'Band of Brothers' (book and mini-series)

I’ve been a fan of the HBO mini-series for years, but I just finished reading the book by Stephen Ambrose on which the series was based. The book has more detail, naturally, but the series is quite true to Ambrose’s narrative. So they can be reviewed together.

‘Band of Brothers’ follows one company of soldiers through World War II. This was no ordinary company. This was “Easy” Company. That is, E Company, 406th Regiment, 101st Airborne. Serving in Easy was anything but easy. With over a 100% casualty rate, your chances of coming home unscathed were pretty low. (100% casualty doesn’t mean that every person in the company was killed or wounded. If the company has approximately 150 men at full strength, it means that over the course of the war more than 150 men were killed or wounded. As men got wounded, got promoted, earned transfers or somehow got to go home, reinforcements came in to replace them. Say 350 or so men went through Easy’s ranks throughout the war, but over 150 of those men were either killed or wounded...that’s how the math works.) Easy was a paratrooper company, but they only made a couple of jumps during the War. Most of their time was spent as an elite ground infantry unit that was repeatedly sent on the most dangerous missions. Over a period of a little over one year, Easy landed behind enemy lines on D-Day, fought in Holland in a very dangerous operation that eventually failed, held out through the hell of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge, and eventually was on the front lines for the invasion of Germany. They were also one of the first companies to arrive at Berchtesgaden and Hitler’s mountain getaway ("The Eagle's Nest"), getting first crack at Hermann Goering’s incomparable wine collection.

The depictions of battle in both the book and the series are superlative and harrowing. They stand up there with the “best” of 'Saving Private Ryan' or 'Schindler’s List' in war realism. A particularly striking scene in both formats is when Easy are approaching the drop zone in Normandy on D-Day (actually, they were dropped the night before). Easy was one of several elite paratrooper companies dropped behind German lines as the D-Day assault occurred on the beaches. Their mission was to knock out as many of the German batteries as possible in order to make the beach landings easier. What this meant was mounting raids on German encampments and engaging in fierce fire fights and often brutal hand to hand combat with battle-hardened German soldiers. This was their first taste of real battle after months and months of intense training. The shock and intensity of German anti-aircraft guns blazing at the bombers carrying the paratroopers to their drop zones is one of the more memorable experiences I have had watching anything on television. It tells you how intense it was when the paratroopers were scrambling to jump out of the planes before they reached their destination, thereby landing somewhere unknown behind enemy lines in the middle of the night, just to get away from the bombardment. If you are a war buff (like me), then you will be happy to know that scenes like this are plentiful throughout 'Band of Brothers.'

But one of the most intriguing aspects of Easy to me was how two very different men shaped the character of the company. One was Capt. Herbert Sobel, and the other was Maj. (although he was a Lieutenant when he led Easy) Dick Winters. Sobel was in many respects a disaster of a leader. He was a tyrant in boot camp, capricious and sadistic (but then some argue that is exactly what a drill sargeant in training camp is supposed to be). In the field he was incompetent, unable to read a map and constantly making basic tactical mistakes. The men of Easy were so afraid of taking orders from Sobel in real combat that all of the junior non-commissioned officers in the company risked court martial by resigning their positions en masse. The higher-ups clearly saw the writing on the wall and thankfully transferred Sobel before Normandy (to train more hapless recruits). David Schwimmer does a fantastic job in the series of playing Sobel in all of his petty glory.

Winters took over Easy after Sobel’s replacement was killed on D-Day, and he was the ultimate leader in every way. He had a gift for tactics and for improvising on the ground, and he also had a deep understanding and connection with his men. The survivors of Easy, decades later, still spoke of Winters as if he were a semi-deity. In fact, one of Winters' attacks on a German stronghold of machine gun nests was so artful, it is still studied at West Point to this day. It is clear why Winters had such an impact, but what I found fascinating was that many Easy survivors, although to a man they all despised Sobel, also credited Sobel for making them who they were. Ambrose refers to Sobel as “a petty tyrant” more than once in his book, and he chronicles Sobel’s abuses through page after entertaining page. But Ambrose also wrote: “I asked every member of Easy that I interviewed for this book if the extraordinary closeness, the outstanding unit cohesion, the remarkable staying power of the identification with Easy came because of or in spite of Sobel. Those who did not reply ‘Both,’ said it was because of Sobel. [One veteran] looked me in the eye and said flatly, ‘Herbert Sobel made E Company.’ Others said something similar. But they nearly all hated him.” Sobel, through his sadistic ways, trained and pushed Easy harder than any other unit in the U.S. Army were trained. He just would have been a horrible combat commander. ( A favorite scene: Sobel decides to give the men a break from training and orders a nice spaghetti dinner to be cooked. Right at the end of the dinner after the men have gourged themselves, Sobel bursts in and orders a 10 mile run up a mountain. You can imagine the result.)


ABOVE: The two men who made Easy Company what it was, Winters (played by Damian Lewis) and Sobel (David Schwimmer)

It is true that Ambrose views the men of Easy as heroes. If there is a flaw at all, it may be that Ambrose worships these men a bit too much. But he also points out the mistakes that were made as well, he does not paint a perfect picture. But let’s face it, this was a group of extraordinary men. I was also struck with how Ambrose eloquently describes the close bonds that are formed in battle. He says: “They found in combat the closest brotherhood they ever knew. They found selflessness. They found they could love the other guy in their foxhole more than themselves. They found that in war, men who loved life would give their lives for them.”

It is a remarkable book and a remarkable mini-series. I would recommend checking out both. But if you've only got time or interest for one or the other, check out the mini-series first. It is wonderful and engrossing filmmaking.

Finally, I’ll let the legendary Maj. Winters have the last word:

“That extra special, elite, close feeling started under the stress Capt. Sobel created at Camp Toccoa. Under that stress, the only way the men could survive was to bond together. Eventually the non-coms had to bond together in a mutiny. The stress in training was followed by the stress in Normandy of drawing the key combat mission for gaining control of Utah Beach. In combat your reward for a good job done is that you get the next tough mission. E Company kept right on getting the job done through Holland – Bastogne – Germany. The result of sharing all that stress throughout training and combat has created a bond between the men of E Company that will last forever.”

**** out of ***** (for both book and mini-series)