It was reported last week that Richard D. Winters had died Jan. 2 at an assisted living center in Campbellstown, Pa., three weeks before his 93rd birthday.

At his death, Winters had almost a cult following, as if he were some sort of fictional superhero. The further away World War II becomes, the more that Americans understand it only as legend, to the extent they understand it all. In 2004, the Gallup Poll reported that only 63 percent of American adults (and 47 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds) were able to correctly identify what country was the enemy on D-Day. It becomes harder to remember that flesh-and-blood men like Dick Winters actually did the things of which legends are made.

To the extent that any one individual is responsible for the "Greatest Generation" label applied to the Americans who grew up in the Depression and fought and endured World War II, it was Dick Winters — who did extraordinary things at a very young age and then quietly disappeared into the rest of his life, only to be "discovered" as an old man. Follow the thread:

In 1988, historian Stephen E. Ambrose began working on a book about D-Day. He met Winters two years later, and Winters, then 72, suggested that Ambrose focus on the unit he had commanded. In 1992, Ambrose published "Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle Nest."

In 1997, producer Steven Spielberg and actor Tom Hanks began filming "Saving Private Ryan," in which Hanks' character also was an unassuming Army officer from Pennsylvania. The plot was loosely based on the real-life story of the Niland brothers that Ambrose mentioned in his book.

The following year, inspired in part by Ambrose's books about D-Day, NBC's Tom Brokaw coined the term "The Greatest Generation" for his own book.

Spielberg and Hanks had bought movie rights to "Band of Brothers," which resulted in the 10-part HBO miniseries that first aired in 2001. The British actor Damian Lewis portrayed Lieutenant (later Major) Winters. The TV series finished the job that the books had started, turning the real Dick Winters into a celebrity at the age of 83.

By all accounts, Winters endured celebrification only because it reflected attention onto the men he'd served with. He even left instructions that news of death be released be delayed until after his funeral.

Compare that with today's culture, where so many people with so few accomplishments yearn to be famous and ... well, you don't want to go there.

Dick Winters graduated from college with a business degree six months before Pearl Harbor. He later wrote that he enlisted in the Army in the summer of 1941 because it meant he'd have to serve less time than he would if he were drafted.

Three summers later, at 1:20 a.m. on June 6, 1944, he and his platoon jumped out of a C-47 over Normandy to begin cutting a path for the troops who would begin landing on Utah Beach at dawn. His company commander, in another plane, had been killed. At the age of 26, Winters found himself in charge of a company of paratroopers scattered across Normandy's Cotentin Peninsula.

That day he led 13 men on an assault on a heavily manned artillery battery that was pounding allied forces landing on Utah Beach. This business-school graduate executed an attack on a larger force that later was taught at West Point as an example of small-unit assault tactics.

Here's one of those "It's a Wonderful Life" kind of stories: In October 1973, U.S. Attorney General Eliot Richardson became a national hero when he refused President Richard Nixon's order to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

After Ambrose's book came out, Richardson wrote Winters to say that he'd been a young medic in the Fourth Infantry Division on D-Day, and often had wondered why the German artillery had stopped. Richardson said he figured Winters was the reason he got off Utah Beach alive.

"'Follow me!' was his code," Ambrose wrote.

And because of the way he treated his men, they did.

Here's an example: In February 1945, well after Winters and his unit were withdrawn from Normandy, after more heroism in Holland in the wake of the catastrophe that was Operation Market-Garden and after they'd endured the siege of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge, the 506th was quartered in the French town of Haguenau on the south bank of the Moder River. On the north bank were the Germans. The war in Europe still had three months to go, but the outcome no longer was in doubt. No one was feeling very heroic.

Winters was asked to send a patrol across the river to grab some prisoners for interrogation. The patrol was successful, but it cost the lives of two men. The regimental commander, Col. Robert F. Sink, was 'so delighted with the successful patrol, he ordered another one for the next night," Ambrose writes.

Sink and a couple of staff officers came to the battalion headquarters to watch the operation. "They had a bottle of whiskey with them," Ambrose writes. "Winters said he was going down to the river to supervise the patrol. When he got to the outpost, he told the men to just stay still. With the whiskey working on him, Sink would soon be ready for bed. The patrol could report in the morning that it had gotten across the river and into German lines had been unable to get a live prisoner."

No wonder his men loved him. He would not risk their lives if he didn't have to, and if he had to, he would be in front.

I'm not saying they don't make them like that any more, but they are rare. And they were real.