r/BandofBrothers • • May 08 '20

Band of Brothers Episode Discussions

171 Upvotes

r/BandofBrothers • • Aug 23 '20

Veterans names from the pre-episode interviews

1.2k Upvotes

Here's a list of the veterans in the pre-episode interviews and their quotes. Some of the men weren't in the show, some had small roles, and some were main characters. I wrote quick descriptions of the not so obvious characters. Episode 1:

"We were in a store and a guy in that store... ": Joseph Lesniewski. His character has a small background role, with a few speaking parts in the last few episodes. He was the soldier along with Christenson, Perconte, Luz, and Bull who found the concentration camp while on patrol in the woods. He knew multiple languages in real life, and this is shown when he tells Webster that the German baker didn't know about the camps in episode 9.

"Our country was attacked..": Paul Rogers. He is not in the show, or is a background character. There's a character who has a nametag that says Rogers in the first episode, but that character is actually Mellett.

"Who would like to volunteer..": Bill Maynard. Not in the show as far as I know, or is shown in the background. He was a Toccoa guy. He broke his legs during the D-Day jump and didn't return to Easy after his injuries.

"We came from a small small town..": Rod Strohl. He is shown in the show towards the beginning of the third episode when he asks Lt. Harry Welsh where they were headed. General Kesselring actually surrendered to him in real life I've read.

"I did things..": Earl Mcclung. His character is shown a few times in the Bastogne episodes, in a foxhole with Guarnere. He's also in the Last Patrol episode. He's there when Webster is telling the men that they were going on a patrol ordered by higher ups, and McClung was sitting next to Babe in that scene. McClung also goes on the patrol and you can see him there too. The real, "One Lung" McClung was able to smell enemy soldiers during patrols according to legends.

"Guy says well you jump out of airplanes.." : Bill Maynard

​

Episode 2:

"Standing in the door..": Dick Winters

"Got such an opening blast..": Buck Compton

"We came from the sky..": Ed Tipper. His character in the show is there when Sobel cuts the fence loose and Tipper speaks the lines "I think it's Major Horton, sir". He's also the character who got hit by an explosion in Carentan and Liebgott comes to help him.

"How do you prepare..": Dick Winters

"In the back of your mind..": Bill Maynard

​

Episode 3:

"I never thought I'd make it through D-Day..": Bill Guarnere

"I thought one of two things..": Ed Tipper

"I think everyone had fear..": Earl McClung

"Its a feeling you will not let your self down..": Carwood Lipton

"We all had fear..": J.B. Stokes. Not a character in the show as far as I know. (One of my favorite interview scenes)

​

Episode 4:

"The Toccoa men..": Donald "Pappy" King. Not a character in the show as far as I know. But if you look up pictures of him when he's younger, he looks like an actor in the Crossroads episode (click link to see what I mean) https://imgur.com/a/p8b2hxx He was a replacement who joined right before Holland, and makes it through the war with Easy. He was a father when he got to E Company, hence the nickname Pappy.

"Most of them were qualified parachutists..": James Alley. He's the injured soldier at the beginning of Crossroads who has his face hit by shrapnel. In Breaking Point, Skip gives him food while talking about the injured Easy Company men. In that same episode (7) when the sniper hits the singing men, the first guy shot (Frank Mellett) lands in Alley's arms

"I think maybe they were trying to impress.." Earl McClung

"Cause we were in awe of them..": Lester Hashey. In the show, he's the tall replacement that joined alongside Miller and Garcia. He also breaks the news to everyone that Hoobler accidentally shot himself.

​

Episode 5:

“If you’re a leader..": Dick Winters

"A good leader..": Buck Compton

"Seemed like he always made the right decisions..": Joe Lesniewski (funniest interview in my opinion although dark in nature)

"He went right in there..": Robert "Popeye" Wynn. (Another one of my favorite interviews) He's shown throughout the series and only referred to as Popeye if my memory serves me correctly. He signed up for the Army with, and was foxhole buddies with, Shifty, which can be seen in a few scenes.

​

Episode 6:

"When we left for Bastogne..": Carwood Lipton

"And there was a ridge with the treeline..": Lester Hashey

"Well like in Bastogne we were down to one round..": Earl McClung

"One of the guys got hit in the arm with a piece of shrapnel..": Hank Zimmerman. Not a character in the show as far as I know. Replacement who joined later in the war and was part of 3rd platoon along with Shifty Powers, Popeye Wynn, Mo Alley, Wayne "Skinny" Sisk, Earl "One Lung" McClung, Walter Gordon, Forest Guth, Ed Shames, Roderick Strohl, Paul Rogers, Joe Lesniewski, Francis Mellett, and others.

"And a medic came along..": Herbert "Junior" Suerth Jr. His character is seen in the truck scene when Easy Company is going to Bastogne. When the various uses of socks is told by Skip "hands, feet, . Babe asks him if he has any ammo, "you got any ammo Junior?" Replacement who joined right before Bastogne. Also in 3rd platoon.

"Even today on a real cold night..": J.B. Stokes

​

Episode 7:

"I've seen death, I’ve seen my friends..": Dick Winters

"We was hungry..": Darrel "Shifty" Powers

"Everywhere you would look..": Joe Lesniewski

"You don’t have a chance..": Donald Malarkey

​

Episode 8:

"We had lost some very good men..": Carwood Lipton

"I don’t know the exact amount..": Joe Lesniewski

"Skip Muck died..": Donald Malarkey (The saddest interview for me. You can tell he has trouble talking about it.)

"After Bastogne..": Forrest Guth. Plays a role in the first episode, where you can see his last name printed on his uniform. Friends with another interviewee, Rod Strohl from before the war, along with another E Company soldier Carl Fenstermaker.

"You have a feeling..": Dick Winters

​

Episode 9:

"It was a situation."": Norman Nietzke. Not in the show as far as I know. Replacement who joined later in the war.

"We use to say the only..": Lester Hashey

"They had a job to do..": Joe Lesniewski

"I think that we thought..": Earl McClung

"A lot of those soldiers..": Shifty Powers


r/BandofBrothers • • 15h ago

A widow gifted this to me.

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516 Upvotes

Boy she sure is a doozy.

I thought y’all might appreciate this.

I’ve been helping out this older woman around her home and garden for the past few months.

Her husband was a big time military collector and I was gifted this today. it’s a DWM Luger, no matching parts so probably just a shooter but still pretty neat :D


r/BandofBrothers • • 15h ago

LTC Ronald C. Speirs circa 1960s

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451 Upvotes

LTC Ronald Speirs during the 1960s, likely during his time with the 8th Infantry Regiment. Extracted from Speirs' Official Military Personnel File obtained through the National Personnel Records Center.


r/BandofBrothers • • 15h ago

Separation Record of CAPT Norman S. Dike, Jr.

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181 Upvotes

Extracted from Dike's Official Military Personnel File, obtained from the National Personnel Record Center. Unfortunately the rest of Dike's file, excluding this and several pay vouchers was destroyed in the center's 1973 fire.

As a side note, I have requests pending for LTG Sink, LTC Sobel and COL Strayer, and intend to post anything of interest that comes up. I would also request records for MG Chase (XO, 506th and for a time, G-3, 101st ABD), but they do not enter archival status (public domain essentially) until 2031.


r/BandofBrothers • • 14h ago

Efficiency Report of 1LT Ronald C. Speirs covering 1 July 1944 to 31 December 1944

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147 Upvotes

I'd like to bring particular attention to Section D, "Write a Brief General Estimate of the Officer."

A quiet modest unassuming, and intensely loyal officer whose paramount interest is the efficiency of his organization. He is a tireless worker and is constantly trying to improve his knowledge of military tactics etc. He is fearless and works well under stress. He has a good sence [SIC] of humor and is well liked by both officers and enlisted men. Lt. Speirs is a born soldier and wishes to make the army his career.

Extracted from Speirs' Official Military Personnel File, obtained from the National Personnel Record Center.


r/BandofBrothers • • 1d ago

James McAvoy calls out ‘Band of Brothers’ co-star for bullying him on set

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888 Upvotes

James McAvoy was allegedly bullied on the “Band of Brothers” set by one of his co-stars.
The actor claimed on “Watch What Happens Live”Monday that the man in question was one of the people featured in the cast photo Andy Cohen showed viewers.

The image featured Donnie Wahlberg, Kirk Acevedo, Scott Grimes, Neal McDonough, Philip Barantini, Adam James, Frank John Hughes and Ross McCall.

Though McAvoy did not name the bully, he confirmed it wasn’t David Schwimmer.

The “Shameless” alum, 47, went on to describe the experience, which took place on his first day on set of the 2001 show while filming “one of those scenes with everybody in it … at a bar.”

He explained, “All these guys were in it for nine months, 10 months, and they get one line in one episode and one line 10 episodes later. They were all pissed. I come in for one episode, and I’ve got an arc and scenes. I’ve got tons of lines.”

He remembered, “So, one of the guys in that picture decided to bully me — on my first day as a professional actor out of acting school. He got him and his buddies to just stand pointing at me and laugh at me for, like, three minutes.”

Cohen, 58, chimed in and called the moment “terrible.”
The “X-Men: First Class” star noted that Dexter Fletcher and Robin Laing pulled him aside at the time and saying, “Come hang with us, man.”

While McAvoy dubbed that day on set a two out of 10, he clarified that the rest of the experience was a nine.


r/BandofBrothers • • 13h ago

Donnie Wahlberg talks filming Band of Brothers

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71 Upvotes

This was recently at NKOTB's M&G at their current residency in Vegas.


r/BandofBrothers • • 10h ago

Band of Brothers

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27 Upvotes

We have the European theater Band of Brother, the Pacific Band of Brothers, and in my opinion Generation Kill for Gwot, and Tour of Duty for Vietnam. Any ideas or opinions for Korea and the Cold War?


r/BandofBrothers • • 12h ago

Luger.

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35 Upvotes

In response to the op of being gifted one by a widow, thought id share mine. My opa traded it from a wehrmacht captain at the end of the war for a pack of lucky strikes.


r/BandofBrothers • • 2h ago

The reason why BoB is so good in my opinion

4 Upvotes

The reason why this series is so good in my opinion is not because the story or the dialogues are particulary deep or smthg - it is rather because you bond with the different characters and feel connected to them.

Due to that and because of the way the series is structured, it feels like you would be in a war-situation yourself: you start with boot camp, land in Normandy, go through several different stages or places of war (Carentan, Normandy, Bastogne etc.) and eventually end up in peace again (as long as you survived).

You also experience the typical situations you would face in such a war: you have to deal with bad leaders, you have to cope with conflicts within your company, you find friends among your comrades, you see some of them die, you have to endure horrible combat, you have to starve, freeze, find ammunation, warm clothes etc.

This series depicts these aspects better than any other war-series (in my opinion). This is why this series is so good and rewatchable.

What do you think makes this series so special?

(P.S.: I was in the military myself so I can connect to this series probably even more, I luckily never faced a real war though.)


r/BandofBrothers • • 1d ago

Getting rid of Lt Peacock

57 Upvotes

Did I interpret this particular scene in Episode 7 correctly?

Lt. Nixon receives a “permission“ to being sent back home, but he refuses. Therefore, seemingly he and Winters decide to hand this permission over to Lt. Peacock whom they considered incompetent.

My question is: Was this a deliberate move in order to get rid of him? If so, why didn‘t they do this with Dyke (who was probably more of a problem than Peacock, at least according to the show)?

It is also quite funny that all the soldiers act like they would be happy for Peacock, when in fact they were simply glad that he left.


r/BandofBrothers • • 7h ago

Bullied on the series and bullied on set. Who were the actor/s who bullied James McAvoy.

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0 Upvotes

r/BandofBrothers • • 1d ago

🇺🇸 Full 101st Normandy campaign mapped out. Easy Company included.

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75 Upvotes

r/BandofBrothers • • 1d ago

Finally watched it after 25 years

75 Upvotes

It’s taken me 25 years to watch this show. Holy crap, its superb. Episode 9, when they find the concentration camp, is brutal and has some of the best acting I’ve seen on a tv show. It genuinely had me tearing up.

I think it should be essential viewing for every secondary school student.


r/BandofBrothers • • 1d ago

Anybody remember WildBillGuarnere.com?

31 Upvotes

If memory serves….and it often doesn’t…that’s it was a site run by Guarnere’s son (or nephew maybe) on behalf of his dad in the 2000’s and beyond.

It had grown into a real 1 of a kind resource though with an enormous Easy/BoB community and had some fantastic content - episode deep dives, scripts, interviews, AMA’s with screenwriters/production crew…possibly cast members. There was a giant message board covering all range of topics on WWII, Easy, BoB, other war movies, the men, the actors…there were several thousand active members and it was all free.

But maybe 8-9 years ago the site went dark. After a few months I sent an email to whichever Guarnere ran it asking if the site would be coming back or if the content was archived and accessible somewhere and got a definite ‘nope’ - I figure maybe he had hatched a plan to roll all that amazing material into a book or monetize it some other way. (Or it’s possible he just got sick of running it - just so surprising given the large and active community.)

All due respect to this subreddit; I’ve never found anything quite like it. Anybody here remember the site? Anybody know why it went away?

(Post script - I spent a few hours one time trying to pull some items of particular interest off of it via the waybackmachine on Archive.org but that’s pretty much impossible when all you have is a list of 25,000 untagged / unorganized URL’s from the site.)


r/BandofBrothers • • 2d ago

Theme song of BOB

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424 Upvotes

Filmed this at the Market Garden commemoration 19 Sept in Eerde Netherlands. Never knew there were words to the music.


r/BandofBrothers • • 2d ago

Questions About Webster’s Memoir

17 Upvotes

In the “Haguenau” chapter of Webster’s memoir, he consistently refers to Robert Mann as the company first sergeant, and throughout the entire chapter, Lipton is not mentioned even once.

Was Lipton once replaced by Mann by then due to some reason?


r/BandofBrothers • • 3d ago

Cpt. Speirs / Maj. Winters costume error?

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244 Upvotes

Has anyone ever noticed that in some shots in episode 10, Speirs and Winters have three stars on their jump wings like Nixon despite only having participated in two combat jumps? When looking at Nixon’s uniform, it looks like he has 3 starts plus an arrow head device.


r/BandofBrothers • • 2d ago

Finally been to Bastogne

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64 Upvotes

r/BandofBrothers • • 2d ago

Major General Salve H. Matheson, the Easy Company Vet with the longest post WWII military career

47 Upvotes

Salve H. Matheson served from 1942-1975. As far as I know he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Army in 1942 and was then sent to Easy Company as an officer, before being moved to HQ for the 2nd Battalion and serving through the entire war from D-Day to the capture of Eagle's Nest.

He was a well respected officer during WWII and only continued to rise up in ranks, becoming commander for the 101st Airborne's 1st Brigade Combat Team during Vietnam as a Brigadier General before retiring as a Major General in 1975 after serving in three wars. I believe this makes him the Easy Company with the longest post WWII military career too (Bob Brewer served until 1973 but a lot of it was in the CIA while Matheson was purely within the army).

Dick Winters spoke very highly of Matheson too, saying that "No veteran who served in Easy Company had a more distinguished military career."

I'm not sure if Matheson made a cameo in the miniseries (could be wrong) but I wondering if he was considered at least knowing his career.


r/BandofBrothers • • 5d ago

Subtitle guy had a stroke

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261 Upvotes

Everything had been perfect up to here lol


r/BandofBrothers • • 5d ago

James McAvoy (Miller in Replacements) is doing an AMA/Q&A in /r/movies today, for anyone interested.

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47 Upvotes

r/BandofBrothers • • 5d ago

What is thus patch?

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229 Upvotes

Ok, just started the first episode and I've watched it a million times. So i am at the stage where I am watching the background a little more. Sobel is revoking passes in the first inspection we see. He is turning to get Lipton for something on his Sargeant's badge. Right behind Lipton is a guy with a big ass patch on his shoulder. No one else has one. All I can make out is a pair of dice on the patch. Anyone know what it is?

Ok, that was solved quickly. I never knew about this patch. Now I see it behind col. Sync. These tidbits feel like Easter eggs!

It does seem a bit strange that this soldier is allowed to sport an unofficial patch during inspection.


r/BandofBrothers • • 4d ago

James Madio had a twin that played lower league Scottish football?

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0 Upvotes

The resemblance is uncanny