Band of Brothers: Episode 10/Final, Points

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.

 

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.

As I wrote about this series, I used the mens' army rank on occasion, but for the most part, I used last names, just as the men did. 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 9: Why We Fight

https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2023/10/band-of-brothers-episode-9-why-we-fight.html

 

The name of this episode, "Points," is in reference to a system of "points" used by the U.S. Army to demobilize (discharge and send home) enlisted men. When the war in Europe ended, men of a rank less than commissioned officers had to have 85 points in order to be able to be sent home. The calculation was determined this way: a soldier got one point for every month in the service, dating from September 1940; they got another point for every month they served overseas; they got five points for every combat decoration they received (for example, Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and others); and they received twelve points for dependent children under the age of 18, and limited to three such children. So for example, when Germany surrendered, Corporal John De Snickerdoodle had entered the service in May 1944, giving him 12 points. He was sent to Europe in September 1944, giving him 8 more points for a total of 20 points. He was wounded in November 1944 and received the Purple Heart, giving him 5 more points, now a total of 25 points. He has a 2 year old daughter at home, giving him 12 additional points and a final total of 37 points ... get used to occupation duty, Private, you're not going home. You may even be sent to the Pacific to fight the Japanese. This system of points is very impotant in the episode, because the men naturally calculated their points to see where they stood, and because as the war in Europe was ending, the talk about redeploying the 101st Airborne Division to the Pacific against Japan was commonly heard.

 

This episode opens in July 1945, as Major Winters prepares to take a morning swim in Lake Zell at the city of Zell am See, Austria (it is about 35 miles from Salzburg). Captain Nixon comes by and asks his friend Winters what he plans to do after the war ends (this is one of those scenes that starts in July, but then goes back to early May to present the events that had occurred; so, to set the situation, by July, Germany had surrendered, but the Allies were still at war with Japan). Winters tells Nixon that the regimental commander, Colonel Sink, had spoken to him about staying in the Army and making a career of it. He says he told the Colonel that he would think about it. So now Nixon, who is from a wealthy family, offers Winters a job at a family-owned business in New Jersey (Winters was from Pennsylvania). Winters thanks his friend and says he will think it over. Winters dives into the lake for his swim, and he narrates as the scene shifts back to early May, as the men of Easy Company want to capture Hitler's villa, known as the "Berghof," located in the mountains above the Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden. High above Hitler's villa is the "Kehlsteinhaus," known to many as simply the "Eagle's Nest," a kind of chalet that was completed as a gift to Hitler by the Nazi Party in 1938. Hitler seldom used the "Eagle's Nest," but it survived the war and still exists today; however, the "Berghof" villa was heavily bombed late in the war, and its remains were later demolished.

The Nazi SS had blocked the road up one side of the mountain to Hitler's "Eagle's Nest," and French forces also wanted to capture this Hitler possession, but Colonel Sink, the commander of Easy Company's regiment, the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, tells Winters to get there ahead of the French. So, Easy Company heads into the town of Berchtesgaden, where they take over the "Berchtesgadener Hof," an elaborate hotel used by guests of Hitler and other Nazi leaders who were visiting Hitler's villa (Britain's prime minister in 1938, Neville Chamberlain, stayed there when he went to see Hitler at his villa about the then crisis over Czechoslovakia). The hotel provides Winters, Welsh and Speirs the opportunity to take some Nazi souvenirs. Winters then tells Speirs to take Easy Company and go up the mountain and capture Hitler's Eagle's Nest, which they do. Later, Nixon, Welsh and Speirs are on the balcony of the "Eagle's Nest," when they are joined by Lipton and Winters. Winters tells them the news that Germany has surrendered, and he takes his friend Nixon by jeep to a huge wine cellar with thousands of bottles of expensive wine and liquor at the nearby vacation home of Nazi leader Hermann Göring. 

The war in Europe is over, but the 101st Airborne Division is assigned to occupation duty in Austria. A German colonel (played by Philip Rham) surrenders to Winters,  and the Colonel wonders what he and Winters will do "without war to occupy our time." He removes his pistol from its holster and offers it as a show of his personal surrender to Major Winters, so that he won't be forced to surrender to a person of lesser rank, but Winters tells the Colonel he can keep his pistol (Note: Actually, in real life, Winters accepted the pistol, but why such a thing was changed in the script, is beyond me, although things like 2+2 are also beyond me. Winters later said the pistol had never been fired by the Colonel, and that was how he too kept it for the rest of his life ... unfired.)

 

A number of troops from the 101st Airborne watch newsreels from the still ongoing war in the Pacific. Winters tells Speirs, Nixon, Lipton and Welsh that the divisional commander, General Maxwell Taylor, has said the 101st Airborne will be sent to the Pacific to fight the Japanese. Winters tells them that training has to be maintained to keep the men ready to fight. We then see several of the men cautiously walking through a forest, but they are hunting deer. When they finally come upon a male dear with a large rack of horns, Shifty Powers, the great sharpshooter, can't bring himself to pull the trigger, and the deer runs off (Shifty has had enough killing). We then find out that Shifty will be required to remain in the army, because he lacks adequate points to be discharged and sent home (he's from Virginia). Easy Company is assembled and Captain Speirs, the company commander, tells the men that General Taylor has authorized one man from every company in the division to be sent home, who otherwise lacked the points to go home. So, a drawing is held for Easy Company, and Harry Welsh draws a piece of paper from a helmet and hands it to Speirs, who reads out the man's serial number and name... Darryl "Shifty" Powers. We see the helmet had only contained Shifty's name and no others. The whole company is happy for Shifty, and we see him go to Major Winters to say goodbye. An emotional Shifty searches for the words he wants to say to Winters, but he can't get them out, although we can tell the high regard he has for Major Winters. Shifty tells the Major that he doesn't know how he will explain all of his experiences when he's back home in Virginia, but Winters tells Shifty, "You're a hell of a fine soldier, Shifty, there's nothing more to explain." Shifty salutes Winters, and the Major returns the salute, but he then reaches out to shake Shifty's hand. As Shifty leaves, he wipes away a tear. We go from being happy for Shifty, to then learning that the truck carrying Shifty and a couple other men was hit head on by a drunken soldier from another American unit, and Shifty spent months in the hospital recovering from a concussion, a broken pelvis and a broken arm. Life sometimes leaves us little time to celebrate.

Winters, Nixon and Welsh are together when Nixon tells Welsh that Winters has put in to be transferred to the 13th Airborne Division, which he believes will be deployed to the Pacific soon. Nixon tells Welsh he's going with him, jokingly adding, "Somebody's got to go with him, he (Winters) doesn't know where it is." Welsh wants to go home and marry his long time sweetheart, and he says to Winters, "You're leaving the men?" Winters replies, "They don't need me anymore." We then see Winters seated in front of Major General Elbridge Chapman (played by David Andrews), the commander of the 13th Airborne Division. Chapman goes over Winters' combat record, asking some questions or making comments at times, and at the General's mention of the various places Winters has served, the Major's mind flashes back to those locations and to the action he and his men saw there. The General then asks, "Why do you want to leave the men?" In the end, the General tells Winters he needs to stay with the 101st Airborne, and if that division is deployed to the Pacific, that Winters should be leading one of the battalions. The General says to him, "Let me tell you something son, you've done enough."

We next see Liebgott, Sisk (played by Philip Barantini) and Webster riding along a dirt road toward a small farmhouse. We find that Liebgott wants to see the man at the house, as some of the freed prisoners of a concentration camp said this is the man who was the camp commandant (Note: Speirs ordered this). Webster is hesitant, but they go inside and see a burly man who asks them in German what they want. Liebgott speaks in German to the man about the camp, and he then pulls his pistol and puts it to the man's head. As the heated exchange takes place, the reluctant Webster goes outside trembling, and he lights up a cigarette. Sisk comes out and says the guy is guilty, but then there is a shot, and the man runs from the house with a wound on his neck and with Liebgott following. Liebgott tries to fire, but the gun jams, and he yells "Shoot him!" Webster makes no move to fire, but Sisk shoots the man as he runs away.

Next, at a crossroad checkpoint, Janovec (played by Tom Hardy) is on duty, but Webster is his relief and Janovec tells him he has 75 points, and that makes him 10 points short to go home. Webster tells him that he has 81 points. Janovec gets into a jeep to go back to where the company is staying. The jeep sets off, but a barrel from a passing truck falls off the truck and Janovec is killed in the ensuing accident, but the actual accident is not shown. (Note: Ambrose's book says Janovec had been leaning on a door of a truck, when it flew open. Janovec hit the pavement fracturing his skull.) Just before Janovec's accident, a German soldier on crutches hands Webster a document. It's the man's discharge, and Webster looks around, then he goes over to a German field gendarme, who is being used to help control traffic and check identification information. He speaks English too. He has just checked the papers of a private citizen's car with a husband and wife and Webster asks him where the couple are going, and the gendarme says they are going to Munich. So, Webster asks the German soldier on crutches if he'd like to go to Munich, and he gladly accepts. Webster opens the back door, tosses a couple of suitcases to the side of the road, and lets the soldier get in; all as the couple protests (Note: I take the point to be that Webster feels much in common with the injured German soldier and he figures the civilians can make the sacrifice of a few personal belongings to give him a ride. In a previous episode, Webster wondered if American civilians realized how much their troops have sacrificed to win the war.)

Winters narrates that, with the war in Europe over, the men had plenty of three things: weapons, alcohol and time on their hands. One night, Sergeant Grant (played by Nolan Hemmings) has two troopers in a jeep he is driving. As they approach a checkpoint, they see a dead German officer lying in the road and an American soldier standing nearby with a pistol in hand. Grant tells the two men to stay in the jeep while he goes to see what is going on. When he approaches the man with the gun, it's obvious the guy is drunk and the guy cracks that the German officer wouldn't give him any gas. There is another jeep nearby (the jeep that had been driven by this American soldier), and then a dead British officer, and then that officer's jeep. Grant asks the soldier for his weapon, but the guy totally ignores Grant and says that he is going to take the British officer's jeep, and Grant steps forward and the guy fires the pistol in Grant's direction, and the bullet hits Grant in the head. The man takes off in the jeep.

The scene shifts to the aid station where an Army doctor tells Speirs and Doc Roe that Grant needs brain surgery, but that he doubts he will live. Speirs and Roe head out with Grant on a stretcher to find a German brain surgeon, and when they go to the home of a doctor, Speirs points his gun at the doctor and orders him to come along. The doctor briefly looks at Grant and he tells Speirs to put the gun away, and they leave for the hospital. The men of the company had gone out to find the shooter, and they get him, and then in a room at the headquarters they begin working him over. A visibly angry Speirs comes in, draws his pistol and asks the man where the weapon is that he used. When the man cockily says, "What weapon," Speirs uses his pistol to smack the man across the mouth, saying, "When you talk to an officer, you say 'sir.' " Speirs points the gun right at the guy (if you have followed these articles, you know the reputation Speirs has), the men move away out of caution, but Speirs doesn't pull the trigger. He orders them to get the MPs (military police) to "take care of this piece of s--t." Sergeant Talbert (played by Matthew Leitch) asks, "So Grant's dead?" Speirs tells them Grant is expected to live.

Everyone knew the points system wasn't perfect, so Winters and other officers try to get the long time veterans away for a while. Winters talks with Malarkey and sends him as an "advisor" to an airborne exhibition featuring Allied aircraft on display in Paris, where he will stay at a nice hotel. When Malarkey salutes; instead of returning the salute, Winters reaches out to shake his hand. Carwood Lipton is waiting to see Winters, who tells him that because the war is over, that the Army policy about battlefield commissions is to transfer the officer to another unit, and Lipton says he was expecting this. Winters says that he was given the job to reassign Lipton, and he thought he would move Lipton to the battalion headquarters; that is, Lipton is really not going anywhere, he just won't be with Easy Company on a continuous basis. This is really what happened with Winters back in Holland, he gave up total hands on control of Easy, but he was right in the battalion headquarters keeping his eye on the men. Winters tells Lipton his first assignment is to accept the surrender of a German general and his men, because the general doesn't want to surrender to Private Babe Heffron from South Philly (for those unaware, Philly is a common shortening of Philadelphia). So, Winters tells Lipton, "I figure 2nd Lieutenant Carwood Lipton of West Virginia will soothe the general's feelings."

Winters drives the jeep that takes Captain Nixon and Lipton to the surrender. When Winters stops the jeep, Captain Sobel and another soldier come walking by. The soldier salutes Major Winters, but Sobel turns his head. Winters calls Sobel out by saying, "We salute the rank, not the man," and Sobel stops and salutes, with Winters returning the salute. There is a large number of German prisoners and the General (General Theodor Tolsdorf, played by Wolf Kahler) comes to Major Winters, who motions for him to go to Lipton. He asks Lipton for permission to speak to his men, and Lipton agrees. The General walks to the front and speaks a few lines to his men, but the sentiment is the same as for the American troops. Liebgott translates for Winters and Nixon: "Men, it's been a long war, it's been a tough war. You have fought bravely and proudly for your fatherland. You are a special group, that has found a bond in one another, that can only develop in combat. We comrades have shared foxholes and have supported each other in terrible moments. We have seen death and suffered together. I am proud to have served with you. You all deserve a long and happy life in peace."

The scene shifts to a baseball game among the men, as Major Winters narrates a bit about the postwar lives of several of the men. This miniseries was filmed in 2000 (first shown in 2001), and a fair number of the men were still alive, but Winters' narration tells when some had passed away. Winters tells about his own life and how "there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of the men I served with who never got to enjoy the world without war."

 

 

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

WORD HISTORY: 

Shrapnel-This word is from the family name of Henry Shrapnel in 1806. He invented an explosive device that was filled with metal balls (commonly lead), which were then the "bullets" of the day. When it exploded, the "bullets" went in all directions, causing numerous injuries and deaths to those exposed to the blast. "Shrapnel" was a member of the British Royal Artillery. The name "Shrapnel" is thought to be from French "Charbonnel," the diminutive of "charbon," meaning "charcoal" (perhaps in reference to hair color), from Latin "carbo" (meaning "coal, charcoal"). It's origin is unclear, but it may be from the same Indo European form that gave English "hearth," a word from the Germanic roots of English.

Band of Brothers: Episode 9, Why We Fight

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.

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.

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 8: The Last Patrol

https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2023/09/band-of-brothers-episode-8-last-patrol.html?m=1

 

This episode takes place in the waning days of World War II, from the latter part of March, through April and up to about May 1 or 2, 1945. We see some German musicians on the street playing Beethoven's solemn "String Quartet No. 14 in C Sharp Minor (Op. 131)." The town has been heavily damaged in the war, and German civilians are clearing debris and trying to put things back in order, a characteristic Germans are known for, but there can be a dark side to that characteristic, too. So, we have German work ethic and desire to bring order to their damaged city; and this, set to the music of one of the greatest composers in history, who was a German; but, why do Germans keeping fighting for Hitler, in a war that has long ago been lost? Some of Easy Company's men are beginning to wonder why they are still in Europe, away from their families, and still at war.

 

We see some events during the first part of the episode that will be contrasted to the second part of the episode (these aren't necessarily in the proper chronology). George Luz and Frank Perconte are searching for eggs in the hen house of a German farm. A woman comes in and Luz tries his luck at "showing her how friendly Americans can be," but she slaps him across the face. We also see Captain Speirs take a couple of silver trays and silver candle holders to the Army Post Office, where Private Vest takes care of the regiment's mail. Speirs gives Vest a couple of packs of cigarettes to take care of sending these "souvenirs" to the Captain's family in the United States. Speirs tells Vest, "Finders keepers." We see the alcohol dependent Captain Nixon out late at night looking for Scotch in a heavy rain, but he's oblivious to the weather, as he breaks the front window of a German shop selling liquor. The owner lives up over the shop and he shouts out the window at Nixon, but to no avail. Nixon doesn't find a liquor to his liking.

 

This episode focuses on Major Winters' close friend, Captain Lewis Nixon, who is also known as "Lew" and "Nix." We soon see Nixon looking very serious after he gets out of a jeep, and when he goes to his quarters, he takes a couple of drinks of whiskey, and then, Winters comes in. We now learn that Nixon was involved in a parachute jump with some men of the U.S. 17th Airborne Division, but that the plane he was on was hit by German anti-aircraft fire, and only Nixon and two others survived (one book on the subject says Nixon and three others survived). The commanding officer of those who died also perished, so Nixon has been ordered to write to the parents of the young men killed on the plane, and it's not a job he's looking forward to doing. (Note: The 17th Airborne Division was involved in a large scale paratroop drop in the latter part of March, 1945 called Operation Varsity. The drop has been controversial since it took place, because it risked the lives of so many personnel, American, British and Canadian, when ground operations were making significant progress, with "seemingly" fewer casualties.) Nixon talks with Winters about what he should say to the parents, and we see how Nixon's feelings have turned downward, as when Winters says to tell the parents that their sons died as heroes, Nixon asks if Winters still believes that (for the record, Winters says he does). Nixon has to look around his quarters to find a bottle that still has whiskey in it, but most are empty. Winters tells Nixon that Colonel Sink has demoted Nixon from serving with the regimental staff (apparently because of Nixon's heavy drinking). Nixon will again serve in the 2nd Battalion staff. When Winters asks Nixon if he heard him say that he's being demoted, Nixon casually replies, "Yeah, demoted, gotcha." The troubled Nixon then goes back to talking about the men killed earlier that day. It takes us back to the D-Day episode, where the jittery Private Hall has his fears calmed by Winters, which brings out the courage in Hall (whose real name was "Halls"), who helps to destroy the German artillery battery, but who loses his life doing so. Winters sees Hall's body and kneels for a moment, but then he must continue the fight. At the end of the day, the situation is reversed from this current episode, as then it's Nixon asking Winters what's bothering him, and Winters tells him about Hall being killed that day. Nixon tries to divert his friend's thoughts, but after a tough day of fighting and killing, Winters takes some more time to be human.

Frank Perconte and recent replacement Private Patrick O'Keefe (played by Matt Hickey) walk along to their shift for outpost duty. O'Keefe asks when Perconte thinks they'll "be jumping into Berlin and see some real action," which brings a swift and tough reply by Perconte about O'Keefe being a replacement. The two men relieve Hashey (played by Mark Huberman) and Garcia (played by Douglas Spain), but O'Keefe stays busy and checks the post machine gun, while humming a happy song, much to the annoyance of Perconte, who is trying to read a book, and who is still rankled by O'Keefe's desire to see action. Twice Perconte tells "O'Brien" (he gets his name wrong, with O'Keefe correcting him) to relax, but now Perconte really turns it on. He tells O'Keefe that he's like all of the replacements, desiring action and chomping at the bit to fight Germans, but that within a few days, they're lying there bleeding and with their guts hanging out, "screaming for a medic and begging for their godd---ed mothers." He continues that this is the best part of the war for him, because he's got "hot chow, hot showers, a warm bed ... I even got to wipe my a-- with real toilet paper today." Perconte finishes by telling the young man, who just left the U.S. two weeks before, "It's been two years since I seen home... This f---in' war!" 

The scene shifts to Winters and Speirs discussing plans in front of a wall map. Nixon steps into the room and says, "The president is dead." (Note: President Franklin Roosevelt died on the afternoon of April 12, 1945, from a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia. Because of time difference, it was nighttime in Germany.)

Nixon is still on a quest for Vat 69 whiskey, and he goes to Private Vest (played by Kiernan O'Brien), who takes care of the mail, but who is also something of a contact for other favors. Vest tells Nixon that now that they are in Germany, that brand of scotch whiskey will be hard to find, and that it will be very expensive if it is found. Nixon comes from a wealthy family, and he tells Vest to try to get him the whiskey, regardless of the cost. Vest gives Nixon a letter that has come for him, and Private Janovec (played by Tom Hardy) comes in and tells them that 300,000 Germans just surrendered, and that the unit is "moving out in one hour." (Note: The Germans who surrendered had been encircled in the German industrial area called "the Ruhr.") When Nixon reads his mail, he finds out that his wife is divorcing him and that "she's taking everything. She's taking the house, the kid, the dog ... It's not even her dog, it's MY DOG," he shouts as he throws his helmet. And no scotch to help him drown his sorrows (and anger). (In an earlier episode, Nixon talks about finding a "certain young lady," where they were stationed in England. He had been seeing her at that time, and I believe his wife may have gotten word of it. Understand, this information is not in the miniseries.)

The men get into trucks and DUKWs, commonly called "ducks," which were combined land and amphibious vehicles, that looked a good bit like landing craft. They are heading into Bavaria, in southern Germany, and as Webster says, "the birthplace of National Socialism" (Nazism). Captain Speirs tells them the Allied commanders feel the Nazis will try to form a resistance movement from Waffen SS troops in the mountains of Bavaria and Austria (the Alps). Perconte tells O'Keefe, "It looks like your gonna get your wish, O'Flannery (getting his name wrong again), those (Waffen SS) guys, they're f---in' crazy." O'Keefe simply replies, "It's O'Keefe." As the column moves along, the men sing the famous paratrooper song "Blood on the Risers" (also known as "Gory, Gory, What a Helluva Way to Die," as it is set to the music of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"). The men stop and takeover a German family's home for the night, before moving on again ("presumably" they took over other homes as accommodations for all the men.) Surrendered German troops are seen all along the highway (Autobahn), and Webster yells out to them, "You stupid fascist pigs... You ignorant, servile scum! What the f--- are we doing here?" A few seconds earlier, he told the other guys in the truck, "Dragging our a--es halfway around the world. Interrupting our lives. FOR WHAT?" As the column moves on, the men see two French soldiers bring three German soldiers out of a building, put them on their knees and shoot them in the back of their heads. O'Keefe is stunned and he turns to Perconte, who shrugs his shoulders.

The company comes upon a Nazi concentration camp near Landsberg am Lech in southern Bavaria, located about 40 miles west of Munich.(Note: The 101st Airborne Division did not actually discover the concentration camp, as is shown in the series, but rather the men of the 101st entered the camp the next day, after its discovery by the U.S. 10th Armored Division.) Landsberg is the city where Adolf Hitler served part of his sentence for the "Beer Hall Putsch" in the 1920s, and it was during that time that Hitler wrote his book "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle). If you've never seen "Band of Brothers," or at least this episode, it is something I hope you will see, because no written account can describe the horrendous conditions in the camp; you need to see it for yourselves. (Note: This was a subcamp of  the infamous Dachau concentration camp, not far from Munich. It was termed "Kaufering IV," as there were other subcamps of Dachau.) Major Winters has the men open the camp gate, and he and the men enter as prisoners come to even just touch the American troops. Liebgott translates for Winters, Nixon, Spiers and some of the men, as he talks with one of the inmates, who tells him that the guards fled in the morning, but that they first shot as many of the prisoners as they could, and that they also set fire to some of the barracks, with live prisoners still in them. The camp is full of Jews, their only "crime" being their ethnicity in Nazi eyes. He tells them there is a women's camp at the next train station. Many of the stunned paratroopers hold handkerchiefs over their noses to try to keep out the stench. Some of the guys enter the living areas and they find them packed with sick, starving men, too weak to stand up. (Earlier, in Landsberg itself, Nixon enters a house looking for whiskey, and he finds liquor, but not a type he wants. He sees a picture of an older German officer and he picks it up, looks at it and tosses it to the floor, breaking the glass. He also sees a picture of the officer's wife, who enters the room without a word, folds her arms and glares at Nixon, who looks at her, lays the picture down and walks to the door and leaves.)

Winters orders Nixon and Spiers to get food and water from the town to help the desperate camp inmates. They get cheese from one business and bread from a bake shop, the owner of which rants against the men (the baker is played by Hans-Georg Nenning). Webster tells the guy to shut up a couple of times, but when he continues yelling, Webster takes out his pistol, grabs the owner by the collar and shoves him onto a table; then, he puts the pistol right to the man's head and says, "Shut up you Nazi f--k!" The man says he's not a Nazi, which then brings Webster to say, "You fat f--king pr--k! ... How about a human being, are you one of those, or are you going to tell me you never smelled the f---ing stench?" Anyway, the men go back to the camp and start distributing the food and water. 

After a while Colonel Sink, the regimental commander, comes in and he has the regimental doctor (played by Corey Johnson) with him, who tells them that they have to stop giving the prisoners food, because it could actually kill them, and that the prisoners will have to be kept in the camp until proper accommodations can be found, where food and water can be given to them under medical supervision. The men are shocked to hear that they will have to lock the inmates up again, and translator Liebgott says "I can't tell them that, sir," but Winters tells him, "You have to, Joe." Liebgott tells the inmates in German that they have to remain in the camp for a short time. Later, back in Landsberg, Winters tells Nixon that 101st divisional headquarters passed along information that Allied troops have been discovering concentration camps all over the place, and that the Russians had found one ten times bigger than the one outside Landsberg, and that it had execution chambers and ovens to cremate the bodies. (Note: This is an obvious reference to the most infamous of all camps, Auschwitz.) THIS IS WHY WE FIGHT! It is bigger than any one person, or any group of people. HUMANITY. General Maxwell Taylor, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, orders the citizens of Landsberg to bury the dead at the camp the next day. We see German civilians dragging bodies and shoveling dirt. Nixon spots the woman who glared at him earlier at her house, but now he glares at her, until see looks away.

The scene returns to where the episode began, with the musicians nearing the end of Beethoven's song. Nixon tells some of the men that Hitler's dead, and Randleman asks, "Is the war over, sir?" Nixon says "No," and he tells them they are moving out in one hour, destination ... Berchtesgaden. (For those unaware, Berchtesgaden was where Hitler's villa in the Alps was located, with Salzburg only about 25 miles away.)

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

WORD HISTORY:

Nasty-This word has an uncertain history; thus, relatives are lacking. One thing is certain; that is, "nasty" did not come from political cartoonist Thomas Nast in the 1800s, as "nasty" had been around well before Nast was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States with his family as a child; however, his later political views were often expressed in harsh cartoons, especially about Catholics and Irish immigrants. For critics, this made his family name fit in perfectly with "nasty" (Note: He was originally Catholic himself, having been baptized as such upon his birth in Germany, but he converted to Protestantism when in his early 20s in the United States). His connection with "nasty" undoubtedly made the word more common in the U.S. So, why do we have the word at all? Well, there are theories, but no conclusive proof. As far as I could find, the word appears in the late 1300s with the meaning "dirty, foul," and with spellings like "naxty," "nasky," "nasti" and "nasty." Some believe English borrowed the word from one of the North Germanic languages, as Swedish has "naskig" (meaning "nasty, messy") and Danish has "nasket" (dirty, filthy), and also possible is Dutch (which is, like English, West Germanic) "nestich," which became "nestig" (dirty, from the underlying meaning, "dirty as a bird's nest"), and there is always the possibility that it's from an Old English form, which was then reinforced by Old Norse. Whatever the case, the 1600s saw the "dirty" meaning expanded to morality; thus, "obscene." The meaning expanded further to include "mean, bad tempered, annoying, unpleasant."

Band of Brothers: Episode 8, The Last Patrol

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.

 

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. 

 

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 7: The Breaking Point

 

https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2023/09/band-of-brothers-they-helped-defeat_19.html

 

 

Before the actual episode begins, a clip from an interview of the real Dick Winters is shown, and he tells how, at this stage of the war in February 1945, that he and many other men felt there was potential to survive the war, as the Battle of the Bulge had broken large-scale German offensive capabilities. He says he and the others wanted to be careful and to not take any unnecessary risks. So, keep this in mind about this episode and thereafter.

 

This episode begins in February 1945 in the city of Haguenau in Alsace with Private David Webster returning to the company after having been wounded in Holland. Webster provides the narration of the episode. The casualties suffered at Bastogne and Foy have left Easy Company's ranks thinned and the survivors are a mix of cynical, bitter and worn down. Webster isn't warmly greeted as he seems to have thought he would be, and the sour attitude leaves him feeling like a replacement. Some of the men resent Webster having been gone for about four months, while they took heavy casualties and suffered the loss of friends, now missing from the ranks. He goes to the company command post, where Sergeant Lipton is on a couch suffering with pneumonia, but he is still trying to help as much as he can. Lipton has Webster take a seat as he prepares to assign him to one of the platoons. Then in walks a young lieutenant named Henry Jones (played by Colin Hanks, the son of Tom Hanks), who had graduated from West Point on what had been D-Day, June 6, 1944. Company commander Speirs is expected shortly, and when he appears, Captain Winters enters and tells Speirs that the regimental commander, Colonel Sink, wants a special patrol to make a raid on a house across the river used as an outpost and observation post by the Germans. Sink wants prisoners for interrogation, and he then wants the house destroyed. 

Winters tells Speirs to pick 15 men for the patrol, including one who speaks German. He then specifically names Babe Heffron (played by Robin Laing), Earl McClung (played by Rocky Marshall) and Joseph Ramirez (played by Rene L. Moreno) to go on the patrol. Jones has been present for all of this, and he wants to volunteer, but Speirs wants men with experience, so he turns him down. Jones and Webster are assigned to the 2nd Platoon and they have to duck and dodge some German mortar fire on their way to the platoon. Malarkey briefs Jones on the situation, and Jones tells Malarkey about the patrol scheduled for later that night. While Jones and Malarkey talk, the men overhear about the patrol, and this prompts a couple of the guys to try to get information from Webster (he had been present in the company command post and heard everything). They now treat Webster better, and he eventually tells them about the 3 men specifically wanted for the patrol. None of the three is happy about it; so, here we have the contrast of three veteran men not wanting to go on the patrol, but one inexperienced newcomer wanting to volunteer, but who is rejected. Malarkey asks for the platoon's attention to tell the men about the patrol and about the three men already designated to participate, but they tell him they already know, because Webster told them (when they were trying to get the information from Webster, they promised not to tell that he gave them the information). While some of the men breathe a sigh of relief, it means little, as there are still 12 more men to be selected from the overall company. A call comes into Malarkey and he tells the men there are showers now available. On the way to the showers, an explosive round sounds down the street and word goes up that there is a casualty. It turns out to be Sergeant Bill Kiehn (actor un-credited for the role), who was killed.

The men go to the showers, and get fresh uniforms, but afterward, Malarkey is told he is to lead the patrol and the rest of his platoon (2nd) is also included (2nd now includes Webster), along with Shifty Powers of 3rd Platoon. Webster talks with Lieutenant Jones, since Jones has been left out of the patrol, and he tells him Malarkey is tired, and that he (Jones) should take his place. The young lieutenant goes over to Malarkey and talks with him, and Malarkey agrees, but it's not their place to decide such things, as that power lies with Speirs, the company commander, and Winters, the battalion commander. So, a little later Jones and Private Vest (played by Kiernan O'Brien), who also wants to go on the patrol (he has taken care of mail, some supplies and reports, so he wants a combat mission before the war ends) go to Winters and Speirs, and Winters initially turns down Jones, but accepts Vest. Then Jones tells the two officers that Malarkey is tired and agreed to step aside, to which Winters sarcastically replies, "That was nice of him." Winters then reconsiders and tells Jones he can go (Jones' participation will be as an observer, not as the leader of the patrol). Winters and Speirs discuss replacing Malarkey to lead the patrol, as they realize he has been in every major engagement since dropping into Normandy on D-Day, and he has seen his closest friends killed or severely wounded in that time. We also see that Frank Perconte has returned, after being wounded in the butt during the fighting at Foy.

The participants meet with Winters, who tells them Sergeant Martin will lead the patrol. The plan for the mission is discussed and certain men are chosen by Martin to actually go with him to try to grab Germans as prisoners. The patrol must cross the Moder River in some rubber boats to the German held side, take some prisoners, place some time-delay demolition charges in the house used by the Germans as an outpost, and then get back in the boats and return to the American held side. Others from the company will provide fire power to cover the returning men and prisoners. Webster gets Liebgott out of having to be a direct part of the patrol, as Liebgott and Webster both speak German, and Webster says he can be the translator, which leaves Liebgott in the safer position of helping to provide covering fire.

The men get into the boats, but as they begin to cross the river, the last boat capsizes; so, the other boats go on to the other side of the river (the men in the capsized boat make it back safely to the American side). The men fire a rifle grenade into the target house, and Private Eugene Jackson (played by Andrew Lee Potts) throws a grenade in, but he charges inside too quickly, and the shrapnel from his own grenade hits him in the head and neck. The rest of the men charge in and take three prisoners, one of whom is wounded. The men get the prisoners and Jackson out, and Webster plants the demolition charge. There's a lot of firing, the men get to the boats, signal by blowing a whistle for covering fire, and they get back to the American side, but they have to leave the wounded German over on the river bank. 

The men concentrate on helping Jackson, and Martin gets Doc Roe, but Jackson dies. In the morning, Sergeant Martin reports to Winters about Jackson's death, and Winters tells him that it wasn't Martin's fault. Regimental commander Colonel Sink tells Winters that he wants another patrol that night and Winters tells Speirs. Sink shows up and tells Winters, Nixon and Speirs what a great job the men did on the patrol. Sink leaves and Speirs tells Winters that he'll brief the men about the second patrol, but Winters says that he'll do it. They go to the men and Winters lays out the plan, which is the same as the first mission, but further into that part of the town, which makes it more dangerous. He then tells the men to get a good nights sleep, and to report to him in the morning that they had again crossed the river, but that they had been unsuccessful at getting more prisoners. He then tells them they will be moving off of the front line. The men are naturally happy, and we hear that a false report was filed about the mission, but that Sink and other regimental officers never learned what really had happened. 

Winters, Nixon, Speirs and Lieutenant Jones go inside, and Lieutenant Welsh returns from the hospital, and where we see and hear Carwood Lipton's official battlefield commission to lieutenant. Then Winters tells Jones that he is being promoted to first lieutenant and he gives him written orders from the regimental headquarters that he is to join the regiment's staff. When Winters is outside, his friend Nixon gives Winters the news that Winters has been promoted to major. They and the men get into trucks and jeeps to withdraw from the front line.

 

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

WORD HISTORY:

Grenade-This word is related to "grain" and to "gravy," Latin-derived words borrowed by English from French, and to "corn" (the form meaning maize), a word from the Germanic roots of English. "Grenade" goes back to Indo European "ger," which had the notion, "to wear down;" thus also, "to grow older, to mature." This produced Indo European "gerhanom," which meant, "grain;" that is, "the matured part of a plant." This gave Latin "granum," also meaning, "grain, seed," and this spawned the Latin adjective "granatus," meaning "of, about or relating to having grains;" that is, "seeds," and this produced the noun "granatum," which was used with "pomum," a form from Latin "pome," meaning "apple or fruit," which gave Latin "pomum granatum," which meant "pomegranate," literally, "apple of many seeds or grains." This was taken by Latin-based Old French as "pomegrenate," with the word often shortened to its second part in both Latin and French. While types of hurled weapons dates well back in history, as the use of gunpowder became common, its use in bombs also developed to cause the explosion of thrown weapons that caused fragments to violently disperse to kill or wound personnel. The resemblance to pomegranates, which are filled with seeds, fit perfectly for the weapon; thus, "grenade." English took the word from French in the late 1500s, and the word also came to be applied to similar weapons that could be launched from rifles or from grenade launchers. English cousin German also borrowed the word, that borrowing was from Italian "granata," and the German form, "Granate," is used as the general word for "(artillery) shell," besides for the thrown weapon.

Band of Brothers: They Helped Defeat Hitler (Episode 7: The Breaking Point)

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.

 

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.   

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 6: Bastogne:

https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2023/09/band-of-brothers-they-helped-defeat_12.html

 

 

This episode opens with the men of Easy Company advancing through the forest outside of the village of Foy (rhymes with 'toy' in English, but is pronounced as if "fwah" in French, and the company is stationed in the French speaking part of Belgium, with Belgium having three official languages: Dutch, French and German). This forested area is called "Bois Jacques" (Jack's Wood or Forest), and Sergeant Lipton's narration tells us that the company cleared the forest of any German troops, but that the men had not met much resistance. For much of the remainder of the episode, the company's men will be in defensive positions just outside Foy, until they are told to capture Foy itself. (Note: Foy and a few other villages are all part of the Bastogne area, and Bastogne is only about 2 miles away.)

 

Hoobler (played by Peter McCabe) shoots a German Waffen SS soldier riding a horse. When Hoobler gets to the man, he finds the man has a Luger on him. Hoobler has long wanted a Luger, and now he has it. Hoobler shows off the gun to his Easy Company buddies and he puts it into his pocket, but a little while later, the gun goes off, with the bullet tearing open an artery in Hoobler's leg. The men all have on any extra clothing they've got to get them through the cold weather, and Hoobler's clothing prevents the guys from seeing how bad his wound is. The men try taking care of him and getting him to an aid station, but Hoobler dies from loss of blood.

 

One of the continuing threads of this episode is about Lieutenant Norman Dike (played by Peter O'Meara), the then commander of Easy Company, who had replaced Lieutenant Frederick Heyliger when Heyliger was accidentally shot by a sentry (Heyliger had been the replacement for Captain Winters when Winters was moved up to 2nd Battalion Headquarters). The series has Dike played as an officer who has connections to a higher level officer in the 101st Airborne Division, and that he was given command of Easy Company to gain some combat experience for his resumé, before his next military career advancement. (Note: The men were not really connected to Dike, who seems to have generally kept a distance from the men.) Throughout much of the episode, we hear the men talk about Dike being absent for long unexplained periods of time, and the men call him "Foxhole Norman," as that's where he pretty much stays when he is around. For the most part, everyone just tolerates Dike, as they're all stuck in defensive positions in and around Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge; however, once the Germans are stopped, then comes the shift to offensive operations by the Americans to drive the Germans back from any ground they had taken. Now the men worry about any inexperience or incompetence in Dike and how it could get them killed. Captain Richard Winters and his friend Captain Lewis Nixon talk about Lieutenant Dike on a couple of occasions, and Nixon, who sort of adds some blunt, non emotional points to Winters at times, tells Winters, "We all know who you'd like to have running Easy (Company), but the problem is, it's not your job anymore, Dick." More on this shortly ...    

 

We see Sergeant Lipton and Lieutenant Compton often talking with the men, and the men have strong and comfortable ties to both Lipton and Compton.

 

The Germans unleash periodic artillery barrages on Easy Company, and the ferocious bombardments take a toll: Muck and Penkala are killed by a direct hit on their foxhole by a German artillery shell. Part of one of Joe Toye's legs is blown off and when Guarnere is trying to drag Toye to safety, another artillery round explodes nearby, and Buck Compton, who is coming to help them, is thrown back by the explosion, and Guarnere loses a leg. Compton gets to his feet, but his struggles with "shell shock" hit the "breaking point" (of the episode title) when he sees Toye and Guarnere lying there on the ground badly wounded, and he removes his helmet and drops it to the ground. Compton is pulled from the front line and sent for care elsewhere. Don Malarkey is under lots of stress, as Penkala and Muck were two of his best friends, but when offered a chance to work with Captain Winters for a couple of days to get a break, he turns the offer down and chooses to stay with the others. Lipton and George Luz are in a foxhole as one of the strong artillery barrages ends, and a dud German artillery shell lands in the dirt at the edge of their foxhole. Luz takes out a cigarette and lights it, but Lipton reaches over, takes it and starts puffing away. Luz says, "I thought you didn't smoke," and Lipton replies, "I don't."

 

In what is one of those lighter scenes, even though the subject is serious, Private Kenneth Webb (played by Jordan Frieda) hears from a couple of the guys about Lieutenant Speirs (played by Matthew Settle) having possibly shot one of his own men, and about Speirs giving 20 to 30 German prisoners cigarettes, just before he turned his Thompson sub-machine gun on them. So, who walks up to the foxhole just as the stories end? Speirs! The guys don't say anything, but their faces show, "I hope he didn't hear any of that!" Speirs asks what the men are doing and tells them how they should improve their foxhole. With the stories about him, the men are all uneasy around Speirs, and as he walks away, he turns and asks them if they want a cigarette. The men just look at him and nobody says anything, so Speirs specifically then asks Webb, who doesn't speak, but who just shakes his head no, his helmet moving from side to side. It's a pretty funny scene.

 

The time has come for the capture of Foy, and the day before, Sergeant Lipton meets with Winters and tells him how he is confident the men are ready, but that he doesn't have confidence in Lieutenant Dike to lead the company into battle. He tells Winters that Dike "is an empty uniform," and Winters listens, but because Dike has a friend in the upper levels of the 101st Airborne, he can't do anything about Dike, and Lipton knows that too. The next day, we see Winters giving final instructions to Dike, ending with, "Get it done!" The attack proceeds across a field in front of Foy, and there are storage huts and such scattered around, as the area is rural. All is going well until Dike orders the advance to halt. Many of the men are out in the open, and such a pause allows the Germans to zero in on the men with their artillery, and they do! Dike is confused, and he has no plan on how to advance. Winters is watching, as is Colonel Sink, and the casualties mount, including Frank Perconte, who is wounded in his backside, and Private Webb is killed. Winters starts to go out to the men to lead them himself, but Sink orders him back, so Winters calls on Lieutenant Speirs to go in and lead the attack. Speirs dashes into action, has the men focus on a building with a sniper, which they do, eliminating the sniper, and Speirs charges forward with the men following him, and with the Germans now abandoning vehicles to flee. Many Germans surrender and the men begin to celebrate the victory, but they are premature, as another German sniper shoots and kills some of the men before sharpshooter Shifty Powers (played by Peter Youngblood Hills) takes him out with one shot. The battle is over, but the ranks have been thinned.

 

That night, the men are entertained by the choir at a convent, as they finally get to be inside, instead of out in the cold. Lipton narrates again, telling us all the casualties the company suffered (the company had 145 men when they first arrived in Belgium, and as they spend the evening in Foy, they are down to 63.) In condensed form, Speirs figures that Lipton wants to ask him about the stories he has heard about him (Speirs), but Lipton tells him that because Speirs has never denied the stories, the stories continue, which brings Speirs to tell him that having such a fearsome reputation is not necessarily a bad thing. In a great moment, Lipton tells Speirs that the men aren't worried about the stories, they are just happy to have a good commander again. Speirs then tells Lipton that it's his understanding that since Winters moved up to the battalion headquarters, Easy Company has always had a good leader and a man who held the men together in tough circumstances. He tells Lipton, that man is Lipton, and he tells him that Winters has put in for a battlefield commission for Lipton, and it will be official in a couple of days. Lipton will be a lieutenant. 

 

The company does not get the time off they had thought they would get; rather, they are off to Hagenau in Alsace to help counter a secondary German offensive (compared to Hitler's Ardennes attack) called "Northwind" (German: Nordwind).                   

 

 

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

WORD HISTORY:

Boot-The spelling "boot" has various meanings when used as a noun or as a verb, and these forms are not all related (I intend to do other meanings too). First, the noun for "a foot covering, the top of which goes above the ankle," with the singular certainly used, but I'd say a bit more common in the plural, "boots." The origin of the form with this meaning is shaky, although it "seems" to go back to Indo European "bhud/bhut," "seemingly" with the notion of "to beat or strike," which then gave Old Germanic "buttaz," which adjectivally meant "short, blunt," and the noun form meant "blunt end, rounded end" (the idea being, "something that is shortened or blunted as a result of striking it"). This gave Frankish, a Germanic dialect/language, "butt," meaning "blunt," with the Frankish verb form "buttan" meaning "to strike or hit." Forms of these words were absorbed by Old French as "bot," meaning "a hit, a strike/striking," and "bote," meaning "shoe that covers the foot and lower part of the leg," perhaps from its appearance of being blunted or shortened (not extending the length of the leg?). This was borrowed by English in the first part of the 1300s meaning, "shoe extending to the lower leg for horsemen," but the meaning then expanded to all such "high shoes." "Boot" is related, through Germanic, to "buttock" and "butt" (thick end piece), both from the Germanic roots of English, and it is also related to French "butte" (mound or small hill), which also is from Germanic Frankish. None of the other Germanic languages have forms of "boot" in the English sense, rather they have words that fit with the original Germanic meaning "blunt." "Boot" meaning "compartment for stowing things" (seemingly a shortening of "boot locker") and in British English meaning what Americans call "the trunk of a car,"^ is from the same sources of "boot, the high shoe." It came from a few hundred years ago and the use of a chest by a coachman to both store his boots, and to then provide a seat for himself on the closed chest. Later, such storage compartments were built into a coach, and later still, they were included in motor vehicle designs, and the term carried over to such in British English.

 

^ I'm never quite sure about the terms used in Canada, but my "guess" is, they may well use "trunk." Unlike the U.S., Canada has maintained an official connection to the British throne; and thus, the British monarch is also the king or queen of Canada.    

Band of Brothers: They Helped Defeat Hitler (Episode 6: Bastogne)

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.

 ____________________________________

 

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. 

 

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 5: Crossroads

 

https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2023/09/band-of-brothers-they-helped-defeat.html?zx=bc3e5930eb4402e 

 

 

(Note: The terrain of the Ardennes was heavily forested and often rough. Vehicles, including tanks, had few options to move, except on roads, which weren't all that plentiful in the region, and those that existed tended to be narrow; plus, it was winter, and it often snowed. In 1940, German forces broke through relatively sparse French forces in this region and moved on to cut off Allied forces and trap them at Dunkirk. The German idea in late 1944 was similar, and indeed, the American forces were stretched, and many troops had little or no combat experience. Hitler had managed to scrape together a formidable force to attack the Americans in this area, but while the Germans achieved some successes, they met tough opposition from the Americans, and the German supply situation was poor, as in a certain way, they had too many troops and vehicles for such a limited number of roads. While the German Tiger tanks were fearsome weapons, they were also big and heavy; and thus, they weren't ideal for navigating the poor road system in the Ardennes. In 1940, the German armored force that helped achieve a breakthrough was done with much lighter tanks.)   

This episode opens with medic Doc Roe wandering through the forest and we eventually see him approaching Captain Winters, who has to break thick ice off of some water in order to try and shave. Winters actually takes a young German soldier prisoner, as the young man wanders inside the American line to "empty himself of yesterday's rations" (the 'line,' such as it is a line, is irregular, with neither side being totally sure where the enemy is, as they are dug in and snow had fallen. General McAuliffe (played by William Armstrong), the acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division, stops to hear from 2nd Battalion about the true situation. Robert Strayer (played by Phil McKee), the battalion commander, and Captain Nixon tell him about gaps in the line, low supplies of food and ammunition, and lack of proper winter clothing. McAuliffe, a no nonsense guy, tells them they have to close the line somehow and hold on until the weather improves, so that supplies can be airdropped to the forces in Bastogne. 

 

The Germans periodically put the Americans under artillery fire, with wood splinters providing another dangerous aspect to these bombardments, as when the shells explode, they destroy parts of the many trees, sending splinters both large and small flying about to cause painful injuries or even death. During various parts of this episode, we see some of the things that happen to the men, who are treated by Doc Roe and Ralph Spina (played by Tony Devlin), Easy Company's medics team: Joe Toye has trench foot, and when he removed his boots to dry his feet and change socks, the boots were destroyed by one of the artillery shells, but Doc Roe gets Toye another pair of boots; Bill Guarnere really does have gonorrhea; Buck Compton continues to struggle with his mental health, as the stresses of the last six months have taken a toll; "Smokey" Gordon (played by Ben Caplan) is seriously wounded by a bullet that enters one shoulder and exits through the other, leaving him paralyzed (this was the end of the war for Gordon and he spent a lot of time in hospitals, and he gradually overcame the paralysis); Alex Penkala (played by Tim Matthews) was lightly wounded, but bandaged up by Doc Roe, Harry Welsh (played by Rick Warden), in a foolish move, starts a small campfire, which Winters tells him is a bad idea, but Welsh says, "Just for a couple of minutes ... we're in a dell" (dell=small hollow), but the fire draws the attention of German artillery and mortars and shells begin landing all around, with Welsh being wounded in the thigh (he spent time in the hospital, before returning to the unit a little later in the war); Skinny Sisk is wounded in the leg with some wood splinters caused by one of the exploding shells, and he is taken to the medical facility in the interior of Bastogne, where he is attended by two nurses, one of whom gives him a glass of whiskey for the pain, and she strokes his head, bringing Sisk to tell Doc Roe, "I'm in heaven Doc!"; Private John Julian (played by Marc Ryan-Jordan) is shot and killed while on a patrol with some other men from the company, with "Babe" Heffron (played by Robin Laing) coming in to try to save his close friend Julian, but he couldn't get to him, as each time he tried, the German fire would intensify. Julian's death sends Heffron's emotions reeling, as Heffron and Julian had promised one another that if one was killed, the survivor would take the killed man's belongings to his mother. 

 

Throughout the first half of the episode, Doc Roe keeps scrounging medical supplies from any of the men, because he is so short of many things. In a trip into the heart of Bastogne, he sees a nurse named Renee (played by Lucie Jeanne), and he is able to get a box of supplies from her. On another trip into town, Doc tries to help Renee and another nurse, Anna (played by Rebecca Okot), save a wounded soldier's life, but the man dies. Doc Roe is visibly angry and Renee sheds some tears. Physical tiredness is now complicated by frustration and anger.

 

Colonel Sink (played by Dale Dye), the regimental commander, comes to Easy Company and tells the men of a German demand for surrender and General McAuliffe's one word answer to the Germans of "Nuts!" The men laugh and Dye leaves, with McAuliffe's message having inspired the men to continue to resist. (Note: McAuliffe's reply to the German surrender demand has gone down in history as one of the great stories of World War Two and the 101st Airborne's tenacious defense of Bastogne is one of the most famous military achievements in American history.) 

 

After days of snow and fog, the skies clear and American aircraft drop supplies into Bastogne. Doc Roe struggles with the stresses of killed and wounded men and Captain Winters sends Roe into Bastogne for what he thinks will be a brief rest and some hot food. Instead, the Luftwaffe bombs the town and Roe sees the building used as a medical facility get hit. When he goes in, he sees Renee dead in the rubble. He goes back to Easy Company's perimeter around the outskirts of the town. He finds Heffron in a foxhole and for the first time, Doc calls Heffron by his nickname, Babe, and this cheers the young man (up to this point, Doc Roe typically calls the men by their last names, although he would sometimes call Heffron by his proper first name, Edward, until finally one day, a stressed Heffron snaps at Roe and tells him to stop calling him Edward, "only the goddamn nuns call me Edward." 

 

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

WORD HISTORY:

Nurse-This word is related to "nourish," "nurture" and "nutrition," all Latin-derived words borrowed by English from French, and to "nutrient," another Latin word borrowed directly from that language. "Nurse" goes back to Indo European "(s)neu," which meant "to flow," and then an extended form "(s)neutri," which meant "a wet nurse, a woman who suckles a child." This gave Latin the verb "nutrire," which meant "to nurse a child, to feed, to foster," and this produced the Latin noun "nutrix," "a wet nurse," which produced the adjective "nutricius," meaning "relating to suckling:" thus also, "relating to giving nourishment," which then gave Latin the noun "nutricia," meaning "a nurse, one who helps in raising a child," and this passed to Old French as "norrice," meaning "a wet nurse, a nanny," and English borrowed the word circa 1200 with all sorts of spellings, including: "norice," "nurrice," "nurice," "noryse," and meaning "a wet nurse, a nanny, a foster mother." The modern form of the word began around 1400, but other spellings remained for a time. The meaning of "wet nurse" expanded to the more general, "woman who helps in the upbringing of children" in the early 1500s. The second half of the 1500s saw the word applied to "one who provides care for sick, elderly or injured people," and the idea of "taking care of children" also began to be applied to "tending to young plants." The verb form started as "norishen" and "nurshen" and meant "to suckle a child," but it also could mean "to help raise a child or children," and following the noun, the verb also added the meaning "to care for the sick or infirm."                  .       

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.

 ____________________________________

 

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."