1st Lieutenant Norman S. Dike Jr. was a commander of Easy Company during the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne, Belgium. As a ranks-climber, he was not a good commander, which resulted in several Easy Company men's deaths during their attack on Foy. He became known as "Foxhole Norman".
Biography
Lieutenant Dike was born in Brooklyn New York. He was a graduate of Brown University and was the son of a New York State Supreme Court judge. His mother was from the famous New York "Biddle jewelry family".
Military Service
Lt. Dike was transferred from Division HQ to Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division in the first week of November 1944 becoming commanding officer. During the assault on Foy, Dike had ordered a platoon to go on a flanking mission around the rear of the town. During their charge, he abandoned the mission and ordered the men to take cover with him.
Dike's lieutenants informed him they were going to get killed because they were bracketed. At the same time, Captain Richard Winters, former commander of Easy Company and the Battalion's X.O., tried radioing Dike to tell him the same thing. Having no idea how to control the situation, Dike froze. "He fell apart," as Carwood Lipton at that time the company's first sergeant, later put it. Dike told First Squad to go on a flanking mission and for everyone else to provide suppressing fire, despite there being no adequate cover and they would be cut off from the company. He was relieved of command during the attack the by Lt. Ronald Speirs, then moved on to become an aide to Gen. Maxwell Taylor, 101st Airborne Division.
(See here for more information on the battle)
Winters later spoke in unflattering detail about Dike in his autobiography, Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Richard Winters. Likewise, in Brothers in Battle—Best of Friends, William Guarnere and Edward "Babe" Heffron do not refer to Dike favorably. His constant, unexplained disappearances, inattention to the men under his command and his preference for remaining in a foxhole, rather than fighting, earned him the pejorative nickname of "Foxhole Norman" among the members of Easy Company.
Later Years
After the war, Dike earned his law degree from Yale Law School. He died in Switzerland in 1989.