Band Of Brothers - All The Interviews With The Soldiers Of Easy Company

we were in a store and a guy in that store told us to put our uniforms on what the hell are you talking about he says the usa is in a war with japan we couldn't believe it well our country was attacked it's a different it wasn't like courier vietnam we was attacked and you know it was a feeling that uh maybe we just dumb country people but where i come from but a lot of us volunteered who would like to volunteer for the tank corps who would like to volunteer for the air force who would like to volunteer for the navy or whatever and then they said who would like to volunteer for the airborne so he says what the hell is the airborne nobody ever heard of it we came from a small small town and three fellows in that town were that were four f committed suicide because they couldn't go at different time i did things i didn't do them for metals i didn't do them for accolade i did them because it's what had to be done i said well you jump out of airplanes you know you've got all your army equipment you jump out of airplanes to fight the enemy because they said go to hell nobody put up their hands and then i don't know what it was brought it up with the the guy giving the the speech was sent but you get paid 50 a month more so that made it 100 bucks i uh standing in the door i could see the lights on the drop zone and i had to assume that was our drop zone way in the ahead of us and so that we had had the red light had everybody standing up ready to jump so when the plane started to get hit and suddenly the pilot gives me the green light i'm out the door immediately got such an opening blast from the opening shot from the prop blast that it broke this chin strap that we had on this helmet liner and that's when i lost his famous leg bag that everybody talks about just from the shock of the opening it just flew right off my foot we came from the sky we hit and in any direction you went there would be enemy you knew it and that was all part of what you accepted how do you prepare yourself mentally each man must do that himself each man must prepare himself mentally to uh to make that jump in the back of your mind you you know you you wonder what's going to happen and all that you know you uh you've been trained and trained and trained and what you what your job is going to be and what you're supposed to do and you oh that's what you've got to think about you know what and we lost a lot of people that night but you try to put it all on your mind i never thought i'd get through d-day let alone the next phase or the next phase i thought i was going to get killed instantly i thought one of two things a quick death or come through probably without a scratch i think everybody had fear i think there's people that can handle fear i think i think i was probably one of them i think i was just as scared as anybody else except i could think it's a feeling you would you would not let yourself down and you would not let your comrades or your unit down we all had fear but we all had training to know that you try to handle your fear and and work to accomplish what you're supposed to be doing at the core man that's the ones that was there to be very beginning they are very close and they accept people coming in like myself as a replacement because you also have to prove yourself well most of them were we know we're qualified parishes they had to be a lot of them were awfully green and we knew that we just we hoped we could keep them alive and they could keep alive a lot of them didn't but uh no all right they they eventually blend right in i think maybe they were trying to impress the older guys maybe people like me or shifty or i don't know why but uh i got right there to where i didn't want to be friendly with replacements coming in because god i didn't like see him get killed i just it just tore me up because we were in a lot of them they were wearing infantry badges you know their uniform they had a star on their jump wings they uh they were like heroes to us you know that's how we looked at them and they were good furthermore they were good we had good officers for the most part but we had excellent ncos they looked and they looked after you if you're a leader you lead the way not just uh on the easy when you take the tough ones too a good leader has to understand the people that are under him understand their needs their their desires or how they think a little bit seemed like he always made the right decisions along the way he was a real soldier like some of some of the officers uh i don't think i would follow them in the water but uh he was he was one of the best he went right in there and he didn't know he never thought of not being first or sending somebody in his place i don't know how he survived but he did when we left for bastogne we were short of equipment we didn't have enough ammunition we didn't have enough warm clothes but we had confidence that our higher military authorities would get to us whatever we needed and there was a ridge with the tree line we were dug in on that ridge chairman's knew right where we were and they really gave us a shellacking well i can buy a stone we're down to one round for man there for a while there's just fog was in they couldn't drop it couldn't resupply us every time they tried to drop supplies into us they missed us and dropped them to the germans when the guy got hit in the arm with a piece of strap took his arm off above the elbow and they were going to take him out he said get my wrist watch off my arm then a medic came along and i think he really saved my life because he stuck a suret in my in a key position more morphine even today a real cold night we go to bed and my wife will tell you that first thing i'll say is i'm glad i'm not investing i've seen death i've seen my friends my men being killed and this is it doesn't take too many days of that and you changed dramatically he was hungry had no food but didn't have much ammunition it's cold we didn't have any clothes you couldn't build a fire if you'd be able to fire some crazy thing and chewed at you everywhere you would look you would see dead people you know dead soldier there here ours there's then civilians besides dead uh animals so death was all over you don't have a chance when your friends go down you know to to really take care of them as you might and especially if you're in an attack uh moving or whatever and i withstood it well but i had a lot of trouble in later life because uh those events would come back and and you never forget them we had lost some very good men there toy and garnier had lost their legs there garnier gordon was badly hit a number of other people were killed it was a difficult situation there i don't know the exact amount of men that got killed in that but uh six seven of them were real close friends of mine skip muck died and eugene roe came to me about 10 minutes after he was killed and he wanted me to see if i wanted to go look at him and i said no i wouldn't be able to stand that so i i didn't go look at him after bastogne we went to hageno there was another push there we wanted we want to get some idea what was across the river there what kind of strengths they had you have a feeling you're going to live through the war you have a feeling it's starting to ease off uh you can't account for it it's just a gut feeling but everybody had that feeling i believe i might be able to live through so walk carefully take care of yourself it was a situation there where everybody was happy to see the war coming to an end and the germans didn't really have that much of a heart for and they realized that the end was there well he says the only good crowd is a dead one well but there was something in there that you know hey that was a kid most of them were kids we all were kids they had a job to do the same way as me so we went about and did the job that we had to do i think we thought that the germans were probably the evilest people in the world but as the war went along we found out also that it wasn't the germans per se a lot of those a lot of those soldiers i've thought about this often that man and i might have been good friends we might and we might had a lot in common we might like to fish you know he might like to hunt you never know you know of course they were doing what they were supposed to do and i was trying to do what i was supposed to do but under different circumstances we might have been good friends a very unusual feeling it's a very unusual happening and it's a very unusual bonding we knew that we could depend on each other and so we were a close-knit group just brave so brave was unbelievable and uh i don't know anybody that i admire more than bill garnier and and joe toy and uh they were very very special i'm just one part of the big war that's all one little part and i'm proud to be a part of it sometimes it makes me cry the real men the real heroes are the fellas that are still buried over there and those that come home to be buried seemed like you figured that you thought that you could do just about anything and after the war was over and it came back out why you lost a lot of that or at least i did i lost all that confidence well he's hoping to stay alive that's something henry v was talking to his men he said from this day to the ending of the world we in it shall be remembered we lucky few we banned our brothers for he who today sheds his blood with me shall be my brother do you remember the letter that my granny wrote me you do you remember how i ended it i cherish the memories of a question my grandson asked me the other day when he said grandpa were you a hero in the grandpa said no but i served in a company of earth you

Channel: Elliott Walsh

Views: 1,166,907

Rating: 4.9269295 out of 5

Keywords: Band, Of, Brothers, All, The, Interviews, With, Soilders, Easy, Company

Id: AMUbF0ItdT0

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 15 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/MosFelil]

I've watched Band of Brothers at least a dozen times and I still get goose bumps and tear up when the veterans are on.

[u/GetGhettoBlasted]

''Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?''

''No. But i served in a Company of Heroes.''

[u/outtyn1nja]

Easily one of the best TV shows ever made.

[u/Mors_ab_alto]

Band of Brothers is undoubtedly one of the greatest film productions ever undertaken. It has immortalized the story of this great company of men to whom we owe so much. I'm so glad they included these interviews before each episode and I thought it was entirely fitting to not reveal who each man was until the very end. By then, we are not only much more invested in their great story, but feel like we know each individual as he was in his youth. At times full of laughter, at others gripped by fear, but stoic in their dedication to duty nonetheless.

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The final interview with Maj. Winters recalling the cherished memory of a question his grandson asked will always bring tears to my eyes. When asked, "Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?" he replies, "No, but I served in a company of heroes." Humble until the very end, he only praises his men. A leader we should all strive to emulate.

[u/Craicor]

Winters is an example for all men.

[u/PuddleOfKnowledge]

This is my Christmas tradition; crack open the Band of Brothers boxset and enjoy with the tree lit and a glass of whiskey, getting tears in my eyes listening to these men tell their story

[u/[deleted]]

"We had good officers, for the most part."

WEEKEND PASS REVOKED!

[u/Verypoorman]

If you like that then you should definitely watch They Shall Not Grow Old. The footage and audio is isn’t just cleaned up, it looks and sounds amazing. There’s a part when one of the soldiers speaks about have to shoot his own man because he was so far gone and in so much pain, and it just hit me like a punch in the gut. It’s well worth the watch.

[u/brad-corp]

God, just thinking about 'the replacements' episode and when they first came across the concentration camp is making me tear up. And the bit about how many people turned up to Joe Toy's funeral.