Not surprisingly, on Memorial Day it gets a shoutout. Let us not forget their sacrifice.
Sobel chose to try and punish him using non-judicial procedures that would have limited punishment. It’s more in line with the process of punishment under Article 15 of the UCMJ today. Winters had the choice to either accept the non-judicial punishment or demand a trial by court martial. Winters chose trial by court martial. That Sobel chose to use those much more limited procedures over a small, and contested, infraction by a member of his command teams speaks to the command climate Sobel was creating.
Sobel didn’t start off by choosing to try and court martial Winters, though. He painted himself into a corner where trying to court martial was his incentivized next step.
He was pretty good too. Also Michael Cudlitz (Bull) who also played Abraham on The Walking Dead.
I also recall cameos by Simon Pegg and Jimmy Fallon.
Colin Hanks was also good in a small one-episode role as a West Point graduate in first assignment. It was interesting in how it showed the politics around some of the privilege granted West Point grads and introducing a new and inexperienced officer into a seasoned combat unit without turning him into another arrogant and inept officer like Sobel or Lt Dike.
Was he the guy who went on one mission pretty much as an observer, and immediately got promoted to 1st Lt?
I agree that’s an important distinction. Sobel even told him to accept an obviously unfair punishment. In my question, I meant why would Sobel even have this as an option given the triviality of his concerns? I have known enough petty people, but only sociopaths would be so extreme.
That’s the one.
Going off-topic to give the highly deserved praise for this. That didn’t happen on The Iowa . Dale Eugene Mortenson (who died in 2022) was the only person who tried to stop it. One of his sailors cried “Mort! Mort! Mort!” just as the turret exploded, which is also the Latin word for death.
I’ve had three commands where I held similar authority (although the UCMJ was a post WWII creation.) Sobel had more authority that got limited post WWII but commanders have quite a bit of authority. The reason for that level of authority is because it mostly works for handling relatively minor cases at a low level. Controls, like being able to demand a court martial, exist in the system because sometimes commanders are dumb or abuse their considerable power.
What Sobel was charging him with wasn’t exactly trivial. He thought Winters disobeyed a direct order. It was a relatively trivial order about checking on the latrine cleaning detail but it was a direct and lawful order. There’s not really a good way for the system to cleanly distinguish which orders commanders should have the authority to enforce. Some of the seemingly little things can make a critical difference in an environment where sometimes people are literally doing their utmost to kill you. Trusting commanders with the tools to maintain good order and discipline related to minor infractions should be something they can handle. It’s something that they overwhelmingly do handle well. We rely on other controls and higher level commanders to address the exceptions…like Sobel. We don’t cripple the overwhelmingly majority’s ability to command just because there are Sobel’s in the world.
I understand, but let me phrase things another way. How many times in your career were you threatened with court martial? My guess is very few. When reaching into the set of discipline options for commonly encountered situations, it seems to me it would rarely be the appropriate choice. Could I be wrong? I often am.
IDK about real life, but in the miniseries he gave Winters to conflicting orders, only one of which could be carried out.
Where you are wrong is Winters was never threatened with court martial. Sobel did make describe as the more appropriate choice. He chose to pursue the lesser nonjudicial disciplinary process (which I’d still describe as extreme for the case.) As part of the process he was required to inform Winters that he had the right to refuse and instead have the case handled by court martial. Winters chose the court.
I have seen BoB more than I can count. I read the book. I read the book about Winters. I read the book by Winters. I read the book Webster wrote right after the war. I read the book by Guarnere and Hefron. I met Bill Guarnere shortly before his death.
Some of BoB and the Pacific have very local ties to me. I drive over the John Basilone bridge and pass by his statue all the time. I’ve bought gas at the station that sits were his house used to be. Bob Lecke was a reporter with a nearby newspaper. Lewis Nixon came from Nixon NJ which was part of a township called Raritan. Because there were several towns called Raritan (including Basilone’s hometown just a few miles away) they voted to change the name. One of the choices was Nixon. They went with the other choice and changed the name to Edison. Winters did move to the area and worked for Nixon’s father until he pulled a gun on him in a drunken rage. Winters eventually moved back to the area near Hersey PA.
This is one part of the book (and series) that shows that Ambrose got too close to his subjects. The book began when he was researching his book on D-Day. That book does have quotes from several Easy company guys. Ambrose became intrigued by these guys because he never saw a group that held together so well after the war. Most stayed in contact until the day they died. That and the broad range of combat experience made them an ideal subject for a book.
But like I said he got a little too close. It was clear that Spiers killed the prisoners. Winters was always very clear of the subject and said so in his book. He said at another time Spiers would have been court martialed but they couldn’t afford to lose officers. Ambrose kept it ambiguous in the book even though he had to know the truth. Another example is the unnamed sentry that shot Moose. It wasn’t a mystery to the men in the company but Ambrose chose to not name him.
That is the big issue about The Pacific. There wasn’t one unit or group of men that were involved from the beginning to the end. Easy Company’s story flows so well with the narrative of the European Campaign it almost seems made up.
Unlike the Silver Star, the Bronze Star can be awarded for both valor and merit. Just running the airborne school in England was probably meritorious enough to earn a Bronze Star for merit.
I’ve never heard an explanation of why they devoted an entire episode to Blithe. It’s easy to blame Ambrose but that’s what he was told by others in the company. It still doesn’t explain his prominence in the series. In the book he’s mentioned in a couple of sentences.
Blithe was awarded the Silver Star for actions in Korea. He died while on active duty in Germany from a ruptured appendix in 1967.
Although they got the name wrong in the series they did show a nurse from the Belgian Congo working there. Augusta Chiwy was a real person who survived the war and lived until 2015.
Also a real person. Jones stayed in Germany as part of the army of occupation. He died from complications of surgery due to a car accident.
Who pulled the gun?
The series is a clinic of British actors doing great American accents. Number one of course is Damien Lewis who is flawless. Really the only one I have a problem with is Marc Warren. I don’t understand why his story was the focus of an episode and his accent is really weird.
Also just a ton of future stars and prominent actors. Tom Hardy, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Stephen Graham, Andrew Scott, Dominic Cooper, Jason O’Mara…
Old man Nixon the head of Nixon Nitration Works. IIRC he was naked at the time. It’s been awhile since I read it.
That’s what I assumed, but only because the TV show depicted Winters as not being a drinker.
I was a high school student in Minneapolis when Universal arrived in 1969 or '70 to film Airport. They chose MPS/StP because the winters there are usually cold with lots of snow.
Unfortunately, the winter that year was one of the mildest in decades. They had to truck in huge volumes of fake snow to film the outdoor scenes.
Yes I didn’t write that clearly.
Winters was sincerely religious. He listed his religion as Lutheran but I believe much of his family was Mennonite which wouldn’t be unusual were he grew up and eventually returned to.
I think his character is there to show that even though these guys are built up as the best of the best, they are still human and would react to such a stressful situation in their own ways, some of them not necessarily valiant. Falling asleep on D-Day and not making the effort to rejoin his unit, going slightly catatonic and the temporary blindness humanizes him, shows they aren’t just all Rambos.
This is reinforced by the opening interviews with the real Easy guys about how they handled the fear they had and this episode picks one guy to focus on as an example. Since he was a barely mentioned character in the book – and since they thought he was dead – it was easy to turn him into one of those “certain characters and events have been altered for dramatic purposes” characters you see in the disclaimers.