Easy Company Training Ground at Currahee | History Traveler Episode 100

well for anybody who is familiar with the story of easy companies of the series band of brothers the name kurahi should ring a bell this is a mountain that the men of easy company and everybody else that trained at toccoa georgia went up and down well we just rolled into toccoa and we are at the base of kurahii we're going to go ahead and go up and down except we're not going to run it we're actually going to to rocket and just to make things a little bit more interesting i've also got this bad boy right here this is the burden uh it's basically just a leather bag that i have filled up with pennies you might say well why would you be dumb enough to go three miles up and three miles down kirahi with an extra burden well if we're going to go up and down kurahi we want to make sure that we've earned it so we're going to go ahead and strap on our packs grab our burden and head to the top [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so all right well we're about a half mile in i would say on this is called the now called the kernel sink trail uh and well yeah part of me wonders if i shouldn't have done this like in november or december uh i don't know if august in north georgia was the best choice but i could say we're gonna do it we want to make sure that that we earn it um can't wait to get to the top though okay one mile in and the sweat is pouring feels good here's one thing that's kind of deceptive about kurahi you would think that it's like a straight path up and then an easy path back down we're only a mile in right now it may be hard to tell from this angle this is actually going down so what that means is that all of these airborne recruits that we're training here it's not like you just work your butt off to get to the top and then you can coast back down there's uphill coming back down as well oh man now that i'm looking at it it's kind of a steep down so you uh you get your butt kicked going up and you get your butt kicked coming back down too [Music] all right just checked and we just passed mile two and it looks like after mile two [Music] things start really going uphill and i feel like this would be a good opportunity to talk about captain sobel sobel was the company commander of easy company and the men did not like him very much they found him to be petty and vindictive would punish them for the smallest things and make them run up and down kurahi now what they didn't realize probably and what they realized later is that tough training makes for tough men and even though he was kind of a vindictive man and uh revoked passes for no reason that was getting them toughened up getting them ready for combat so even though captain soba wasn't well liked he might have been the best thing that ever happened to easy all right here we go hi ho silver okay if anybody was ever wondering after watching the series band of brothers how tough curry he was well i can i can attest to the fact that it it is a bit of a grinder we're not taking a leisurely pace but [Music] i want you to just look at this off to the side that let me get a rock that [Music] is almost straight down okay uh we're getting closer to the top and uh i legitimately feel like i just left a piece of my soul down at the bottom there not trying to complain or whine just stating the state of things right now man hard to believe that uh the guys that trained here in order to graduate had to make it up and down this thing in 48 minutes oh mercy okay we got about a tenth of a mile final ascent [Music] [Music] i'll tell you what it's one thing to learn about history it's a whole nother level to get out and experience parts of it so to be able to rook up that mountain and follow in the same footsteps has been like dick winters bull randleman bill garnier skip muck and shifty powers i was just thinking about that all the way up and how a lot of guys who trained right here at toccoa and came up kurahi every day a lot of those guys didn't make it back never did see their families again but man what a view all right we're gonna go ahead and take the three miles down i think we're going to take a break crack open a giaco palmer that i brought up with me and a cliff bar tomorrow we're actually going to be going to camp tocoa and uh look at where these guys trained and got ready to go over and fight against nazi germany well before break court manor in normandy and the crossroads in holland and bastogne and the eagles nest for the men of easy company there was this place right here this is camp toccoa at the foot of kurahi which we went up yesterday where the men of easy company and you know many other men in the 101st and the 11th airborne trained in preparation to become paratroopers in world war ii uh so we're going to be going in here and and taking a look at some of the the remnants of what is here at taco looking at where these men trained there's a group of people that keep this place they're keeping the history alive here at toccoa and i've been communicating back and forth one of the guys his name is george i sent a message yesterday just confirming that we were going to be meeting at nine o'clock and he sent me a message back that said i'll be there at 8 59 so i think i'm going to like george but anyway very excited to get in [Music] here now before we go inside the camp i wanted to show this out in front of camp toccoa they have this it's kind of like a memorial or memorial walk is what they call it that is dedicated to all of the parachute infantry regiments that trained here at toccoa and i wanted to go up and show each of them so they have one here for the 506th trained here 20th of july 1942 had two combat jumps in normandy and holland [Music] and also the 501st also two combat jumps in normandy and holland [Music] and then later on the 511th trained 5th january 1943. these guys ended up getting attached to the 11th airborne and you can see they were over in the pacific theater had five combat jumps new guinea leite in the philippines luzon and the philippines okinawa and japan there is an amazing story about a uh the liberation of a camp called los banos that the 11th the 11th airborne was a part of so look that up because it's pretty amazing they trained here and then also the 517th 15th march 1943 and they had one combat jump in southern france so anyway he had a pretty pretty cool memorial talking about uh the men who trained here [Music] all right we are inside of the gates here at camp toccoa and met up with george he's been he's been showing us around and teaching us a little bit about the history of this area now in the 1950s camp toccoa was deconstructed and the government had a deal to where if you paid i think 25 you could tear down a barracks building and keep all the wood well a local took down a bunch of these buildings and then just stacked the wood and the original panels and everything in a barn original windows all of that stuff so a lot of the things that you see here at camp tacoa today are original materials which is really exciting and uh one of the original pieces or one of the pieces that's made from original wood is this guard house right here so anyway we're going to kind of explore around here today there's a lot to see there is a lot of amazing things that they are doing here at uh at camp tacoa that i'm excited to show and share [Music] now this road that we are looking at right now is the original road that would have ran through camp toccoa and where all of these pines are and all of this well it's mostly pines uh back here in this area is where all of the barracks would have been i'm going to show an old photo later that'll that'll give you a little bit better idea so kind of keep this in mind and you know use your imagination but they've taken some of the original toccoa wood and they've reconstructed a barracks here at the camp so we're gonna go in and maybe take a look okay now as i mentioned they're in the process of redoing a lot of things here at toccoa and man what they're doing here is simply amazing to preserve history well this is what the inside of the barracks currently looks like as they are bringing history back this really excites me that they're doing this and i think the long-term plan is to have well you can see the foundations out here and let me get the lighting right you can see the foundations out there where they're building more of these barracks and i think that the long-term plan is to get these set up for overnight stays to where you can come to camp tocoa and uh sleep in the basically you know kind of like the original barracks it's the original wood [Music] [Music] okay now again i'm walking up the road that i was making reference to earlier where all the men that trained here would have mustered up in the morning and again back here is where the uh the camp barracks would have been located now there is one original building that is still standing here that was never torn down and it is this one right here now this now serves as uh they call it the regimental hq there's a little museum in here uh originally it was probably like for um like a px or post exchange so you could come here and get snacks uh they had their their post office here may have been used for storage at different points but this right here is an original building that that was never torn down here at camp tacoa okay so this is just inside of that original building and uh this area has been converted into a bit of a museum i want to show this first though so this is a map or an aerial photograph showing the original camp toccoa now right here let me get it in focus so if you look right here here's that road that i was just walking down we are in one of these buildings right here and then this is where all of the troop barracks would have been okay and then this was the parade ground this was the the rifle range now the rifle range wasn't completed whenever the 506th was here so the guys from easy company wouldn't have used that uh they they were transported to a different place to do the rifle training up here in this area this is all like motor pool and support staff and things like that and then this is base housing for um the families of the of the the servicemen that that worked here so not not the recruits but you know cooks um people in the motor pool officers like the higher up officers but yeah this is what the original camp toccoa looked like they also have some original items that have been recovered here so this is an old newspaper from the 40s that that they found and of course you know they're always finding different items after it rained so this is an old penny uh from 1934. so bill garnier found your penny that you dropped uh and then you know they have a few few other items up here kind of cool to to see some of these recovered items from tacoa here's an original wood table with swing out seats from the mess hall that would have been at camp tacoa along with some world war ii era dinnerware and some some old tuna that's about 80 years old i don't think that's gonna be very good but uh but yeah so the so the guys from easy might have been uh gathering around this table to to eat a meal guys like popeye win and buck compton and some of those others they've done something really cool in this museum that i i like so they've they've taken some of the original toccoa wood i'm gonna have george talk a little bit more about that here in a second just because he has a better grasp on it than i do but they've reconstructed what one of the bunk houses would have looked like okay so here you have these us army bunks and here's what is really a cool touch this is the foot locker that once belonged to popeye wind okay so they have that set up here and another little interesting touch is they have this uh 101st airborne uniform now the the helmet is an original piece the uniform is not it's it's a reproduction but what makes the uniform cool to me you notice it's kind of weathered uh this was used on the set of saving private ryan i'm a big movie buff so so that's equally cool to me very nice all right these are original panels from capticoil they're five feet wide eight feet tall they have outside lap boards on the outside an interior fiberboard painted green at the top gray at the bottom they're basically sawdust and glue the two by fours on the ends have three holes in them one at the top middle and bottom when they converted a building from tar papered shack to a wooden building or just built a building from scratch they had a wooden floor and a wooden roof they took the panels slid them in bolt them together uh and you had prefabrication then the joints which have that molding that's on the side of that building and the joint would have been covered with that molding here wow here's one of the original wood doors that was recovered from toccoa and george told me that this thing is is quite heavy but there's all kinds of little just nuances about this place so for example they have this display here of some original documents from a gentleman by the name of lynn lines and here's a picture of the guys from from easy company i think this might have been right after 120 mile march that they made colonel sink had read something about how the japanese had done a 100 mile march in 72 hours so he wanted to beat that so they did a 120 mile march from here to atlanta but anyway this wood right here is toccoa wood so any time they can use original materials they do i really really appreciate that oops i almost forgot to include this uh the the men of the 506th which was what easy company was in whenever they got here they didn't have barracks they lived in this tent city while the barracks were being constructed interesting [Music] all right i'm uh back outside now uh now yesterday whenever we went up kurahi the the spot that we started from is not the exact spot that the men who trained here would have started from they would have mustered up right here on on this road and they would have went through this gate right here and then up and would have hit that path uh i don't know if i really showed it well on the video but it's it's where the the woods kind of start uh going up curry mountain then they would have went you know three miles up three miles down okay now they have something else here at camp taco that they are working on that i am quite excited about they've got a c-47 so we're going to kind of jump in here and uh and take a look at this thing so what we're looking at right now of course is the wing to one of these c-47s that the paratroopers would have jumped out of and uh to me whenever i look at this i mean look at all of these dang rivets there's just hundreds and hundreds of them and to me this kind of stands as a monument to you know not only the the paratroopers but also to the defense industry and to the women the the rosie the riveters who uh who worked on these different aircraft and tanks and things like that and uh we're really the the backbone to the the war effort because without them well there's no way the allies could have won looking at another piece of the plane here and uh i don't know to me it's really interesting to to see this plane in all of these different parts and to uh man just see all of the inner workings of it very interesting all right and then of course here we have the main fuselage for the c47 now this is considered an active work site so you're not supposed to go in but i happen to get some special permission so if i have the opportunity to go inside a c-47 home better believe i'm going to take advantage of it all right go ahead and uh crawl up in here let's adjust our lighting a little bit there we go and holy smokes i gotta be careful here because there's only i just got to be careful but uh yeah here is the inside of ac47 and oh oh yeah gotta really be careful there [Music] this is this is what i'm walking on here and i don't want to i don't want to damage anything huh now this really shouldn't be a surprise to me but it's it's kind of amazing just i mean how how thin and light all of the materials are in in this plane i mean of course it has to be light in order to fly this is not um well it's just not going to support my body weight walking across it and i don't want to damage it and don't want to hurt myself but there's the cockpit up there i'm going to see if i can find a way around i think there's another door up there where i can get up and show the cockpit okay let's see if we can get up in here oh just hit my head okay let me get adjusted here all right here is the cockpit for the c47 very very interesting and then looking back yeah there's where all of the paratroopers would have been lined up waiting for the green light to jump this is really really interesting to me all right is it possible for a grown man like myself to be in a world war ii era c47 and not take the opportunity to sit in the pilot seat oh my gosh i feel like a kid in a playground right now this is awesome look at this i really wish that i knew the history of this particular craft uh like where it flew and uh you know what missions it participated in if any i have no clue what i'm doing right now but i'm doing it so cool this is this really is awesome [Music] do [Music] okay so now i'm back in that original building that i was in earlier and i wanted to show you this to kind of close things out this is the future vision of what these fine people here in toccoa are putting together for this old camp so this this is right where the barracks would have been that's going to be a green space they're going to have reconstructed barracks that people can spend the night in uh they're going to have you know c47 reconstructed this is going to be an amazing amazing place all right before i leave there's one more thing that i wanted to show what the people here at camp decoder are doing to to restore this place and to keep history alive really is amazing and they've provided opportunities for people to to help them in that effort and if you look at this this right here is an original piece of camp tocoa wood with some camtakoa challenge coins embedded in them and uh they've made these available for people to to purchase take home support what they are doing here here's the hitch you can't order it by mail you can't go online and get it you have to come to this place and experience what's going on here uh in order to to get one of these pieces of history um man this really has been an amazing experience i'm so glad that we came here today uh to be able to come to you know the place where men like you know dick winters and uh bill garnier and carwood lipton and all those guys trained and and got ready to to go fight over in germany i don't know it's something else i i love coming to these places and and being able to experience history firsthand but uh anyway if you're ever down in georgia come to this place because it it is well worth it all right we're off to the next place [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 420,009

Rating: 4.9496927 out of 5

Keywords: history, history travel, history traveler, bastogne, wwii, ww2, world war ii, battle of the bulge, 101st airborne, easy company, dick winters, major winters, tv show, hbo, battle, war, travel, belgium, foy, toccoa, currahee, toccoa georgia, camp toccoa

Id: sbWsqUx4L1Q

Length: 31min 10sec (1870 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020