I love the mini series* Band of Brothers*. Any time its on I have to watch, even though I own it. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen each episode. I also read the book a few times. I have always wondered about episode 3. That is the one which focused on Albert Blithe. He cowers in a foxhole during D-day, gets hysterical blindness, generally acts cowardly until he works through his fear. Then he gets shot in the neck and dies a few years after the war from his wounds. I wondered how much of this was true. The book barely mentioned him, IIRC it just mentions his death from his wounds. I never knew how much they made up for the TV show.
Well it seems it was all wrong and I never knew. The members of Easy Company thought Blithe died in 1948. Actually he was shot in the shoulder, recovered and stayed in the army. He also served during the Korean War. He died in 1967 while still on active duty (complications from an ulcer). He was buried in Arlington Cemetary with full honors. [Here](http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/albert-blithe.htm) is the link. I'm a little pissed at how they portrayed him. One of the documents in the link shows that he was awarded the Silver Star, 3 Bronze Stars and 3 Purple Hearts. They didn't just give those away, especially in the Airborne. He also had over 600 jumps. Just thought I'd share.
That is a nice surprise. They could have at least made up a fake name for the character rather than portray a real soldier that way. Nice detective job
Never having jumped out of an airplane, yet having "cut loose’ among young men who (gradually, of course) came to understand that they’ve been sent to die for their country, the scene where the Airborne Rangers are racing along in the motorcyle/sidecar rang true. While on duty, one is simpy doing one’s duty; off duty, the same level of risk-taking is… liberating!
The only other false note I found between BoB and actual service with young men who’ve realized that death is part of the sign-on package, was the honorably-serving Jewish soldier who took umbrage with the other soldiers’ disparagment of David Schwimmers’ characters’ martinet behavior as an insult to his own Jewishness; and the scene where Schwimmer is lost on manuvers. Knowing the Jewish soldier’s sore spot on the issue, I would have kidded him with “hey, maybe he’s gonna lead us for 40 years out here!”
In my experience, nothing private was allowed to interfere with unit cohesion, especially a private grudge.
Having worn a uniform, I’ve gravitated way from authors who didn’t wear one; such as Stephen Ambrose; or those who marginally did such as Ernest Hemingway; in favor of those who did; such as Leo Tolstoy, James Jones and Bill Mauldin. I don’t pretend to any of their literary talents; it’s just that some of us were expected to scrape out our potential death-mates’ latrines, and others were fortunate to describe such things at a distance.
Don’t put Ambrose in with the others and don’t confuse the TV show with the book. For one he didn’t write fiction. For the most part he edits oral histories. He let the veterans tell their own story. That’s how BoB came into being. Ambrose was researching his D-Day book when he met some of the men from Easy Company. He was amazed at how close they stayed together through the years and as he looked into their story he felt he had to tell it. My biggest problem with the book is that Ambrose got too close to his subjects. In the book he never says if Spear killed the prisoners on D-Day, he just comments on the speculation. I read an interview with Dick Winters where he stated that Spear killed the prisoners and should have been court martialed for it. Ambrose also wouldn’t reveal who shot Moose Hedigger (sp?). These are details a historian should not leave out.
I think what clouded his perceptions of the veterans was his great admiration for their accomplishments and maybe a bit of guilt and not being with them. Ambrose was old enough to see the gold stars hanging in the windows but not old enough to be in the war. My father was the same way. He dropped out of high school at 17 to try and get into the war but it ended while he was in boot camp. I think he always felt a little guilty.
I don’t blame Ambrose for the mistake about Albert Blithe. In the book there is one or two sentences about him. I don’t know what made the TV show creators decide to make an entire episode about him. I couldn’t find that out and I don’t know if where they got their information from.
As an interesting side note, I happen to have in front of me “Beyond Band of Brothers” by Dick Winters, his memoir of the war. It’s great so far and I recommend it if you liked Band of Brothers. I’ve only read through Operation Market Garden, but I remembered Winters mentioning Blithe, so I looked it up. Here’s what he has to say in part about the blindness incident:
He goes on to mention Blithe’s further service in WW2 and Korea and his medals. He doesn’t seem to be aware that Blithe died on active.
Thanks I’ll have to pick that up. I take it that it was written after the TV show was made? From what I read everyone in Easy Company thought Blithe died in 1948 until his family came forward after the show aired.
Yeah, the book just came out recently. I happened to see it in the new book section at my library. In the opening, Winters says that after Ambrose finished Band of Brothers, he boxed up all of his research materials and gave them to Winters. Winters was reading through it and realized that there were lots of things that didn’t get included in the book and tv show that he wanted to share, plus his own personal views on events.
There are quite a few bits from the miniseries and from Ambrose’s book that’ve been contradicted by other information. Liebgott’s wife and children claim he was never Jewish, for example; most of the Easy Co. vets say that he was during the war, at least. In Ambrose’s book, Talbert is described as showing up at a reunion as an odd, mountain-man-like guy who’d been living in the redwoods; his family say he was a successful businessman.
The real character assassination is what the miniseries did to poor Webster, though – find and read his “Parachute Infantry - An American Paratrooper’s Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich” (by David Kenyon Webster, obviously). The real Webster bears no semblance to that annoying twit who’s in the miniseries, just as The Last Patrol bears almost no semblance to what actually occurred in that incident.
What’s really annoying is that the writers for the miniseries obviously read Webster’s book; quite a few of the details made their way into the miniseries (watch for the MPs taking away Cobb, and the OP being destroyed just after Easy leaves, which are described in Webster’s book).
Also, look for Biggest Brother, which is a biography on Winters by Larry Alexander; it reads better than Beyond Band of Brothers, and covers different ground.
