Band of Brothers (original) (raw)

MARK BANDO'S WEBSITE

http://www.pathfindertour.com/BandoNormandyTours.html

More observations re: Episode 1: Planes are shown taking off for D-Day in broad daylight, no doubt to show off the pretty fleet of C-47's procured for the film. They actually took off in dusk-to-dark conditions, which could still be added to the film, in a way which doesn't hide most of the details of the planes. Also, no plane shown taking-off had an equipment parapack under the belly-most of them actually did. Both these mistakes were mentioned to me by 506th vets and by George Koskimaki of Signal Co.

The noise level in the planes precluded the showing of the most famous E Co. story of the flight over, which has appeared in three books, including my latest. Wayne 'Skinny' Sisk broke the solemn silence of his fellow passengers by suddenly asking in a loud voice: "Do any of you bastards want to buy a good WRISTwatch?" But then, the Sisk character was barely evident in the series, while Guth and several other interesting real life characters were omitted from the show.

A brief on-the-plane scene shows Captain Nixon seated next to LTC Strayer, and they are looking at and discussing a map. Actually,they jumped from different planes. LTC Strayer jumped first from his plane, followed by radioman Bill Maslowski with a SCR 300 radio. On another plane, Major Oliver Horton jumped first, followed by SCR300 radioman Gordon King, then by Lewis Nixon.

On the plus side: -I loved the music which accompanies the takeoffs from England-suitably majestic music for a momentous time of Heroes putting it all on the line.

EPISODE 2-Day of Days

Episode 2 opens with the E Co. troopers in the planes and enroute to Normandy. Once again, we have the issue of noise level. Screen writer John Orloff has discussed this on our Forum and it seems that the noise level varied drastically depending on whether the door of the C-47 was open or closed. As I watched this episode with G/506th Normandy vet Ed Sliszewski, it was HIS opinion that the noise level was much louder than he remembered. Although I have jumped by parachute, I've never flown in a C-47, so I can't give a personal opinion on this. Suffice to say, if Sisk could make the comment alluded to earlier, and be heard by the others in his stick, he and Walter Gordon must have been riding in a plane with the door closed.

Flak and A.A. fire over the D.Z.: As most of you already know, Lt Winters' stick jumped just east of St Mere Eglise, about 1/2 hour before 82nd Airborne troopers of the 505PIR arrived. There was a German Luftwaffe 88mm flak battery in St Mere, which comprised more troops and firepower than the occupying Army garrison from the 91st Infantry Division. (The flak unit was later criticized by its peers for pulling out of town around 0300 and leaving it open to occupation by Cannonball Krause's 3/505PIR.) At any rate, the presence of those 88's meant that the planes in the serial shown did receive fire of that caliber. Most troopers were not subjected to big stuff like that, but mostly lots of MG and rifle fire, with some 20mm. In most of the drop areas, there were probably more tracers than shown during Winters' descent and less big stuff. The shooting down of Lt Meehan's plane was graphically shown, but I really doubt if the average viewer realized WHICH plane it was and more importantly, who was aboard. I've been to the spot where the plane went-in, east of Beuzeville au Plain and it was important to note that the Easy Company Commander Lt Thomas Meehan died in that crash along with the A.C. crew and the entire stick of paratroopers. Right up through the end of the last Normandy episode, this fact was only hinted at. It was never explicitly stated in the series, until Episode 10. When Ambrose wrote his book, Band of Brothers, he barely described the crash and he mixed the names of the victims in with the others from E Co. who were KIA in ground fighting.

Some comments have already been made on the Forum of this site regarding Winters' depicted descent into Normandy. Those who watched the HBO special on the making of the series know a bit about the technical aspects of how that was done. As many have pointed out, Winters is not wearing a reserve (chest pack) parachute on the jump, which was an oversight by those who shot the scene. In reality, a few individuals opted to jump without the reserve chute. They reasoned that a malfunction at 6-800 feet altitude would probably not be correctible by use of a reserve. For by the time a man realized in the confusion of a night combat jump, that his main chute had not opened properly, it was probably too late to effectively deploy the reserve. Unless Dick Winters took that option, the missing chute is an error. Also, if you watch his exit, when the leg bag rips loose from his leg, and count as the troopers did-{"one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand"), you'll see that even before you get to two thousand, the bag has disappeared from his leg. If you watch it in slow motion, his leg is in the up position at the time the bag departs. That is possible, given the speed at which the planes were flying, probably around 150 mph, but more likely, the bag snapped off at the three-thousand count, after his leg had reached a downward position, and it probably departed in a downward direction as well, as a result of the opening shock. In all, however, the jump scenes are exciting and well done, and I understand many of the vets who first saw parts of the series at the premiere in France, enjoyed the flight and jump scenes more than any part of the series.

Lt Winters' depicted landing is much softer than was actual and the way his lines collapsed looked very unreal and staged. On the ground, the first trooper Winters actually met was the supply sgt of Company 'F'. In the series, Winters and Pvt John Hall, (misidentified as being from 'A' company), are shown walking casually and talking loudly. During their conversation, a word was deleted from the dialogue, which was very noticable. Many people commented on this and it remains a subject of speculation as to what word was edited out. These two also commented that considering that one of them was from 'A' Co (1st Bn) and the other from 'E' Co (2nd Bn), that one or both of them must be on the wrong drop zone. Assuming that Hall was in 'A' Co., which he wasn't, and that he was having this conversation with Lt Winters, it would have been inaccurate to say that. Both the 1st and 2nd Bns of the 506th belonged on the same Drop Zone (DZ 'C', near St Marie du Mont). As it turned out, the first half of Strayer's 2nd Bn serial landed near DZ'A' and the 2nd half landed near St Mere Eglise.

I also wondered why Bull Randleman's bayonet duel with a German after landing was not shown. Perhaps it was filmed but didn't look convincing? Or maybe they didn't want to show the same trooper in two seperate bayonet duels in the same series? I had considered that the most interesting experience of anyone in that company on the night of the drop.

Once Lt Winters linked-up with others on the ground, the force moved east, then south, toward their objectives. In real life, Guarnere was walking as lead scout, with Winters following, along with LTC Robert Cole (3/502), Major J.W. Vaughan, Pinky Ginder, and others from the Deuce. There was, and is no railroad line to follow east out of St Mere Eglise, and the only rr line in the area bypasses St Mere on the west, heading north toward Cherbourg. By the time the group encountered the southbound column of Ost volunteers and horses, it was at least nearing 0400 AM, and the U.S. column had grown to over 160 paratroopers. The location where this small shootout occured was precisely at the 'T' intersection of the D423 road with the D115. The enemy encountered had been stationed at a farm called Artilly, due south of Beuzeville au Plain, which is where Lt Meehan's plane went-in. This encounter is described on page 49-51 of my current book. Whomever firedthe shots, there were not nearly as many as depicted in the film, which sounded like the St Valentine's Day Massacre. (recent testimony seems to suggest that Bill Guarnere was too far back in the column to do the shooting).
The roads which meet there are simply a 'T' intersection with nothing around but hedgerow-lined fields. There is no walled culvert as shown in the film, and I suspect that backdrop was substituted for filming because the ambush would show up better in dark conditions, with walls behind the enemy troops and horses. Less than five enemy actually went down from American fire in this encounter. These details are not presented for criticism, but merely to mention the difference between reality and what was shown.

The two 82nd Airborne troopers who attached themselves to the 101st group in the film were well-dressed with such accurate details as small American flag arm patches, small mesh helmet nets, and even a lanyard for the M2 jump knife, worn in the neck pocket.

There is a D-Day scene wherein the characters pause in their dialogue, as they hear huge naval artillery shells cutting the air over their heads. I couldn't understand why the shells were never heard exploding a few seconds later. These were 8 inch and 14 inch shells from the Cruiser USS Quincy II and the Battleship Texas. The shells moved slowly enough and were so large, that the troopers could SEE them in mid air, before they landed. Bob Sechrist, a 501st Pathfinder, says "they looked like flying Volkswagens."
They hit the ground and implanted themselves with a thud, before exploding. Most of the targets they were firing on were not far inland from Utah Beach. Lt Russo of 2/501 described the sound of huge incoming naval shells in trajectory, in a taped interview: "WHUH,,,...WHUH...WHUH...WHUH...WHUH WHUH-WHUH-WHUH WAAA-AHH, WAA-AAHH, WAAAAAAAH-thud, Ka-BOOM!- You've got it. It's yours. It's on your head."

The scene where Don Malarkey meets the German PW from Oregon did happen on D-Day although it isn't mentioned in Ambrose's book. The screenwriters learned of it from talking to Don and decided to put it in the film. But it had to be married to a more dramatic event to be allowed in, so it was made part of the scene in which Lt Speirs offers cigarettes to the same group of prisoners before gunning them down. Don actually went to school in Eugene OR and told the writers the PW was from Portland, but somehow, it got changed to where the PW was from Eugene. He was not in a group which was shot after surrendering. Lumping the Malarkey story to the Speirs cigarette incident brought home the impact of the killings by making them more personal to the viewer.

At any rate, of all the stories attributed to Lt Speirs the cigarette one is the most apocryphal, as I've never found an eyewitness to the event. Malarkey says he heard a Tommygun firing in the rear on the day of the attack on Carentan, shortly before the attack commenced. He was told that the sound was Speirs shooting PWs after giving them cigarettes. Dick Winters told me the story in 1989, but he had heard it happened at Bastogne. Neither of them witnessed the incident, nor did Lt Gibson, who first related the tale to Ambrose. Art DiMarzio, a Dog Company trooper who always accompanied Lt Speirs on patrols also had no knowledge of the cigarette incident, although he did witness other similar incidents. So, it is debatable whether this actually happened. BTW, Winters emphasized to me that he took a very dim view of prisoner shooting, that it was not a common mode of behavior in the 506th and that he felt ashamed of any such incidents which might have happened.

Reconstruction of the fight for the guns at Brecourt Manor was very well executed and certainly one of the high points of the series. One small detail they missed was Loraine tossing back a couple of German grenades before they exploded, which they could have gotten from me, as I have the General Orders with Loraine's Silver Star writeup. Winters himself wrote a detailed account of this battle in 1945, and it was reproduced in George Koskimaki's 1968 book 'D-Day With the Screaming Eagles'. If you read Winters' account, you will see that far from calling Loraine a "f*cking jeep jockey" for being a poor shot, it was actually Bill Guarnere who initially missed the man he was shooting at, when 3 Germans were fleeing a position on foot. Remember that this action was carried out with only about a dozen Easy Company men, who were present for duty after scattering by the Air Corps. Just think what the entire company could have done. Don Malarkey gave a lot of input to the production crew, and had only two comments after viewing Episode 2. He stated that the action as depicted, was even more intense than how he recalled the actual battle, and that the reason the attack was eventually broken off was that the men were out of ammunition (I believe that fact was stated in the dialogue). All the viewers I talked to enjoyed watching the Brecourt fight very much and felt that it alone was worth the series. The only fault I saw in it was a special effects weakness, as the bullet strikes on some Germans didn't seem to coordinate precisely with the soundtrack. That was very noticable again in Episode 3, wherein Smoky Gordon was firing at German Paras in a swampy area from an upstairs window in Carentan. On old episodes of the TV show 'Combat', the shooting and reactions of the victims seemed to be much better coordinated. That crew had a lot of experience on those matters, filming such shootouts every week for about five years. There was also a lack of sync between sound and bullet strikes in the halftrack scene of Saving Private Ryan (a second after Hanks' Tommygun stopped firing, a German took bullet strikes and went down.)

A few words re: the language in episode 2. One friend of mine who was a paratrooper in Battery 'B' of the 377th PFA Bn. actually cancelled his HBO service after viewing the first two episodes because he couldn't stand the amount of swearing. I frankly hadn't paid much attention, probably being calloused from 25 years of police work in Detroit. After hearing these reactions, I went back and re watched Episode 2, paying more attention to the language, and there ARE a considerable number of J.C.'s and 'F' bombs in there. In Dick Winters' first written account of the action, he has Popeye Wynn saying I'm sorry I goofed-off". Screenwriter John Orloff contacted Popeye and was able to elicit the info from him that he had actually used much stronger language. Thus was the dialogue changed to :"I'm sorry I fucked-up". Regardless of the actual profanity level of the day, most WW2 vets I know will argue like all getout that there was LESS cursing in the 40's than is common today. At first I was skeptical, but after 30 years of hearing this from so many individuals, I tend to believe them. The film would have been just as good with less profanity. My friend historian Bill Warnock wrote me the following observation on this:

"The 'F' word was used by GIs of the WW2 era, but I think the BoB writers overdid it. They portray a degree of profanity typical of Vietnam and today, not WW2. This was (also) the case in 'Saving Private Ryan'. Several vets commented to me about this."

T-5 John D. Hall, whom the series depicts as having been KIA in the Brecourt action, may have been a member of the basketball team, but he was not a member of Company 'A', as the dialogue indicates. He actually belonged to Service Company, as did Gerald Loraine. Loraine was not Sink's only jeep driver, and Fred Roe, from Michigan, also performed that function at various times in WW2.
John D. Halls, same middle initial as John D. Hall, but note the 's' on his last name, was a member of the 81mm mortar platoon, of Headquarters Co., 2nd battalion, 506th PIR, and according to John Barickman of the same platoon, it was HALLS who was killed in the Brecourt fight, not HALL.
This is likely to be correct, because John D. Hall died in the plane crash of Stick #32 near Picauville, France, and all aboard were killed in that crash. Lt. Kenneth Beatty, the XO of C/506th was jumpmaster and most of the troopers aboard were Charlie Co. men. In 2004, as some Brits were preparing to put-up a marker in memory pof those victims at the Uppottery airfield site in the U.K., the name T-5 John D. HALL, of Service Co., appeared on the loading manifest.
Since HALL could not have made the jump at all, and since he could only be KIA once, he was certainly NOT the trooper KIA at the Brecourt fight.
It is also worth noting that HQ/2 and F/506th troopers played a role at Becourt, as did Speirs of Dog Co., who arrived in time to take the final gun. To consider this exclusively an Easy Co. action, does disservice to the other fighters who were involved.

Regarding the ending of Episode 2 on D-Day night in St Marie du Mont, Winters actually spent that night about 2 or 3 miles southwest of St Marie, at Culloville, where Colonel Sink's HQ was located. There is no picturesque river or lake at either of those locations.

MARK BANDO'S WEBSITE

Episode 3-Carentan

As stated before, Episode 3 was one of my 2 favorites. My criticisms of this part are mostly limited to clarifications and technical details. The 506th circled the west side of Carentan in a night maneuver on 11-12 June, and on the morning of the 12th attacked from west to east coming-in to the small portion of town south of the rr line. They met a 'T' junction with the road which runs south toward Perriers, and fanned left and right to clear the buildings of Germans. One bulding on the SW corner of that 'T' junction still bears a lot of bullet pockmarks from that morning many years ago.

The photo above was made in June, 2000 and shows the French building on the SW corner of the road into Carentan from the west. The camera was facing SE, and the road to Perriers is met at a 'T' junction about 100 yards to the left of here. Winters' company came in from the right (west), heading east. There are bullet dings in the stone wall from E Company's fire on 12 June, 1944. This seems to be the only war-related damage still visible in the area.

Lots of people are asking, "Who was the trooper who executed a wounded German paratrooper with his .45 pistol?", (after the dazed kraut stumbled out of a grenaded house) I asked Carwood Lipton about this, and he stated: "That was just Hollywood-we didn't shoot prisoners." Of course this was combat, and really only a potential prisoner situation, thus borderline. But at any rate, Lip didn't know of such an incident, so it is probably fiction.

The horrible wounding of Ed Tipper by an artillery round is an example of not explaining enough to the viewer. Not only was he not introduced to the viewer prior to his wounding, it was never made clear that he survived those wounds. Ed was a native of Detroit and I first heard his name in 1971 when interviewing one of his pre-war buddies Dick Laichalk of Easy 501. Although the 'We Stand Alone Together' program gave some evidence that Tipper had survived the war, I doubt if most of the audience ever grasped who that horribly wounded soldier was in the first place. The deliberately diminished soundtrack of his buddies calling his name would have been senseless to me, had I not known who the wounded man was.

One of the technical gripes I had on this episode was the paint scheme on the German paratrooper helmets. I've seen about ten specimens of FJ helmets collected by 101st troopers in Normandy, and all but one have a tan with green splotch paint scheme. One has shades of reddish brown and tan mixed together. NONE have had the basic Luftwaffe color. I've come to conclude that the 6th Para Regiment was basically wearing helmets of this tan/green type in Normandy. I saw some regular blue gray Luftwaffe paint jobs on helmets in the series as well as a few camo helmet covers, but NONE bearing the actual paint job which was prevalent at the time. Another point I could have advised them on, but does anyone CARE? The helmet that fell off the fatally wounded German after Blithe shot him sounded like it was made of plastic (which it probably was). A real FJ pot would sound more like a rock hitting the ground (thud, not a hollow clunk).

Illustrated above is a German paratroop helmet bearing the most common camo paint scheme used by Para Regiment 6 in Normandy-this specimen from 3rd Bn of the 6th Para was picked-up after the bayonet charge beyond the Madeleine river bridge by a member of LTC Cole's Bn.

During brief action shots of men wearing belts of .30 caliber ammo over their shoulders, you can see the missing primers in the shell casings-very obvious to anyone knowledgable on firearms. Perhaps this was for safety purposes, but this annoying detail also showed up many times in SPR, and such scenes should be shot from a different angle, not be shown, or edited-out. Otherwise, live bullets with primers could be used just for filming those brief closeups, and handled with care, to avoid accidents. Years ago I saw dummy rounds with fake primers in the base, so it can be done.

Probably most viewers don't know that the fragmentation grenades were the wrong color (black)-see page four of Equipment for a color shot of an original paint scheme. Also, most of the grenades in the series were late 1945 to postwar styles, with 2-prong spoons, instead of the wide, wraparound type spoon. Most of the M-1 Garand rifles shown were from the Korean War era, with flat operating rods, wrong lockbars on rear sights, front sight shields too flared-out, and too many birch, as opposed to walnut, stocks. At least Blithe and Winters had walnut stocks on their rifles for the closeup shooting scenes.

The 501st trooper from 'A' Co., 1st Bn on the white horse, had the correct 'tic' on his helmet at 3 o'clock, but the white diamond should have been painted exactly like a square(all sides the same size), rotated with point-up-NOT an elongated diamond as shown.

Throughout this episode, Damian Lewis' portrayal of Dick Winters is fabulous, as a fearless commander, with a charmed life. This is evidenced in his exposure to fire on the attack into Carentan and his standing in plain view above Blithe, firing his M-1 during the Bloody Gulch battle. His patient compassion for Blithe during the latter's episode with hysterical blindness is one of the best scenes in the series.

Inaccurate line: After taking Carentan, the statement is made: "We're going to attack east, to the high ground." While there IS high ground to the east of the south edge of Carentan at Hill 30, that was the 501's area. In fact, E/506th came into the south part of Carentan from the west, then doubled back the way they came and continued WEST, into the area short of Douville which became known as 'Bloody Gulch'. It was there they spent the night of 12-13 June and had the big fight with a taskforce comprised of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division and elements of 6th Para Regiment.

Before that scene, several men are shown recalling events of D-Day, with visualized flashbacks of Lt Speirs and the infamous cigarette incident. Although that allegedly happened on D-Day (in the film) and we saw that the PW victims were regular German Army troops, suddenly in this visualization, the victims become mostly Waffen SS troops. There were no Waffen SS troops in contact with the 101st on D-Day, and the men talking about Speirs didn't learn what a combat SS uniform looked like until later that day (June 12th) at the earliest. Just wondering why the substitution of German troop types for that visualization? Was this to make the audience more sympathetic to Speirs ("What the hell, they were just SS bastards anyhow")?

In the night incident wherein Sgt Tab Talbert was mistakenly bayonetted by George Smith, the dialogue in Ambrose's book has Tab saying: "Smith, it's Tab! Don't!" what was wrong with that and why did it have to be obscured into mumbling by the actor portraying Tab?

The same night, when Blithe encountered Lt Speirs on his implied ghoulish nocturnal sortie, the passwords used are obsolete. The entire First Army, not just the paratroopers, changed passwords every three days, starting one day after D-Day. Flash-Thunder was only used on D-Day. From D+ 1 thru 3, the words changed to Thirsty-Victory. From D+3 thru 6, to Weapon-Throat; from D plus 6 thru 9, to Wool-Rabbit. So in scenes such as the meeting with an 'F' company member above Carentan, as well as the Blithe-Speirs encounter, the passwords should have changed accordingly. They could have gotten this info from me also, but probably consider it "unimportant".

Also in that scene, Lt Speirs tells Blithe that there's no hope and to accept the fact that he's already dead, Mr Speirs has stated via his stepson, that he himself never made such a comment. That sentiment WAS expressed by an EM named Lee Parrish of G/501 on page 7 of my 2nd book.

The Battle of Bloody Gulch

Above: Bloody Gulch photographed by the webmaster in May, 2004. The camera is facing to the northwest.In one scene on 13 June, the Perconte character comments:"It's 9:30 in the morning back home." I really don't know why that line was even inserted. The battle started before 0600AM French time that day, and 2nd Armored tanks showed-up to assist around 2:30 in the afternoon,which is what time it would've been when Perconte made his statement.

The detail about it raining off and on, on the 12-13th June was correct. Actually, when the 2nd AD showed-up, the 66th Armored Regiment expended some 75,000 rounds of .30 caliber MG ammo, as well as 225 rounds from their main batteries. The troopers were almost out of ammo when the tankers arrived and many of them cried when given additional ammo to kill the enemy with. Others were seen to kiss the tanks in gratitude. Some paratroopers jumped aboard the Shermans and manned the .50 caliber MGs, quickly depleting the ammo supply. "They were an angry bunch", a 66th officer commented. The Armored Infantry following the tanks were members of 3rd Bn 41st Armored Infantry Regiment, and most were wearing brown wool OD shirts and trousers, with low quarters and infantry leggings. Most were probably NOT wearing tanker jackets. The one 2nd AD guy singled out to be shown in closeup ("Hey Buddy! Hey Buddy! Are you o.k.?) was talking to Blithe and was evidently modeled after the only widely published photo of any 2nd AD man in Normandy. That was a photo of M.P. Co. Lt. Paul Unger, searching a SS PW in Notre Dame de Cenilly, which happens to appear in my 3rd book, 'Breakout at Normandy' on page 59. Robert Capa took the photo. Every detail, including the wire rimmed glasses looks the same. That photo is misleading, because it makes Unger look small in comparison to the giant SS prisoner. Actually Unger was over 6' tall himself. At any rate, because of my research on 2nd AD, their involvement at Carentan on 13 June, and my considerable photo collection I could have been a good advisor for that episode as well. Between 1995-99, I interviewed over 300 WW2 veterans of the 2nd Armored Division for my book, published in 1999. Chapter 3 of my 'Breakout' book contains graphic details, including spraying the trees with .50 caliber fire as dead German snipers dropped-out, SS troopers leaving their places of concealment to attack the American tanks, and SS men standing upright in their holes, firing MP40s at Shermans until the tankers accelerated and ran them over.

Skip Muck's comment "Hey-Shermans! Check it out!", seemed like out of place jargon from 1960's or later vernacular. The German armor in the battle looked good, as did most of the SS troopers. This battle was done well, but should have been a bit better. Both 'D' and 'F' companies were badly slurred as they were shown hauling ass to the rear during the battle. I didn't know Dog Co. broke in that battle. Company F did fall back, leaving the flank of Winters' company exposed. Some of them faded back in a fighting withdrawal, not an all out rout as shown in this episode, and they took a toll on the way. But Company F was slurred repeatedly in the series. In real life, Winters made a bitter complaint to LTC Strayer and Colonel Sink about F company's withdrawal, and their Company Commander since Toccoa, Captain Thomas Mulvey, lost his command as a result. F company withdrew because they had inadequate ammo and were facing more armor than Easy Company-or at least that is their explanation for withdrawing that day. I know Winters remains pissed-off about it to this day.

The story about Easy members looting the musette bags of fallen troopers in St Mere Eglise was eliminated from this episode. (They stopped when one discovered a pair of baby booties in one of the bags.) I thought this was the most powerful story in that portion of Ambrose's book and should have been shown. Perhaps they filmed it, and it didn't come-off as convincing? It was certainly more important than the story of Lt Welsh keeping a parachute to have a wedding dress made from. Malarkey's motorcycle ride in England could have been shortened. A narrator would've helped clarify things in this episode. Many viewers were not clear when the men had returned to England, as evidenced by a movie reviewer, who thought the scene of Malarkey in the British laundry took place somewhere in France. A small caption at the bottom of the screen 'England, July, 1944', or a voiceover, could have solved that problem. Sgt Lipton's speech near the end of Episode 3 further confuses this issue when he states "We won't be returning to England." Although he alludes to Membury airfield, most viewers have no idea where that is located.

The end piece which states that Easy lost 65 men in Normandy is misleading. Less than 5 members of that company died in ground combat in Normandy-the rest of those killed were aboard the Co. HQ plane that went-in before battle was joined. The remainder of the 65 in those stats were wounded. This is brought up to clarify what happened, not to diminish the sacrifices of the heroes of E/506th. In real life, Albert Blithe survived his WW2 wound, fought in Korea, and died while still on active duty, in 1968.

Episode 4-Replacements

In this episode, we witness the partial liberation of the Netherlands (Holland) starting in September, 1944. This episode is where lay viewers really began to get confused about where the action was taking place. Some subtitles, or better yet, a voiceover narration would have been a tremendous aid to the average viewer at this point.