Band of Brothers

I only saw a few episodes of Band of Brothers many years ago and finally got to watch the entire series last year. Early this month, I found the book.

The WWII movie buff in me WWII movies-made-by-Tom-Hanks-and-Spielberg buff in me loves both the series and the book. I mean, if these stories are told in textbook form, they may have a different effect on me. Case in point: I wasn't really aware (or didn't really care?) of the US's role in WWII, not until I was older. In my mind, Japan was always the brutal occupier. I didn't know what they wanted from us exactly, and that the British were here too and lost or something. And I must have thought H*tler was from a different time -- and I got A1 in History for my SPM! To be honest, school sounds so alien now, I can't remember what I knew and what I didn't then.

When I thought of the US and war, I always thought of Vietnam, though. I watched Tour of Duty with my father when I was a kid. I went to Vietnam, visited their war museum and crawled through their famous war tunnel in '08. Ok, the entire network was originally 200km long, I only crawled through a stretch of 100 metres that has been expanded for tourists -- which I will never do again, thank you.

Ok, back to Band of Brothers (because I've just had a cup of coffee).

1) If you haven't read the book and plan to read it now, and if you are like me, who calls anything that fires a 'gun', make sure you have your Google image search ready. To get a clearer picture of what's happening in the book, maybe you should know what a rifle, machine gun, artillery, shrapnel, shelling, mortar or potato masher is first.

Both of these are potato mashers.

2) It's also probably good to know what a theater, regiment, battalion, company and platoon are. They still confuse me till today.

3) I read many of the paragraphs twice because there were so many characters. For this, Wikipedia came in handy.

4) With the usual charm of a biographer, Ambrose would write a funny story about Private A, for example, and as we were rooting for Private A, he'd close the paragraph with a sentence like "the bullet hit A's neck and killed him instantly".

.............

5) Some of the details in the TV series differ from the book, and God knows how much both the series and the book differ from the actual events, but I appreciate that these were real people fighting in a real war; the battles, the events, the places were all real.
- But I'm confused about what actually happened to Lt Hank Jones. The book says he died during the patrol, but he did not die in the series.
- Albert Blithe was wounded and died in 1948 in both the series and the book, but according to the internet (which I totally meant Wikipedia), he died in 1967 after the war.
- Other than that, you can now throw me a quiz on who did what or who died when, and I will answer them correctly.

6) My favourite parts from the series:
- in Bastogne, when Bill Guarnere was trying to drag and save Joe Toye. OMG, it's one of the saddest scenes in the series. Tom Hanks was mean. (Both men lost one of their legs.)
- when the patrol team found the concentration camp.
- when the German general was addressing his surrendering troops:

"Men, it's been a long war, it's been a tough war. You've fought bravely, proudly for your country. You're a special group. You've found in one another a bond that exists only in combat among brothers. You've shared foxholes, held each other in dire moments. You've seen death and suffered together. I'm proud to have served with each and every one of you. You deserve long and happy lives in peace."

- every time Captain Speirs showed up on screen *giggles*.

7) These guys were in their early 20s during the war. They mostly enlisted themselves at the age of 17 or 18. Richard Winters was made Captain at the age of 26. Kind of makes you think of what you did with your life when you were 18 and 26.

8) Looting, except probably during emergencies, is still not cool.

9) The Germans were described in the book by the American G.I. as "liked best, clean, hard-working, disciplined," among others.

"Lieutenant Foley noted that 'The residents, on their own volition, were determined to clean up and sweep out the ruins of the war. Along most of the streets there were neat stacks of salvageable cobblestones. Houses were worked on to remove the debris. They were still in bad shape, yet they appeared almost ready to be rebuilt. Amazing.'" ~ Band of Brothers, page 258.

10) I've always wanted to find WWII books from the point of view of the Germans and the German army. I think I saw one titled The Forgotten Soldier in the bookshop. Maybe I'll go and get that one.

Good night.

Images: Touchstone, joieshop.com, Google Images