Band of Brothers

I have a keen interest in World War II. I don’t know why I do and I don’t know where it came from. Maybe it’s the sheer scale of it and the thousands of stories that have been told that drew me in.

For me, one of the stand-out stories of WWII was the story of the volunteers that formed Easy Company, 506 PIR, 101st Airbourne Division. It’s a gripping real life tale that’s far superior to anything that Hollywood could dream up. I’ve read Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers book twice. Once before viewing the HBO mini-series and once after. For those that don’t know, the book chronicles the tale of Easy Company between 1941-45. The story starts when Easy Company formed in Toccoa, Georgia under the shadow of the Currahee mountain (Currahee translates to ‘We stand together’ which became the company’s motto). They trained hard under the sadistic rule of Captain Herbert Sobel. Ironically, Sobel became a loner and drifter in later life and tried to take his own life and failed. He was bitter towards Easy company and when he died, not even his sons turned up for his funeral. The story moves on to their training in preparation for the jump into Normandy ahead of the D-Day invasion and carries them through some of the hardest and most bitter fighting in the European campaign. They held the line in Bastogne in the "Battle of the Bulge", liberated part of the Dachau concentration camp and were the first to reach Hitler’s Nest in Austria. They suffered horror, tragedy and some dramatic highs and lows. The Easy Company survivors describe their personal accounts of the war. The confusion, the senseless death and wounding of their friends, the "chickenshit" ways of some officers and the admiration for the bravery of others. 

While Stephen Ambrose does a great job of wrapping up these many testimonials into a cohesive single story, it is a work of fact and doesn’t very often disclose the emotion of the men other than in reproducing their letters to their loved ones. It is an overview of what happened and why it happened. This is where Private David Kenyon Webster’s  memoir "Parachute Infantry" fills in the emotional gaps.

David Webster was badly misrepresented in the HBO mini-series (which is otherwise excellent and fairly faithful to Ambrose’s book). The series painted him as a shirker and a loud mouth. Reality couldn’t be further from that character. Webster was a sensitive and well educated man. Educated at Harvard he volunteered for the 101st and originally trained with "F" company before requesting a transfer to "E" company after the D-Day jump. He could have used his family’s connections to either avoid the war or to sit it out comfortably in administration but he wanted to experience war as a private. He was a self confessed "goldbrick" (he never volunteered for anything) and was often frustrated at his officers for their stupidity and idiotic ways. His personal account is a very raw and emotive story. It’s easy to think of those G.I.s as emotionless fighters who knew what to do and were always ready for the fight. Webster sets the record straight. He writes about being scared, wanting to cry and the desire to dig "a thousand foot deep and pull the mud in after him" when under attack from artillery (a giant with iron finger tips picking his way to him). He was no coward though. He followed his orders and did his job. He fought bravely even if he was scared and always thought about self-survival. He hated war but knew that it wasn’t going to go away so he figured he may as well get stuck in at the front and get it over with.

He wrote to his parents often and on one occasion he wrote that he knew that he wouldn’t survive his next jump and they should prepare themselves for his death. He told them that death isn’t unexpected in the army and seeing your friends "machine gunned in the face" (this happened to his platoon leader in Normandy) is part of life and not considered shocking or surprising.

He did survive the war thankfully and he wrote most of this book in the 1950s. Unfortunately he never got to see it in print. Publishers wanted stories of bravery and rose-tinted tales of the war. They didn’t want a story of courage, fear, confusion and hatred of life as a soldier. Webster died in 1961. He had a keen interest in sharks and wrote many books on them (also not published until Jaws was released in the 1975) and went out one night in his boat and was never seen again. After the success of Ambrose’s book and the subsequent HBO series, it was finally put into print.

Another member of Easy company "Wild Bill" Guarnere was described by Webster as fearless and brave. Guarnere’s war came to an end with a "million dollar wound" in Bastogne during the "Battle of the Bulge". He lost his leg when an artillery shell exploded above him during a fierce shelling which injured his friend Joe Toye. Guarnere ran from the safety of his fox hole to help him. Guarnere is still very active in getting the old Easy Company men together for reunions and his grandson, Gino, runs his website, which, I’m proud to say, uses IPB.

I’m thankful for the freedom these guys fought for and hope that no one else has to go through what they did. Their tales show us the very best and the very worst of the human soul.