Here’s a decent overview. I’m not sure what you mean by “honorary groupings”, but the regiment was eliminated as an actual grouping sometime during WWII. I think the paratroopers were a bit unusual that they still had a regimental commander.
If Sobel had been criticized by a higher-ranking officer, I’m sure he would have made all the appropriate noises. “Yes, sir.” “I’ll try to do better, sir.” I just don’t think that he had the necessary self-awareness to understand what they were trying to tell him. As soon as he was out of the CO’s office, he’d be thinking “my men let me down, I’ve got to push them harder.”
Company = 100-200 men.
Battalion = almost a thousand men.
Regiment = two to three thousand men.
Division = roughly 15,000 men.
Numbers will fluctuate based on individual training schedules, combat casualties that are yet to be replaced, soldiers detatched for special duty, soldiers on leave, etc.
BoB was highlighting E (or “easy”, in military phonetics) company, 506th Parachute Regiment, 2nd Battalion, 101st Airborne Division.
Right before they fired Sobel they told him Easy was one of the finest companies they had ever seen. So he was probably confused as to why he was transferred.
Yeah, which is why he looked like he was going to cry when they told him he was being transferred. Actually a really well acted scene by Schwimmer.
Yes, the sergent’s rebellion was far more serious (from the Army’s perspective). Even Winters comments about how foolish he thought the whole thing was; despite that it got rid of Sobel, he wasn’t supportive of it.
However, I’m not sure that Sobel wouldn’t have ended up leading Easy into combat had the sergents not done what they did. Recall the example of Capt. Dike basically phoning-in his command while in Bastogne. Absolutely everybody in Easy was contemptuous of him, whereas they had some grudgingly complimentary things to say about Sobel.
And, as muldoonthief noted, Sobel ended up with a Bronze Star. So he couldn’t have been as horrible as the biases of Easy Co leads us to believe.
As far as Sobel’s attitude towards others, I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as ‘respectful above, contemptous below’. He was completely insubordinate to Maj. Winters, who outranked him by that point. And he got along well with his lackey at Curahee (whose name I forget), and didn’t turn Popeye in to the MPs when Sobel found him AWOL trying to rejoin Easy (which mystified the Easy Co guys, apparently). He seems to have been a complex guy, way out of his element.
I loved Sink’s answer: “Son, the war needs you elsewhere.”
Thank you very much Muldoonthief and MLees. I found that info really great to know.
I have watched and enjoyed movies, documentaries and series about modern warfare for many, many years. But before BoB and before this discussion, I never really understood much about the concepts of the leadership of troops and the respect shown both up and down the chain of command and just what effect it has on leading troops into combat.
I’ve learned more in the past two days then I have in perhaps 40 years prior.
I want to thank all the people who have made recent contributions to this discussion, including: BobArrgh, mlees, muldoonthief, and very much Robot Arm whose post I really enjoyed. I thought it was very insightful.
I know I left out many people and I apologize to them all. But I am really feeling very appreciative to all those who contributed to this discussion. Thank you all so very much.
By saying he had something “coming to him”, I only meant that in the context if he had ever led men into combat and caused them to be killed and wounded as a result of his incompetence. The fact that he was never permitted to lead men into combat made the whole issue of “fragging” irrelevent.
But thank you for your comments. I liked them very much and found them to be very informative.
Thank you for your thank you.
Stick around; this kind of thing happens a lot here.
Divisions (like the 101st Airborne Division and regiments (like the 506th Parachute Regiment) serve as administrative units as well as combat units and can operate more or less self contained. They are actually pretty complex organizations as there are various headquarters, logistics and support elements at each level. Think of a corporation of two to twenty thousand people. You’ll notice when Winters got promoted to Battalion (assigned to the battalion headquarters staff), his job mostly consisted of administration tasks.
The series is about E (“Easy” in ye olde phoenetic alphabet) Company, 2/ 506th Parachute Regiment (2nd Battalion / 506th Parachut…), a group of about 150 men and typically led by a captain. Within the company would be 3 platoons of about 40+ men led by a leutenant which would be furthur divided into squads and fire teams. A company is pretty much the largest tactical manuever element in the military (which is just a fancy way of saying all the guys in the unit are expected to fight together as a cohesive group). That is not to say that the battalion and subordinant units could not also become engaged in actual fighting as shown during the Normandy and Bastogne battles.
As for Soble, I would imagine that office politics are pretty much the same wherever you go. Another series that captured battlefield politics very well was Generation Kill about the Gulf War.
I have another question about the conflict between Captain Sobel and Lt. Winters.
Sobel’s decision to Court Martial Winters has always puzzled me. This decision might well be considered to be self-destructive and indeed the cause of Sobel’s downfall. But, was this decision about Sobel’s need to try and make others think that his poor performance in the war games was someone else’s fault? Or was it just his way of saying, “if I’m going to look bad, I will make sure that I’m not the only one.”
After all, I think the reason for his wanting to discipline Winters had nothing to do with the war games. I’m not exactly sure. But wasn’t the supposed problem that Winters supposedly failed to perform some minor duty and was that duty at all related to the war games?
I’ve always wondered what might have been going through Sobel’s mind when he decided to try and punish Winters. Was he trying to show the higher brass that he was not the only one to blame for things going wrong? Or was he just acting childish and wanting to make Winters look bad because Sobel had been made to look bad?
This one incident has always seemed to me to be one of the most interesting in the series. If possible, I’d really like to understand it better and hear what other people think was going through Sobel’s mind when he decided that Winters should be punished. I’d especially like to know if there was any connection between the event that Winters was supposed to have failed to do and Sobel having being made to look bad.
I just checked my DVD of Episode One and the duty Winters was supposed to perform was the inspection of the latrines.
That sounds like a very trivial thing for which to be Court Martialed, but as many of you explained upthread, the duty itself may not have been the real issue. The real issue is about supposedly being given a duty and then either performing that duty or failing to perform that duty.
At any rate, it seems pretty clear to me that no one could make any connection between Winter’s supposed duty and Sobel cutting the fence. Or could they?
It has been a while since I’ve seen BoB, but if I recall correctly, Sobel really did not want to court-martial Winters. Sobel had given Winters non-judicial punishment, and it is a Soldier’s right to turn down that punishment, and request trial by court-martial.
Winters simply called Sobel’s bluff.
OK. But why did Sobel want to give him punishment? And could he have had any expectation of some kind of outcome from that which would be somehow favorable to Sobel? Specifically, was he hoping to send some kind of message to the brass about his (Sobel’s) performance on that war game where he cut that fence?
My view might be naive, but I just saw it as Sobel being angry at his humiliation and wanting to take it out on somebody. If he spots an opportunity to take Mr. oh-so-competent Winters down a peg, so much the better.
Given what we know about Sobel, that certainly makes sense. Sobel was just that childish and just that much of a fool.
Still, I just wish there was some kind of clue as to what Sobel was hoping for by doing this. The only clue I can see is that he clearly wasn’t expecting Winters to call his bluff. They showed his face for a second after Winters signed that form and you could see that Sobel was clearly shocked by Winter’s decision.
I don’t get the sense that Sobel was trying to take down Winters, or redeem himself for the wargame, or impress the brass. He doesn’t strike me as the Machiavellian sort, who would plot and scheme and think that far ahead. Something went wrong, an order didn’t get carried out, and he started looking for someone to blame for it (because, after all, it couldn’t possibly be his fault). After that, it’s just a case of complete, pig-headed intransigence. There is nothing anyone can tell him that will change his mind.