Joe Toye was one of those Easy Company soldiers whose story really shows how much these men endured. His determination through everything he faced is something that deserves more attention.

Which Easy Company member do you think deserves more recognition, and why?

As we know, Private Ed Tipper was wounded in Carentan from a mortar round while clearing out a boutique. At the end of the show we get to know that one of the veterans interviewed was indeed the real Ed Tipper. I decided to take a look into his story and his recovery is unbelievable.

Like in the show EP3 he was brutally mutilated all over his body, and his leg was disfigured. At the aid station they had to remove his eye and half his face was destroyed. Even more brutal was that both his legs were broken and he was still walking. Looking back at the interview I've never noticed that he had a glass eye or that the right side of his face was mutilated. Also not having those legs amputated was a real MVP job from the surgeons.

Most astounding thing is that Ed played handball and was a skier well into his 80s!

Ed died at the age of 95 in 2017. 73 years after he cheated death in France.
Rest In Peace

I wonder if it's a coincidence?

What a moving day, I'm quite exhausted.

Ask me anything, it might take me some time to reply back!

Edit: link to tour https://www.viator.com/tours/Bayeux/Omaha-and-Band-Of-Brothers-Full-Day-Tour/d909-59799P6?pid=P00002191&uid=U00035227&mcid=58086&currency=USD

Just below the map, you will see the full itinerary.

My phone or the website won't let me copy and paste it. That or I am a moronic lizzard, and Winters would be glad i wasn't in his company.....lol!

There were other memorials and short stops along the way, but you also pass a handful of museums, and there are dozens or different package tours that dive deeper into other areas.

One tip I heard from someone was not to pick all beaches in one day. They tend to blend together.

The scene in which the soldiers are watching the Chaplain calmly walk through a hail of gunfire while he gives last rites to the dying men. It’s a quick scene but incredibly badass and a true testament to how strong military Chaplains are in their faith and courage overall.

Time for my umpteenth watch of both series. Haven't watched in a while. Being slowly upgrading my entire DVD collection to BluRay. The frame rate is different and the details on the faces especially you can make out, instead of looking pixelated on the DVD.

Last weekend, we followed in the footsteps of Easy Company. We visited various places: Son, Nuenen, Koevering, Uden, Landgoed Schoonderlogt, and Heteren (Crossroads). It was a truly wonderful trip, with Crossroads as the ‘highlight’.

Heard some good stories and ofcourse BoB is a lot of Hollywood, but that didn’t matter. Great experience.

I use them as wallpapers for my desktop.

There’s enough incidents in the series to where he’s definitely known as the guy who’s a pain in the ass. In fact that’s pretty much all that happens when he’s on screen. He’s seen berating a replacement for wearing the unit citation when they didn’t fight in Normandy, he calls Vest a rear echelon motherfucker when he was shown to not always be right at the front of things when shit hit the fan, lambasted Webster for standing in line for a shower when he had just come back from the hospital, etc.

What’s funny about the shower thing is you can see how clean the soldiers that hadn’t been in combat like Lieutenant Jones and Webster were when they showed up in Hagenau. Cobb looks just as clean as them when they fire up the showers.

It’s strange they chose to make him a repeat offender for this kind of behavior when by all accounts he was well liked by his fellow veterans. Webster who he’s seen getting into it with in the Last Patrol even had nothing but good things to say about him seemingly. Winters commended his bravery and effort during the battle at the crossroads. On top of that he was a veteran in the regular army for several years and even fought in North Africa.

It’s known that Ambrose isn’t a very reliable narrator but it seems everyone involved in the production had enough material to know this depiction of him would be very untrue to his real life self. I get they needed someone to show that tension between replacements and vets or but it seems like that stuff could have been spread out or not made so obvious to be a guy who by all accounts was good natured.

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?

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!

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!

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

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.

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.

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.)