It’s cool that when David Schwimmer shows up again this episode you only see Captain Sobel, and not Ross from Friends. That speaks volumes to David Schwimmers performance in this series.
Like many others, I've watched a lot of reactions to BOB and watched the series a dozen times. I agree that these girls are probably the best I've seen in grasping the storyline. It's a pleasure to watch.
I think it’s Taylor Tomlinson who has a standup routine about her Pepaw how cute he is and how many confirmed kills he has he really should check that out it’s hilarious
Chocolate, sugar, etc was rationed during the war and the little boy was too young to have had it before the war. The "Scary" guy is Lt. Spiers. The solider who gave the little boy chocolate is Webster.
And the little boy will get to taste chocolate for the first time all over again after the war…… I’m pretty sure that’s d ration chocolate that Web gives him, having tasted a recreation…. It’s pretty terrible tasting.
It had nothing to do with rationing. This was German occupied Netherlands. They had been occupied for 4 years before Operation Market Garden and they people of the Netherlands were literally starving to death becuase the occupying Germans were taking all their food. The boy never tasted chocolate before because he looked young enough to have been born during the occupation or right before. It would have been doubtful if he even ever tasted a fresh vegetable or any edible meat not to mention chocolate.
In _Beyond Band of Brothers_ Winters describes that the machine gun bullet entered the front of Nixon's helmet, grazed his forehead leaving an abrasion, and exited out the side. Nixon missed death or a severe head wound by just a few millimeters.
Yeah those steel helmets wouldn't stop direct bullet hits, mostly they'd help against shell fragments from artillery air bursts and just making soldiers feel more secure than NOT having a helmet.
@@asmrhead1560 Yeah a lot of people still think they were like armor, but were really closer to why hardhats are used in construction and firefighting. As armor the only thing they could really guarantee was that a glancing blow was more likely to skip off than dig in and bounce off of an inner surface.
@@asmrhead1560 The biggest danger really is in bumping your head against something while running around and getting past obstacles in combat. It's pretty easy to get a concussion in and around war, or just a serious bleeding head injury. Nowadays military helmets will stop low powered bullets, and higher power bullets that have been fired from far enough away that they've been slowed down by air resistance a lot. But still getting hit by a bullet in the helmet is going to cause pretty bad neck injuries a lot of the time, probably knock you down. That energy is still going somewhere, it's just distributed across your entire skull instead of just a small point, but it's a lot of energy. They're quite effective at keeping soldiers safe from shrapnel and from ordinary head-bumps though. They're also finding now that the heavier, more effective helmets put so much weight on the head and neck that it causes soldiers to have a lot of neck problems later, just from constant compression on the spine over a career. This problem is getting magnified by all the things attached to helmets today like cameras, comms, lights, and of course night vision and thermal imagers which also require counterweights in back to keep the helmet balanced. Some of that stuff is becoming essential in the modern battlefield, but it does do permanent damage to the people wearing them. Lots of R&D is being put into trying to figure out how to make helmets lighter and smaller, while finding a good balance for protective ability. I can't help but wonder if helmets will eventually end up being attached to some kind of flexible rotating spinal support column in back so the head has all its mobility, but the weight gets distributed into some kind of powered exoskeleton that can also help bear the weight of all the other equipment they wear and carry. But who knows how reliable such a system would be, and whether it will only do more harm than good by adding bulk or break down at inopportune times.
The soldier who had a “not so graceful” approach to hopping the fence, was actually doing that on purpose, in order to level the fence, so his fellow soldiers could run over, instead of hopping over. It’s far safer and faster. By the way, good observation, on the tank blowing up that building! I own the series, and have watched it many times, but never made the link, that that was the same window that old couple were seen.
You are correct: that lieutenant was color blind. It's mentioned in some of the memoirs that he tried to join the service several times but failed the eye test each time because he was color blind. However, he eventually took the test enough to be able to fake it.
Genuinely curious, what's your source on that? I always assumed it was because of color blindness as well, but I haven't been able to find any historical reference to Lt. Peacock actually being color blind. And I've heard other suggestions put forth that he was nervous at the door (Peacock, in the show, is generally portrayed as being a bit hapless) and would have had his eyes closed or something like that. So if you found reference somewhere about Peacock actually being color blind I'd love to read it.
@@TheLanceUppercut I can't remember if it was in the Band of Brothers book or one of the many memoirs I've read. I'll have to see about digging them out of storage to find the reference. I'm not 100% sure that it was Peacock when I read about it. They might have just taken the story of a different color blind lieutenant and ascribed it to Peacock.
@@TheLanceUppercut A lot of guys lied to join the army at this time. Historically, the military would reject men who were colorblind, bad eyesight, deafness, flat feet, and many conditions that affect performance. But the "call to serve" was strong at this time, and many men would lie about their age, their health, etc. in order to join. If you were old enough to serve but you didn't, people in America would call you a coward, even if you had an excuse.
Anyone who says the younger generation is lost... just need to watch them appreciate this show. You guys are doing great... and we all cried, you arent alone.
I am pretty sure that the people that say that are talking about the teenagers, not the people in their twenties. But anyway, the new generations are not lost, they are just different.
@ParlonsAstronomie I think some people would be surprised how many teenagers actually do show respect and appreciation and want to learn. I feel like, unfortunately, the certain minority that make their voices loud ofc at times don't appreciate sacrifices in the past that people made sadly.
Orange is the national color of the Netherlands (Holland). The person hanging the orange drape from the window is celebrating their liberation. There is a film by the title of "A Bridge Too Far" that is all about Operation Market Garden.
At 10:35, the older gentleman sitting at the table waving a flag is one of the Easy Veterans who was visiting the set that day. I won't say which to avoid spoilers.
On a separate note, when Bull is hustling the new guys off the field after jumping into Market Garden, he did this because the jump went so well the men were concentrated to landing in a small field (not spread out all over like on d day). There were rifles, helmets and other gear literally raining out of the sky. No hustle meant you were going to be bonked in the head by those same falling items.
My mom was born in Arnhem, Holland. Her parents were both teenagers/early 20's in Holland during WWII. My grandmother and her ballet group performed for Hitler once. My grandfather would sometimes have to dress as a woman at night for safer travel. That generation of humans and what they did for us all will never be replicated.
My grandfather was a medic who served with the Canadians in Holland. He returned home but passed in 1948, a decade before I was born, so I never got the chance to meet him. My aunt kept a penpal friendship with the daughter of the family my granddad was billeted with there. They were friends for 40 years before each passed from old age. Several of my closest school friends are Dutch-born. Bless the Netherlands. A beautiful country with wonderful people. ♥
Your Papa was probably the last of the greatest generation. He must have had a wonderful impact on you guys, since you both seem to be kind, insightful and empathetic. I'm enjoying your channel, thanks.
A neat detail is at 10:30 when Winters folds his collar inside out to hide his rank. Snipers often targeted officers. Also, Market Garden was a massive operation with tens of thousands of men. This battle was a tiny slice of a much, much larger situation.
@@mattj2081 Nonsense. There was no political pressure applied. There was poor planning and faulty execution but that was the fault of Field Marshall Montgomery and Gen Browning, senior British Commanders. General Browning deliberately ignored intelligence that German forces in the area were much stronger than believed. It was a gamble.
@@mattj2081 It was less 'political pressure' (the politicians) than it was internal Allied military leadership wrangling for dominance and the title of winning the war. Montgomery (the British highest command) railed against the decreasing influence of the British ("there since the start") and especially the decreasing spotlight on himself. As the American effort (in terms of men and material) vastly outstripped the British the Americans naturally assumed the dominant role, notably with Eisenhower being given overall command of the Allied effort (Montgomery hated this and thought Eisenhower a feckless administrator). To make matters worse Montgomery and Patton (a US Army commander) loathed each other, both being arrogant blowhards at heart and each insisting they would "win the war" to their respective tame press corps. In the middle of this was another US Army commander Bradley, who was trying to fight a war with both Patton and Montgomery going on ever-increasing personal aggrandizement quests. Eisenhower was forced to navigate these extreme personalities and the building political (politician/civilian) pressure in Britain (with an exhausted population and economy devastated by complete involvement in two World Wars that included the bombing of the nation) and the United States (isolated from the direct conflict, some still viewing it as a European war, with their young men and the nations wealth propping up the war effort). The end result was Eisenhower spending a huge proportion of his time trying to control internal rivalries (for example his (SHAEF) British Airforce deputy commander Air Chief Marshal Tedder also loathed Montgomery and argued he should be removed from command) and prevent the alliance from fracturing. Montgomery had a decisive advantage in planning Market Garden. His Army Group (in Holland and Belgium) was the only one close enough to take advantage of the newly formed Airbourne Army (a composite of US and British Paratroop Divisions) that would deploy from British airfields. The casualties to frontline units during the Normandy and the following campaign had many asking why multiple elite divisions of (airborne) troops were sitting idle in Britain. The paratroopers themselves were chomping at the bit to deploy after multiple operation cancellations (the ground forces having moved so fast as to overrun drop zones). In the end, Market Garden was a Montgomery vanity exercise, driven by the desperation of the Allies to end the war fast, by geographic (deployment range of the paratroops) considerations, and by the desperation of the Airbourne army to get into action.
The shaming of the women who slept with the germans occupiers happened in many countries including Denmark were I live. It was quite a taboo to be a child of a german soldier and many kids and their mothers got shamed for it in large parts of their lives.
Towards the end of the war was when all of the emasculated Socialists came out of the shadows. Having done nothing productive for the entire duration of the war. And seeing many of their women fall in love with the handsome occupying soldiers. Then, in their "proto-incel" rage, they lashed out against their neighbors. Women who married and formed relationships with the Germans were not just shamed, a great deal of them had their citizenship revoked and were then deported to Germany. Here in the Southwest of Norway, stealing from farms was rampant. If the farmer reported it to the Germans, there would be a crackdown, and he himself would be shunned if not murdered by his own neighbors as a collaborator. A man who is almost a neighbor joined "Hirden" has a teenager during the war to preserve the peace and keep the country together. For that, he was shunned and hated by everyone but a tiny few. The Labor Government of Norway when the war started actively wanted Norway to join the Soviet Union. Not to ally or make friends with the USSR. No. Actually join and become a Soviet Republic under Moscow. Naturally, as private property is the cornerstone to freedom and liberty, a great deal of landowners of various sizes were relatively pro-German. Or rather, as their own government was as extreme in its Bolshevisms, not that negative toward the Germans. The dad of another neighbor actively fought the Germans every chance he could. Including committing war crimes. Such as fighting without a uniform. And faking surrender repeatedly. Time and time again, he and his crew would have to move under the cover of darkness, because of the pockets of pro-German Norwegians around the country. Then, after the war, anyone who had been slightly pro-German lost the right to vote. And, considering the danger to their own lives and of their families, everyone pretended to hate the Germans. So now, we are left with this 'afterthought' that everyone hated the Germans. When in fact, this was a post-war invention. An intention that was both imposed and self-imposed. The post-war bloodshed was less than the average here in Norway. But in places like Denmark, Netherlands, and especially France, there were major mass-murdering purges. And this was in the West. In the East it was on a scale beyond sanity.
As is the case in Korea and Vietnam as well. The half American babies and their mothers were ostracized all their lives with many of those babies being dropped in orphanages. It has been the same since forever.
As it was written in the book, Malarkey (the man who Sobel was scolding about the motorcycle and who also ran out into the field to get a luger on d day) aided another soldier to steal the motorcycle from utah beach, got it onto a landing craft on the beach and somehow onto a ship so they could ride in back in England while the others had to take the train. Sobel to their surprise really didn’t punish them since the army got it back. I can only imagine them just being like “you know what? I’m just gonna take a motorcycle off the beach”
We have a saying in the US Army "There's only one thief in the Army, everyone else is just trying to get their shit back." Technically since Malarkey was still in the Army he couldn't have stolen the motorcycle, he just moved it to a secure location. On one deployment with 3rd Infantry Division a platoon in our company kept parking their vehicles too close to ours, so we un-bolted the door handles and moved it to a different part of the Battalion. They were running around looking for it for awhile before we told them. They didn't think it was as funny as us.
The guy who gives the Dutch kid chocolate is Webster, not the scary guy (Spiers). That kindness always makes me misty, myself. It's a beautiful moment in a horrible, ugly battle.
The people of the Netherlands really take care of our buried guys over there in the American Cemeteries we have for our fallen guys of world war 2. They do this “adopt a grave” type of program where it has a waiting list to this day. They take it serious, and it’s really nice of them. There’s videos about it. 13:54 he later went on to work for the CIA. The lieutenant who was shot that I’m talking about, there was someone from the Easy company that saw him got shot and didn’t know he survived. He ran into him years later like 10-15 years down the road, and it really freaked the guy out. He thought the Lieutenant died.
Same with the folks in Normandy. They care for the fallen Americans' graves. I watched a video of a young French girl who went to the American Cemetery in Normandy. She was filming it to show her American viewers who would never have a chance to go. She said she should have brought flowers, and started weeping. Very touching.
11:20 A lot of the women who slept with the Germans did more than just sleep with the enemy, as quite a few Dutch resistance members, and maybe even some innocents, were snitched on by them. (One woman, I seem to remember, lost three brothers and her father, due to such snitching.) 19:30 Just some info on Winters (the guy who didn’t get his helmet shot off) and Nixon (the guy who did). Winters came from a poor family and needed to work his way through college. Nixon came from a rich family and attended Yale for two years before leaving to enlist in the Army. Winters was a monkish introvert who read all the infantry manuals he could get his hands on. Nixon was a party animal who loved to drink and stay up all night. Winters was a field commander, while Nixon was in Intelligence, which meant that he helped translate the data received from the field into information that people could use. The pair met up during Officer Candidate School, and their friendship started from there.
I am a combat vet. In your first reaction I said you would start to talk and think like the men of Easy. I was right I can see it happening and it's very cool. You two are the best I have ever seen so far. Thank you for this and God bless you both.
The American GIs gave my Mom and her siblings chocolate in the Philippines when they were liberating them from the Japanese occupation in World War II. That scene always reminds me of that
the one you laughed at and called graceful when he fell over the fence, his job was to knock the fence down so it wouldn't slow down the rest of the squad following him
Cobb was already in the Army when the war started. I think he had been in about 8 years. He actually served in North Africa with the armored force before transferring to the paratroops.
Lieutenant Robert Brewer, the officer who was shot in the middle of the road, was amazingly lucky. The bullet passed under his jaw. but in front of his trachea, through that loose flap of skin all humans have on their throat right where their neck meets their head. It bled profusely, but ultimately wasn't all that serious. He could even breathe and talk normally while lying wounded on the street. He finally died (of lung cancer) in 1996 at age 72.
The orange color that's present throughout much of Dutch culture is a nod to the royal family, which is made up of members of the House of Orange. The dynasty dates back to 1544 when William of Orange inherited the estate and title at the age of 11.
I understand the sentiments of someone claiming you are emotional, weak, or naive... but to me, this is the beauty of a reaction like this. As a society, we owe so much to those who weren't, or aren't. Thank you to the men of history and the present who do very hard things to make our society truly strong.
Of the 8000 lost by the British 1st Airborne over 6000 were captured, many of those wounded. The movie "A Bridge Too Far" tells the story of Operation Market Garden.
The Bridge over the Rhine in Arnhem was renamed Frost bridge in honor of Col. Frost commander of the British paratroop regiment who lost the most men and were surrounded and eventually had to surrender after they ran out of food, ammo and medical supplies. Because the armored column failed to reach them.
The armoured column ( the vastly experienced British XXX Corps) only failed to reach British 1st Airborne because the US 82nd Airborne didn't capture the Nijmegen bridge for the armoured column to reach them in time. The 82nd had pulled completely out of Nijmegen when XXX Corps linked up with them and there was a two day battle just to get to the Nijmegen bridge. US 82nd Airborne was supposed to have the Nijmegen bridge captured and ready to XXX Corps to cross over when they linked up. Previous to this the US 101st Airborne also failed to have the Son bridge captured for XXX Corps. XXX Corps had to then build their own Bailey Bridge at Son, which took 12 hours. An armoured column cannot move across rivers without bridges.
They were not expected to hold the bridge for more than four days - which Browning promised to Montgomery before adding "but we may be going a bridge too far." He was absolutely correct, because the 508th PIR failed to move quickly on the Nijmegen bridge and allowed the 10.SS-Panzer-Division to reinforce the non-commissioned officer and seventeen men who were guarding it. The delay it imposed on XXX Corps having to fight for the bridges at Nijmegen sealed the fate of the British Airborne at Arnhem. Point of fact, the British force did not "surrender" at the Arnhem bridge at all - when they ran out of ammunition they were ordered to attempt to break out in small groups and most of them were captured.
8:17 The parachutes were made of pure silk, and these ones are camouflaged, a lot of paratroopers made neck scarves out of damaged parachutes. One of the officers Lieutenant Welsh, kept a parachute through most of the war to bring home to his fiancé so she could make her wedding dress out of the material.
Also, silk was heavily rationed during the war and reserved for military use. Silk stockings for women were extremely hard to come by and cost a fortune. In the 1940s, all women wore stockings with dresses (pants for women were not yet a thing) so this was a huge issue. Because of this, troopers would often collect discarded pieces parachute silk and send them home to their wives or girlfriends, who would then use their sowing and threading skills to sew their own new stockings. And some troopers also used silk for bartering with local women in Europe, usually in exchange for you-know-what.
With Captain Sobel, members of Easy Company may have hated him when he was in charge. But credit him for making Easy Company as good as it was. It solidified the members of Easy into the cohesive unit they were.
" replacements , who needs replacements? " Any army unit that was devastated with so many dead and wounded. They might not want to make friends with them or even know their names, but they definitely needed them
As units lost members, they had replacement soldiers come in to fill the ranks back up. But they more often than not treated badly because they did not have the extensive training and had not gone through any battles yet.
17:25 That is a Jagdpanther. It was armed with the long-barreled 8.8 cm Pak 43/3 L/71 gun, similar to the main gun of the Tiger II. The Americans and British did not have a tank that could penetrate its armor and it can take out any American or British tank in one shot over a mile away.
That's not quite correct. Depending on the range and angle of impact, a HPDS shell with the tungsten core from a British 17-pounder gun like those on the Sherman Firefly could penetrate frontal armor and certainly side armor. A Jagdtiger would have been another story. Likewise, the M26 Pershing with its 90 mm high velocity gun stood a good chance. Of course those wouldn't get to the battlefield until 1945 and even then in small numbers. But the tanks that we saw were regular Sherman's with 75 ml guns and a Cromwell with the British version of a 75 mm gun.
All the German vehicles in the episode were inappropriate for the action at Nuenen except for the half-track personnel carrier. The production only had access to these running condition German vehicles and the same vehicles appear in multiple episodes as a result. Panzerbrigade 107 had Panther tanks in its panzer battalion, as well as a company of Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyers that arrived late and were not involved, while the panzergrenadier battalion was equipped with a number of types of armoured half-tracks. The enemy vehicle involved in the ambush incident with the Shermans of 44th RTR (Royal Tank Regiment) at Nuenen was incorrectly identified by the tankers as a Mark IV tank, but was probably a half-track with a close support 7.5cm kanon (SdKfz 251/9 'Stummel') that was hidden behind a hedgerow. The British Cromwell tanks were used in the armoured reonnaissance regiments and the markings on all the British tanks were the divisional reconnaissance tactical number [45] and the 11th Armoured Division flash (black bull on a yellow field), which is correct for the Cromwells of 15th/19th Hussars, but wrong for 44th RTR - part of the independent 4th Armoured Brigade and attached to 101st Airborne Division for MARKET GARDEN. The Cromwells were involved in an action at Opwetten, on the road from Eindhoven to Nuenen the day before, where Buck Compton was wounded, so this episode is a conflation of two actions at two places on two days with two British armoured regiments in support of Easy Company. As a footnote, some of the American troopers thought the Opwetten action was Nueuen, because the small hamlet was over a small bridge on the river Dommel, and at the far end of the bridge there was a sign that read 'NUENEN' - this actually indicated the river was the boundary between the districts of Eindhoven and Nuenen, and not the town of Nuenen itself. The town was the headquarters of Panzerbrigade 107 and Easy Company had initially bumped the brigade's pickets at Opwetten on 19 September and penetrated to within 200 metres of the centre of Nuenen on 20 September.
The soldier that gave the chocolate to the little boy was Private David Webster. The scary guy was Lieutenant Ronald Speirs. In the first few episodes it's hard to remember who everyone is because we are not that familiar with everyone yet, so no big deal, you will eventually figure it out.
10:32 Quick cameo by "Babe" Heffron. ☺️ Bottom left waving that flag. 15:15 That fence "jump" was on purpose, Ramirez knocked it down, so the rest could proceed with ease, and not waste time going over it and possibly get shot.
great reaction. I had a judge who was in the 101st Airborne. He jumped at Normandy as well as in Holland. He fought around Eindhoven, the town that was bombed here. He fought in all of the battles you are watching. He has now passed away but he was special. There is a reason why they call these men the Greatest Generation. My judge ended up being captured at the Battle of the Bulge. He survived the war, returned to the States, graduated law school, got married and raised a family, set up a prosperous law firm and eventually was appointed to the Bench. In the 90's he returned to Holland at invitation to celebrate the 50th year of liberation and I will always remember his reaction when he came home. He was upset that he was treated as a hero. He looked me in the eye and told me that he wasn't the hero, the heroes wee them men, his friends, that never came back. I tried to explain to him that he was a true hero but he wouldn't hear any of it.
The issued GI shirt was made of a very coarse wool. Paratroopers would cut a swath from their silk parachutes to put under their collar to keep from itching.
After the failure of Market Garden, every time Bernard Montgomery tried to approach General Eisenhower with a new plan, Eisenhower just played along with Montgomery, but he never listened to him ever again on “big plans.” But it was not just failure of the Top Brass. Behind the scenes, Ultra Intercepts had not been listened to, the biggest warning ignored were codes that were broken showing Powerful Units of the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions located literally right by the single road corridor the Tanks were to push on through to Arnhem. These units were refitted and full of battle hardened Veterans from the Normandy Campaign that managed to escape the Allied Pocket at Falaise in France.
How come Eisenhower went running to Montgomery 3 months later then in the Battle of the Bulge when the Americans were retreating? He called on Montgomery on just the 4th day of the battle and asked him to come down and take immediate command of US 1st Army, after his American generals dropped the ball. In his hour of need, Eisenhower turned to his most experienced and most successful general, Montgomery. Eisenhower then agreed to Montgomerys other plans. Operations Blockbuster, Veritable and Grenade. After Market Garden, Eisenhower allowed the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine and Alsace debacles to occur. Each of these were more costly failures than Market Garden.
The music was written by the late, great Michael Kamen. He co-wrote one of the biggest songs of all time, Bryan Adams' 'Everything I do I Do it For You'.
It gets even darker when you know that at least SOME of those Dutch women were assaulted by German soldiers, and that they didn't voluntarily sleep with them. They go through that and are shamed by their own countrymen. War is complicated and horrible.
Haylo & Kiss, Before the D-Day invasion, American troops all received a new weapon, be it an M1 rifle, M1 carbine, M3 sub-machine gun, or Thompson sub-machine gun. The ones they had used in training were left behind for others to train with. Similarly, if a soldier lost his weapon in combat, he would get another one. So the one you saw the fellow unwrap next to the airplane was probably nice and new.
As you mentioned private Blithe survived World war II furthermore he served in the Korean war and was twice decorated for gallantry. He rose to the rank of Master Sergeant before leaving the Army. He actually passed away in 1967. 😢
@@patgray5402 The men of Easy company lost track of Blythe, with most of them thinking he had died. Efforts to contact him failed when they met at reunions after the war.
@@patgray5402 it wasn't that the intentionally were trying to lie it was because they were looking for dramatic effect. I think they were using private Blithe as kind of a stand-in, to put the audience in the soldier shoes.
Another UA-camr, a veteran of the Gulf War, refers to the camaraderie between soldiers as "trauma-bonding." That phrase speaks volumes. Even mentally strong men, selected and trained for war, can't resist being terrified. The men they share these experiences with and on whom they depend to survive will become closer than any other human relationship, except perhaps for the best marriages.
0:23: Your audience adores you for adoring this show. Says a lot about ones character -- those who get the meaning behind this amazing production -- understanding it's about the real heroes, their lives, contributions and sacrifices, who all made a different in our freedoms we have in the world today. So meaningful beyond words.
The soldier that gave the chocolate bar to the boy is David Kenyon Webster. He became an author and wrote "Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich". He was fascinated with sharks and became lost at sea in 1961.
... and so is Bane/Venom in a later ep That so much futur A-lister actors are in this show as support cast speaks volume about the casting team talent and production quality.
i always enjoy shows that show operation market garden. If my grandfather had not been taken prisoner by the americans during this, he would have been with his unit when it got transferred to the eastern front and completely eradicated there. i would not be alive then.
It might be informative to consider the case of Holland in 1944. Every nation under Nazi occupation suffered to one degree or another. There were some factors unique to Holland that made their occupation particularly difficult for the Dutch. Holland is very small, it’s very flat and almost completely lacks forests. This made Holland very easy for the Nazis to observe the entire country and monitor everyone’s comings and goings. The expected resistance movement tended to be predominantly women and children as they were the only ones who could move about without too much attention. By the time of Market-Garden, the Dutch had lived under a completely artificial famine. The wonderful Dutch dairy farmers had to give almost all their harvests and livestock to the Germans. The level of anger directed against the collaborators immediately upon liberation was pretty common. The Nazis believed in divide and rule. You got extra rations for ratting someone out. People rat each other out over personal grievances. When the other side liberates you, retaliations were common. Consider, too, in a fast-moving modern war, the village that was liberated that morning saw collaborators rounded up and hung by lunch. Then a German counterattack and you might have more hangings by sundown but going the other way.
The Liberation of Eindhoven, the Netherlands, 20 September 1944. Civilians dancing in the square. In 1944 & 1945, the Netherlands was liberated by Canadian, British, Polish, Dutch, and American troops.
It's always wild to come back to this series and see so many "before they were stars" actors. James McAvoy of course, but also Michael Fassbender, Tom Hardy, Simon Pegg, and more.
I'm not surprised at all that you two like James McAvoy. There's a load of actors who you'll meet that were here early-ish in their careers. As for your older subscribers, like myself, the 1983 movie The Outsiders was the first break for a lot of older actors you may know. Take care of yourselves, H & K !!
Next to Dick Winters, Bull Randleman is my favorite character in the series. You can't go wrong with an easy going cigar chomping country boy from Arkansas.
I just got my flu shot and every time I get one I always think of that scene with Randleman. We complain about a sore arm after a vaccine..ouchy. Let me take a Tylenol 😂 Guy had shrapnel in his shoulder and still had to fight hand to hand. what a tough man.
A perpendicular hit on one of those old steel pot helmets wouldn't even slow a rifle round down meaningfully; zero protection. They might help with a glancing high velocity hit and do protect from low velocity projectiles and debris...like a hardhat. The outer steel shell could also be used as a wash basin or to heat water.
You would not want to heat water on it because that would actually change the temper of the steel and make the helmet less effective. Depending on the angle of deflection and range, a helmet could deflect a bullet or shell splinters.
Trivia. The Presidential unit citation. If you arrive at a unit that has won that award, you have to wear that ribbon even if you were not there when they won it. Otherwise you are out of uniform. When you leave the unit, you no longer wear it. If you were assigned to the unit when they won it. You wear it even if you get assigned to another unit. In other words, the rest of your time in the military. Cobb was being stupid.
little background info on the operation Market - Garden: its aim was to capture bridges in Netherlands to create a corridor to enter Germany. Plan was that the paratroopers (US 101st with "our" Easy comp. + 82nd divisons, British 1st division and Polish 1st para brigade) were to drop in advance and capture and hold bridges until British tanks of the XXX Corps arrived. Basically after relatively smooth and comfortable drops comparing to Normandy, with soldiers and equipment intact, not many things went well for the Allies. Although the paratroopers were able to secure most of the objectives after hard and valiant fighting, they failed to take one of the crucial bridges in Nijmegen. And military intelligence commited one of the big blunders of the war, because Netherlands was not defended by "kids and old men" but by 719th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht and also by 9th and 10th SS Panzer divisions and with several German Fallschirmjäger (paratrooper) regiments which were considered elite in German armed forces. And while they had not had many tanks in the beginning of the operation, they directed most of the avaliable armor to the area including some of the best German tanks like Panther and Tiger. The result was mass casualty rate on Allied side and blowing up several of the targeted bridges. That and the fact, that the British tanks were unable to link up with the paratroopers failed the whole operation. The idiom "A bridge too far" referring to an act of overreaching is based on this operation. There is also a movie with the same name depicting the operation. Lt. Brewer who was hit in the neck by a sniper, survived his wounds and rejoined Easy company at the end of the war after recovery.
A fair comment on the operation, except that the 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions were known to be in the region - the reason Montgomery actually cancelled Operation COMET that was to drop the British 1st Airborne Division and attached Polish Brigade only, on the Grave-Nijmegen-Arnhem bridges. He realised the airborne comonent of the operation was not strong enough to deal with heavy armoured counter-attacks and cancelled COMET at the last minute on 10 September. He later had a scheduled meeting that day with Eisenhower and proposed an upgraded airborne operation (provisionally called SIXTEEN) by adding the two American divisions. This enabled the British and British-equipped Polish Brigade to concentrate at Arnhem, as they had superior anti-tank gun resources. The American divisions had more field artillery than anti-tank guns in their establishments and they would be deployed to the south at Eindhoven-Grave-Nijmegen to hold open the corridor to Arnhem. Planning was turned over to 1st Allied Airborne Army, as now all of its units would be committed to the expanded operation scheduled for 17 September, and this was where most of the planning compromises were made, against British advice. The German 1.Fallschirm-armee (1st Parachute Army) was a paper unit that utilised 20,000 Luftwaffe ground troops promised by Hermann Göring to plug the gap in the Netherlands front line that had opened up between the 15.Armee at Antwerp and the 7.Armee at Aachen. Apparently, Hitler raged at his generals about what to do about the disatser in the West and Göring, normally not able to contribute much to these meetings, timed his intervention perfectly and suddenly announced he had 20,000 troops they could use. These troops were redundant airfield ground crews, training regiments, etc., that were nominally converted into Fallschirm (parachute) regiments at the stroke of a pen. They were not the elite parachute troops that the Allies encountered in Normandy (such as the 6.Fallschirmjäger-Regiment at Carentan), but only had a cadre of Normandy survivors around which to build the new units, while at the same time having to fight MARKET GARDEN. The airborne Operation MARKET failed at Nijmegen due to a command failure in the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment to carry out General Gavin's instruction to send their 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge immediately after landing, while it was reported by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees to be guarded only by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men. The delay allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division at Ruurlo to deploy the SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, attached from the 9.SS-Panzer-Division at Beekbergen, and II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 (Kampfgruppe Reinhold) at Vorden to Nijmegen, to reinforce the bridges and organise the defences at Nijmegen. It took 36 hours of hard fighting to take the bridges by combined attacks after the tanks of XXX Corps had arrived. Cornelius Ryan's classic book, A Bridge Too Far (1974), ignored the failure at Nijmegen - despite being given an honest steer by Gavin in their 1967 interview - and instead attributed the failure to a range of excuses, including faulty intelligence, communications failures, and the weather. The film version omits even more details, although the script is highly entertaining and penned by William Goldman, whose previous work on classic comedy western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) is probably just as historically accurate.
It's a bit of a Catch-22 for replacements. They don't know many of the hacks that help hardened soldiers survive, but because those hardened soldiers don't want to bond with someone who may be dead soon (and who is likely replacing someone they HAD developed friendship with), they have a harder time learning how to survive. Also, how the new guys react and how the vets react really emphasizes what you lose when killing other humans is your job. The British made a political decision to try and minimize destruction. Maybe the Dutch appreciated that, but I'm sure the Allied soldiers who died as a result did not.
The fact that some actors in this series were just starting out and now they're popular among younger people and younger women crush on them..... given that their characters are introduced and later killed... just goes to further serve the impact of the message this series conveyed so well. The sacrifice these men made for our collective future should be always remembered. Thank you for your reaction. Plus, "smarticles" was probably the cutest thing I've ever heard. Cheers
Gotta say, I'm really enjoying these videos. I've wondered the younger generations' thoughts/reactions to conflicts. WWII was far removed even for me, but I also had a different perspective, since I was a military brat and we were stationed in Germany from '84 to '92. Their reactions aren't different or surprising. But still very interesting. And, comforting, in a "we all felt feelings together" kind of way). Happy to have recently subscribed!
This episode is great because it shows all the salty survivors (up to that point) to show how they have risen through the ranks from their training days. Now they are Sgt's and above and are team leaders and squad leaders. They treat the replacements like their own kids and you see the small scenes where the veterans of combat are trying to teach the new guy's what to do. Leadership has 2 priorities and that is Mission Accomplishment & Troop Welfare. That's great that you picked out the color-blind officer. I think the directors wanted to show a little testament to the type of men who joined. Many stories of men who faked paperwork, hid health/medical conditions, or cheated on eye exams in order not to get disqualified from military service. There were also a few stories of underage boys who faked their birth records or birthday on enlistment papers. In the other series, called the Pacific, they show the battle for Iwo Jima where 27 Medal of Honor's were awarded for a battle that only lasted 2 months. One of them was a Marine by the name of Jack Lucus who joined the Marine Corps at the age of 14 and he was awarded one of the Medal's of Honor at the age of 17 on Iwo Jima.
Your level of respect for the vets in the series is so moving. I am a veteran of the Gulf War, sometimes it seems fewer people in the younger generation have any idea the sacrifices that have been made for them. Your reactions give me hope for the future. Thank you.
It's kind of crazy watching this show now and seeing a lot of the side actors who went on to be pretty big stars a few years later. James McAvoy in this episode, Michael Fassbender played Christenson, the machine gunner in the first episode who got chewed out for drinking from his canteen (and he shows up again in a later episode), Simon Pegg as Bill (though Pegg was pretty well established on TV in the UK at the time), and keep an eye out for a young beanpole Tom Hardy later on.
The soldier who gave the kid chocolate is Webster. The guy you thought it was is Spiers. Both feature pretty predominantly in the second half of the series. Webb features a bunch in the next episode.
@8:20 Parachutes at the time were made from silk which was rationed and in very high demand especially to women. Any GI who could get parachute silk could barter or sell it to the locals for a very good profit. Women especially, since silk made good underwear fabric and many european women would try to take advantage of abandoned parachutes to make such items. Its all the more funnier when some women could only find the green camoflauge type instead of the white silk. @21:20 It is remarakable how much the human body can endure and recover from. One story out of Iraq in 2003, a US Army infantry squad took up positions on a roof top and one of the sergeants was shot through the neck and fell three stories before hitting the ground. He survived but was paralyzed from the neck down. According to one of his men who kept in touch after he was sent home later said in an interview "We'll I later found out his D*ck still worked, because he had 3 kids".
There are so many fans of this show and so many history/trivia pages on the internet.. I'd caution you ladies about reading the comments before you finish the series.. There are spoilers lurking within!
The Soviet Army tended to want very robotic soldiers that mindlessly followed orders. They’d take our 100 man group and just fight it until everyone was dead. Units went to training together, like Easy, but no soldiers were sent to replace losses. You just send a whole brand new unit…… which has to relearn all those same lessons. Oddly enough, though, there was a moment when Allied planners intentionally used green troops and saw their inexperience as a bonus. For the D-Day invasion, y’all saw the airborne aspect mostly. Remember how happy you were when Nixon came riding up on a tank? That tank had to come across the beach. So did lots of other men and equipment. Mountains of it. This could have been a problem if the first wave of troops simply stopped when they got out of the boats. Doesn’t even matter why, if the first wave bogs down it screws everyone trying to come behind, get it? There isn’t physical space on the beach for everything we’re bringing and we can’t fight until we get ashore. Front guys GOT to go. So, Allied planners gave that assignment to a green infantry unit figuring with as much lead as will be flying across that beach only someone who’d never been in combat would be dumb enough to advance across that beach. Hideous losses but it worked
At 17:30 a short explanation: The german tanks Tiger and Panter had a stronger shooting power. So they could easy break the armor of the sherman tanks. On the other way, the Sherman tanks had no chance on this point...i hope, i could explain a bit :)
The " kids and old men " were German troops of various quality. Some were German marines who had no ships to go to, and some were poor quality work battalions that were reorganizing into Combat teams ( Kampfgruppe). Plus, an entire Panzer Corp had moved into the area to rest and resupply.
Recall the scene where a replacement asks “What do we do now?” A less experienced soldier says “Stay down,” but is immediately overruled by Bull who screams at them to move and that staying still makes you a target. Thats combat, knowing when, how and where to move maximizes your chance to live. Make the wrong choice and you’re dead
That scene in Eindhoven when the resistance member looked at the tank and said to winter's " ill be happy to show you the quickest route". The underlining point that was being made there was that during the war. The British wanted to be the one's who defeated Hitler and not the Americans. So if Market Garden were to succeed they wanted the news articles to say that the British army got into Germany first and then the Americans followed. Now the tanks in that scene were British tanks and everyone knew that both allied forces wanted to be the first to defeat the Germans which is why he said he would show him the quickest route. This dynamic between the British and American is put on full display in a movie that depicted the war through the experience of a great American general Patton. I recommend watching it, he is a fascinating person and that movie really showed how the war was like for a leader. It showed the politics that were at play as well. Overall Americans usually say that the Europeans cannot save themselves without us doing the job for them. This is all meant to be a jab at Europe since America used to be a colony and now that has all turned around with America being the one's who the Europeans need. So it makes sense why the British didn't want this to happen again in WWll. The Russians were the one's who strolled their way into Berlin St the end.
Total nonsense. The resistance man was talking about guiding the paratroopers to their objectives, which were four bridges in Eindhoven and the specific objectives of 2nd Battalion (including Easy Company). This rivalry nonsense was in the minds of Americans and exaggerated by films like Patton (1970) and A Bridge Too Far (1977) which were written and produced by Hollywood people. The film version of A Bridge Too Far is only 50% historically accurate in the narrative account and was based on journalist Cornelius Ryan's incomplete 1974 book (he had terminal cancer) specifically about this operation, Market Garden, and there's a distinct American bias in the anti-British narrative in the book. Ryan originally hailed from Dublin (and emigrated to the USA after the war) and during the European campaign was embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army - Dublin and Patton are both premier colleges of the anti-British school of philosophy. If you want to learn the true story behind Market Garden, then you have to read some history books. For the internal politics in 1st Allied Airborne Army that compromised Market Garden's planning I would recommend American military historian Roger Cirillo's PhD thesis - The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (2001 Cranfield University), and also for free online you can read Cornelius Ryan's interview notes with General James Gavin of the 82nd Airborne about the decisions he made in his divisional plan that compromised the entire operation, but not followed up in the book and completely omitted from the film (Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967). The best research on what went wrong at Nijmegen are by Dutch researcher RG Poulussen in Lost At Nijmegen (2011), American historian John C McManus in September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), and 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012). You'll notice that I've avoided citing any British authors to avoid the inevitable charge that I may be biased against Americans - I'm not - about three quarters of my family are American and that should never stand in the way of getting to the truth. I'm no expert on the Eastern Front or an apologist for Stalin's wasteful abuse of his own people, but I'm confident you'll find the Russian advances to Berlin were no walk in the park - they faced the vast bulk of the German army and suffered 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths during the war. I find your arrogance and ignorance both sickening and unfortunately typical in UA-cam comments.
Sobel ended up attempting his own life and died from malnutrition in a hospital either he didnt eat or bad staff but i go to the first. He surfived his self inflicted handgun round and was blind I think.
Albert blithe ended up serving in Korea as well and he won several medals. Spiers served in korea as well. Once you finish Band of Brothers you have to watch, We Stand Alone Together. Also you can read Dick Winters book which was awesome. The Band of Brothers book also has a ton more info than show as well.
I’m really impressed with how quickly you two are catching on to what’s really happening and the gravity of some of these moments. A lot of younger reactors completely miss how heavy some of these scenes are. Kudos.
Your nervousness around the civilians in Eindhoven was absolutely the correct response. It would have been very easy for the Nazis to use insurgency tactics. Today, there is no way that man would have been allowed to go back into the air raid shelter alone and unguarded.
"He never tasted chocolate". There's little boy from Holland who never tasted chocolate, and it's doubly sad since Dutch Chocolate is famously delicious. They weren't able to make it during WWII because they were no longer getting cocoa shipped in from their colonies, where cocoa is grown. Holland was occupied since May 1940, so a little boy like him probably never had any.
Great reaction ladies. :) A couple of fyi for you. The British tank commander was under 'specific' orders not to cause unnecessary damage to property, where is the line drawn for that? Also the German tanks and SP guns could rip though most British and US tanks from ranges where they were unlikely to be hurt back which is why the few overcame many. Also the movie portrays actual tank battle tactics (unlike the inaccurate garbage that is 'Fury'), you may notice the first German shot knocks out a tank behind the leading tanks, as this causes confusion and blocks their retreat and chances of finding cover and survival. May I recommend the movie 'A Bridge Too Far', it is about operation 'Market Garden' and is a reasonably accurate portrayal of what actually happened and has an excellent cast of many fine actors.
"[beer] just sitting out in the open": Back in the day, beer used to be delivered to homes, just like milk. He found the beers sitting on someone's doorstep.
My grandfather witnessed the paratrooper drop while he was riding his horse and cart to the town of Son (prn. 'Zone') just a short distance from Eindhoven. In the show it's depicted as a bloodless event, but only moments later fighting broke out all around him. He crawled in a ditch for several kilometers to his country home which had been requisitioned by German soldiers for a number of weeks. When he finally made it home, the German soldiers who had been living in his house, sleeping in his barn, and eating his food had all disappeared. The next chance he got he sold his property to a cousin and immigrated to Canada. He never saw Holland again.
It’s cool that when David Schwimmer shows up again this episode you only see Captain Sobel, and not Ross from Friends. That speaks volumes to David Schwimmers performance in this series.
That's why he was type casted for the roll, he wasn't supposed to betaken seriously initially
Perhaps, but I think a big factor was Schwimmer's resemblance to the actual Sobel.
Exactly. By the time the series ended, I really didn’t like his character.
He's a very good actor. We can see him flex that talent in this series, where people to this day hate his character.
good thing Rachel didn't show up and revealed he is not a captain but a paleontologist...LMAO!
Haylo: "He's literally my celebrity crush!"
Me: "Uh-Oh"
"Randleman is Papa" may be the best reaction I've heard.
Like many others, I've watched a lot of reactions to BOB and watched the series a dozen times.
I agree that these girls are probably the best I've seen in grasping the storyline. It's a pleasure to watch.
When they say about their Papa got me!
I think it’s Taylor Tomlinson who has a standup routine about her Pepaw how cute he is and how many confirmed kills he has he really should check that out it’s hilarious
@@MrTech226 yep, that was really sweet. :)
My grandpa was in the 13th Airborne and almost jumped for Market Garden but his unit was called off. He said if he had gone I wouldn't be here today.
Chocolate, sugar, etc was rationed during the war and the little boy was too young to have had it before the war. The "Scary" guy is Lt. Spiers. The solider who gave the little boy chocolate is Webster.
And the little boy will get to taste chocolate for the first time all over again after the war…… I’m pretty sure that’s d ration chocolate that Web gives him, having tasted a recreation…. It’s pretty terrible tasting.
Considering that's a Hershey bar, that kid still hasn't tasted chocolate. ;-)
@@impgard was it? But also d rats were made by Hershey ( pretty sure they invented them) but even if it was a plain old Hershey bar I fully agree lol
It had nothing to do with rationing. This was German occupied Netherlands. They had been occupied for 4 years before Operation Market Garden and they people of the Netherlands were literally starving to death becuase the occupying Germans were taking all their food.
The boy never tasted chocolate before because he looked young enough to have been born during the occupation or right before.
It would have been doubtful if he even ever tasted a fresh vegetable or any edible meat not to mention chocolate.
@@Patrick-xv6qvAgreed
Winters: "Never put yourself in a position to take from these men"
Buck: "Alright...I'll throw left handed then..." 🎯 😉
@@va3svdthanks for all that. i've rewatched the series many a time, and i really appreciate expanding on details such as this.
@@va3svd ooh you are right, the differing perspectives are interesting. i'll look into reading this one when i can. thanks again!
In _Beyond Band of Brothers_ Winters describes that the machine gun bullet entered the front of Nixon's helmet, grazed his forehead leaving an abrasion, and exited out the side. Nixon missed death or a severe head wound by just a few millimeters.
oh god
Yeah those steel helmets wouldn't stop direct bullet hits, mostly they'd help against shell fragments from artillery air bursts and just making soldiers feel more secure than NOT having a helmet.
@@asmrhead1560 Yeah a lot of people still think they were like armor, but were really closer to why hardhats are used in construction and firefighting. As armor the only thing they could really guarantee was that a glancing blow was more likely to skip off than dig in and bounce off of an inner surface.
@@asmrhead1560 The biggest danger really is in bumping your head against something while running around and getting past obstacles in combat. It's pretty easy to get a concussion in and around war, or just a serious bleeding head injury. Nowadays military helmets will stop low powered bullets, and higher power bullets that have been fired from far enough away that they've been slowed down by air resistance a lot. But still getting hit by a bullet in the helmet is going to cause pretty bad neck injuries a lot of the time, probably knock you down. That energy is still going somewhere, it's just distributed across your entire skull instead of just a small point, but it's a lot of energy. They're quite effective at keeping soldiers safe from shrapnel and from ordinary head-bumps though.
They're also finding now that the heavier, more effective helmets put so much weight on the head and neck that it causes soldiers to have a lot of neck problems later, just from constant compression on the spine over a career. This problem is getting magnified by all the things attached to helmets today like cameras, comms, lights, and of course night vision and thermal imagers which also require counterweights in back to keep the helmet balanced. Some of that stuff is becoming essential in the modern battlefield, but it does do permanent damage to the people wearing them. Lots of R&D is being put into trying to figure out how to make helmets lighter and smaller, while finding a good balance for protective ability.
I can't help but wonder if helmets will eventually end up being attached to some kind of flexible rotating spinal support column in back so the head has all its mobility, but the weight gets distributed into some kind of powered exoskeleton that can also help bear the weight of all the other equipment they wear and carry. But who knows how reliable such a system would be, and whether it will only do more harm than good by adding bulk or break down at inopportune times.
The soldier who had a “not so graceful” approach to hopping the fence, was actually doing that on purpose, in order to level the fence, so his fellow soldiers could run over, instead of hopping over. It’s far safer and faster.
By the way, good observation, on the tank blowing up that building! I own the series, and have watched it many times, but never made the link, that that was the same window that old couple were seen.
You are correct: that lieutenant was color blind. It's mentioned in some of the memoirs that he tried to join the service several times but failed the eye test each time because he was color blind. However, he eventually took the test enough to be able to fake it.
Great to see the girls quickly pick up on this one, a lot of reactors miss it initially.
Genuinely curious, what's your source on that? I always assumed it was because of color blindness as well, but I haven't been able to find any historical reference to Lt. Peacock actually being color blind. And I've heard other suggestions put forth that he was nervous at the door (Peacock, in the show, is generally portrayed as being a bit hapless) and would have had his eyes closed or something like that. So if you found reference somewhere about Peacock actually being color blind I'd love to read it.
@@TheLanceUppercut I can't remember if it was in the Band of Brothers book or one of the many memoirs I've read. I'll have to see about digging them out of storage to find the reference. I'm not 100% sure that it was Peacock when I read about it. They might have just taken the story of a different color blind lieutenant and ascribed it to Peacock.
@@TheLanceUppercut Ok, found a Wikipedia article about it. It wasn't a lieutenant after all, but Walter "Smokey" Gordon.
@@TheLanceUppercut A lot of guys lied to join the army at this time. Historically, the military would reject men who were colorblind, bad eyesight, deafness, flat feet, and many conditions that affect performance. But the "call to serve" was strong at this time, and many men would lie about their age, their health, etc. in order to join. If you were old enough to serve but you didn't, people in America would call you a coward, even if you had an excuse.
I appreciate that you release these reactions every 3-4 days and not the weekly releases most reactors do!
Thank you for sharing them with us.
Anyone who says the younger generation is lost... just need to watch them appreciate this show. You guys are doing great... and we all cried, you arent alone.
I am pretty sure that the people that say that are talking about the teenagers, not the people in their twenties.
But anyway, the new generations are not lost, they are just different.
@ParlonsAstronomie I think some people would be surprised how many teenagers actually do show respect and appreciation and want to learn. I feel like, unfortunately, the certain minority that make their voices loud ofc at times don't appreciate sacrifices in the past that people made sadly.
Orange is the national color of the Netherlands (Holland). The person hanging the orange drape from the window is celebrating their liberation.
There is a film by the title of "A Bridge Too Far" that is all about Operation Market Garden.
Definitely should watch A Bridge Too Far to learn more about Operation Market Garden. Excellent stuff.
The Canadians certainly helped to liberate Holland look it up
@@timcliffsmithmarket garden was a failed attempt by the British general
@@JackyJames1Don’t just blame the British for this, Gavin and his 82nd failed to take the main bridge in time as well, so it was a collective failure.
There is a highly inaccurate* film by the title of "A Bridge Too Far"
At 10:35, the older gentleman sitting at the table waving a flag is one of the Easy Veterans who was visiting the set that day. I won't say which to avoid spoilers.
Good catch...Bill G. would be proud to see his Philly friend there. ;-)
LOL that is great, i never noticed him! That must have been very special to portray the people that you liberatef
On a separate note, when Bull is hustling the new guys off the field after jumping into Market Garden, he did this because the jump went so well the men were concentrated to landing in a small field (not spread out all over like on d day). There were rifles, helmets and other gear literally raining out of the sky. No hustle meant you were going to be bonked in the head by those same falling items.
And a bonk on the head from those fallings could easily kill you
My mom was born in Arnhem, Holland. Her parents were both teenagers/early 20's in Holland during WWII. My grandmother and her ballet group performed for Hitler once. My grandfather would sometimes have to dress as a woman at night for safer travel. That generation of humans and what they did for us all will never be replicated.
My grandfather was a medic who served with the Canadians in Holland. He returned home but passed in 1948, a decade before I was born, so I never got the chance to meet him. My aunt kept a penpal friendship with the daughter of the family my granddad was billeted with there. They were friends for 40 years before each passed from old age. Several of my closest school friends are Dutch-born. Bless the Netherlands. A beautiful country with wonderful people. ♥
Lets hope its never replicated but history tends to be cyclical.
Your Papa was probably the last of the greatest generation. He must have had a wonderful impact on you guys, since you both seem to be kind, insightful and empathetic. I'm enjoying your channel, thanks.
A neat detail is at 10:30 when Winters folds his collar inside out to hide his rank. Snipers often targeted officers.
Also, Market Garden was a massive operation with tens of thousands of men. This battle was a tiny slice of a much, much larger situation.
And it was all based off of faulty information and couldn't be corrected or properly planned due to political pressure. It was all a big waste.
@@mattj2081 Politics and ruining shit, name a more iconic duo
@@mattj2081 Nonsense. There was no political pressure applied. There was poor planning and faulty execution but that was the fault of Field Marshall Montgomery and Gen Browning, senior British Commanders. General Browning deliberately ignored intelligence that German forces in the area were much stronger than believed. It was a gamble.
@@mattj2081 It was less 'political pressure' (the politicians) than it was internal Allied military leadership wrangling for dominance and the title of winning the war. Montgomery (the British highest command) railed against the decreasing influence of the British ("there since the start") and especially the decreasing spotlight on himself. As the American effort (in terms of men and material) vastly outstripped the British the Americans naturally assumed the dominant role, notably with Eisenhower being given overall command of the Allied effort (Montgomery hated this and thought Eisenhower a feckless administrator). To make matters worse Montgomery and Patton (a US Army commander) loathed each other, both being arrogant blowhards at heart and each insisting they would "win the war" to their respective tame press corps. In the middle of this was another US Army commander Bradley, who was trying to fight a war with both Patton and Montgomery going on ever-increasing personal aggrandizement quests. Eisenhower was forced to navigate these extreme personalities and the building political (politician/civilian) pressure in Britain (with an exhausted population and economy devastated by complete involvement in two World Wars that included the bombing of the nation) and the United States (isolated from the direct conflict, some still viewing it as a European war, with their young men and the nations wealth propping up the war effort). The end result was Eisenhower spending a huge proportion of his time trying to control internal rivalries (for example his (SHAEF) British Airforce deputy commander Air Chief Marshal Tedder also loathed Montgomery and argued he should be removed from command) and prevent the alliance from fracturing.
Montgomery had a decisive advantage in planning Market Garden. His Army Group (in Holland and Belgium) was the only one close enough to take advantage of the newly formed Airbourne Army (a composite of US and British Paratroop Divisions) that would deploy from British airfields. The casualties to frontline units during the Normandy and the following campaign had many asking why multiple elite divisions of (airborne) troops were sitting idle in Britain. The paratroopers themselves were chomping at the bit to deploy after multiple operation cancellations (the ground forces having moved so fast as to overrun drop zones). In the end, Market Garden was a Montgomery vanity exercise, driven by the desperation of the Allies to end the war fast, by geographic (deployment range of the paratroops) considerations, and by the desperation of the Airbourne army to get into action.
@@cyberdan42 Excellent synopsis of the circumstances surrounding the Market-Garden clusterfuck.
The shaming of the women who slept with the germans occupiers happened in many countries including Denmark were I live. It was quite a taboo to be a child of a german soldier and many kids and their mothers got shamed for it in large parts of their lives.
If they weren't just dropped off on the German side of the border and told "good riddance "
Towards the end of the war was when all of the emasculated Socialists came out of the shadows. Having done nothing productive for the entire duration of the war. And seeing many of their women fall in love with the handsome occupying soldiers. Then, in their "proto-incel" rage, they lashed out against their neighbors.
Women who married and formed relationships with the Germans were not just shamed, a great deal of them had their citizenship revoked and were then deported to Germany.
Here in the Southwest of Norway, stealing from farms was rampant. If the farmer reported it to the Germans, there would be a crackdown, and he himself would be shunned if not murdered by his own neighbors as a collaborator.
A man who is almost a neighbor joined "Hirden" has a teenager during the war to preserve the peace and keep the country together. For that, he was shunned and hated by everyone but a tiny few.
The Labor Government of Norway when the war started actively wanted Norway to join the Soviet Union. Not to ally or make friends with the USSR. No. Actually join and become a Soviet Republic under Moscow.
Naturally, as private property is the cornerstone to freedom and liberty, a great deal of landowners of various sizes were relatively pro-German.
Or rather, as their own government was as extreme in its Bolshevisms, not that negative toward the Germans.
The dad of another neighbor actively fought the Germans every chance he could.
Including committing war crimes.
Such as fighting without a uniform. And faking surrender repeatedly.
Time and time again, he and his crew would have to move under the cover of darkness, because of the pockets of pro-German Norwegians around the country.
Then, after the war, anyone who had been slightly pro-German lost the right to vote.
And, considering the danger to their own lives and of their families, everyone pretended to hate the Germans.
So now, we are left with this 'afterthought' that everyone hated the Germans.
When in fact, this was a post-war invention.
An intention that was both imposed and self-imposed.
The post-war bloodshed was less than the average here in Norway. But in places like Denmark, Netherlands, and especially France, there were major mass-murdering purges.
And this was in the West.
In the East it was on a scale beyond sanity.
As is the case in Korea and Vietnam as well. The half American babies and their mothers were ostracized all their lives with many of those babies being dropped in orphanages. It has been the same since forever.
Very true, same in liberated France.
As it was written in the book, Malarkey (the man who Sobel was scolding about the motorcycle and who also ran out into the field to get a luger on d day) aided another soldier to steal the motorcycle from utah beach, got it onto a landing craft on the beach and somehow onto a ship so they could ride in back in England while the others had to take the train. Sobel to their surprise really didn’t punish them since the army got it back. I can only imagine them just being like “you know what? I’m just gonna take a motorcycle off the beach”
We have a saying in the US Army "There's only one thief in the Army, everyone else is just trying to get their shit back." Technically since Malarkey was still in the Army he couldn't have stolen the motorcycle, he just moved it to a secure location. On one deployment with 3rd Infantry Division a platoon in our company kept parking their vehicles too close to ours, so we un-bolted the door handles and moved it to a different part of the Battalion. They were running around looking for it for awhile before we told them. They didn't think it was as funny as us.
The guy who gives the Dutch kid chocolate is Webster, not the scary guy (Spiers). That kindness always makes me misty, myself. It's a beautiful moment in a horrible, ugly battle.
The people of the Netherlands really take care of our buried guys over there in the American Cemeteries we have for our fallen guys of world war 2. They do this “adopt a grave” type of program where it has a waiting list to this day. They take it serious, and it’s really nice of them. There’s videos about it.
13:54 he later went on to work for the CIA. The lieutenant who was shot that I’m talking about, there was someone from the Easy company that saw him got shot and didn’t know he survived. He ran into him years later like 10-15 years down the road, and it really freaked the guy out. He thought the Lieutenant died.
That is so heart warming. and thank you from the US. ^-^
You do know they do exactly the same to the British and Commonwealth graves as well? Not just American?
@@ChrisCrossClash correct, but this show focuses on an American airborne unit.
Same with the folks in Normandy. They care for the fallen Americans' graves. I watched a video of a young French girl who went to the American Cemetery in Normandy. She was filming it to show her American viewers who would never have a chance to go. She said she should have brought flowers, and started weeping. Very touching.
@@ChrisCrossClash So? Big chip on little shoulder there, pal.
It doesn't matter how many times I re-watch this series, I always listen to the introduction theme in full. It's just so wonderful to listen to.
11:20 A lot of the women who slept with the Germans did more than just sleep with the enemy, as quite a few Dutch resistance members, and maybe even some innocents, were snitched on by them. (One woman, I seem to remember, lost three brothers and her father, due to such snitching.)
19:30 Just some info on Winters (the guy who didn’t get his helmet shot off) and Nixon (the guy who did). Winters came from a poor family and needed to work his way through college. Nixon came from a rich family and attended Yale for two years before leaving to enlist in the Army. Winters was a monkish introvert who read all the infantry manuals he could get his hands on. Nixon was a party animal who loved to drink and stay up all night. Winters was a field commander, while Nixon was in Intelligence, which meant that he helped translate the data received from the field into information that people could use. The pair met up during Officer Candidate School, and their friendship started from there.
I am a combat vet. In your first reaction I said you would start to talk and think like the men of Easy.
I was right I can see it happening and it's very cool. You two are the best I have ever seen so far.
Thank you for this and God bless you both.
The American GIs gave my Mom and her siblings chocolate in the Philippines when they were liberating them from the Japanese occupation in World War II. That scene always reminds me of that
My Japanese father in law remembers recieving chocolate from American GIs during the early days of the occupation.
the one you laughed at and called graceful when he fell over the fence, his job was to knock the fence down so it wouldn't slow down the rest of the squad following him
Cobb was already in the Army when the war started. I think he had been in about 8 years. He actually served in North Africa with the armored force before transferring to the paratroops.
10:34 Cameo/spoiler alert: The old man in the lower left corner of the frame is the real Babe Heffron.
I've seen BoB at least a dozen times, and I never picked that up before, thank you!
Lieutenant Robert Brewer, the officer who was shot in the middle of the road, was amazingly lucky. The bullet passed under his jaw. but in front of his trachea, through that loose flap of skin all humans have on their throat right where their neck meets their head. It bled profusely, but ultimately wasn't all that serious. He could even breathe and talk normally while lying wounded on the street. He finally died (of lung cancer) in 1996 at age 72.
The orange color that's present throughout much of Dutch culture is a nod to the royal family, which is made up of members of the House of Orange. The dynasty dates back to 1544 when William of Orange inherited the estate and title at the age of 11.
It was Webster who gave the kid the chocolate bar, not Spiers.
I understand the sentiments of someone claiming you are emotional, weak, or naive... but to me, this is the beauty of a reaction like this. As a society, we owe so much to those who weren't, or aren't. Thank you to the men of history and the present who do very hard things to make our society truly strong.
Of the 8000 lost by the British 1st Airborne over 6000 were captured, many of those wounded. The movie "A Bridge Too Far" tells the story of Operation Market Garden.
Very inaccurately in places though.
@@lyndoncmp5751it's an epic flick though... tremendous cast/top notch cinematography.
(And free on UA-cam.)
The Bridge over the Rhine in Arnhem was renamed Frost bridge in honor of Col. Frost commander of the British paratroop regiment who lost the most men and were surrounded and eventually had to surrender after they ran out of food, ammo and medical supplies. Because the armored column failed to reach them.
The armoured column ( the vastly experienced British XXX Corps) only failed to reach British 1st Airborne because the US 82nd Airborne didn't capture the Nijmegen bridge for the armoured column to reach them in time. The 82nd had pulled completely out of Nijmegen when XXX Corps linked up with them and there was a two day battle just to get to the Nijmegen bridge.
US 82nd Airborne was supposed to have the Nijmegen bridge captured and ready to XXX Corps to cross over when they linked up.
Previous to this the US 101st Airborne also failed to have the Son bridge captured for XXX Corps. XXX Corps had to then build their own Bailey Bridge at Son, which took 12 hours.
An armoured column cannot move across rivers without bridges.
They were not expected to hold the bridge for more than four days - which Browning promised to Montgomery before adding "but we may be going a bridge too far." He was absolutely correct, because the 508th PIR failed to move quickly on the Nijmegen bridge and allowed the 10.SS-Panzer-Division to reinforce the non-commissioned officer and seventeen men who were guarding it. The delay it imposed on XXX Corps having to fight for the bridges at Nijmegen sealed the fate of the British Airborne at Arnhem.
Point of fact, the British force did not "surrender" at the Arnhem bridge at all - when they ran out of ammunition they were ordered to attempt to break out in small groups and most of them were captured.
8:17 The parachutes were made of pure silk, and these ones are camouflaged, a lot of paratroopers made neck scarves out of damaged parachutes. One of the officers Lieutenant Welsh, kept a parachute through most of the war to bring home to his fiancé so she could make her wedding dress out of the material.
Also, silk was heavily rationed during the war and reserved for military use. Silk stockings for women were extremely hard to come by and cost a fortune. In the 1940s, all women wore stockings with dresses (pants for women were not yet a thing) so this was a huge issue. Because of this, troopers would often collect discarded pieces parachute silk and send them home to their wives or girlfriends, who would then use their sowing and threading skills to sew their own new stockings.
And some troopers also used silk for bartering with local women in Europe, usually in exchange for you-know-what.
That's when nylon stockings were invented. Not as good as silk, though.
@@catherinelw9365 I'll have to take your word for it.
With Captain Sobel, members of Easy Company may have hated him when he was in charge. But credit him for making Easy Company as good as it was. It solidified the members of Easy into the cohesive unit they were.
"You turrrrrd!" (at Cobb during the bar scene) made me laugh pretty hard
" replacements , who needs replacements? " Any army unit that was devastated with so many dead and wounded. They might not want to make friends with them or even know their names, but they definitely needed them
came to comment similar. "Who needs replaced?" as if they didn't cry about all the death in the prior episodes.
As units lost members, they had replacement soldiers come in to fill the ranks back up. But they more often than not treated badly because they did not have the extensive training and had not gone through any battles yet.
Green as grass yes, but they had their jump wings.
The little boy with the chocolate might be my most favorite scene in the whole show.
I think every episode has a perfect scene. I accept this is the one for episode four.
It helps that the kid they cast was probably one of the cutest kids on the planet.
17:25 That is a Jagdpanther. It was armed with the long-barreled 8.8 cm Pak 43/3 L/71 gun, similar to the main gun of the Tiger II. The Americans and British did not have a tank that could penetrate its armor and it can take out any American or British tank in one shot over a mile away.
That's not quite correct. Depending on the range and angle of impact, a HPDS shell with the tungsten core from a British 17-pounder gun like those on the Sherman Firefly could penetrate frontal armor and certainly side armor. A Jagdtiger would have been another story. Likewise, the M26 Pershing with its 90 mm high velocity gun stood a good chance. Of course those wouldn't get to the battlefield until 1945 and even then in small numbers. But the tanks that we saw were regular Sherman's with 75 ml guns and a Cromwell with the British version of a 75 mm gun.
All the German vehicles in the episode were inappropriate for the action at Nuenen except for the half-track personnel carrier. The production only had access to these running condition German vehicles and the same vehicles appear in multiple episodes as a result.
Panzerbrigade 107 had Panther tanks in its panzer battalion, as well as a company of Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyers that arrived late and were not involved, while the panzergrenadier battalion was equipped with a number of types of armoured half-tracks. The enemy vehicle involved in the ambush incident with the Shermans of 44th RTR (Royal Tank Regiment) at Nuenen was incorrectly identified by the tankers as a Mark IV tank, but was probably a half-track with a close support 7.5cm kanon (SdKfz 251/9 'Stummel') that was hidden behind a hedgerow.
The British Cromwell tanks were used in the armoured reonnaissance regiments and the markings on all the British tanks were the divisional reconnaissance tactical number [45] and the 11th Armoured Division flash (black bull on a yellow field), which is correct for the Cromwells of 15th/19th Hussars, but wrong for 44th RTR - part of the independent 4th Armoured Brigade and attached to 101st Airborne Division for MARKET GARDEN.
The Cromwells were involved in an action at Opwetten, on the road from Eindhoven to Nuenen the day before, where Buck Compton was wounded, so this episode is a conflation of two actions at two places on two days with two British armoured regiments in support of Easy Company.
As a footnote, some of the American troopers thought the Opwetten action was Nueuen, because the small hamlet was over a small bridge on the river Dommel, and at the far end of the bridge there was a sign that read 'NUENEN' - this actually indicated the river was the boundary between the districts of Eindhoven and Nuenen, and not the town of Nuenen itself. The town was the headquarters of Panzerbrigade 107 and Easy Company had initially bumped the brigade's pickets at Opwetten on 19 September and penetrated to within 200 metres of the centre of Nuenen on 20 September.
Canadians were a big part of this fight! Our awesome American cousins ( brothers and sisters) are making sure Canada is safe thank you America
The Canadians did well under Montgomery as their overall commander.
@@lyndoncmp5751 all the Allies are HEROES that's a fact
Thanks, neighbor!
The soldier that gave the chocolate to the little boy was Private David Webster. The scary guy was Lieutenant Ronald Speirs. In the first few episodes it's hard to remember who everyone is because we are not that familiar with everyone yet, so no big deal, you will eventually figure it out.
10:32 Quick cameo by "Babe" Heffron. ☺️ Bottom left waving that flag. 15:15 That fence "jump" was on purpose, Ramirez knocked it down, so the rest could proceed with ease, and not waste time going over it and possibly get shot.
French here, the shaved women and shot/hanged men collaborators (Real or suspected) happened in liberated France too.
And, you nailed it, the officer that ordered the sergeant to tap his leg when the light changed from red to green was, in fact, color blind
great reaction. I had a judge who was in the 101st Airborne. He jumped at Normandy as well as in Holland. He fought around Eindhoven, the town that was bombed here. He fought in all of the battles you are watching. He has now passed away but he was special. There is a reason why they call these men the Greatest Generation. My judge ended up being captured at the Battle of the Bulge. He survived the war, returned to the States, graduated law school, got married and raised a family, set up a prosperous law firm and eventually was appointed to the Bench. In the 90's he returned to Holland at invitation to celebrate the 50th year of liberation and I will always remember his reaction when he came home. He was upset that he was treated as a hero. He looked me in the eye and told me that he wasn't the hero, the heroes wee them men, his friends, that never came back. I tried to explain to him that he was a true hero but he wouldn't hear any of it.
The issued GI shirt was made of a very coarse wool. Paratroopers would cut a swath from their silk parachutes to put under their collar to keep from itching.
After the failure of Market Garden, every time Bernard Montgomery tried to approach General Eisenhower with a new plan, Eisenhower just played along with Montgomery, but he never listened to him ever again on “big plans.”
But it was not just failure of the Top Brass. Behind the scenes, Ultra Intercepts had not been listened to, the biggest warning ignored were codes that were broken showing Powerful Units of the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions located literally right by the single road corridor the Tanks were to push on through to Arnhem. These units were refitted and full of battle hardened Veterans from the Normandy Campaign that managed to escape the Allied Pocket at Falaise in France.
How come Eisenhower went running to Montgomery 3 months later then in the Battle of the Bulge when the Americans were retreating? He called on Montgomery on just the 4th day of the battle and asked him to come down and take immediate command of US 1st Army, after his American generals dropped the ball. In his hour of need, Eisenhower turned to his most experienced and most successful general, Montgomery.
Eisenhower then agreed to Montgomerys other plans. Operations Blockbuster, Veritable and Grenade.
After Market Garden, Eisenhower allowed the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine and Alsace debacles to occur. Each of these were more costly failures than Market Garden.
The old man sitting at the table at the 10:54 mark is the actual Babe Hefron.
The music was written by the late, great Michael Kamen.
He co-wrote one of the biggest songs of all time, Bryan Adams' 'Everything I do I Do it For You'.
It gets even darker when you know that at least SOME of those Dutch women were assaulted by German soldiers, and that they didn't voluntarily sleep with them. They go through that and are shamed by their own countrymen. War is complicated and horrible.
2:56 "If something happens..."
Something definitely did happen.
Everyone who knows this series did a collective "oof" sound when she said that.
The little boy with the chocolate is such a profound and moving scene which really hit myself different after having kids myself.
Haylo & Kiss, Before the D-Day invasion, American troops all received a new weapon, be it an M1 rifle, M1 carbine, M3 sub-machine gun, or Thompson sub-machine gun. The ones they had used in training were left behind for others to train with. Similarly, if a soldier lost his weapon in combat, he would get another one. So the one you saw the fellow unwrap next to the airplane was probably nice and new.
As you mentioned private Blithe survived World war II furthermore he served in the Korean war and was twice decorated for gallantry. He rose to the rank of Master Sergeant before leaving the Army. He actually passed away in 1967. 😢
Lol why did the series lie so blatantly? That seems like an obvious fact to get right.
@@patgray5402 The men of Easy company lost track of Blythe, with most of them thinking he had died. Efforts to contact him failed when they met at reunions after the war.
Ah I see.@@markh3271
@@patgray5402 it wasn't that the intentionally were trying to lie it was because they were looking for dramatic effect. I think they were using private Blithe as kind of a stand-in, to put the audience in the soldier shoes.
Another UA-camr, a veteran of the Gulf War, refers to the camaraderie between soldiers as "trauma-bonding."
That phrase speaks volumes. Even mentally strong men, selected and trained for war, can't resist being terrified. The men they share these experiences with and on whom they depend to survive will become closer than any other human relationship, except perhaps for the best marriages.
0:23: Your audience adores you for adoring this show. Says a lot about ones character -- those who get the meaning behind this amazing production -- understanding it's about the real heroes, their lives, contributions and sacrifices, who all made a different in our freedoms we have in the world today. So meaningful beyond words.
The soldier that gave the chocolate bar to the boy is David Kenyon Webster. He became an author and wrote "Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich". He was fascinated with sharks and became lost at sea in 1961.
Prof X and Magneto are in Easy company first before they formed the X-Men😅
... and so is Bane/Venom in a later ep
That so much futur A-lister actors are in this show as support cast speaks volume about the casting team talent and production quality.
i always enjoy shows that show operation market garden.
If my grandfather had not been taken prisoner by the americans during this, he would have been with his unit when it got transferred to the eastern front and completely eradicated there.
i would not be alive then.
It might be informative to consider the case of Holland in 1944. Every nation under Nazi occupation suffered to one degree or another. There were some factors unique to Holland that made their occupation particularly difficult for the Dutch. Holland is very small, it’s very flat and almost completely lacks forests. This made Holland very easy for the Nazis to observe the entire country and monitor everyone’s comings and goings. The expected resistance movement tended to be predominantly women and children as they were the only ones who could move about without too much attention.
By the time of Market-Garden, the Dutch had lived under a completely artificial famine. The wonderful Dutch dairy farmers had to give almost all their harvests and livestock to the Germans. The level of anger directed against the collaborators immediately upon liberation was pretty common. The Nazis believed in divide and rule. You got extra rations for ratting someone out. People rat each other out over personal grievances. When the other side liberates you, retaliations were common. Consider, too, in a fast-moving modern war, the village that was liberated that morning saw collaborators rounded up and hung by lunch. Then a German counterattack and you might have more hangings by sundown but going the other way.
The Liberation of Eindhoven, the Netherlands, 20 September 1944. Civilians dancing in the square. In 1944 & 1945, the Netherlands was liberated by Canadian, British, Polish, Dutch, and American troops.
I watch this show every year a least once to remind myself of how greatful I am and to never forget it
It's always wild to come back to this series and see so many "before they were stars" actors. James McAvoy of course, but also Michael Fassbender, Tom Hardy, Simon Pegg, and more.
I'm not surprised at all that you two like James McAvoy. There's a load of actors who you'll meet that were here early-ish in their careers.
As for your older subscribers, like myself, the 1983 movie The Outsiders was the first break for a lot of older actors you may know.
Take care of yourselves, H & K !!
Next to Dick Winters, Bull Randleman is my favorite character in the series. You can't go wrong with an easy going cigar chomping country boy from Arkansas.
You're one of the few reactors I've seen who actually catches the detail that the Lieutenant is colorblind, nice catch!
I just got my flu shot and every time I get one I always think of that scene with Randleman. We complain about a sore arm after a vaccine..ouchy. Let me take a Tylenol 😂
Guy had shrapnel in his shoulder and still had to fight hand to hand.
what a tough man.
Karissa is right Haley, you are smarticles
lol
A perpendicular hit on one of those old steel pot helmets wouldn't even slow a rifle round down meaningfully; zero protection. They might help with a glancing high velocity hit and do protect from low velocity projectiles and debris...like a hardhat. The outer steel shell could also be used as a wash basin or to heat water.
You would not want to heat water on it because that would actually change the temper of the steel and make the helmet less effective.
Depending on the angle of deflection and range, a helmet could deflect a bullet or shell splinters.
Trivia. The Presidential unit citation.
If you arrive at a unit that has won that award, you have to wear that ribbon even if you were not there when they won it. Otherwise you are out of uniform. When you leave the unit, you no longer wear it.
If you were assigned to the unit when they won it. You wear it even if you get assigned to another unit. In other words, the rest of your time in the military.
Cobb was being stupid.
little background info on the operation Market - Garden: its aim was to capture bridges in Netherlands to create a corridor to enter Germany. Plan was that the paratroopers (US 101st with "our" Easy comp. + 82nd divisons, British 1st division and Polish 1st para brigade) were to drop in advance and capture and hold bridges until British tanks of the XXX Corps arrived. Basically after relatively smooth and comfortable drops comparing to Normandy, with soldiers and equipment intact, not many things went well for the Allies. Although the paratroopers were able to secure most of the objectives after hard and valiant fighting, they failed to take one of the crucial bridges in Nijmegen. And military intelligence commited one of the big blunders of the war, because Netherlands was not defended by "kids and old men" but by 719th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht and also by 9th and 10th SS Panzer divisions and with several German Fallschirmjäger (paratrooper) regiments which were considered elite in German armed forces. And while they had not had many tanks in the beginning of the operation, they directed most of the avaliable armor to the area including some of the best German tanks like Panther and Tiger. The result was mass casualty rate on Allied side and blowing up several of the targeted bridges. That and the fact, that the British tanks were unable to link up with the paratroopers failed the whole operation.
The idiom "A bridge too far" referring to an act of overreaching is based on this operation. There is also a movie with the same name depicting the operation.
Lt. Brewer who was hit in the neck by a sniper, survived his wounds and rejoined Easy company at the end of the war after recovery.
A fair comment on the operation, except that the 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions were known to be in the region - the reason Montgomery actually cancelled Operation COMET that was to drop the British 1st Airborne Division and attached Polish Brigade only, on the Grave-Nijmegen-Arnhem bridges. He realised the airborne comonent of the operation was not strong enough to deal with heavy armoured counter-attacks and cancelled COMET at the last minute on 10 September. He later had a scheduled meeting that day with Eisenhower and proposed an upgraded airborne operation (provisionally called SIXTEEN) by adding the two American divisions. This enabled the British and British-equipped Polish Brigade to concentrate at Arnhem, as they had superior anti-tank gun resources. The American divisions had more field artillery than anti-tank guns in their establishments and they would be deployed to the south at Eindhoven-Grave-Nijmegen to hold open the corridor to Arnhem. Planning was turned over to 1st Allied Airborne Army, as now all of its units would be committed to the expanded operation scheduled for 17 September, and this was where most of the planning compromises were made, against British advice.
The German 1.Fallschirm-armee (1st Parachute Army) was a paper unit that utilised 20,000 Luftwaffe ground troops promised by Hermann Göring to plug the gap in the Netherlands front line that had opened up between the 15.Armee at Antwerp and the 7.Armee at Aachen. Apparently, Hitler raged at his generals about what to do about the disatser in the West and Göring, normally not able to contribute much to these meetings, timed his intervention perfectly and suddenly announced he had 20,000 troops they could use. These troops were redundant airfield ground crews, training regiments, etc., that were nominally converted into Fallschirm (parachute) regiments at the stroke of a pen. They were not the elite parachute troops that the Allies encountered in Normandy (such as the 6.Fallschirmjäger-Regiment at Carentan), but only had a cadre of Normandy survivors around which to build the new units, while at the same time having to fight MARKET GARDEN.
The airborne Operation MARKET failed at Nijmegen due to a command failure in the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment to carry out General Gavin's instruction to send their 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge immediately after landing, while it was reported by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees to be guarded only by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men. The delay allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division at Ruurlo to deploy the SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, attached from the 9.SS-Panzer-Division at Beekbergen, and II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 (Kampfgruppe Reinhold) at Vorden to Nijmegen, to reinforce the bridges and organise the defences at Nijmegen. It took 36 hours of hard fighting to take the bridges by combined attacks after the tanks of XXX Corps had arrived.
Cornelius Ryan's classic book, A Bridge Too Far (1974), ignored the failure at Nijmegen - despite being given an honest steer by Gavin in their 1967 interview - and instead attributed the failure to a range of excuses, including faulty intelligence, communications failures, and the weather. The film version omits even more details, although the script is highly entertaining and penned by William Goldman, whose previous work on classic comedy western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) is probably just as historically accurate.
Thank you for reacting to this show and willing to examine the horrors of war. You are appreciated!
It's a bit of a Catch-22 for replacements. They don't know many of the hacks that help hardened soldiers survive, but because those hardened soldiers don't want to bond with someone who may be dead soon (and who is likely replacing someone they HAD developed friendship with), they have a harder time learning how to survive. Also, how the new guys react and how the vets react really emphasizes what you lose when killing other humans is your job. The British made a political decision to try and minimize destruction. Maybe the Dutch appreciated that, but I'm sure the Allied soldiers who died as a result did not.
I cant wait for them to meet Lieutenant Norman S. Dike
Orange is the national color of Holland/The Netherlands. They were hanging the orange sheets out to welcome them (and say don't shoot!)
The fact that some actors in this series were just starting out and now they're popular among younger people and younger women crush on them..... given that their characters are introduced and later killed... just goes to further serve the impact of the message this series conveyed so well. The sacrifice these men made for our collective future should be always remembered. Thank you for your reaction. Plus, "smarticles" was probably the cutest thing I've ever heard. Cheers
I just wanted to let you know that you are very enjoyable to watch! Keep up that grind, You are doing great so far!
It just gets harder from here on out. Hope they have a huge supply of tissues.
Gotta say, I'm really enjoying these videos. I've wondered the younger generations' thoughts/reactions to conflicts. WWII was far removed even for me, but I also had a different perspective, since I was a military brat and we were stationed in Germany from '84 to '92. Their reactions aren't different or surprising. But still very interesting. And, comforting, in a "we all felt feelings together" kind of way). Happy to have recently subscribed!
This episode is great because it shows all the salty survivors (up to that point) to show how they have risen through the ranks from their training days. Now they are Sgt's and above and are team leaders and squad leaders. They treat the replacements like their own kids and you see the small scenes where the veterans of combat are trying to teach the new guy's what to do. Leadership has 2 priorities and that is Mission Accomplishment & Troop Welfare.
That's great that you picked out the color-blind officer. I think the directors wanted to show a little testament to the type of men who joined. Many stories of men who faked paperwork, hid health/medical conditions, or cheated on eye exams in order not to get disqualified from military service. There were also a few stories of underage boys who faked their birth records or birthday on enlistment papers. In the other series, called the Pacific, they show the battle for Iwo Jima where 27 Medal of Honor's were awarded for a battle that only lasted 2 months. One of them was a Marine by the name of Jack Lucus who joined the Marine Corps at the age of 14 and he was awarded one of the Medal's of Honor at the age of 17 on Iwo Jima.
Your level of respect for the vets in the series is so moving. I am a veteran of the Gulf War, sometimes it seems fewer people in the younger generation have any idea the sacrifices that have been made for them. Your reactions give me hope for the future. Thank you.
Well said and kind to recognize them. Also, thank you for your service.
It's kind of crazy watching this show now and seeing a lot of the side actors who went on to be pretty big stars a few years later. James McAvoy in this episode, Michael Fassbender played Christenson, the machine gunner in the first episode who got chewed out for drinking from his canteen (and he shows up again in a later episode), Simon Pegg as Bill (though Pegg was pretty well established on TV in the UK at the time), and keep an eye out for a young beanpole Tom Hardy later on.
The soldier who gave the kid chocolate is Webster. The guy you thought it was is Spiers. Both feature pretty predominantly in the second half of the series. Webb features a bunch in the next episode.
@8:20 Parachutes at the time were made from silk which was rationed and in very high demand especially to women. Any GI who could get parachute silk could barter or sell it to the locals for a very good profit. Women especially, since silk made good underwear fabric and many european women would try to take advantage of abandoned parachutes to make such items. Its all the more funnier when some women could only find the green camoflauge type instead of the white silk.
@21:20 It is remarakable how much the human body can endure and recover from. One story out of Iraq in 2003, a US Army infantry squad took up positions on a roof top and one of the sergeants was shot through the neck and fell three stories before hitting the ground. He survived but was paralyzed from the neck down. According to one of his men who kept in touch after he was sent home later said in an interview "We'll I later found out his D*ck still worked, because he had 3 kids".
There are so many fans of this show and so many history/trivia pages on the internet.. I'd caution you ladies about reading the comments before you finish the series.. There are spoilers lurking within!
The Soviet Army tended to want very robotic soldiers that mindlessly followed orders. They’d take our 100 man group and just fight it until everyone was dead. Units went to training together, like Easy, but no soldiers were sent to replace losses. You just send a whole brand new unit…… which has to relearn all those same lessons. Oddly enough, though, there was a moment when Allied planners intentionally used green troops and saw their inexperience as a bonus. For the D-Day invasion, y’all saw the airborne aspect mostly. Remember how happy you were when Nixon came riding up on a tank? That tank had to come across the beach. So did lots of other men and equipment. Mountains of it.
This could have been a problem if the first wave of troops simply stopped when they got out of the boats. Doesn’t even matter why, if the first wave bogs down it screws everyone trying to come behind, get it?
There isn’t physical space on the beach for everything we’re bringing and we can’t fight until we get ashore.
Front guys GOT to go. So, Allied planners gave that assignment to a green infantry unit figuring with as much lead as will be flying across that beach only someone who’d never been in combat would be dumb enough to advance across that beach. Hideous losses but it worked
At 17:30 a short explanation: The german tanks Tiger and Panter had a stronger shooting power. So they could easy break the armor of the sherman tanks. On the other way, the Sherman tanks had no chance on this point...i hope, i could explain a bit :)
The " kids and old men " were German troops of various quality. Some were German marines who had no ships to go to, and some were poor quality work battalions that were reorganizing into Combat teams ( Kampfgruppe). Plus, an entire Panzer Corp had moved into the area to rest and resupply.
Recall the scene where a replacement asks “What do we do now?” A less experienced soldier says “Stay down,” but is immediately overruled by Bull who screams at them to move and that staying still makes you a target.
Thats combat, knowing when, how and where to move maximizes your chance to live. Make the wrong choice and you’re dead
That scene in Eindhoven when the resistance member looked at the tank and said to winter's " ill be happy to show you the quickest route". The underlining point that was being made there was that during the war. The British wanted to be the one's who defeated Hitler and not the Americans. So if Market Garden were to succeed they wanted the news articles to say that the British army got into Germany first and then the Americans followed. Now the tanks in that scene were British tanks and everyone knew that both allied forces wanted to be the first to defeat the Germans which is why he said he would show him the quickest route.
This dynamic between the British and American is put on full display in a movie that depicted the war through the experience of a great American general Patton. I recommend watching it, he is a fascinating person and that movie really showed how the war was like for a leader. It showed the politics that were at play as well. Overall Americans usually say that the Europeans cannot save themselves without us doing the job for them. This is all meant to be a jab at Europe since America used to be a colony and now that has all turned around with America being the one's who the Europeans need. So it makes sense why the British didn't want this to happen again in WWll. The Russians were the one's who strolled their way into Berlin St the end.
Total nonsense. The resistance man was talking about guiding the paratroopers to their objectives, which were four bridges in Eindhoven and the specific objectives of 2nd Battalion (including Easy Company). This rivalry nonsense was in the minds of Americans and exaggerated by films like Patton (1970) and A Bridge Too Far (1977) which were written and produced by Hollywood people.
The film version of A Bridge Too Far is only 50% historically accurate in the narrative account and was based on journalist Cornelius Ryan's incomplete 1974 book (he had terminal cancer) specifically about this operation, Market Garden, and there's a distinct American bias in the anti-British narrative in the book. Ryan originally hailed from Dublin (and emigrated to the USA after the war) and during the European campaign was embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army - Dublin and Patton are both premier colleges of the anti-British school of philosophy.
If you want to learn the true story behind Market Garden, then you have to read some history books. For the internal politics in 1st Allied Airborne Army that compromised Market Garden's planning I would recommend American military historian Roger Cirillo's PhD thesis - The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (2001 Cranfield University), and also for free online you can read Cornelius Ryan's interview notes with General James Gavin of the 82nd Airborne about the decisions he made in his divisional plan that compromised the entire operation, but not followed up in the book and completely omitted from the film (Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967). The best research on what went wrong at Nijmegen are by Dutch researcher RG Poulussen in Lost At Nijmegen (2011), American historian John C McManus in September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), and 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012). You'll notice that I've avoided citing any British authors to avoid the inevitable charge that I may be biased against Americans - I'm not - about three quarters of my family are American and that should never stand in the way of getting to the truth.
I'm no expert on the Eastern Front or an apologist for Stalin's wasteful abuse of his own people, but I'm confident you'll find the Russian advances to Berlin were no walk in the park - they faced the vast bulk of the German army and suffered 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths during the war. I find your arrogance and ignorance both sickening and unfortunately typical in UA-cam comments.
Sobel ended up attempting his own life and died from malnutrition in a hospital either he didnt eat or bad staff but i go to the first. He surfived his self inflicted handgun round and was blind I think.
My god the final episodes will be a tsunami of tears for you guys
Albert blithe ended up serving in Korea as well and he won several medals. Spiers served in korea as well. Once you finish Band of Brothers you have to watch, We Stand Alone Together. Also you can read Dick Winters book which was awesome. The Band of Brothers book also has a ton more info than show as well.
I’m really impressed with how quickly you two are catching on to what’s really happening and the gravity of some of these moments. A lot of younger reactors completely miss how heavy some of these scenes are. Kudos.
Your nervousness around the civilians in Eindhoven was absolutely the correct response. It would have been very easy for the Nazis to use insurgency tactics. Today, there is no way that man would have been allowed to go back into the air raid shelter alone and unguarded.
Episodes 6-9 are pretty emotional so bring tissues
I use more tissues in number ten, but that’s just me.
"He never tasted chocolate". There's little boy from Holland who never tasted chocolate, and it's doubly sad since Dutch Chocolate is famously delicious. They weren't able to make it during WWII because they were no longer getting cocoa shipped in from their colonies, where cocoa is grown. Holland was occupied since May 1940, so a little boy like him probably never had any.
Great reaction ladies. :) A couple of fyi for you. The British tank commander was under 'specific' orders not to cause unnecessary damage to property, where is the line drawn for that? Also the German tanks and SP guns could rip though most British and US tanks from ranges where they were unlikely to be hurt back which is why the few overcame many. Also the movie portrays actual tank battle tactics (unlike the inaccurate garbage that is 'Fury'), you may notice the first German shot knocks out a tank behind the leading tanks, as this causes confusion and blocks their retreat and chances of finding cover and survival. May I recommend the movie 'A Bridge Too Far', it is about operation 'Market Garden' and is a reasonably accurate portrayal of what actually happened and has an excellent cast of many fine actors.
"[beer] just sitting out in the open": Back in the day, beer used to be delivered to homes, just like milk. He found the beers sitting on someone's doorstep.
My grandfather witnessed the paratrooper drop while he was riding his horse and cart to the town of Son (prn. 'Zone') just a short distance from Eindhoven. In the show it's depicted as a bloodless event, but only moments later fighting broke out all around him. He crawled in a ditch for several kilometers to his country home which had been requisitioned by German soldiers for a number of weeks. When he finally made it home, the German soldiers who had been living in his house, sleeping in his barn, and eating his food had all disappeared. The next chance he got he sold his property to a cousin and immigrated to Canada. He never saw Holland again.