, as well as the fact that the SOL for anything other than death penalty crimes is 5 years.
Recent case says that people discharged of military service can still face UMCJ …
see Military Retirees Can Be Court-Martialed After All, Appeals Court Decides