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Release date : March 6, 2002.
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BAND OF BROTHERS
E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne
From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
Stephen E. Ambrose
To all those members of the Parachute Infantry, United States Army, 1941-1945, who wear the Purple Heart not as a decoration but as a badge of office.
"From this day to the ending of the World, ... we in it shall be remembered ... we band of brothers"
Henry V William Shakespeare
1 - 'WE WANTED THOSE WINGS' 2
2 'STAND UP AND HOOK UP' 8
3 "DUTIES OF THE LATRINE ORDERLY" 13
4 "LOOK OUT HITLER! HERE WE COME!" 19
5 "FOLLOW ME" 25
6 "MOVE OUT!" * 34
7 HEALING WOUNDS AND SCRUBBED MISSIONS 42
8 "HELL'S HIGHWAY" * 48
9 THE ISLAND * 56
1O RESTING, RECOVERING, AND REFITTING 66
11 'THEY GOT US SURROUNDED-THE POOR BASTARDS" 72
12 THE BREAKING POINT * 79
13 ATTACK 86
14 THE PATROL * 91
15 "THE BEST FEELING IN THE WORLD" 97
16 GETTING TO KNOW THE ENEMY 101
17 DRINKING HITLER'S CHAMPAGNE 108
18 THE SOLDIER'S DREAM LIFE 112
19 POSTWAR CAREERS 119
PHOTOGRAPHS 126
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND SOURCES 133
1 - 'WE WANTED THOSE WINGS'
*
CAMP TOCCOA
July-December 1942
The men of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army, came from different backgrounds, different parts of the country. They were farmers and coal miners, mountain men and sons of the Deep South. Some were desperately poor, others from the middle class. One came from Harvard, one from Yale, a couple from UCLA. Only one was from the Old Army, only a few came from the National Guard or Reserves. They were citizen soldiers.
They came together in the summer of 1942, by which time the Europeans had been at war for three years. By the late spring of 1944, they had become an elite company of airborne light infantry. Early on the morning of D-Day, in its first combat action, Easy captured and put out of action a German battery of four 105 mm cannon that were looking down on Utah Beach. The company led the way into Carentan, fought in Holland, held the perimeter at Bastogne, led the counteroffensive in the Battle of the Bulge, fought in the Rhineland campaign, and took Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. It had taken almost 150 percent casualties. At the peak of its effectiveness, in Holland in October 1944 and in the Ardennes in January 1945, it was as good a rifle company as there was in the world.
The job completed, the company disbanded, the men went home.
Each of the 140 men and seven officers who formed the original company followed a different route to its birthplace, Camp Toccoa, Georgia, but they had some things in common. They were young, born since the Great War. They were white, because the U.S. Army in World War II was segregated. With three exceptions, they were unmarried. Most had been hunters and athletes in high school.
They were special in their values. They put a premium on physical well being, hierarchical authority, and being part of an elite unit. They were idealists, eager to merge themselves into a group fighting for a cause, actively seeking an outfit with which they could identify, join, be a part of, relate to as a family.