Finally, they captured Hitler's Bavarian outpost, his Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. They parachuted into France early D-Day morning and knocked out a battery of four 105 mm cannon looking down Utah Beach, they parachuted into Holland during the Arnhem campaign, they were the Battered Bastards of the Bastion of Bastogne, brought in to hold the line, although surrounded, in the Battle of the Bulge, and then they spearheaded the counteroffensive. In combat, the reward for a job well done is the next tough assignment, and as they advanced through Europe, the men of Easy kept getting the tough assignments. Army, was as good a rifle company as any in the world.įrom the rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to the disbanding in 1945, Stephen Ambrose tells the story of this remarkable company. And at its peak - in Holland and the Ardennes - Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Divison, U.S. Their stories-the history they witnessed, the history they made-are the redlettered memories of the days of their youth, words that landed in the golden ears of a great writer who knew wheat from chaff.They came together, citizen soldiers, in the summer of 1942, drawn to Airborne by the $50 monthly bonus and a desire to be better than the other guy.
I found it impossible to be a distant observer of the lives of the men of Easy Company as heard and written by Stephen Ambrose.
Magnificently, Ambrose demonstrates the most important quality for any scholar or writer-as a listener. In it, he shows himself to be, again, a great chronicler of history, a teller of authoritative, intuitive, and heartrending stories. Band of Brothers holds its own on the Ambrose shelf of books. There is no question of Stephen’s bona fides as a historian. Rather, the saga of Easy Company is meted out in the days, even the hours, from the formation of the outfit at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, through the horrible months begun in Normandy, and not completed until they took the Eagle’s Nest in the memories told by the likes of men named Carwood, Buck, and Wild Bill. The historical record of Easy Company of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division is written neither in the grand tactics of military planning nor in the collective events across the nations-wide fronts of World War II. Excerptīand of Brothers FOREWORD TO THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITIONĪS THE RED-LETTER VERSION of the Gospels puts extra attention on those certain passages most important to that story, Band of Brothers shows Stephen Ambrose’s high regard for, and his faith in, the words of the brothers themselves. E Company was a company of men who went hungry, froze, and died for each other, a company that took 150 percent casualties, a company where the Purple Heart was not a medal-it was a badge of office. This is the story of the men who fought, of the martinet they hated who trained them well, and of the captain they loved who led them. They discovered that in war, men who loved life would give their lives for them. But in training and combat they learned selflessness and found the closest brotherhood they ever knew. They drank too much French wine, looted too many German cameras and watches, and fought too often with other GIs. They were rough-and-ready guys, battered by the Depression, mistrustful and suspicious. They parachuted into France early D-Day morning and knocked out a battery of four 105 mm cannon looking down Utah Beach they parachuted into Holland during the Arnhem campaign they were the Battered Bastards of the Bastion of Bastogne, brought in to hold the line, although surrounded, in the Battle of the Bulge and then they spearheaded the counteroffensive. Ambrose tells the story of this remarkable company. And at its peak-in Holland and the Ardennes-Easy Company was as good a rifle company as any in the world.įrom the rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to the disbanding in 1945, Stephen E. They came together, citizen soldiers, in the summer of 1942, drawn to Airborne by the $50 monthly bonus and a desire to be better than the other guy.
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Ambrose’s classic New York Times bestseller and inspiration for the acclaimed HBO series about Easy Company, the ordinary men who became the World War II’s most extraordinary soldiers at the frontlines of the war's most critical moments.
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