Easy Company 506 The real Band of Brothers - A look back

my name is kirk zadesky i work at playtone we produced abandoned brothers inevitably when i talked to somebody about that project they always bring up the interviews with the real men of easy company that preceded every episode so i want to tell you a story about those interviews when we first started the project one of the first things we did is have a film crew go to the various homes of the men of easy company pennsylvania west virginia california north carolina oregon and really all across america and after a few days of this uh the director of our with our film crew called me in los angeles and he said you know it's funny every time we pull into a new neighborhood and to go up to a new home of an easy company member there's always a crowd of people outside and at first he thought well everybody sort of thinks that maybe tom hanks will be there or it's it's hollywood and there are cameras and it's exciting and glamorous but he realized pretty quickly that had nothing to do with any of that because what it really was the reason that there were so many people crowded into the living room is that this is the first time grandpa has ever told this story to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the epic series band of brothers the normandy institute in genesis publications are proud to share highlights of the 2005 easy company reunion tour to normandy holland and the ardennes to have walked in the footsteps of these heroes was an immense honor but perhaps the most touching part of the reunion was to bear witness to their shared sorrow humor and camaraderie they were quite simply a real life band of brothers [Music] the heroes didn't come home we just did other guys but i've always the heroes didn't come home but uh life goes on looking at those crosses wanting to get choked up you know you get a lot of friends in there it hurts when you go to see something like that i'm glad that i met all these all these uh guys you know during the war and glad as many of us that did got back safe that is uh that is the most important thing about it and the fact that we did we did do what we were supposed to do which we tried and that is just i just feel like that we've accomplished [Music] see there's a stick in the plane it's called a stick and there's about 18 or 20 guys and you take when the first guy goes out to the last guy well that's about 18 to 20 seconds and the plane is going supposed to be going 90 miles an hour but he's going about 120 so you can imagine the distance between the first guy that jumps out on the last guy there's at least five six seven mile distance so it took us a day and a half to two days to get together you know that's we always kid that we made more we went out of the plane without landing in a plane for many many times a day like this is like the day we jumped in september the 17th 1944 i'm amazed at how much the people turn out just to talk to a bunch of old beat up men like we are you know i think the biggest thing is meeting guys that you haven't seen in 20 years you know and they're still healthy and still getting around and just shooting the breeze i never realized how heavy it was the one time i went over fort bragg with one of the guys and buddies of mine and they had one league out there and then i think we picked it up and i said oh my god just being heavy and you never realized why during the war of course i jumped same time everybody else did i landed in the flooded area where the germans had flooded it and i was fortunate enough that i landed right in a ditch i didn't know it was a ditch but it was it was 18 inches deep out on the right 18 d inches deep on the left and seven feet in a ditch so that's where i picked to land and i almost drowned before i got out of there the clung landed at the church just outside the church and book taylor and king and i landed in a little field right about in here right this area here slightly out of secondary sacraments and then from there we got on this road here and went down it's probably this real big house was a road went down toward the beach and we went down here the plane went down i understand just behind here in the field [Music] forest guth was the first one to come across it and that we know of he did not know at that time it was company headquarters plane but he saw the remains it had burned parts of bodies and so forth and later on learned that it was the company headquarters plane the residents around here knew that it burned for days there was very very little left as it blew up if i'm correct a set of dog tags of sergeant evan were found was found in a tree some 20 years later [Music] so that gives you an idea of you know remains and all that now some some of our platoon was up in grade four uh popeye for one and they had pretty tough but you know there's no way of knowing just how many lives that winter's outfit saved when they took those four artillery pieces because it's falling right down on their feet so i'm sure this is hundreds [Music] it was a kind of a signature piece of what happened on d-day because they the position was unknown by the american intelligence they didn't know it was there and it had been moved in about two months before and the the aerial reconnaissance had not picked it up the germans when they went out and attended the guns or anything else they didn't walk across the field they walked on the edge of things so that there was no indication from the air of uh you know of german activity crossing crossing those fields there but the um it was just a lucky deal that's what it was period i told dick wonders that once down and down down in lake tahoe and he said what do you mean luck you know i thought we just luck i said there's no other way we could have done that but the way we did it and that was just luck he was mad about that [Music] one thing that has to be said here that one said and e-company had a little bit to do with it and there's no excuses to be made about e-company and what they did here it was 101st airborne division that maintained a circle around around bastogne and performed the greatest feat of arms in the history of the war in europe and don't anybody ever forget that bravo well what else you got to say about me [Laughter] i don't have anything i better get out of here my wife waiting for well me the only one [Laughter] you got that right i don't remember no showing or no snow or no snow don't believe this guy [Music] but anyway you never never had to lose for connie okay hold it hold it hold it the middle of the day or the middle of night while you stood sideways there his big nose out there and then i just want to tell you guys one thing if [ __ ] was blood he'd be wounded [Music] i actually the reason i wanted to come so bad was for the honor the person that got killed in here i knew two of them was got killed right by me uh mallet and ap heron good friends of mine i think i i mentioned to a couple people here recently that we've had men come to reunions in wheelchairs and go home and die there's a great deal of pride in the fact that that well that you come places like this and these people have a kind of a hero worship that [Music] i don't think is necessarily deserved uh so we were here so we did it so we got it done that's really was the whole thing i have some so many people i have to thank for probably being alive you know and they thank me for being alive it's a trade-off but we're awful close all of us we may not seem lively but just let something happen over there [Music] [Music] for those of you who are not familiar with the all the men of e-company i think there are 12 or 13 here this morning that made d-day and they went for the most part through the war completely why they stayed live no one knows but we're all here today there were thousands that died in the battle of the bulge an e-company is only one of a thousand rifle companies in the united states army during that period we all we all knew that we were good soldiers e-company thought they were better than most but still there were many companies that suffered many more casualties than we did particularly in these woods [Music] do i've stories between fellows and things that they've taken care of for one another when after the war we had alcoholics we had things that they they took people out of the gutter and bought clothes for them tried to get them straightened out and so forth and that's the kind of camaraderie that exists i thank you people just deep deep down if if it means anything there's not many people in the world that i ever say i love you but i do every every one of you for what you've done and what you mean to me it's just wonderful [Music] do [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Normandy Institute

Views: 53,141

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Id: 8UreIpLAgdA

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021