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Band of Brothers (Paperback)
by Stephen E. Ambrose
| Category:
World War II, History |
| Market price: ¥ 198.00
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A true story collected from the yarns of Easy Company survivors that tells the tale of brave citizen soldiers and their experiences as they battle the Nazi menace – The world will always owe a debt of gratitude to the men who "laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom"! |
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Author: Stephen E. Ambrose
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pub. in: September, 2001
ISBN: 074322454X
Pages: 336
Measurements: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00201
Other information: 2nd Touchstone Ed edition
ISBN-13: 978-0743224543
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- Awards & Credential -
The New York Times Bestseller |
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- MSL Picks -
Band of Brothers tells the tale of one such group of brave men whose exploits were nothing short of spectacular as the armies of the Allied nations sought to bring down the German empire. The men of Easy Company of the 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne embodied the greatness of the American spirit and clearly demonstrated why, once they entered the fray at Normandy, the tide had turned against Hitler's Army. Easy Company was one of the true elite squadrons in World War II. It was tasked with such crucial operations as airborne landings behind German lines to enable the D-Day landings to be a success to holding the fort during the last major German offensive at Bastogne and Battle of the Bulge. Band of Brothers tells us everything about a group of men and how they fought. We get to laugh with them, we get to see the horrors that they have seen. We also get to see the incompetence that sometimes becomes prevalent in wartime. Each soldier in "Easy Company" has his own story. Ambrose does a fine job telling as many of the stories as possible without bogging down the narrative with too many names and unrelated tales. There is a certain awe at the ordeals these men faced. It's hard not to have butterflies in one's stomach as one reads about the men preparing for their first drop over Normandy under heavy fire and in dark conditions. "Band of Brothers" chronicles these men from that initial Normandy invasion all the way until the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest.
This is an incredible story, told mainly in the words of those who were there, and you can feel the fear, exhilaration, killing fury, bitter cold and biting hunger along the way. But most of all you can feel the camaraderie of soldiers thrown together in a remote training camp in 1942, who trained and fought as a band of brothers and now, sixty years on, still maintain their closest friendships with each other.
This book is chockablock full of infantry minor actions. Advance, assault, defence, withdrawal, patrolling and raiding - all told from multiple viewpoints in stark detail - the war in microcosm as seen by airborne infantrymen. In addition, there are few maps in the book at the front of the book, which is consist of a map of northern France and England, a close-up map of Utah Beach (the beach behind which Easy dropped on D-Day), a close up view of Market Garden, and close-up view of Bastogne. This will help letting you follow a bit of the action.
Ultimately, this is a very valuable book for anybody who likes reading about warfare. It adds a very personal touch to the whole thing. There aren't long descriptions of blood and guts, but you do see just enough to feel the tension along with these men. It's a valuable story and it's wonderfully told.
- From quoting Patrick L. Randall and Peter Mackay
Target readers:
History and warfare lovers, readers who are interested in WWII
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Stephen E. Ambrose is the author of Citizen Soldiers, Undaunted Courage, and D-Day, as well as biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon. He is founder of the Eisenhower Center and president of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans. He lives in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and Helena, Montana.
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From the Publisher
As good a rifle company as any in the world, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, kept getting the tough assignments -- responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. In Band of Brothers, Ambrose tells of the men in this brave unit who fought, went hungry, froze, and died, a company that took 150 percent casualties and considered the Purple Heart a badge of office. Drawing on hours of interviews with survivors as well as the soldiers' journals and letters, Stephen Ambrose recounts the stories, often in the men's own words, of these American heroes.
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Chapter 9: The Island
HOLLAND
October 2 - November 25,1944
Easy Company, like all units in the American airborne divisions, had been trained as a light infantry assault outfit, with the emphasis on quick movement, daring maneuvers, and small arms fire. It had been utilized in that way in Normandy and during the first ten days in Holland. From the beginning of October until almost the end of November 1944, however, it would be involved in static, trench warfare, more reminiscent of World War I than World War II.
The area in which it fought was a 5-kilometer-wide "island" that lay between the Lower Rhine on the north and the Waal River on the south. The cities of Arnhem, on the Lower Rhine, and Nijmegen, on the Waal, marked the eastern limit of the 101st's lines; the small towns of Opheusden on the Lower Rhine and Dodewaard on the Waal were the western limit. The Germans held the territory north of the Lower Rhine and west of the Opheusden-Dodewaard line.
The Island was a flat agricultural area, below sea level. Dikes that were 7 meters high and wide enough at the top for two-lane roads held back the flood waters. The sides of the dikes were sometimes steep, more often sloping so gradually as to make the dikes 200 or even 300 feet wide at the base. Crisscrossing the area were innumerable drainage ditches. Hills rose on the north side of the Lower Rhine, giving the Germans a distinct advantage in artillery spotting. They had apparently unlimited ammunition (the German industrial heartland was only 50 kilometers or so up the Rhine River), enough at any rate to enable them to fire 88s at single individuals caught out in the open. All movement on the island was by night; during daylight hours, men stayed in their foxholes, observation posts, or houses and barns. The fall weather in northwest Europe was, as usual, miserable: cold, humid, rainy, a fit setting for a World War I movie.
There were whole regiments of British artillery on the Island, firing in support of the 101st. This meant that Island battles were artillery duels in which the main role of the infantry was to be prepared to hurl back any assault by the German ground troops and to serve as forward artillery observers. Patrols went out every night, to scout and to maintain contact with the enemy. For the most part, however, Easy and the other companies in the 101st sat there and took it, just as their fathers had done in 1918. A man's inability to do anything about the artillery fire added to the widespread, overwhelming feeling of frustration.
But of course it was not 1918. On the Island, the men of Easy first saw jet airplanes in action. They watched vapors from the V-2s, the world's first medium-range ballistic missile, as they passed overhead on the way to London. Still, as had been true of soldiers on the Western Front in 1914-1917, they fought without tank support, as a tank was much too conspicuous a target on the Island.
The rations added to the sense that Easy was in a World War I movie rather than a real 1944 battle. The company drew its rations from the British, and they were awful. The British 14-in-1s, according to Corporal Gordon, "will support life, but not morale." Bully beef and heavy Yorkshire pudding were particularly hated, as was the oxtail soup, characterized as "grease with bones floating in it." Most men took to throwing everything in the 14-in-1s into a single large pot, adding whatever vegetables they could scrounge from the countryside, and making a sort of stew out of it. Fortunately there was fresh fruit in abundance, mainly apples and pears. Cows that desperately needed milking were relieved of the contents of their bulging udders, and that helped, but there was no coffee and the men quickly tired of tea.
Worst of all were the English cigarettes. Cpl. Rod Bain described them as "a small portion of tobacco and an ungodly amount of straw." Best of all was the daily British rum ration. Next best was finding German rations. The hard biscuits were like concrete, but the canned meat and tubes of Limburger cheese were tasty and nutritious.
As had been true of the villages of France on both sides of the line on the Western Front 1914-1918, the civilian residents of the Island were evacuated (and Holland is the most densely populated country on earth). This gave the men almost unlimited opportunities for looting, opportunities that were quickly seized. Webster wrote, "Civilians dwell under the misapprehension that only Germans and Russians go through drawers, closets, and chicken coops, whereas every G.I. of my acquaintance made a habit of so doing." Watches, clocks, jewelry, small (and large) pieces of furniture, and of course liquor quickly disappeared - that is, what was left, as the British had already stripped the area.
The Island was most like World War I in its stagnated front. Easy spent nearly two months there, in daily combat. It sent out almost 100 patrols. It repelled attacks. It fired an incredible amount of ammunition. It took casualties. But when it was finally relieved, it turned over to the relieving party front-line positions that had hardly moved one inch.
The company moved onto the Island on October 2, by truck, over the magnificent bridge at Nijmegen (still standing) that had been captured by the 82d on September 20 at 8:00 P.M. Once over the Waal, the trucks took the men some 15 kilometers, past dozens of camouflaged British artillery pieces, to the village of Zetten.
They arrived at night, to relieve the British 43d Division. The 506th regiment was taking over a stretch of front line that had been held by a full division. It was over 6 miles in length. The 2d Battalion of the 506th was on the right (east) end of the line, with Easy on the far right with the 501st PIR to its right. Easy had to cover almost 3 kilometers with only 130 men.
British soldiers met the company in Zetten and escorted the leading elements to their new positions. "What's it like up here?" Webster asked.
"It's a bloody rest position, mate," was the reply. The numerous craters from 105s and 88s looked fresh to Webster, who doubted that he was being given straight scoop. After a three-hour march, the patrol reached its destination, a clump of houses nestled beside a huge dike. The Lower Rhine was on the other side of the dike, with a kilometer or so of flat, soggy grazing land
between it and the dike. The area was littered with dead animals, burned houses, and empty machine-gun belts and ammo boxes. This was no-man's-land.
To cover his assigned section of the front, Winters put the 2d and 3d platoons on the line, along the south side of the dike, with the 1 st platoon in reserve. He did not have sufficient troops to man the line properly, so he placed outposts along the dike at spots that he calculated were most likely enemy infiltration points. He kept in contact with the outposts by means of radio, wire, and contact patrols. He also sent three-man patrols to the river bank, to watch for enemy movement and to serve as forward artillery observers. He set up his CP at Randwijk.
At 0330, October 5, Winters sent Sgt. Art Yournan out on a patrol, with orders to occupy an outpost in a building near a windmill on the south bank of the dike. With Youman were Pvts. James Alley, Joe Lesniewski, Joe Liebgott, and Rod Strohl. The building was beside a north-south road that ran to a ferry crossing on the river to the north, back to the small village of Nijburg to the south.
When the patrol reached the road, Youman told Lesniewski to go to the top of the dike to look things over. When he reached the top, hugging the ground as he had been taught, Lesniewski saw an unexpected sight, the outline of a German machine-gun set up at the point where the road coming from the ferry crossed the dike. Behind it, in the dark, he could just make out a German preparing to throw a potato-masher grenade at Youman's patrol, down at the south base of the dike.
Simultaneously the other members of the patrol heard German voices on the north side of the dike. Liebgott, who was trailing, called out, "Is that you, Youman?"
The German threw the grenade as Lesniewski called out a warning. Other Germans pitched grenades of their own over the dike. Lesniewski got hit in the neck by shrapnel. Alley got blown to the ground by a blast of shrapnel that left thirty-two wounds in his left side, face, neck, and arm. Strohl and Liebgott took some minor wounds; Strohl's radio was blown away.
They had run into a full company of SS troops. It had come across the river by ferry earlier that night and was attempting to infiltrate south of the dike, to make a diversionary assault in support of a major attack the 363d Volksgrenadier Division was scheduled to launch at first light against the left flank of the 506th at Opheusden. Although the patrol did not know it, another SS company had crossed the dike and was on the loose behind American lines. Although division did not yet know it, the attack on 1st and 2d Battalions of the 506th was much more than just a local counterattack; the German objective was to clear the entire Island area of Allied troops.
After the skirmish with the first SS company, the E Company patrol fell back. It was a full kilometer to Winters' CP. "Come on, Alley," Strohl kept saying. "We've got to get our asses out of here."
"I'm coming, I'm coming," the limping Alley replied.
At 0420 Strohl got back to the CP to report the German penetration. Winters immediately organized a patrol, consisting of a squad and a half from the 1st platoon, which was in reserve, plus Sgt. Leo Boyle from HQ section with a radio.
Sergeant Talbert ran back to the barn where his men were sleeping. "Get up! Everybody out!" he shouted. "The Krauts have broken through! God damn you people, get out of those beds." Webster and the others shook themselves awake, grabbed their rifles, and moved out.
Winters and his fifteen-man patrol moved forward quickly, along the south side of the dike. As they approached the SS company, he could see tracer bullets flying off toward the south.
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Eugene (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-06 00:00>
I have read alot of WWII history books, so therefore I am very familiar with Ambrose's work. While it may be hard to say which one is his best because he always did a fantastic job of telling "the story", maybe this is just one of the best stories he had the chance to tell. This book is a personal inspiration; I have given it to many friends to read and they are always in awe when they return it. While this book has obvious appeal to any WWII buff, it is such an amazing story that anyone can enjoy it. Then I saw the HBO series, and oh boy did the story ever "come to life". Read the book, watch the series, and just be prepared to deal with the overcoming urge to drive to the recruiting center!
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Michael (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-06 00:00>
After watching the movie first, then reading the book, I wished I've read the book first. This book is one of the best I've read and I don't read a whole lot. What those men went through during the war, I can't compare to my experience's. I to was in two different wars, Vietnam and Gulf War. The hardships they endured along with the good times can only be discribe by those who were there. To Major Winters and his outfit my hat is off to you all. I just wish I could meet with those gentlmen and shake their hand and tell them thank you for sacificing so much in order that we can stand proud of our country and the freedom we have today.
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Leota (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-06 00:00>
This book is a great read. A poignant account from a group of WWII airborne veterans, not high-ranking staff officers, that experienced the inhuman realities of war. But more than that, the underlying message, as the book was appropriately titled, was a group of young men with eclectic backgrounds and aspirations came to be brothers. I would be doing the book injustice if I tried to write an accurate synopsis of it, and by accuracy not only do I mean the historical facts but also the human emotional triumphs and travesties that is conveyed in this work. I'll let the author and accounts from the various members of Easy Company, speak for themselves. Get this book, it's definitely one to add to your library.
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Bill (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-06 00:00>
Stephen Ambrose's "Band Of Brothers" is a powerful testimony to the singular effects of battle on a company of American paratroopers in the European Theater of Operations during World War II. As Ambrose tells it, the only thing deeper than the change they wrought on the outcome of the war was the change the war wrought on them.
After heavy training and embarkation to England, Easy Company of the 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division dropped in just beyond Utah Beach on D-Day, helping clear the Carentan Peninsula of German forces. Later, during Operation Market Garden, they helped secure the Dutch village of Son. A period of scheduled rest became their toughest combat experience yet when German forces launched a surprise attack across the Ardennes and the company pitched in to defend Bastogne. Finally, the company made it to Austria and encamped in Hitler's mountain redoubt at Berchtesgaden.
"Anything was better than the blood and carnage, the grime and filth, the impossible demands made on the body - anything, that is, except letting down their buddies," Ambrose writes.
Published in 1992, 50 years after the war, Ambrose's book was a giant step forward in national recognition for the men who fought for the United States during World War II. Ambrose writes with obvious admiration and conviction, yet he also tells some uncomfortable truths. Presenting real heroes to an age with few of its own can be awkward unless it comes with a certain amount of candor.
The "brothers" we read of here are not without their flaws. Ambrose describes such ugliness as looting from civilians and shooting German POWs with an unflinching eye. At the same time, you feel an awe for these men beyond words, their willingness to endure hardship and the likelihood of death.
After D-Day, Pvt. David Webster writes his mother about her wish he not be in the van of the attacking army: "If the country all had your attitude, nobody would fight, everybody would be in the Quartermaster. And what kind of a country would that be?"
Tough words for a worried parent, but they resound through the years to our softer if not war-free time.
Ambrose's strong identification with the subjects of his book make for a complicated read. He seems at pains to echo their views about their commanders, pro and con, their grousing about the frustrations between the combat, and especially their sense of specialness, to the point where he seems to suggest Easy Company was no mere elite cadre but the greatest unit who ever walked the earth, exerting more energy in a single engagement than football players would if they played three 60-minute games in a row.
"The 101st Airborne was the most famous and admired of all the 89 divisions the United States Army put into the Second World War," Ambrose writes, an arguable point to present so matter-of factly. [What about the Big Red One?] He goes on: "Ever since, men have worn that Screaming Eagle on their left shoulders with the greatest of pride."
Ambrose seems less a historian and more a cheerleader at moments like this. Ambrose's understandable pride in the exploits of his countrymen causes him to shed much of his professional decorum. In his Acknowledgments, Ambrose even notes he has been made an honorary member of Easy Company; it's clear he is writing many times with a greater sense of duty to his subjects than to his readers.
At least Ambrose gets something back for this; a trust from his subjects he puts to good use as they become our pathfinders for discovering war as the great adventure and bloody travesty it is.
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