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 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 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."   

Band of Brothers: They Helped Defeat Hitler (Episode 4: Replacements)

 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> Captain Herbert Sobel 

Here is the link to the previous article on Episode 3 Carentan:

 

https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2023/08/band-of-brothers-they-helped-defeat_22.html 

 

Part (Episode) 4: Replacements 

 

This part opens with Easy Company back in England as the men drink beer, play darts and sit around talking. The stress of war has subsided at this time. Due to the company's previous casualties, replacements have been added. Private James Miller (played by James McAvoy), Private Antonio Garcia (played by Douglas Spain) and Private Lester Hashey (played by Mark Huberman) are all replacements in Bull Randleman's squad and the three are sitting together at a table when Sergeant Bill Guarnere comes over to talk with them a bit, as Randleman looks on from a few feet away. Guarnere tells the guys to always pay attention to Randleman, because he's the smartest man in the company. Private Roy Cobb (played by Craig Heaney) comes over to the replacements and asks Miller what he has pinned to his uniform. When Miller replies that it's a regimental citation badge for what the 506th Regiment did in Normandy, Cobb sarcastically tells Miller that he (Miller) didn't fight in Normandy. Miller doesn't know what to do, but he removes the badge and puts it on the table, then rises and walks away. Randleman now comes over to the table and reminds Cobb that he didn't fight in Normandy either (Cobb was wounded on the plane before he could jump into Normandy). Sergeant Lipton announces that the company is moving out and the men now know the "fun" is over. The men hear (now Captain) Winters explain the operation they will be participating in has them jumping into Holland and then taking and holding the city of Eindhoven, until British armored units can arrive. The hope is that the overall operation will get Allied forces into Germany and help to end the war by Christmas. The parachute drop will be in daylight, but the men are told that military intelligence believes most of the German forces in Holland are old men and kids, so they aren't expecting much opposition.            

As the men are getting ready to get into the transports to fly to Holland, the company's former commanding office, Captain Sobel, pulls up in a jeep followed by a truck. We learn he is now the regimental supply officer. Popeye Wynn gets out of the jeep, and he tells Randleman that he busted out of the hospital, because he didn't want to be transferred to another unit. To refresh your memory, Popeye got shot in the butt on D-Day; so, when asked if he can make the jump assigned to Easy Company, Popeye says, "Yes, I just can't sit." He's also asked if Sobel knew he left the hospital without permission to return to his unit, and he says that Sobel knew, but "maybe he'll court martial me later." Further, the motorcycle taken and ridden by Malarkey and More is in the truck, and Sobel calls Malarkey over and asks him where he found the motorcycle, but Malarkey plays dumb, and Sobel tells him the motorcycle is United States Army property. 

The men jump into Holland and everything seems fine, as there is no flak fire nor German infantry waiting for them, and they are able to get formed up into the proper platoons. Not long thereafter, they move into Eindhoven unopposed, where they are greeted as liberators by the Dutch. A member of the Dutch resistance, John van Kooijk (played by Hugo Metsers), offers to help Winters in any way he can, but when Winters sees that the man has kids giving him information on the British tanks being near, Winters is skeptical. Within a short time; however, here come the British tanks, and Winters now is much friendlier to van Kooijk. Meanwhile, the Dutch are busy rounding up collaborators, and we see the women collaborators having their heads shaved and sometimes swastikas are painted on their foreheads. 

 

Nightfall comes and three Easy Company men, Corporal Donald Hoobler, Private David Webster (played by Eion Bailey) and Private Robert van Klinken (played by Ezra Godden) approach a Dutch farm house. The basement doors open and a man comes out, and the man tells them it is an air raid shelter and that he and his family have been there because of all of the aircraft flying over. The Dutchman gives the men some food, and out of the shelter comes his little son. In a scene that will warm your heart, Webster goes to the boy and gives him a chocolate bar, which his father opens for him. The boy takes a bite and his face lights up. The boy's father says, "He's never tasted chocolate before." In the morning, the company sets out for the city of Nuenen, supported by some British tanks. As the company moves along the road, one of the women collaborators is standing with her baby along the side of the road. One of the paratroopers hands her some food (regardless of what she has done, you don't hurt the child). 

 

The company stops just outside the town and Lieutenant Robert Brewer (played by Brandon Firla) walks out a short distance from the main body of troops. Randleman calls out to him, but a sniper's bullet hits him in the neck and he falls to the ground. A German armored personnel carrier (also called armored half tracks, and the Germans called them Schützenpanzerwagen or SPW) speeds by on the column's left, but one of the British tanks fires and hits it, and it bursts into flames. Randleman runs to help Brewer and a medic also runs to his assistance, but he is shot in the thigh. The men get into town, and at first, the Germans are not to be seen, but they have a Tiger tank to the far side of a building, which puts it out of easy sight of the paratroopers and British tankers, and additionally, they have covered the tank in hay for camouflage. Randleman goes out in front and signals to Sergeant Martin about the Tiger tank. Martin goes to the lead British tank and tells the tank commander about the Tiger tank being just out of his view. Martin suggests that the British fire a couple of rounds into the building behind which the German tank is hidden, but the tank commander says he has orders not to cause undue property destruction. Martin is angry, but he gets down from the tank. Within a few seconds, the British tanks move up, and we see the German Tiger tank swing its turret around in readiness to fire. BOOM! The shell hits one of the British tanks and destroys it. The German tank comes out from hiding and this brings Randleman to yell for his men to fall back. (Note: The German Tiger I was a nasty opponent, and it could destroy any armored vehicle the Allies had. The good news is, they were expensive and complicated to make, and then to maintain; thus, the Germans didn't make them in huge numbers. The Tiger tank had a truly frightening reputation among Allied soldiers, and I recall reading that some Allied commanders were perplexed at times, as they said after the war, the tank's reputation was so fearsome, some Allied soldiers called just about every German tank a Tiger, and this created a problem, as it caused panic among the soldiers.) A German assault gun also appears and hits another of the British tanks, which bursts into flames, but keeps moving. Everywhere the paratroopers begin to fall back, and the Germans have a machine gun positioned atop a building which starts firing down on the men. Van Klinken is hit by gun fire and killed. Private Miller is killed by a shell as he fires on the enemy from a ditch. The Americans use a rifle grenade to take out the machine gun, but the Germans now have lots of infantry following up, and the American position becomes totally untenable for the paratroopers. In the heavy fighting, Bull Randleman is cut off from the rest of the company and he is wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel. He is able to crawl to safety for the time being. 

 

Buck Compton is wounded and the men take a door off of one of the houses to carry him to safety. The Americans fall back to some trucks waiting for them. Throughout the series, tense and serious situations are still used to produce a little chuckle, and such happens as Lewis Nixon begins talking with Winters, when a bullet hits his helmet, knocking him to the ground. Winters rushes over, and Nixon says, "I'm all right, I'm all right ... Am I all right?" Winters says, "Yeah, do you feel all right?" And Nixon says, "Yeah, quit looking at me like that." The paratroopers move out. 

 

Randleman hides in a barn and he hears various German forces passing. The farm owner comes into the barn and Randleman grabs him, but the Dutch farmer tries to get the shrapnel out of Randleman's left shoulder, with Randleman finally giving the man his knife to help dig it out. The man stuffs a cloth inside Randleman's uniform to cover the wound. The man's wife also comes into the barn and they hide with Randleman as German soldiers are checking barns and houses for any Americans. Four Germans enter the barn, but they look around briefly and three leave, with one stopping to take a leak. When he is leaving, he sees the bloody cloth that had been covering Bull's wound, but which had fallen out. Aircraft can be heard and the soldier starts to leave, but then he hears a small noise and he checks further. With the aircraft now almost directly overhead, Randleman tries to sneak up on the German, but the German turns and tries to fire, but his rifle jams. It becomes a battle of bayonets, and Randleman's size and strength prevail (hey, he's not called 'Bull' for nuthin'). When daylight comes, Randleman sees no Germans, so he leaves the barn. He finds Private Miller's body and seconds later a scout jeep pulls up and Randleman gets in.

 

Meanwhile, back with the rest of the men when it's still dark, Randleman's absence is on their minds and Hoobler decides he wants to go find Bull. At first, Guarnere says he'll go, but Hashey, Garcia and Webster tell Guarnere they'll go. Cobb says, "I'm not going back up there," but we then see him with the others in their search for Randleman. When it's daylight, the men hear a vehicle approaching and they hit the ground, but it's the jeep with Randleman in it. They return to the company where Guarnere sees Bull and says, "I don't know whether to slap you, kiss you or salute you ..." (He then points over to the men who went to find Bull) "These guys wanted to go on a suicide run to drag your ass back." Bull says, "Is that right? ... Never did like this company none." 

 

The company moves out again, and Nixon tells Winters they're likely going to face more German tanks, and Winters answers, "Well, as long as they're only manned by old men and kids" (a sarcastic remark regarding the military intelligence assessment prior to their jump into Holland). Then Winters says, "I don't like retreating," but Nixon answers, "First time for everything." When Winters asks Nixon how the other divisions further north are doing, Nixon answers, "We're going to have to find another way into Germany."         

 

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

WORD HISTORY:

Tenable-This word is related to quite a number of words, including: "distend" and "tense" (stretched tightly, including figuratively), Latin-derived words borrowed by English from Latin, to "extend" and "tenacity" both Latin-derived words borrowed by English from French ("extend" is more precisely from the French spoken by the descendants of the Normans in England), to "tendon," a word borrowed from Latin, which had it from Greek, and it is distantly related to "thin," a word from the Germanic roots of English. "Tenable" goes back to the Indo European root "ten," which had the idea of "to stretch." This gave Latin the verb "tenere," which meant "to keep, to hold, to possess, to grasp, to maintain," and this gave Vulgar Latin "tenire," meaning "to hold, to possess," which passed into Old French as "tenir," with the same meaning. This produced the French adjective "tenable," meaning "capable of keeping or maintaining," and militarily, "capable of being defended or held against an enemy." English borrowed the word in the 1570s. My own experience in American usage is, we don't often read or hear "tenable,"  but we do hear or read the opposite form, "untenable" ('incapable of being defended'), somewhat more often, but the usage is by far in reference to "ideas and proposals" nowadays.         

Band of Brothers, They Helped Defeat Hitler (Episode 3 Carentan)

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.

 

Just a little comment and information here about Private John Hall, who was killed on D-Day, while helping some of the Easy Company men destroy a German 105mm artillery battery that was shelling American troops on Utah Beach (covered in previous segment on Episodes 1 & 2). Historian Stephen Ambrose didn't supply a lot of information on this young man in the book "Band of Brothers;" in fact, Ambrose mentions him in a couple of sentences of one paragraph of the book, ending with Winters ordering an attack on one of the German artillery positions, and that "Hall led the way and got killed." (In fairness, there may not have been much more Ambrose could have found out from the survivors of Easy Company when he interviewed them for his 1992 book, as Hall was not from their unit.) The miniseries gives Hall an expanded role, and he is called "a New Yorker," but his name was actually "John D. Halls" (with an 's'), and he was from Colorado. Note also, incredibly there was another paratrooper John D. Hall (no 's') who died when the transport he was on went down on the night of the jump into Normandy. In the series, Halls and Winters are alone, without any idea of where they are in Normandy. The young man is naturally nervous, but Winters talks with him about other things to help settle him down. Just prior to the ambush on the German troops and wagon, Winters gives Halls some responsibility when he tells Guarnere, "You and Hall up front," which brings Guarnere's retort, "Who the hell's Hall?" Later, when Winters is assigning tasks to his men for the attack on the German artillery battery, Halls obviously wants to take part, but he is left out, as he is not part of Easy Company, but later, he shows up at the fighting, and when Winters says he needs TNT, Halls says, "I have TNT, sir," which brings Winters to say, "Good job, Private!" We see throughout the miniseries that Winters tries to encourage the men, not humiliate them. The miniseries shows Halls being killed by stepping on a mine, with an obviously pained Lieutenant Winters stopping briefly when he sees Halls' body. Near the end of the episode, in a brief scene, a visibly affected Lieutenant Winters tells his friend Lewis Nixon about Halls being killed. Nixon tries to take his friend's mind off of Halls' death by talking about a German map with their artillery locations that was captured by Winters in the fighting at the German artillery battery, but it doesn't change Winters' solemn mood. (While the scenes with Halls seem to have been largely written for the script, the fact is, that young man died that day in the service of his country, age 22. He undoubtedly had parents and other family members who mourned his loss. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star for his actions that day. At least the series gave him a little recognition. He is buried at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.)

       

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> Captain Herbert Sobel 

 

This is the link to the first segment I did covering Parts 1 ("Currahee")  & 2 ("Day of Days"): 

 

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

 

Part Three "Carentan"- June 8, 1944- This part opens with a paratrooper, helmet in hand, staring up at the sky. Three other Easy Company men, led by Sergeant Floyd Talbert (played by Matthew Leitch), see him, and Talbert calls out "Blithe .... Hey Blithe." The soldier finally turns, puts on his helmet as he walks over to the three men, telling them, "You're the first familiar faces I've seen." When the four men get into town, where the 2nd battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment has its headquarters, Liebgott shows them a Nazi flag he has taken, and Floyd "Tab" Talbert pulls out a German army camouflage poncho. Private Albert Blithe (played by Marc Warren) goes and joins some other men, including Frank Perconte, who pulls up one of his sleeves to reveal some wrist watches he's taken from dead German soldiers. Even though we haven't seen Blithe for very long, he seems to be disconnected from the war. Lieutenant Harry Welsh (played by Rick Warden), commander of the 1st Platoon of Easy Company, calls the men together to tell them they are to take the town of Carentan, a town of about 4000 inhabitants in those days. 

 

The men set off, but after losing contact with the company ahead of them, Corporal Hoobler (played by Peter McCabe) and Private Blithe are sent ahead to make contact with the other company, which they do, and Blithe is then sent back to inform Easy Company. On his way back, Blithe turns and sees a German soldier facing him by a tree, but Lieutenant Winters comes out of the bushes and tells him the man is dead. Lewis Nixon is with Winters and he tells them the German is a Fallschirmjäger, the word for paratrooper in German. The dead soldier has an edelweiss in his lapel (Edelweiss is a flowering plant from the Alps), and Nixon explains that the soldier must have climbed up in the Alps to get it, and it means he's a true soldier. 

 

By morning, the men are on the edge of Carentan and begin to advance, but they face German machine gun fire from German paratroopers defending the town, causing the American paratroopers to take cover in the ditches on each side of the road leading into the town. Winters has to get them moving and the men enter the town to undertake house-to-house fighting, during which time the Germans use mortar and artillery fire to make things even more harrowing. Shifty Powers kills a German sniper who had already killed or wounded a couple of Americans. (Note: Historically, his comrades in Easy Company said "Shifty" was an excellent shot with a rifle.) Liebgott and Private Tipper (played by Bart Ruspoli) check the interior of a house, and as Tipper is leaving, a German mortar round lands nearby. When Tipper emerges outside the house, we can see how badly wounded he is, as blood is dripping from his face, and one eye is essentially gone (historically, Tipper lost his right eye in the battle, but the series shows it as the left eye), his legs are wounded and one shoe is smoking from the blast. In a moving scene, Liebgott has Tipper sit down and he holds him, as well as trying to comfort him (this was the end of the war for Tipper, and he spent the rest of the war in hospitals). 

 

During heavy fighting, we see Chaplain (Father) John Maloney (played by Doug Cockle) going to wounded and dead men without regard to the danger. German resistance lessens and the remaining German troops try to withdraw through swampy land around much of the outside of the town, but Easy Company machine gunners quickly deploy to devastate the fleeing Germans, who are out in the open. (Note: The Germans had expected the Allied invasion that summer of 1944, and they flooded many areas to make the landing of paratroopers and glider troops more difficult, as part of their defensive measures.) The U.S. 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (also part of the 101st Airborne Division) sends a man on horseback to let Easy Company (a part of the 506th Regiment) know that their part of Carentan has been secured, and Lieutenant Winters tells the soldier that this section is also clear. The 2nd Battalion commander, Major Strayer (played by Phil McKee), asks Winters if it safe now, as they want to move the wounded out. Winters tells him it is, and not long thereafter, Winters is wounded in the lower leg by a ricochet. Winters goes to get the wound cared for by Medic Doc Roe. Nearby on the floor sits Private Blithe and Winters asks Doc Roe what's the matter with Blithe. Doc tells him that Blithe can't see. Winters goes over to Blithe and asks him what happened and Blithe says that his sight blacked out, and that he can't see anything. Winters tells him they're going to send him back to England, but Blithe is emotional and says, "I didn't want to let anybody down," but Winters assures him that's not in question. Winters goes back over to Doc Roe again, but Blithe gets to his feet and says, "Thank you, sir," and he says further, that he's all right and that now he can see again. Winters tells him to stay a little longer, then to head back to his platoon. (Note: In Ambrose's book "Band of Brothers," he relates a similar story about Blithe, and he says Winters said he had never seen anything like it, with Blithe so scared that he lost his sight, but that "all he needed was somebody ... to calm him down.")       

 

A number of the men are sitting around Carentan, when Lieutenant Speirs walks up and tells them they're going to be moving out shortly. Private Alton More (no double 'o' spelling, played by Doug Allen) cracks, "Don't they know we're just getting settled here?" Speirs stares at him, but walks away. This brings Warren "Skip" Muck (played by Richard Speight) to tell More, "You're taking your life into your own hands," with Alex Penkala (played by Tim Matthews) asking if he means because of the German prisoners Speirs shot, or because of one of his company's own sergeants that he shot. This brings Malarkey to emphatically ask, "You mean he shot one of his own guys?" Penkala says he heard that the guy was drunk and refused to go out on a patrol. Muck says he heard that Speirs "came up to a bunch of German POWs (for those unaware, it means "prisoner(s) of war"), gave them cigarettes and even a light, then he swung his Thompson machine gun around and hosed them." The picture on the screen this time (compared to this same incident in the previous part about D-Day) shows the Germans are all Waffen SS troops (in the first version, they are all regular German army troops), and this time, we are shown the executions. Private More adds that it was about 20 German prisoners that Speirs killed, but that he left one alone (the picture on screen shows the one young German prisoner so terrified of what he is seeing, that his lit cigarette burns down between his trembling fingers, but he doesn't flinch. Then Penkala says he heard that Speirs took a German 105 mm gun on D-Day all by himself, and how he went through heavy machine gun fire to do it. Malarkey tells them he saw that and it is true. Lieutenant Welsh calls out for the men to get up, because they're moving out. 

 

When Easy Company is moving along (on foot), machine gun fire starts and mortar shells begin landing. The men run for the bushes (hedgerow) right in front of them and they begin to fire back at the Germans, who are positioned in another hedgerow. Night comes and we see a figure use a pistol to tap on the helmet of a sleeping paratrooper. A very hushed voice tells the soldier to get up, because it's his watch. The soldier, Private George Smith )played by Iain Robertson), awakens and quickly gets to his feet with his fixed bayonet rifle and jabs at the figure, who yells, "It's me, Talbert," but he is wounded by the bayonet, but luckily, Liebgott pushes Smith away, telling him that it's Talbert. Smith looks stunned and he begins apologizing as Talbert calls out for a medic. Doc Roe appears and the situation begins to settle down and we hear Roe tell Talbert he will be okay. 

 

Meanwhile, in another foxhole, Sergeant Martin and Private Blithe are together. They hear Talbert yell for a medic and groan in agony, and they are curious as to what's happening. Blithe says he can't sleep, so Martin sends him to find out what the noise is about. On his way, Speirs pops out and tells Blithe everything is in order; so, they go to the foxhole with Martin. Speirs tells them, "Do what you have to do," which prompts Blithe to tell Speirs, "Sir, when I landed on D-Day, I found myself in a ditch all by myself. I fell asleep." He attributes the sleepiness to the air sickness pills they had been given (historically, there were other paratroopers who complained that the pills made them drowsy). Blithe continues that when he woke up, he really didn't try to find his unit to fight, but just stayed where he was. Speirs asks him if he knows why he hid in the ditch, and Blithe says, "I was scared." Speirs says, "We're all scared. You hid in that ditch, because you think there's still hope ... The only hope that you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can function like a soldier is supposed to function and act without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it." Speirs walks away. 

 

When daylight comes, the Germans begin firing mortars and machine guns, and Easy Company returns fire. The German mortar shelling grows and Blithe is totally panicked in his foxhole, crying and screaming. Winters goes along his line of men who are firing at the German positions. He shouts encouragement and gives instructions at times. He comes to Blithe and he reaches down and grabs him and tells him, "Stand up soldier." Blithe stands and points his gun toward the German positions; Winters tells him to fire his weapon, and Blithe fires. Winters tells him, "Don't stop, keep firing," and Winters stands next to Blithe firing his rifle as he encourages Blithe. It calms Blithe and gives him courage to see the company commander next to him firing on the enemy, and Blithe reloads and continues firing. 

 

The Germans now send some armored vehicles into the battle, all from the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division. German paratroopers also kneel in firing position and fire at the American lines. One German assault gun fires and hits the tree and hedgerow area by machine gunner Walter "Smoky" Gordon (played by Ben Caplan), temporarily putting Gordon out of action. Lieutenant Welsh takes Private John McGrath (played by Stephen Walters) and a bazooka to try to destroy the German assault gun. The bazooka's first shot hits the shield for the vehicles machine gun. The assault gun has to then come up over a small rise, and when it dies, Welsh tells McGrath to fire, which he does, and the bazooka round penetrates the more lightly armored underside of the assault gun, which causes it to explode. (Note: German assault guns were often mistaken for tanks, as they were built on tank chassis, but they lacked a revolving turret, but that made them cheaper and easier to produce, and the Germans produced thousands of them on various tank chassis.) Gordon recovers and begins firing again, and as heavy fighting is ongoing, suddenly shells explode around the German troops and vehicles. Sherman tanks from the U.S. 2nd Armored Division have arrived and tipped the battle to the American favor. The Germans begin to withdraw. 

 

Blithe takes aim at a German paratrooper and fires. The man crumples, but then a withdrawing vehicle blocks the view of him, and when the vehicle passes, the man is gone, although his helmet rolls down the uneven ground. Firing stops and American troops begin to move around. Blithe goes up the rise to where the German had been. He sees blood on the ground and he tracks the blood trail a short distance until he sees the German paratrooper dead on the ground. Blithe looks at the man without emotion, then he squats down and takes the man's edelweiss from his lapel and slips it onto his own jacket. Blithe is now a real soldier. 

 

On D-Day + 25, Welsh and Lewis Nixon have a number of men out, when they come onto a farmhouse. Welsh asks for volunteers to check the house, but only Blithe offers to go; so, Welsh picks Martin and Dukeman (Mark Lawrence) to go with Blithe, with Blithe being the lead. As they near the farmhouse, Blithe moves up and sees nothing, but as he starts to signal to the other two men, a shot rings out and Blithe falls to the ground, badly wounded in the lower part of his neck/collarbone. Welsh orders covering fire and the other men drag Blithe clear of the house, where Doc Roe comes to treat him. Lieutenant Winters comes and tells Nixon and Welsh the company is being pulled off of the front line to an area in the rear with hot food and showers, and then they will return to England. 

 

The scene shifts to a field hospital and we see piles of uniforms from wounded men. The camera gets closer and we see a 101st Airborne uniform with an edelweiss in the breast pocket. We then see a hospital. Inside, among the patients, we see Gordon and Popeye Wynn. Gordon receives his third Purple Heart. Blithe, his neck heavily bandaged and his eyes focused on the ceiling, is wheeled in on a bed and placed on the other side of Popeye. Wynn tells Gordon, "How many (Purple Hearts) is that? Two? Three? You have no shame." Gordon tells of his wounds, but Popeye tells him, "He (pointing over toward Blithe) only gets one." Gordon looks somberly over toward Blithe.

  

Easy Company returns to England, where Malarkey and More take an Army motorcycle and sidecar and go speeding through the area. They nearly collide with a truck. We then see the men in a mess hall in England, where Gordon gives the company his version of "The Night of the Bayonet," a poem about Smith bayoneting Talbert, and the whole place rocks with laughter. At the end, Gordon gives Talbert one of his Purple Hearts, since Talbert wasn't wounded by the enemy. Sergeant Lipton asks for the company's attention, and he tells them to pack up all their gear, because they are returning to France, and they aren't expected to return to England. The hall is quiet. Early the next morning, Malarkey knocks at the door of a lady, Mrs. Lamb (played by Diana Kent), who does laundry for the soldiers. He tells her the company is leaving England for good, this time. He pays her for his laundry, and she asks if he could also take Lieutenant Meehan's laundry, as she thinks Meehan has forgotten it. Malarkey has a saddened look on his face, because he knows Meehan is dead, and he takes the laundry and pays her. She then asks about some others, and she reads their names from the bundle of each man's laundry, ending with Albert Blithe. All have been either killed or wounded.

 

This part ends with onscreen information that Easy Company lost 65 men in Normandy. Then comes another bit of information, but it is incorrect. The info says that Albert Blithe never recovered from his wounds in Normandy, and that he died in 1948. Dick Winters and the other men had that same information, and thus, it was put into Ambrose's book and also into the miniseries. How the year 1948 came to be affixed to Blithe's death, is puzzling. Blithe's family contacted people to correct the record. He did indeed recover from his wounds, and he re-enlisted in the Army in 1949 and fought in Korea and was decorated for his service. Blithe died in 1967, he was only 44 years of age. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, which is located just outside Washington D.C. in Arlington, Virginia. 

 

 

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

WORD HISTORY:  

Shamble(s)-The word really is "shamble," but it has come to be used in the plural form. It goes back to Indo European "skambh," which meant "to support, to prop up." This gave Latin "scamnum," meaning "bench, stool," which produced the diminutive "scamellum," meaning "small bench, short stool," and this was borrowed into West Germanic as "skamil," with the same meaning. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "scamol/sceamol," essentially with the same meaning, but also eventually, "footstool," and then "a bench or stool for displaying goods for sale." The form then became "schamel," but with variants like "shamel, shamel(l), schamil, schambyl(l) and others, all with the "stool, footstool, stool/bench for displaying goods for sale," meanings. The word then became "shamel" (shamels?), meaning bench or small table with the more specific "meat products for sale" (circa 1500); thus also, "meat shop or market," but in some places the word was used for "slaughterhouse" (mid 1500s), which developed into a meaning of "place of slaughter and butchery;" thus later too, "a place of a mess," which began to be applied to "battlefields," and "places of death or destruction." Relatives in the other West Germanic languages: German has "Schemel" (footstool), Low German has "Schamel" (small short stool), Danish "skammel" ("stool," borrowed from Low German, Danish is North Germanic), Dutch "schemel" (low bench).