Germans fell all around. The survivors waved a white flag. Coyle told his men to cease fire, stood up, and walked down the lane to take the surrender. Two grenades came flying over the hedgerow and landed at his feet. He dove to the side and escaped, and the firing opened up again.

The Americans had the Germans trapped in the lane, and after a period of taking casualties without being able to inflict any, the German soldiers began to take off, bursting through the hedgerow with hands held high, crying "Kamerad!"

Soon there were 200 or so men in the field, hands up. Coyle went through the hedgerow to begin the rounding-up process and promptly got hit in the thigh by a sniper's bullet-not badly, but he was furious with himself for twice not being cautious enough. Nevertheless, he got the POWs gathered in and put under guard. He and his men had effectively destroyed an enemy battalion without losing a single man.

It was difficult finding enough men for guard duty, as there was only one GI for every ten captured Germans. The guards therefore took no chances. Corporal Sam Applebee encountered a German officer who refused to move. "I took a bayonet and shoved it into his ass," Applebee recounted, "and then he moved. You should have seen the happy smiles and giggles that escaped the faces of some of the prisoners, to see their Lord and Master made to obey, especially from an enlisted man."

E COMPANY'S experience on June 7 was unique, or nearly so-an unguarded German flank was seldom again to be found. But in another way, what the company went through was to be repeated across Normandy in the weeks that followed. In the German army, slave troops from conquered Central and Eastern Europe and Asia would throw their hands up at the first opportunity, but if they misjudged their situation and their NCO was around, they were likely to get shot in the back. Or the NCOs would keep up the fight even as their enlisted men surrendered.