No Mutants Allowed

He was their CO, and they were stressed - war was on the horizon, and he was training them to be paratroopers - so the training *has* to be super hard.
They're supposed to loathe him, and later on build a bit of a rapport

The show itself was never able to make its mind up about him either; he is a bad trainer, but trains the best platoon in the world; he is skittish in the field, but trains the best field-men in the world

I'm willing to suspect that a bunch of stressed out 17-19 year olds may not perfectly remember their captain and/or may have credited for a bunch of ills that were not really his fault at all

Ever since, who's gonna question them? Who's gonna question aging veterans "maybe you're just remembering the guy wrong" and Ambrose's book - like any - needs a bit of a narrative flow, an antagonist or two - and then the HBO show really ran with it