Men, your relief is here. Now Zip, Fix Bayonets, Go!

Just beyond the positions our men have briefly taken is a ditch, which gave Easy Company cover to prepare.
A mortar team was left here, eventually called in to play. The men, above, will perform an about face to
begin their simulated charge.

Thirty-five men from Easy Company, 506th PIR, ambushed 150 Germans paused beside this dike near the Lower Rhine in September of 1944, killing 50 and routing two companies at a cost of one of their own. To get a sense for the difficulty and scope of this dawn bayonet charge, volunteers from our World War II study group hiked the 300 yards to the Easy Company starting point, turned around, and waited to dash back toward the bus, the point of enemy contact.
Our study group is composed of mostly senior gentlemen, so by the time the patrol had walked to its starting point, special preparations for their simulated bayonet charge were necessary. Once everyone had been securely zipped, the order to fix bayonets was given. The run was longer than most expected it to be. The distance required stamina, stealth and courage, assets that Easy Company held in great measure.
Today's volunteers, not so much.

The Germans were settled in behind the tree line in the distance, beyond a roadway that leads to the river.
The Germans were waiting for more troops to be ferried across the river and were caught off guard.
The dike, with a road on top of it, is at the right just beyond our hard-charging patrol leader, Bubba.
The charge was made parallel to the dike, a detail not so clear in "The Band of Brothers" portrayal.
We watched the episode in the bus before our arrival here.