Band of Brothers: They Helped Defeat Hitler (Episode 5: Crossroads)

NOTE: "Band of Brothers" is a highly realistic World War Two miniseries from HBO in 2001. Part of the "realism" is the profanity used; so, if you are sensitive to such language, the miniseries is definitely not for you. Also, there are numerous highly bloody scenes of killed or wounded soldiers, and scenes of people in a concentration camp, who have been the subject of horrendous treatment. So here too, if you are sensitive to these kinds of scenes, it is probably a good thing if you skip viewing the miniseries. As for this article and those I'll be doing about the miniseries, I have tried to keep things from being too blatant.

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This very realistic HBO series is based on the book "Band of Brothers" by historian Stephen Ambrose. Remember, this is NOT a documentary nor an actual reenactment, but rather a series with characters representing the actual men, with their real names, of East Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. The series does present events and actions that the men of Easy Company related to Stephen Ambrose, the historian who wrote the book. In the book's "Acknowledgements and Sources," Ambrose writes that he "circulated the manuscript of this book to the men of Easy Company." He goes on to say there were criticisms, corrections and suggestions offered by the men, and that Richard Winters and Carwood Lipton were heavily involved in reviewing the book, the original publication of which was in 1992, while the first airing of the miniseries was in 2001 (Ambrose died in 2002). 

 

As I write about this series, I'll likely use a man's army rank on occasion, but for the most part, I'll use last names, just as the men do. The cast of this series is so large, I decided not to list it, as it would have been overwhelming, although I did decide to list just a few names of the cast who portrayed the men most seen, most heard and most heard about in the stories presented in this series. Believe me, the whole cast is likely 8 or 10 times as large as those I list here, and everyone did a great job.

 

Partial Cast

 

Damian Lewis as Lieutenant, then Captain, then Major Richard Winters

Ron Livingston as Lieutenant, then Captain Lewis Nixon

Scott Grimes as Private, then Sergeant Donald Malarkey 

Shane Taylor as Medic Eugene "Doc" Roe

Donnie Wahlberg as Sergeant Carwood Lipton 

Michael Cudlitz as Sergeant Denver "Bull" Randleman

Frank John Hughes as Sergeant Bill "Wild Bill" Guarnere

Rick Gomez as Technician 4th Grade George Luz

Kirk Acevedo as Staff Sergeant Joe Toye

James Madio as Technician 4th Grade Frank Perconte

Eion Bailey as Private David Kenyon Webster

Dexter Fletcher as Sergeant John Martin

Ross McCall as Technician Fifth Grade Joseph Liebgott

Neal McDonough as Lieutenant Lynn "Buck" Compton

Nicholas Aaron as Private Robert "Popeye" Wynn 

David Schwimmer as Lieutenant, then Captain Herbert Sobel 

Here is the link to the previous article as Episode 4: Replacements:

 

https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2023/08/band-of-brothers-they-helped-defeat_28.html

This episode, directed by Tom Hanks, continues following Easy Company in Holland, in the aftermath of the fighting in and around Eindhoven. (Note: Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks were the executive producers of the miniseries.) Captain Winters has to write a report about one of the company's actions, and we see what happened in a flashback, as Winters goes over things in his mind to write the report. 

 

One thing to remember about Holland, it has lots of dikes and ditches, and one such area plays a part in this episode. Ditches were dug and the dirt then thrown up around the ditch to create the dike; that is, the embankment. Some of these dikes had roads along them. The episode starts as we see and hear a soldier running through a field with his rifle. It's Captain Winters and he finally runs up a rise (this is the dike) and sees a very young German soldier getting up from the ground (this is in the ditch). They look at each other momentarily, and Winters shoots and kills the soldier. The scene now shifts to Winters trying to awaken Captain Nixon for a meeting at the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment's HQ (Easy Company is part of this regiment), but Nixon  continues to remain in bed. Winters takes a glass from a shelf and throws its liquid content onto Nixon, who screams, "That's my own p--s." Winters gets a good laugh out of it. 

The two captains go to the meeting and Winters is told to submit a battle report about Easy Company's successful action against two companies of German Waffen SS troops. So Winters goes back to his command post and starts typing his report. As he starts thinking of what to put into the report, we get to see just what this is all about. We now see the company is in its quarters at night and a patrol returns with a wounded man, Sergeant James Alley (played by George Calil). As Alley's wounds are tended, Winters calls a squad of the men to action. Winters and the squad move along and there is a burst of machine gun fire ahead, but not at them, and Winters and the Easy Company men can't imagine what the Germans are firing at, and thus giving away their position to the Americans. Winters goes to check things out and he sees a number of German soldiers in and around a machine gun position. Winters goes back to the men and has a mortar and its team readied to provide support, and he moves the other men, including a machine gun team, forward. He assigns each rifleman a specific German soldier as a target. They are to fire when he fires. The whole thing goes off well, as each man hits his German target, and then the paratroopers withdraw, with mortar fire and machine gun fire covering their withdrawal, but Corporal William Dukeman (played by Mark Lawrence) is killed. Winters sends for the rest of the 1st Platoon, and another machine gun team.

(Note: The dikes and ditches in Holland made for an advantage and a disadvantage for the troops of both sides. As we'll see here shortly, men in separate ditches (which were fields) from both sides, were out of sight of one another, because the dikes (embankments) blocked their respective views. But, for men in a ditch, if the enemy got on top of the dike, they had a decisive advantage to fire down on those in the ditch.)

 

When daylight comes, Winters has the platoon lined up in a ditch and ready to charge forward, and he plans to throw a smoke grenade, which will discharge red smoke, to signal the attack. Winters and the men had no idea of how many Germans could be over the dike in the next ditch. Winters instructs the men only to charge forward when they see red smoke. He pulls the pin, throws the smoke grenade and runs forward. After several seconds the grenade discharges the red smoke and the men run forward, although at some distance behind Winters (it "seems" the grenade was slow to release the smoke). Now we go back to where this episode opened; that is, Winters runs across the field, up a small rise (a dike) and stops to see a young German soldier getting up from the ground below. There's a short pause as Winters looks at the boyish soldier, who gives a bit of a smile, and Winters fires and kills him. Winters then starts firing at a company size group of German soldiers a little further away in the ditch. Most of them are also on the ground, but the Germans are so totally taken by surprise and startled, they naturally try to find cover, but now the platoon of paratroopers has joined Winters on top of the dike and their fire brings down many a German soldier. After a short time, more Germans enter into the field (there is a ferry crossing near to where the Germans are, and they are trying to withdraw to there, then over the Lower Rhine River). Winters radios for artillery fire, which then decimates much of the remaining German force. Martin and Webster have a few Germans surrender to them saying, "Please don't shoot, we're Polish." Now the Germans get artillery support, and shells begin falling close to the American line and Webster is wounded in the lower leg. The paratroopers get their wounded and the German artillery fire ceases. (Note: Regarding the "Polish" SS men, the Germans and the Poles have had a long, and often, contentious history, which led to many changes in territories. For a couple of centuries, the territorial changes were the Germans taking Polish lands, with the Germans represented by the Prussians and the Austrians, with both taking lands with large numbers of people of Polish background. Once that happened, some of those areas acquired German settlers; thus, a number of areas had mixed German and Polish inhabitants. The results of World War One saw several of these areas with mixed populations go to the newly reformed Poland. When World War Two started, the Germans conquered these territories and put men from the areas into the German military. Some came from areas that had strong identification with "Germans," while others were far less "German" in their view of things, with some even being less than fluent in German, although some people were fluent in both German and Polish. These men in the miniseries are in the SS, so they must have been considered "German" by the Nazis, although with German manpower shortages, the definition of who was German was frequently "stretched.") (Note: The SS was a Nazi organization dating back to before the time when Hitler came to power. Once Hitler was in power, the SS expanded into a huge Nazi organization with sort of "shadow" agencies of the German government and military. The militarized part of the SS was called the Waffen SS, and once the war started, it raised many military units that were administered by the SS, but which in the field, were under the command of the German Army.) 

 

I've neglected to mention, going back to Easy Company's training in the U.S., that Lewis Nixon is a heavy whiskey drinker (he drinks Scotch) and he stores larger bottles of Scotch in Winters' footlocker. He uses these bottles to fill a smaller flask, which is easier to carry around. So, every time he needs to "fill up," he has to get into Winter's footlocker. Winters tolerates the situation, because Nixon is his friend. Winters doesn't smoke or drink, and he rarely swears, but he doesn't lecture others about these things, and he recognizes the reality of military life with the diverse personalities of his men. Harry Welsh is also a heavy drinker, and he keeps liquor in his canteen. In a funny moment during the first episode, the company is being transported by train in the U.S. Nixon comes to where Winters and Welsh are seated and Nixon takes out his whiskey and offers Winters a drink. Winters says, "You know I don't drink," and Nixon replies, "If I thought you'd have taken a drink, I wouldn't have offered it to you." lol! But Welsh gladly accepts Nixon's offer, then saying something like, "This trip might turn out to be okay, after all." Now back to the current episode ...  

 

Winters goes to Liebgott, who had been lightly wounded on the side of the neck during the fighting. He orders Liebgott to take the eleven prisoners they have back to 2nd Battalion headquarters, but he makes Liebgott turn over his ammunition, except for one bullet, and he tells him, "If you drop one of the prisoners, the others will jump you. I want all of the prisoners to arrive back at battalion CP alive" (CP=command post). (Note: Joe Liebgott is depicted in the miniseries as being Jewish, but historically, that is in question, although either one or both sides of his family could have converted to Catholicism, as Joe was supposedly raised as a Catholic. His parents were from Austria, a heavily Catholic area (and he acts as a translator in the series, as he was fluent in German). After the war, Liebgott's own children were raised as Catholics. Now, in contradiction to all of this, the men of Easy Company who offered comments on Liebgott after the war, thought he was Jewish, and I'm sure the scriptwriters for the series loved that, as it gave them the story line of an American Jew versus the Nazis, which is definitely present in the series, but I don't really know what to make of the contradictory information about Liebgott.      

 

Winters sits down near where the young German he killed is lying and he stares over at him. One of the paratroopers tells Winters that the German force there was all SS. Nixon arrives and talks with one of the men, who tells him how they destroyed the German unit, all at the cost of only 22 wounded (with such always being easily said by someone who wasn't wounded). We get to have a little chuckle when Nixon goes to Winters and Winters asks him for a drink, which he then quickly clarifies "of water." Nixon opens his canteen and smells it, "Yeah, it's water." 

 

A little later, Colonel Sink tells Winters that Major Horton was killed during a German attack on the 3rd Battalion (Horton was the 3rd Battalion commander; he is buried at the American Cemetery in the Netherlands). He tells Winters he's moving him up to become the executive officer of the 2nd Battalion, and Winters is pleased, but he is torn by having to give up direct command of the Easy Company men he cares so much about. Sink tells him Lieutenant Frederick "Moose" Heyliger (played by Stephen McCole) will take over to lead Easy Company and Winters is happy with that choice. Now reality hits home, as Winters still hasn't finished the paperwork required by both Major Strayer (commander of 2nd Battalion) and Colonel Sink (commander of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment). We see that Winters is more of a combat leader, not a paperwork guy. We then see Winters behind a desk as Nixon and Heyliger come in. He introduces his orderly, Private John Zielinski (played by Adam Sims), and Nixon and Heyliger tease Winters a bit over his new position. Nixon tells Winters of an operation planned for Easy Company to rescue some British paratroopers stranded on the opposite side of the Rhine River. Winters reacts as the company commander he's been, and Nixon reminds his friend that "Easy Company is in good hands," as Heyliger looks on. As Nixon is leaving, Winters asks that he tell him if Easy Company gets into any problems with the operation. Heyliger leads Easy Company that night and the British paratroopers are brought across the river, where they give the Americans a cheer, and Winters looks over at the building where the British and Americans are, hears the cheer and he smiles. (Note: This was part of "Operation Pegasus." The large airborne-ground operation of mid September was named Market-Garden, and while some objectives were met by the Allies, many British and American paratroopers were killed, wounded or captured; however, a fairly large part of the remaining British paratroopers were able to evade capture, usually with the strong help of the Dutch resistance. The Allies finally put together "Pegasus" to rescue as many of the British paratroopers as possible. So, what you see in Band of Brothers is only part of a larger operation, but Easy Company's rescue was successful and "seemingly" 138 British Paratroopers were rescued, but some sources simply indicate the number to be more than 100.) 

    

A few nights later, Winters and Heyliger are walking along discussing Easy Company when a shout comes to halt, but then bullets fly, and Heyliger is hit and collapses. Winters shouts to cease fire and the sentry who fired runs up to Winters and Heyliger, apologizing and unable to think. Winters has to yell at him to get him moving for help. (Note: Here is one of those historical versus Hollywood scenes, as the miniseries indicates that the sentry was very young (from Wyoming, in the miniseries), although Ambrose does not name the sentry in his book, he wrote that the man was a veteran of the unit and not a recent replacement. Winters and Welsh ride with Heyliger to the aid station, and though both are officers, medic Doc Roe gives them hell for not knowing how much morphine they had given Heyliger, and they had failed to pin the used Syrette(s) on Heyliger's jacket, so that medical personnel would know how much medication he had been given. (Syrettes were small tubes of morphine that were in each man's medical kit.) 

We again see Winters in an office, when in hobbles Bill Guarnere. (Whether there was a scene filmed, but then cut from the final product, I don't know, but Guarnere talks about having been hospitalized and going AWOL (away without leave), in order to stay with Easy Company. Winters, who is glad to see Guarnere, tells him "no more joy riding," and Guarnere agrees. The Eisenhower Foundation's website says Guarnere had taken a motorcycle from a Dutch farmer and was then hit in the leg by a sniper, and when he fell, he also broke his leg. Anyway, Guarnere is back.

 

After the failure of Operation Market-Garden, the Allied situation seemed to be one of replenishing their losses and training for a push into Germany, "assumed" by some to be destined for the spring of 1945. Fresh American divisions and replacements for depleted units arrived in Europe, and they were stationed in areas "assumed" to be relatively calm, where their green troops could gain a little experience in the build-up to a major operation to end the war. Nixon talks with Winters and he tells him that General Maxwell Taylor, the divisional commander of the 101st Airborne Division, is on leave in the United States, and Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe is in charge of the division until Taylor returns. Regimental commander Colonel Sink has gone to Reims (a northern French city) to see a show for the troops by Marlene Dietrich, but Sink has given Nixon a 48 hour pass to give to Winters, so that Winters can take a little time off in Paris. (Note: While Marlene Dietrich was born in what was then just outside Berlin (it later became part of the city), she detested Hitler and the Nazis, and she refused a German offer to return to Germany to make movies; in fact, she became an American citizen. She and her close friend, producer/director Billy Wilder, started a special fund to help get Jews and others targeted by the Nazis out of Germany, and to then give them help to establish a new life. She made hundreds of appearances at shows for Allied soldiers all over Europe during the war.)  

 

Winters takes the train into Paris and he sees a young French "boy" who reminds him of the young German soldier he killed. With no ongoing military operations on his mind, his thoughts slip back in time to the combat he has been through. Winters is a "loner" type guy and he goes places in Paris by himself. The 101st Airborne was withdrawn from the Netherlands and stationed in northern France for some rest. The men are watching the movie "Seven Sinners," starring Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne, with George Luz doing his John Wayne impression, much to the annoyance of the other men who are trying to watch the picture. Luz follows that with an impression of one of Marlene Dietrich's lines in the film (Rick Gomez, who portrays Luz, is hilarious). Winters returns from Paris and walks into where the movie is being shown. He goes and sits right behind Buck Compton, who has returned from the hospital after being wounded in Holland. Winters asks Buck about the movie, but Compton just stares blankly ahead. Winters finally gets Compton to respond, but it's obvious he's not quite the same man. An officer walks in and tells the men the Germans have launched a major offensive in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg and that all leaves are canceled. 

 

The men of the 101st Airborne Division are transported in trucks to Belgium, where they relieve American units battered in the fighting. When the men arrive, they get out of the trucks to see the demoralized American units marching out of the area. The 101st Airborne is low on ammunition, food and winter clothing. The men of Easy Company take the ammunition from the withdrawing American troops, and George Rice (played by Jimmy Fallon) of the 10th Armored Division pulls up in a jeep loaded with ammunition, but Easy Company is still short of mortar rounds. Rice tells Winters that the Germans are about to cut the last road out of the town, and that the 101st will be surrounded. Winters tells him, "We're paratroopers, we're supposed to be surrounded." Winters and Nixon meet with Colonel Sink, who tells them the 101st has to hold the town of Bastogne, because it's an important road center that has to be denied to German tanks and other vehicles. We see Easy Company and other elements of the 101st Airborne Division marching into Bastogne.   

     

Photo is of the HBO 2015 Blu-Ray Miniseries release ... 

WORD HISTORY:

Dike/Ditch-"Dike" and "ditch" are closely related words; in fact, they are variations to one another and both are related to "dig." "Dike" and "ditch" go back to Indo European "dheig," which had the notion of "to stick, to pierce;" thus also, "to dig," from the idea of a spade or other implement "piercing" the soil, in order to develop or to put something in place. This gave its Old Germanic offspring "dikaz," meaning "the result of digging drainage ditches;" thus, "a pond." This gave Old English "dic," meaning "a trench or channel dug for draining water, a digging, an excavation," and this then became "dic, dik, dich(e)," with the same meaning, before the modern form "ditch," which generally means "a trench dug, usually to drain or transport water." Note: Originally, Old English "dic" could also mean "dam, embankment used to confine water," but this then came to be differentiated from that meaning, as the pronunciation "dike" (long i) took over that meaning completely. Old English had the verb "dician" meaning "to make a ditch," but also the mixed meaning of the word back then, as it also meant "to make a mound or an embankment." The verb form "ditch" developed in the late 1300s from the noun and meant "to dig a ditch in the ground," but later the verb also took on the idea of "to throw away," and "to leave a partner" (usually a romantic relationship, but it can also be for business or friendship), with these meanings coming from the idea of "throwing something or someone into a ditch." "Dike" has the same origin in Indo European and then Old Germanic and Old English, but by circa 1500, the idea of, "throwing, piling up excavated soil to form a dam or embankment to prevent water from flowing into low lying areas," had come to be associated with "dike," especially in northern England, where many Old Norse speakers had settled (Old Norse is another Germanic language akin to English). Relatives of both words in the other Germanic languages: German has "Teich" meaning "pond," and "Deich" "dike, embankment" (but the form "Deich" was borrowed from Low German), Low German has "Diek" meaning "dike, dam" (this likely is borrowed or heavily influenced by West Frisian, as Middle Low German had "dik," which was borrowed by German as "Deich"), West Frisian has "dyk" meaning "dike, embankment to confine water," Dutch has "dijk" meaning "dike," Old Norse had "diki" meaning "morass, puddle, moat, ditch," from which Icelandic has "diki," meaning "dike," Swedish has "dika" meaning "dike, ditch;" thus also, "gully," Danish has "dige" meaning "dike."