A Courageous and Bold Undertaking in Band of Brothers

The Onion A.V. Club has a regular feature I often enjoy called “Better Late Than Never” in which one of their pop culture correspondents takes a first look at a past-dated film, TV show, game, book, etc. through the prism of history that comes with it.

In that spirit I recently watched the 10 hour HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, which first aired in late 2001. I remember that it was a highly anticipated event, coming on the heels of the enormous success of Saving Private Ryan and produced by the director and star of that film, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Somehow I never watched an episode (although in watching the series now there was one scene that was familiar to me, recalled from my days of channel-surfing no doubt) despite the critical and popular raves it got at the time.

I can’t quite remember what it was this year that prompted me to seek it out. Perhaps it was hearing about the new HBO series The Pacific which will focus on the war against Japan in the Pacific as opposed to the European theater that is gloriously rendered in Brothers.

My assumption in approaching this saga was that it would be more akin to SPR in terms of the kind of gung-ho bravura, small band of simple soldiers against the whole German army which was the focus of that previous project. What I discovered instead was a thoughtful and poignant study of a single company of elite paratroopers that follows their exploits from basic training at Camp Taccoa, Georgia, through their field training in England, the jump behind enemy lines on D-Day, their near defeat in the Battle of the Bulge, finally ending with their arrival in Berchtesgaden – Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest hideaway in Bavaria.

What I didn’t know about this series, based on the Stephen Ambrose book of the same name, was that it was culled from first-hand accounts of what happened and that the characters in the show are all based on the real men of Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 101st Airborne. Each episode opens (save the last, which closes the episode) with WWII veterans talking about the experience. It turns out that these men are the real life veterans of Easy Company portrayed on screen. It must have been a tremendous and daunting undertaking to turn this real life story into a piece of entertainment to be consumed by the public, but a remarkable job was done by all the screenwriters and directors involved to keep the story honest without pumping it up full of Hollywood clichés.

The most impressive aspect of the series is what the writers leave unsaid. There is nary any pontificating on the meaning of war, responsibility, love of country and honor in serving. No one ever discusses the horrors of the battle experience except to put replacement soldiers or those returning from the hospital and have missed out on combat in their place.

Above all I would say the show exhibits grace, both in its depiction of war in general (it rarely flinches from the nightmarish horror of combat) and of its characters. At the end of the first episode, “Currahee”, as the boys are preparing to load into the planes to jump behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France, there are no grand speeches made, there is no talk about what they might encounter when they land. This kind of quiet reflection defines the entire series providing it with verisimilitude.

The first combat sequence arrives in episode 2, “Day of Days”, which sees the 101st Airborne jumping into Normandy to help clear the way inland for the units preparing to storm Omaha and Utah Beaches. This sequence is unbelievably chaotic and gives a sense of the sheer magnitude of the D-Day operation. These were the first guys into that war, landing in enemy territory and surrounded by Germans on all sides. Not to mention that the planes they were flying in were taking copious amounts of anti-aircraft fire from coming in so low and the paratroopers had to take small arms fire while floating toward the ground defenseless. When you consider the opening landing sequence of Private Ryan in concert with the Airborne assault you realize what a miracle of strategy and execution D-Day truly was.

The central character in the series is Richard Winters (Damian Lewis), who starts as a platoon leader, becomes Company commander after the death of Lt. Meehan on D-Day and is later promoted to Battalion XO. His role as the man who ties the stories together is only one example of the many troops who invaded Europe and later episodes take the time to focus on other soldiers. This is reflected at the close of the first episode as Lt. Winters peers out the jump door of his C-47 transport plane and the camera zooms out and pans to reveal the dozens of other planes and ships below about to embark on the great invasion – a great visual representation of one man lost in a sea of a military expedition. We are left at once attached to a single character while being awed by the scope of the operation.

Winters is the very model of a great commander. He is not only a skilled combat leader, having earned the Distinguished Service Cross for leading an assault on a German artillery position in Normandy, but also a compassionate leader, always knowing when a soldier needs a short break or a hot meal to restore his energy and confidence. Episode 5, “Crossroads”, (directed by Tom Hanks) focuses on him and his leadership. It is perhaps the most introspective episode, but solely relying on the performance of Damian Lewis, the way the camera shows us his perspective on the aftermath of a skirmish and a narrative device that has Winters reflecting on the events while typing his report.

Winters stands in stark contrast to the Company’s first commander, Herbert Sobel (David Schwimmer), who is something of a tyrant during basic training and their stint in England. The casting of Schwimmer in the role of a belligerent nitpicking commander seems at first an odd choice until he is revealed to be nervous before a practice jump, and later jumpy and borderline incompetent in the field. He instills no confidence in his men, all of whom volunteered for the paratroopers specifically to fight alongside the best rather than an untrustworthy draftee. Schwimmer brings a history of playing the nebbish and socially awkward Ross Geller on “Friends” which makes it easier to accept him as a leader grossly overcompensating for a lack of courage and nerve.

One of the great things about this series is the way it focuses on the relationships these men forged which was itself a rather unique set of circumstances. The soldiers went through basic training together as a unit unlike other military units comprised of members who trained separately and were brought together in the field of battle or just before. Easy Company not only had two years together before D-Day, but sat on the front lines of some of the most harrowing fighting in northern Europe between June 1944 and April 1945.

If I have one complaint about the series, it is that it is very difficult to tell the difference between the soldiers early on. There are those characters who get more screen time early on and you very easily identify with, for example Lt. Winters and Sgt. Bill Guarnere (Frank John Hughes) as well as those played by recognizable actors, such as Capt. Lewis Nixon (Ron Livingston), Sgt. Malarkey (Scott Grimes) and Sgt. Carwood Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg). But as far as matching names and faces of other characters, it doesn’t really start to come together for many of them until about halfway through. This makes it difficult to connect during one of the big emotional climaxes of the Battle of the Bulge when Joe Toye (Kirk Acevedo) loses his leg to artillery fire and his good friend Bill Guarnere loses his own leg trying to drag him to a foxhole. For me, Toye was a brand new character in that episode (although Guarnere was well-known to me given his distinctive Philly accent), but looking back on the early episodes a second time I discovered that Toye was always there. However, by the end of the series there are several recognizable characters who you can easily identify with, bringing the long arduous ordeal to a satisfying, if rather sad, conclusion.

The series reaches its emotional pinnacle in episode 9, “Why We Fight”, when a patrol squad stumbles across a concentration camp. The men bear witness to the atrocities committed by the Nazis, heretofore unknown to the average foot soldier. They find hundreds of prisoners wandering about the camp, starved and near death. The shock registers on all their faces as they begin to understand what the war has really been about, even if no one comes out and says it. David Frankel, the director of this episode, allows the power of the images to convey the message. Some prisoners wander past the soldiers in a daze, others hug them with all their might, eternally grateful that someone has finally come to their rescue.