Book Review: 'Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest'

(C) 2001 Simon & Schuster. Cover art (C) 2001 Home Box Office, Inc. 

I must be honest and admit that I did not read Stephen E. Ambrose's Band of Brothers until I had read several other works by the late historian and biographer who, along with Steven Spielberg and Tom Brokaw, helped renew interest in World War II and the amazing men and women of what Brokaw calls "the Greatest Generation."

In fact, it wasn't until almost 17 years ago that I bought Touchstone Books' third edition of Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest, even though Ambrose's book had been around since 1992, two full years before the publication of his trailblazing D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (Simon & Schuster, 1994). But after having read the latter and its follow-up, Citizen Soldiers, I had become an avid reader of Ambrose's World War II books. 

Band of Brothers is a stirring and awe-inspiring account of an elite rifle company in the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Ambrose follows Easy (E in the Army's phonetic alphabet in use during World War II) Company from its arduous training at Camp Toccoa in Georgia, its intensive airborne training regimen and preparation for overseas combat, the trip across the Atlantic, and the long and at times exasperating period of training for the Allied invasion of Europe. 

Ambrose describes the period between Easy's formation in July 1942 and March 1944 as the Sobel Era, named for the company's first commander, Capt. Herbert M. Sobel, a National Guard-commissioned officer from Chicago. A "martinet and widely disliked", Capt. Sobel nevertheless helped transform the 140 officers and enlisted men – all volunteers – from civilians to well-trained and highly motivated citizen soldiers capable of fighting against the veteran soldiers of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

But Sobel's strengths as an officer were limited; he was a strict disciplinarian and pushed Easy to be the best company in the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, but his lack of fairness and practical tactical skills such as map reading detracted from his ability to lead men in battle. His personality conflicts with most of the sergeants and especially with one of his platoon commanders, Lt. Richard D. Winters, would lead to his reassignment in April of 1944 to command a Parachute Jumping School at Chilton Foliat, England.

But Easy Company's hardest days and nights were yet to come, and Ambrose takes the reader along on a sometimes exhilarating, sometimes heartbreaking 11-month-long odyssey across the battlefields of Northwest Europe. Starting with the predawn jump into Normandy on June 6, 1944, Easy Company's citizen-soldiers throw themselves against Hitler's Atlantic Wall, fighting, marching, and dying in such places as Ste. Marie-du-Mont, Carentan, Eindhoven, Zetten, Driel, Bastogne, Foy, Hagenau, until they reach Berchtesgaden, where Hitler had a home called the Adlershorst (Eagle's Nest). Along the way, he provides vivid personality profiles of Easy's officers and enlisted men, including Dick Winters, Bill Guarnere, Buck Compton, Carwood Lipton, David Webster, Skinny Sisk, Floyd Talbert, John Martin, and many others who, in Shakespeare's line from Henry V, "From this day to the ending of the World...shall be remembered...we band of brothers."

Ambrose was a rarity among historians. He did not delve into revisionism, nor did he present historical events in a dry "just the facts, ma'am" manner. He made World War II accessible not only to military history buffs but for the larger reading audience, and in doing so helped the American people embrace the men and women of the "greatest generation" and appreciate their sacrifices and achievements in humanity's largest and most destructive conflict.