A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Band of Brothers,  sadly, reflects one of the sad realities of American society in the 1940s - racial segregation in the armed forces. Although there  were  a few all-Negro (as blacks were referred to in those days) units in the U.S. Army and the Army Air Forces that served with distinction in the European Theater of Operations, most black servicemen were assigned to non-combat units in Supply of Services and other support forces. Most of these soldiers were truck drivers, anti-aircraft gunners, barrage balloon handlers, engineers, stevedores, clerks, cooks, corpsmen, and so on. Only late in the war (fall of 1944 and winter/spring 1945) did large numbers of black infantrymen see combat against German forces, and even then they served in all-black units commanded by white officers. © 2001 Home Box Office, Dreamworks SKG, and Play-Tone Pictures The 101st Airborne Division was an all-American unit made up of individuals from many different groups - Easy Company’...

(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 ...