A Company of Heroes

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Copyright © 2010 Marcus Brotherton

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Brotherton, Marcus.

A company of heroes : personal memories about the real band of brothers and the legacy they left us /

Marcus Brotherton.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-18723-4

1. United States. Army. Parachute Infantry Regiment, 506th. Company E. 2. World War, 1939-1945—Personal narratives, American. 3. World War, 1939-1945—Regimental histories—United States. 4. World War, 1939-1945—Campaigns—Western Front. 5. United States. Army—Parachute troops. 6. Soldiers—United States—Biography. I. Title.

D769.348506th .B75 2010

940.54’12730922—dc22

2009050664

 

 

INTERVIEWS WITH THE FAMILIES OF
:

Albert Blithe
Gordon Carson
Burton “Pat” Christenson
Bill Evans
Tony Garcia
Walter “Smokey” Gordon
Herman “Hack” Hanson
Terrence “Salty” Harris
Frederick “Moose” Heyliger
Paul “Frenchy” Lamoureux
George Lavenson
Joe Liebgott
C. Carwood Lipton
Robert Marsh
Warren “Skip” Muck
Patrick O’Keefe
Alex Penkala
George Potter
Robert Rader
Mike Ranney
LaVon Reese
Eugene “Doc” Roe
Ron Speirs
Floyd Talbert
Joe Toye
Robert Van Klinken

—MAJOR RICHARD WINTERS
Easy Company Commander

Are you familiar with the Band of Brothers? Let me introduce you to a few.

Meet Tab Talbert, the best soldier in Easy Company, and Robert J. Rader, a man so community-minded he has a bridge named in his honor in California.

Meet Moose Heyliger, who set muskrat traps as a child and could name every bird in the sky by the time he led Easy Company, and Pat Christenson, unofficial artist of Easy Company. Pat sketched pictures of the combat he saw—soldiers, tanks, rifles, explosions—always mindful, as he wrote in his journal, that “the true picture of war is impossible to convey, even by those who did the bleeding and the fighting.”

Meet Robert Marsh, a married seventeen-year-old father who lied about his age to get into the Army, and Eugene Roe, a no-show at his own wedding. (As his bride waited at the altar, Doc Roe was parachuting into Normandy—how’s that for an excuse?)

Meet Patrick O’Keefe, who once, although hungry, put all the money he had—thirty-five cents—into a collection box for the poor, and Robert Van Klinken, a backwoods mechanic who showed a remarkable skill for writing. As you read portions of Van Klinken’s letters in the pages ahead, watch for his creative use of language, his frequent use of “swell” (definitely the superlative of the day), and expressions such as “pill squirter” for a rifle, and “honey” for a guitar. Van Klinken’s personality comes through strongly, and because you feel you know him after reading what he wrote, his death comes hard.

Within a company filled with heroes, each man has a story worth telling. In my previous book, I interviewed twenty members of Easy Company who are still alive. In this new book I interviewed the families of twenty-six of the Band of Brothers who have departed. These are their life stories.

Although this is a book that shows a lot of death, it also shows a lot of life. I must warn you that not everything in this book reflects the stuff of heroics, particularly what transpires after the war. This is a tribute book, yes, and is meant to represent the men warmly, but it’s also about real people. It shows their lives, warts and all. This book is about the authentic Band of Brothers, who they truly were, how they lived, served, fought, worked, loved, and ultimately died.

Who were the Band of Brothers? If you’re completely new to the subject, they were the men of the now-legendary Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, an elite group of World War II war fighters. They formed and trained at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, under the tough and controversial Captain Herbert Sobel. After training stateside, the men rode the troop ship
Samaria
to Aldbourne, England, for further battle preparation. They parachuted into Normandy on D-day and, later into Holland for Operation Market-Garden. They fought their way through Belgium, France, and Germany, survived overwhelming odds, liberated concentration camps, and drank a victory toast in April 1945 at Hitler’s hideout in the Alps. Along the way they encountered horrors and victories, welded themselves into a family of soldiers, and helped swing the tide of World War II and, ultimately, the course of history.

Although twenty-six men’s life stories are featured in this book, many more men’s stories could be told. At the start of the war, some 140 men formed the original Easy Company at Camp Toccoa. By the end of the war, due to transfers and (mostly) to men getting shot, 366 men are listed as having been a part of Easy Company.

The company was first chronicled in 1992 by historian Stephen Ambrose in the book
Band of Brothers
. In 2001, Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg turned Ambrose’s book into a ten-part HBO miniseries by the same name. The series won six Emmys and numerous other awards, and still runs frequently on various networks around the world.

The essays that follow differ from other books in that they do not trace the war’s chronology. Rather, they act as snapshots from the company as a whole. For readers seeking to learn more about Easy Company or to build a complete library, a number of other books about the Band of Brothers have been published over the years. The books are:

Feel free to either read this book straight through or skip around from chapter to chapter. The book works in two ways. First, if you’re new to the Band of Brothers, you’ll be inspired and challenged by the biographies of each man profiled. These were ordinary men who trained to become the best, and ultimately did extraordinary things.