I actually read the book along with the airing of the miniseries back in 2001. Every time I watch this I am just awestruck by the epic undertaking of this series.
Re-watching the greatness that was "Band of Brothers"... crazy that it aired 16 years ago
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Also interesting where are some of the actors who played lesser roles are today: Jimmy Fallon, Michael Fassbender, Colin Hanks, Tom Hardy, and James McAvoy.
Just watched Episode 1 the other day on my flight back to SFO. I can never get tired of watching this.
Easily the best miniseries ever made and the most realistic.
Please watch the 80 minute section, "We Stand Alone Together." Awesome. As a WWII buff I think that the only soldier still alive is Don Malarkey. He's 95. Gosh...I respect the heck out of those guys. My father-in-law was one...he was in the 502, I Company. He went in the nite before DDay with all those guys.
Looking forward to watching the "THE MIGHTY EIGHTH", if they can ever finish it.
I liked the pacific as much, very different but equally enjoyable.
Ken Burns has a Vietnam mini-series coming out this summer. If anyone can match Band of Brothers, he can. Though I fear that'll be as much political as anything else.
I read the book, along with just about every book that Steven Ambrose wrote on WWII, prior to the miniseries. I was very skeptical about the series doing justice to the book, but boy was I mistaken. While there are other great books about WWII, this is (IMHO) the greatest "war" genre work in the history of movies, TV, cable. The way that they portray each and every character, such that you understand who they are, what makes them tick, and how they all impact each other as part of Easy Company.
I have the box set of the series, but I haven't watched it in a while. I can just use on-demand now and will do that this summer to watch it again and expect that I will come to appreciate it even more.
I've mentioned several times that the guy who hired me out of college was the lead navigator for the "bloody 100th" at the time the war ended. He told me he was one of the first to see a jet, thinks he is the only navigator to shoot down a german plan in WW2, and had to parachute when a pilot shot his flare gun off inside the cockpit. I could've listed to this man talk for a decade. He has a lot of stuff at the 100th Bomb Group restaurant in CLE.
Great man.
I would love for Hanks and Spielberg to do something about the Korean War.
When I was stationed in West Germany in 1989 - 1991 I was at an airbase built by the Germans during WWII... right smack dab in the middle of where The Battle of the Bulge was fought. I have hundreds of pictures of the area and walked many of the roads those soldiers strode years before. I couldn't imagine doing what they did! Lost my great uncle in Italy (never knew him). My Uncle served on a destroyer in the Pacific (passed a few years ago).
Was watching BoB also, along with my grand-nephew and his friend. I asked both if they knew that many of the men portrayed in the series were Pennsylvanians, including Dick Winters (who had a farm in Lebanon County before retiring in Hershey) as well as South Philly's Bill Guarnere and Babe Heffron. They weren't aware and afterwards borrowed my copy of Ambrose's book to read. They also got a kick out of not knowing that the actor who portrayed the ill-fated Pvt. John Janovec went on to play "Bane" in the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises"
watched the original, then again yesterday on hbo2 in preparation for a trip to normandy in a few weeks. we will roughly follow the trek of the bob all the way to austria. was amazed at how much i'd forgotten. a truly great series about a group of truly great men.
Don't forget to visit the German cemetery. Also, if you have the time, visit Mount St. Michel. Its a full day but a two or three hour drive. Beautiful area. Also, you can download some apps that narrate tours of the battlefields. Great stuff, have a blast.
Every time I watch this, I'm amazed that my father survived Omaha Beach. Never spoke of it once.
And I remember when it was released, the discussion was how all the actors were a bunch of unknown's, the only known name was David Schwimmer from Friends.
My Uncle Dave flew in the 15th. Seven missions over Ploesti.
The casting for the series was outstanding.
David Schwimmer, though portraying a completely unlikeable character, was really, really good. I was never a Friends fan, as I thought the guys all came across as emasculated douches, but he nailed Sobel, at least how Sobel came across in the book.
thx, obi. saw msm on the last go round, but will definitely take in the cemetary.Don't forget to visit the German cemetery. Also, if you have the time, visit Mount St. Michel. Its a full day but a two or three hour drive. Beautiful area. Also, you can download some apps that narrate tours of the battlefields. Great stuff, have a blast.
I really hope that you have a great tour and you can see some of the history.
I've been to Normandy and the surrounding areas, and also to Dachau. I wish I had done and seen more, however. Back when I was reading a lot of books about WWII, I found out that Steven Ambrose had an annual tour where they started in Normandy and followed the war west. I'm not sure whether the intent was to follow the exact route that Easy Company took, but it sure hit a lot of the same areas. I kick myself now for not participating in this tour back then. They might still do the tour, even though Ambrose is deceased or maybe someone else is arranging their own, similar tour.... I was young enough then that I could have just done it and not had to worry about as much.
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The German cemetery has black crosses and stands in great contrast to the US one. Point Du Hoc was my favorite place. Also, got a kick out of passing Sainte-Mere-Eglise. It was the meeting point for the paratroopers on BoB. But it is also where Red Buttons plays Private John Steele in The Longest Day. Here, Buttons chute gets caught in the church steeple. The exit signage all showed a chute on a steeple.
thx, dan. my brother, also a history nut, & i went about 6 years ago and saw a good deal then. upon our return, i saw the bob tour listed and sent it to him. we'd talked on & off about doing it. then his son decided he'd like to see normandy, so he put together this trip which somewhat follows the bob tour. he added some parts(a side trip to the hofbrau house) and removed others. should be a good time.
yeah, the view out over the beach from the emplacement at the point was something. tried to envision that view with thousands of ships there. the church at sme still has a paratrooper hung up there to this day.
We've tried to hit some WW I and WW II locales while traveling in Europe. The first time over as a couple (2005), we hit the military cemetery in Luxembourg and paid our respects to Patton. We did not have time for more than that, as we had places to be--but it was frustrating to drive down the A4 and see signs for Chateau-Thierry and Verdun and not be able to stop. We did visit Bergen-Belsen that trip (I'd been to Dachau while traveling after my PSU exchange program many years before).
The next time over, we did go to Belleau Wood and visited both the American and German cemeteries there as well as Bastogne on the way in (and we also saw the King Tiger at La Glieze) and then Verdun on the way out. My interest in Bastogne, however, had more to do with seeing the movie The Battle of the Bulge as a kid (in Wellsboro, of all places) than BoB. Still want to go to Normandy. The last two trips we were in Germany pretty much exclusively. We'd originally planned to be at the American Cemetery in Margarden, The Netherlands, for Memorial Day last year, but my father-in-law's cancer caused us to cut our trip to a week in Heidelberg.
Below is me in McAuliffe Square in Bastogne ca. 2011.
The next time over, we did go to Belleau Wood and visited both the American and German cemeteries there as well as Bastogne on the way in (and we also saw the King Tiger at La Glieze) and then Verdun on the way out. My interest in Bastogne, however, had more to do with seeing the movie The Battle of the Bulge as a kid (in Wellsboro, of all places) than BoB. Still want to go to Normandy. The last two trips we were in Germany pretty much exclusively. We'd originally planned to be at the American Cemetery in Margarden, The Netherlands, for Memorial Day last year, but my father-in-law's cancer caused us to cut our trip to a week in Heidelberg.
Below is me in McAuliffe Square in Bastogne ca. 2011.
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I post information about the following gentleman almost every time this topic comes up because more Penn Staters (and Penn State fans) need to know this great man.
As an aside, he was an Assistant Scoutmaster for my troop and we used to gather wood for him to carve when we were at summer camp. Amazing wood carver. Leader of the greatest combat engineers since the Roman Legions, but an extremely modest man who would never brag about himself, so I'm doing it for him.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Pergrin
As an aside, he was an Assistant Scoutmaster for my troop and we used to gather wood for him to carve when we were at summer camp. Amazing wood carver. Leader of the greatest combat engineers since the Roman Legions, but an extremely modest man who would never brag about himself, so I'm doing it for him.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Pergrin
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Sorry, been off-line a couple days!
I was stationed at the NATO Airbase in Geilenkirchen. I know... odd for a US Army assignment, but at the time I was a 15E - Pershing Missile Crewmember and The US Army owned the warheads, and the German Luftwaffe owned the launcher and missile. German was not permitted to own nuclear warheads back then.
I watched an outstanding documentary on this exact unit and their amazing efforts to slow down the advancing German tanks during Battle of the Bulge. The story really stuck with me. Thank you so much for posting this again (I had not read it before). Very cool story
I've watched it more times than I can count, and enjoyed it equally every time.
And I don't care how hard you think you are, if you don't break down at all toward the end when the real Winters chokes up while recalling "i cherish the memories of a question my grandson asked me the other day, when he said, 'grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' And grandpa said 'no, but i served in a company of heroes.'"
My two "choke" points every time are when the Dutch women puts the orange sheet out her window and when the patrol finds the concentration camp. My European family was just about wiped out in those camps.
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