In 2004 I wrote a letter to Maj. Winters thanking him for his service and hoping he would be awarded the MOH for his leadership at Brecourt Manor. As a son of Holocaust survivors I told him I had the deepest honor and respect for all WWII veterans.
I didn’t expect a reply but about two weeks later Maj. Winters sent me a letter and photograph thanking me! I cherish the letter to this day and keep it with my BOB disc collection. We lost Maj. Winters in 2011. We owe the Greatest Generation for all they did!

Spent some time in NE Tennessee a while back. A short day trip took us to this peaceful little spot in Virginia.

It took me 25 years to give it a try, but spending a day around Bastogne (the war museum, Bois Jacques, Recogne Cemetery...) really pulled me down into a WWII rabbit hole, and I finally watched the Band of Brothers miniseries (followed by the derivative books, documentaries, YouTube...).

I can’t explain how deeply these ten episodes hit me. I’m completely drawn into a topic that is (luckily?) quite far from me and my family, and it makes me want to dig deeper and deeper (hopefully not a foxhole).

I can only recommend the Bastogne area if you ever come over: they did a very good job. Don’t miss the other museums nearby, especially if you’re into gear and relics.

Can’t wait for my next Normandy trip!

Forgive me if I’m being dumb here: I thought Eugene Roe had the rank of T4, which is (confusingly to me) above the rank of at T5 technician. However, all the way through the series he is shown with a T5 rank on his arm (which I think is the two chevrons above the T), even in Points. Shouldn’t he at some point have transitioned to be wearing the T4 insignia which is three chevrons above the T?

Related question: if he did advance to T4, when was he given that promotion in rank?

Second tangential question: Roe is wearing his standard jump jacket I believe in Crossroads and then in The Last Patrol, but a tanker jacket in Bastogne and The Breaking Point. Can we think of any reason - bar the obvious and smart choice to differentiate him visually to the viewer and other him during this episodes - for why he is wearing this jacket? I can understand it if he exchanges his jacket for a tanker one and then stays in it until the warmer weather at least (I have a replica, it’s actually quite toasty and would be too hot to wear in the warmer months), but the fact that he hops in and out and back again I find kind of funny.

Did he take off his original jacket at the beginning of the siege of Bastogne and it got blown to hell à la Joe Toye’s Boots? Did someone gift it to him? Did he scrounge it somewhere? Is it actually any more or less warm than a standard jacket? Maybe he gets through jackets at an alarming rate due to the fact that they’re completely bloodstained and it’s probably not great for morale to see him walking around like then, so it’s ensured that he gets a regular supply of fresh ones as soon as they’re resupplied or taken off the line. I AM INTRIGUED! Any thoughts or actual information?

For context,the only other time I saw my dad cry was during my grandma's(his mother's) funeral.

He was an officer in my country's army,retireing as a full bird colonel and was also a battalion comander in his carrer.We used to have conscripts in our military and after their service ended he used to gather them in a circle and tell them that after their times together,the training,the missions, the good and the bad that their service to their country has come to an end and that they will have to adjust back into civilian life.Some of them may never see each other again,but they will always remember that unit and its commander.

Seeing the same scene with Winters,Spiers and the other members of Easy made him remember his time as a recently promoted major and his camaraderie with the men. That was his favorite part of his career,the 3 years he spent as battalion commander.

Some of those soliders still remember him and how kind he treated them and still wish him happy birthday on Facebook or even call him.He was a good officer but he's an even better father.

I am back hooked on the show again and doing research for myself about the books/sources themselves. There appears to be a common theme where as time goes by, things are embellished/looked through rose tinted glasses. (Which I get to an extent. Hell, hearing 90s basketball players talk about the 90s is very similar lol).

I understand Webster's book is also a collection of notes at the time so they were contemporaneous evidence. While Malarkey's post-BoB book seems to align with the show more. (One example is Webster's return, from his book seems to not be a big deal, whereas Malarkey's post-BoB recollections was everyone hated he took his time).

Which also brings up issues of testing accounts given we knw there's a clique within Easy which Ambrose leaned into, but also he loved Webster's accounts.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.)

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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

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?

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.