The rubber boats hit the river and the current took them at once. It was February 1945, the ground still hard with winter, and the water ran fast and cold between the banks. Lieutenant Henry Jones Jr. , twenty years old and on his first combat patrol, watched one of the boats capsize.

It went over twice before the men inside could right it. Jones made the call: those men were to abandon the crossing, go back, and stay inside while the rest of the patrol pushed on. He was the newest officer in Easy Company, a replacement who had arrived after the Battle of the Bulge, and this was the first time anyone had seen him act under pressure. The mission had come from Captain Lewis Nixon, the regimental intelligence officer, who wanted prisoners.

He asked his friend Captain Dick Winters to arrange a patrol to cross the river, grab several live Germans, and bring them back for interrogation. Winters chose Easy Company. The plan split the raiding party in two: one group led by Sergeant Ken Mercier, a hardened combat veteran, and the other by Lieutenant Jones, who had volunteered for his first patrol. The two groups would cross in rubber boats, and whichever one captured Germans first would blow a whistle to signal the other to return to the river.

When the remaining men made it across, Mercier moved toward a house near the bank that was believed to be a German outpost. Jones took his group into town to search for Germans to capture. He let Mercier take the lead on the house. It was the sensible choice, letting experience direct the most dangerous work.

Mercier fired a rifle grenade into the cellar window of the house. His men rushed the building and threw grenades down into the cellar. They charged in so fast that the shrapnel from their own exploding grenades struck Private Eugene Jackson in the face and head, piercing his skull and his brain. Jackson would die in the hours that followed.

The men took three Germans prisoner, two of them unharmed. They met Jones and his group at the river, and before crossing back they decided to leave the badly wounded German soldier on the riverbank. They crossed in the rubber boats, and some of the men pulled themselves through the water using a rope that had been strung across the river and tied on both sides to help the boats along. The prisoners were escorted back to Captain Winters at battalion headquarters.

Lieutenant Jack Foley later said that Second Lieutenant Henry Jones Jr. had performed well on his first patrol. The men who knew him in those weeks would have told you he was eager to prove himself. Henry Sweet Jones Jr.

was born in Buffalo, New York, on April 27, 1924, the son of Helen Susan Jones and Henry Sweet Jones Sr. His father was a World War I veteran who had served in the Lafayette Escadrille, the French Air Force unit made up largely of American volunteer aviators, named for the Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolutionary War. The elder Jones had reportedly engaged in a half dozen aerial combat missions against the German flying ace Baron von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron. He was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor, France’s highest order of merit.

Henry Jones Jr. had big shoes to fill. Affectionately known as Hank, he grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Dunkirk, New York, with an appetite for adventure. It first manifested in an attempt to join the French Foreign Legion, perhaps to follow in his father’s footsteps and his father’s role in the Lafayette Escadrille.

His family rejected the idea, and instead he entered West Point with his sights set on a military career. He graduated on June 6, 1944, in the same class as Dwight Eisenhower’s son John. He then went to infantry school at Fort Benning, where he engaged in intense conversations about the parachute troops, believing it might satisfy his thirst for adventure. He transferred to parachute school, and along with 31 of his classmates received a shortened and intensified version of the course, in the belief that they would be quickly shipped overseas.

After receiving his jump wings in late December, he and his classmates were sent to the 13th Airborne Division at Camp Mackall, North Carolina. There he was assigned to a glider infantry regiment, and it wasn’t long before he was proudly displaying his glider wings alongside his jump wings. His anticipation of being shipped overseas became reality in mid-January 1945. The 13th Airborne Division found itself with too many company-grade officers, so Hank and 15 of the classmates he’d earned his jump wings with were sent overseas to replace casualties in the 18th Airborne Corps.

He landed at Le Havre and arrived in Haguenau, France, not far from the eastern border, in mid-February 1945. This was after the Battle of the Bulge. Assigned to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, more commonly referred to as Easy Company, he became a replacement leader for the second platoon. He was wet behind the ears, but according to Stephen Ambrose’s book, he was cocky, clean-cut, and likable.

He was also anxious for a chance to prove himself. It never looked good when new recruits straight out of training arrived after a major battle; the contrast between the hardened soldiers and themselves was even more striking, and Jones was not immune to being dismissed by the other soldiers for his lack of experience. Within a week of the successful patrol, Hank was gone, promoted to first lieutenant and given a staff job at regiment. Some of the men were critical of how quickly he was promoted, but he was a West Pointer, a member of the protected class.

With the end of the war fast approaching, it was rumored that West Pointers like Henry Jones Jr. were being protected because they would be the ones to staff the peacetime army. By the war’s end, Hank had handled himself well in combat and earned three Bronze Service Stars while leading a patrol. He was wounded but still managed to successfully complete his mission, for which he was awarded the Purple Heart.

After the fighting stopped and the Allied forces emerged victorious, Hank found himself with the 506th on the outskirts of Berchtesgaden, racing for Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. With demobilization underway in the months that followed, there were plenty of shakeups in the ranks. Hank was transferred to the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He spent a year in the 508th before being transferred to the 97th CIC Detachment, Region 8, in August 1946, and he was promoted to the rank of captain.

He was stationed in the Berlin region and became a field office commander. While in that role, Hank sustained injuries in a jeep wreck that happened in Heidelberg, Germany. He was on his way to making a full recovery but had a minor difficulty that required surgery. When he felt healthy again, he went to the 279th General Hospital in Berlin to have the operation, after which he planned to return to the States.

The doctors encountered complications. Hank died in the hospital on the evening of July 21, 1947. He never made it home. Henry Sweet Jones Jr.

was just 23 years old.