Reflection On Band Of Brothers
“I Served in a Company of Heroes”
Reflection of Band of Brothers Book and Television Series
World War II was one of the most gruesome and devastating events in the history of mankind. One of the best-known companies in United States Army history was Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 101st Airborne Division. The Easy men fought from June 5th, 1944 until May-November 1945 . In 1991, Stephan E. Ambrose interviewed the surviving members of Easy Company and wrote Band of Brothers, which in 2001, was adapted into the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Through print and television, the men of Easy Company were immortalized, never to be forgotten by the American public.
The series Band of Brothers makes the men of Easy Company accessible, beyond just “soldier” and …show more content…
Ambrose did not place the men of Easy Company on the pedestals that the show does. He reminds his readers that the men were young, that they went out and drank, slept with prostitutes, and acted like men traumatized by warfare. The readers are not spared of how destructive they were, how “they drank too much, they broke too many windows and chairs, they got into too many fights with nonparatroopers” (Ambrose 108). In the series, there are not scenes where the men are anything other than heroic until the last episode, “Points,” after the effects of war had long set in. StSgt. Bill Guarnere explains the show’s omission of these actions in his reflection that, “‘We are different people now than we were then’” (Ambrose 77). Why should Easy Company be remembered for their behavior at their lowest times? The men that nearly destroyed London after returning from Normandy are not the same as the men who were interviewed. No one returns home from war the same, and the series omitted the information so an audience would not alter how history remembered the
Reflection of Band of Brothers Book and Television Series
World War II was one of the most gruesome and devastating events in the history of mankind. One of the best-known companies in United States Army history was Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 101st Airborne Division. The Easy men fought from June 5th, 1944 until May-November 1945 . In 1991, Stephan E. Ambrose interviewed the surviving members of Easy Company and wrote Band of Brothers, which in 2001, was adapted into the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Through print and television, the men of Easy Company were immortalized, never to be forgotten by the American public.
The series Band of Brothers makes the men of Easy Company accessible, beyond just “soldier” and …show more content…
Ambrose did not place the men of Easy Company on the pedestals that the show does. He reminds his readers that the men were young, that they went out and drank, slept with prostitutes, and acted like men traumatized by warfare. The readers are not spared of how destructive they were, how “they drank too much, they broke too many windows and chairs, they got into too many fights with nonparatroopers” (Ambrose 108). In the series, there are not scenes where the men are anything other than heroic until the last episode, “Points,” after the effects of war had long set in. StSgt. Bill Guarnere explains the show’s omission of these actions in his reflection that, “‘We are different people now than we were then’” (Ambrose 77). Why should Easy Company be remembered for their behavior at their lowest times? The men that nearly destroyed London after returning from Normandy are not the same as the men who were interviewed. No one returns home from war the same, and the series omitted the information so an audience would not alter how history remembered the