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A NEW WAR PRODUCTION

Think of being surrounded as

something unusual, horrible.

This should never happen.

No, that was normal.

You fight to the north,

you fight to the south,

you fight to the east, you fight to the west.

You're surrounded.

The poor bastards that's

on the other side has the problem. You don't.

Let's go!

This is the story

of Easy Company.

It was formed in 1942.

506 Parachute Infantry Regiment.

Part of the 101st airborne.

It was the best.

This is not Dog Company.

This is not Fox Company.

This, this is Easy Company.

Our country was attacked.

It's a different-- It wasn't like Korea or Vietnam.

We was attacked.

There's a feeling that

maybe we're just dumb country people, but

we had a lot of us volunteering.

Two okay!

One okay!

I never thought I'd

get through D-Day,

let alone the next phase or the next phase.

Chances of survival is very, very slim.

Extremely slim.

Move out, move out, move it out!

Easy Company's actions on D-Day.

How did that happen?

There's the magic of that chemistry again.

I can't explain.

Let's hope it lives forever.

We were a group of actors.

We were just all ready to go there.

Young.

Serious.

Bit earnest maybe.

Just really wanting to do good work,

wanting to do the thing right.

We were blessed and fortunate enough

to be able to portray the lives of

absolutely true heroes.

Every single one of them.

Just everything was so big, so explosive,

and then you get these small little intimate moments with us.

I don't know.

It made me realize

just how special it was to be a part of this thing.

- The daredevil. - It's a very sacred thing

to carry someone's legacy.

And I think there was that secret sauce

that we were all doing it for something

other than our careers.

When we got into it,

we didn't know what it was.

It wasn't until we really started getting

into it, you know, like, oh, shit, this is...

This is intense.

It's very important to us that the men

had their legacy intact.

Because what they did for the world

should be recognized fully.

It's...

a very unusual feeling

and it's a very unusual bonding.

A hell of a way to die!

If you want to call this

story that we're putting together

a band of brothers,

this is about as clear as you can make it.

BAND OF BROTHERS LEGACY

Am I all right here?

- You're doing great. - Oh, yeah.

I don't know.

Don't forget I'm short, so I can stand.

Maybe it would be better.

Uncle Paduche they used to call me.

What does that mean?

Well, that's the sort of respect for the elderly people.

We were taught

actually from the day you were born,

you respect your elders no matter what.

We weren't lacking in confidence.

We felt that

whatever we came up against,

we could take care of.

Now, what was it about jumping out of an

airplane that appealed to you?

$50 a month.

We were pretty much in the middle of

things most of the time.

But the whole company was...

You know, was...

Very, very special.

I had always promised myself that someday,

someday, I'll write my memories of World War II.

And like everybody else,

you keep putting it off.

But Ambrose came along, and

he requested this

for the purpose of writing a book.

He would interview me, share questions.

One thing led to another, and...

It happened.

Easy Company!

Gather up around me.

The Easy Company story works because

if you look at all the sort of

big plot points of World War II,

they happen to be there

for a bunch of them.

They're in Normandy.

Battle of the Bulge.

They were there at the

Eagle's Nest at the end.

It was just this sort of confluence of

you could tell the whole story

with just this group of people.

You'll be okay.

There was no flinching in Band of Brothers.

It had a docu-drama style to it.

That was its brilliance.

Really gets you among the men.

That's why it's endured so well.

Band of Brothers is different.

It's about supporting each other,

loving each other,

and going from some guys who at one point

didn't know each other at all.

At the end of this 10 episode arc

being guys who would die for one another

because they love each other so much.

You don't get to see that often.

You know, every young actor in the world,

they'd gone casting in Australia,

London, New York, LA.

Hundreds and hundreds of 20-something lads

just thinking, "Oh God, I want to be in this thing."

Knowing this was World War II

and knowing the history that I had

with my dad talking about World War II,

and all the wars for that matter,

I was really prepared for it.

Seven of my great uncles

served in World War II.

They were all

first generation

Jewish New Yorkers.

Every one of them,

their families had escaped.

It was very personal.

Good luck.

When this project

came to me,

I was all in.

My father was in the Army, so it was

subconsciously always right under the

surface and something I really wanted to

explore if I had the opportunity.

Good evening, Easy Company.

Good evening, sir.

Ambrose gave me a call.

He's all excited.

And he said he has some wonderful news.

And he says, "Dick, I sold the rights of

Band of Brothers to Tom Hanks

under one condition.

That he does not play your part,

because he's too old."

I was another, you know,

British punk actor trying to

get his next job.

And

everyone just had a couple of sides,

which is very typical, you know, in a big Hollywood production.

They just give you a couple of pages of scripts.

You learn that. You don't know what it's about.

After the very first one that I read,

I just started reading this guy.

They kept giving me scripts, a guy called Dick Winters.

And I still wasn't sure who Dick Winters was at that point.

But then the next audition, it was Dick Winters again.

The next audition, and I thought,

I should probably ask at this point.

They said, "Well, he's the lead of the series."

I remember thinking,

"Wow, this could be real."

I didn't put a lot of energy into it,

because I kind of judged it.

I was like, World War II officer.

It's a certain type.

There's a look.

I'm not going to get that part.

And I get the book,

and in that same actor way,

you just open it to the index,

because you know...

"This is fine, where's me?"

And I saw my first picture

of Lewis Nixon in the bed,

surrounded by the wine bottles,

you know, shitty grin on his face,

and a

big hangover, I'm sure.

And something clicked, and I was like,

"Oh, I'm going to...

I'm going to get this."

Cheers.

I think that it was a very slow burn

on getting to know

how important this was.

I think the real

impact of all that

started happening when we actually

started contacting the men individually.

Buck was just bigger than life.

And we were so similar

in so many ways that

he wasn't a chatterbox.

He was very kind of close to the vest.

He was so proud to be an American.

More grenade!

I remember a lot of shooting,

a lot of artillery,

a lot of things happening.

And I always felt like I was

somehow...

As I look back on it,

I thought I was damn lucky.

To jump into those shoes

was the most daunting task I could

ever possibly imagine.

You won't need it.

We're jumping low. Take the belly back.

Some guys called him Bull, some guys called him The Bull.

You know, I think

Babe and Bill, The Bull!

Always The Bull.

Not Bull, but The Bull.

And when I initially reached out to him,

he was

very non-talkative.

Had you ever been in an airplane before?

Nope.

So first time up, you had to jump out.

Yeah.

Which created a situation where

I wound up speaking with his wife, Vera,

for a good hour, hour and a half

after I spoke with him.

And got

just incredible, incredible, information from her.

We lost F Company.

Again?

After reading the book and learning what they went through

and educating myself on the unit,

I just was in awe of these guys.

We spoke mostly about family and life,

and he became sort of a mentor to me.

And when he wanted

to speak about the war

he spoke about it.

I never pronged him or

poked him for any information.

In fact, the way it worked on Band of Brothers,

none of the guys ever,

ever spoke about themselves.

You'd talk to him for three hours,

and they would tell you about everything

everyone in the company did but themselves.

And for them, you'd have to go to a different person.

Hey, fellas.

What do you hear? What do you say?

I called him and I said, "Hey, is this Mr..."

I didn't even know how to pronounce his name.

I was making it much more Italian.

They had Americanized it a little bit with Guarnere.

And he answered, "Yowza!"

And I said, "Hi, is this Mr. Guarnere?"

And he said, "It is. Who's this?"

And I said, "My name is Frankie Hughes.

I'm auditioning to play you.

Mr. Guarnere, is there any advice you would give me

to play you?"

And he said,

"Yeah, I was a paid killer.

I was a 19-year-old paid killer.

Don't forget that."

I said, "I won't, sir."

And he said, "Good luck."

When I jumped on D-Day,

I swore

I swore I was going to kill every

damn German I came across.

And that's why I think they nicknamed me

Wild Bill, because I did

a lot of killing D-Day.

Joe!

I'm Ross McCool, and I play Joe Liebgott.

I'm a Scotsman

who sounds English, who's Catholic,

playing an American Jew who spoke German.

So I had a lot to

sink my proverbial teeth into.

Earlier on, I kept getting told from the men,

"It's a scrappy guy."

But he had a sharpness in him.

He knew how to soldier.

Skinny little guy?

You got pink to the neck in Holland.

Sometimes you can't really see too much.

You just get a sense of maybe, you know,

what they look like,

the way they carry themselves, the hair.

They carried themselves like goddamn men.

This is my favorite here.

This is

Winters and Nixon.

Devillish rascal, huh?

- Webbing? - Webbing, please.

Can I have a name, please?

Livingstone playing Nixon.

Looking good.

Lewis had passed,

so it was never really on the table to meet him.

I reached out to Grace Nixon, who was

really wonderful and really open,

as far as inviting me

kind of into her life

and sharing Lewis

the way that she knew him.

- That's a good picture. - He's so handsome.

I think so too.

This guy was handsome. Yes. He's got a handsome face.

I met Dick,

and I remember a man that was

suspicious of Hollywood.

He had a very interesting combination of

a good strong ego,

but he had this amazing humility as well.

As an actor,

what you want always

is you want behavioral.

You want to hear from

someone if something hurt.

You want to hear if something

was joyful, something was sad.

Whatever it was, you can find ways of

exploring the psychology of the person

you're going to play.

To the gang, as we were sitting there,

I said, "Well, when I get in the Army,

I'm not going to volunteer for anything.

B.S. IN ECONOMICS

Just going to do whatever they tell me

and put my ear in and get out."

And the foreman,

who was a World War I veteran

he jumped on my hind butt good,

and he said, "No, you don't.

You get in the Army, and you do your best

each and every day."

I didn't answer him,

but I never forgot it,

and I haven't forgotten it today.

WAR DEPARTMENT FILM BULLETIN

THIS FILM IS CONFIDENTIAL

There were people

who thought that trying to insert people

into combat via parachute can't be done.

It's suicide.

And it was strictly a volunteer thing.

You didn't get drafted and told,

"You're going to go be a paratrooper."

And what happened

was it took you out of the

standard pool,

made you something special.

Well, at ease, paratroopers.

I got a couple of phone calls from

Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

They wanted to say, "Look,

how would you approach this?"

I said, "Well, look.

You're going to hire young men

with no military experience.

And the only thing they really know about

World War II is the last

bad movie they saw."

And I believe that the way to fix it

was to give actors

some fleeting acquaintance

with what a soldier's life is really about.

And I thought, "Look, here's a chance

to do it right."

The first thing they did for us

was they set up

a 10-day actor boot camp.

They train us in the same way that they

train military people.

From here on out,

you're no longer called

by your civilian name.

What's up, yo, dog?

All that stuff's gone.

1940s, right?

We are so f***ed.

Name?

Luz, George.

Dirt in the rear sight aperture.

Pass revoked.

George was from Providence, Rhode Island,

and so he was a tough guy,

and he

and he made people laugh,

and a lot of people loved him.

Are those dusty jump wings?

How do you expect to slay the Huns with

dust on your jump wings?

I got a chance to talk to Bill and Babe

and Carwood, and Bill said to me

constantly, we'd be sitting around,

he's like, "I hope you're funny, kid."

So I'd be like, "Oh, man, oh, man,

I'm going to ruin this thing."

How you cut that fence and get this

goddamn platoon on the move!

Yes, sir!

My grandpa Ron,

he told me when I first told him that I

got this job, and they were

going to send us to a boot camp.

I remember him saying,

"Start running now.

The rest of it's a duck walk, but just

make sure you can run your dick off."

You know? I was like, "Okay."

What company is this?

Easy Company!

What do we do?

We stand alone!

Hey young punk, don't you be so fooled.

I'm an instructor at the Airborne School.

I'm an instructor at the Airborne School.

And everybody's a little apprehensive

about meeting Captain Dale Dye,

military advisor to the movies.

You have three tries.

Snap, and surge of power.

You can make it.

I snuck into platoon

when I was 10 years old.

I saw Dale Dye up on that screen.

I'm like, "I want to work with these people someday."

And I knew it right then.

And then 13 years later, there I was.

I think it's looking good, Webster.

I was cast to play this role, who clearly

was a man who questioned authority.

This guy was going to Harvard.

He had his ticket out of the war.

He didn't have to go.

I knew David Webster's

spirit was a powerful one.

Perconte.

I was ready.

I will say, physically, I was ready.

I couldn't have been any more ready.

It was trying to understand

the chain of command,

and who people were.

He just couldn't understand that

Captain Dye was just a captain.

He was such a force over our lives that

you've got to be a general.

Like, you've got-- And he meant it.

And he'd go, "General, I was just trying--

He'd go, "What?

Perconte, get down and give me 50."

And Jim could just do push-ups till you're tired.

Like, he'd just-- He'd go--

"Okay, what were you saying?"

"General, I was saying--" "50 more."

Like he would just start. You know, he was unbreakable.

Dale did a really smart thing where

he put Damian and I in the same squad.

He made me the squad leader.

And then at a certain point it shifted.

And then he got sort of promoted past me.

And Dale was like,

"You know,

I think it probably, always really

stuck in Lewis Nixon's craw.

I think there was probably a little

competitive thing between

these guys a little bit."

And I found that really helpful.

I moved up from a private to a sergeant

almost immediately.

Not even knowing what I was doing.

And they're like, "Oh, take charge of your platoon."

The hell does that mean?

Halt!

Platoon Sergeant, take charge.

I mean, you could have read it in a book

and you wouldn't have gotten it.

You could have been told it six times and

you would have messed it up.

And you realize, "Oh my gosh,

this full immersion

is how boot camp works."

People came and asked me for advice.

What are we to do, sir?

It was like a crash course

in leadership.

People want your authority.

They want you to be Dick Winters.

They want you to be in charge, so you've got to deliver.

I want concentrated bursts of machine gun fire.

Do not waste your ammo.

Go, runner, go. Cover him.

You get scared a little bit, and you're like,

"I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know what this is."

And then the second thought I have

after that was like,

"Well, neither did they."

Now, this is a brand new idea.

It was the first time

that it had been tried.

It becomes a very easy decision to make later on.

"I'm going to volunteer for the paratroopers."

Your parents say, "No, please don't do that.

That's the wrong thing to do."

And so forth.

But you want to be with the best.

Every one of the requirements was

something to conquer because

we wanted to be in the 506.

There were all kinds of

exercises that you had to pass.

The ones who couldn't measure up

were moved out of the company.

This training at Toccoa,

which lasted roughly 13 weeks,

let's start off with

physical training.

Learning left face, right face

and you get them in shape.

Some of them lost as much as 40 pounds.

But I didn't have nothing to lose.

I weighed about 130.

If I'd have lost 40 pounds,

I wouldn't have been big enough to stay.

Orders changed.

Get up!

Lectures are cancelled.

Easy Company is running up Currahee.

Move! Move!

Currahee.

That was the big obstacle.

To be able to run that.

And I shouldn't say run.

You get the wrong impression.

We didn't run it.

You did a parachute shuffle,

which is a small shuffling step.

You couldn't possibly run that thing.

Nobody could.

Come on, you can make it up there.

Come on. Come on up. Let's go.

Come on, Guarnere. Christenson, come on.

Come on.

They put the fear of the devil in me

when they started telling me about

that mountain, you know.

That you're going to have to run that mountain.

You run that mountain or you're not

going to be, you won't be in this outfit.

You have 50 minutes to the top and back

and I will be watching you.

What are you waiting for?

The way he trained them,

an unforgiving way,

hardened them.

Hi-Ho, Silver!

Now when we talk about

our original company commander,

Captain Sobel,

he did his best,

but he was in the wrong job.

They're right out there somewhere.

Let's just get them.

Sir, we have perfect cover here.

Lieutenant, deploy your troops.

I mean, here's a Jewish, urban,

like an older guy, in the Deep South,

training a bunch of 18-year-olds, and...

You know, there was a lot of

anti-Semitism at the time.

He knew he was

beating the shit out of them at times.

You look tired.

There's an ambulance waiting for you at

the bottom of the hill.

It can all be over right now.

No more pain,

no more Currahee,

no more Captain Sobel.

He was a horse's ass.

Lieutenant Sobel does not hate

Easy Company, Private Randleman.

He just hates you.

Thank you, sir.

His message to us is

that you lead men

by fear.

You lead men by strict discipline.

I said, "No, you lead it by example."

And we had two different philosophies.

I performed my duty as I was ordered, sir.

And I disagree.

So,

your options are quite simple, Lieutenant.

What is it about Winters that

makes him such a good leader?

Well, he takes his duty

a heck far ahead of his privilege.

And you give your life to

make him look good instead of doing

what you're told or ordered to do.

Dick Winters was a very

good leader, excellent leader.

The men would follow him in the name of it.

Sobel, they wouldn't.

Easy Company, you passed your final field test.

Bootcamp was arguably the pivotal point

because it was a group of men

who just understood the mission.

And by understanding the mission,

it became a brotherhood.

Through your eyes, through your actions,

through your gestures, through your

handling of weapons, through your wearing

of the uniform, everything.

The truth is there.

Let it shine, boys.

Make the world proud

of Easy Company

and the world will celebrate our forefathers.

Let's not f*** it up.

Yes, sir.

Not bad for a bunch of actors.

H-Hour.

D-Day.

We were thoroughly prepared.

The men were

trained, hardened,

Physically and mentally,

and they were ready to jump.

Confidence depends on the success of

whatever you're trying to do.

Courage

is what inspires you to do the things

that are needed to get the things done.

I've always said courage

is not the absence of fear.

Courage is going ahead and doing what

needs to be done, even if you feel fear.

D-Day was not an accident that had worked,

it had been prepared for.

We just didn't know what we were doing at the time.

We found that out later.

When you reach that point that

you're standing in the door,

you're asking yourself,

"What the hell am I doing here?"

It's only one thing to do and that's to go.

The routine was the pilot would turn on a

red light by the door

and that was supposed to indicate

that you had, I don't know whether

it was five minutes or three minutes.

When you got the red light, you would

stand up and hook up.

Hook up!

See out the door

and I could see the flak,

the tracer boards and

the stuff in the air coming up.

And then he said to me, "Red light."

Well, by the time I had to go through

that thought process,

he says, "Green light."

And I'm still sitting there on the deck

of the plane

and all the guys are sitting down

and so I said, "Oh God, let's go."

We were sort of the guinea pigs.

Everyone wanted to get out of the planes.

Let's go, let's go, let's go!

Does that light look green to you?

Let's go, let's go, let's go!

No matter where you're at, get them out.

The flak was terrible.

And the aircraft was

absolutely horrendous.

It was like a

July the 4th celebration

ten times over.

I was the first to jump.

Let's go!

And Randleman was the last to jump.

I was supposed to push everybody out.

It was like jumping off a two-story

building where it was.

There was nobody landing

where they were supposed to.

I was ten miles from where we jumped.

We were just scattered

from one end of the peninsula to the other,

men as far as

30 kilometers from their drop zone.

So they're on their own.

But somehow or another those fellas,

individuals of

Joe Toye,

Popeye Wynn,

they found the objective

and they found it on time.

We were all lost,

but we got to the objective

and we took the objective.

Well, on the next morning after daylight,

I'm in this group, we're moving up along

this road, and I run into Winters.

What's going on?

What's the holdup? Not sure.

Five'll get you ten it's got something to do with that.

So Winters is telling me, he says

there's some guys out here,

some Germans out here

firing some artillery pieces.

He said,

"We'd like to find out

what's going on out there

and see what we can do about it."

There's some Kraut Eighty-Eights up ahead,

up ahead and to the right about what?

300 yards?

Up through those gardens.

Now they're right between us

and causeway number two.

Firing onto the boys landing at Utah.

Think Easy can handle it?

Yes, sir.

There are two guns that we know of,

firing on Utah beach

and planning on a third and a fourth

here and here.

The Germans are in the trenches

with access to the entire battery.

How many Krauts do you think we're facing?

No idea.

No idea.

Nothing in the manual tells you how to

react to how to attack these guns.

You have no idea what's there,

how many people are there.

All you know is there's a battery of guns

firing at these beaches.

If you knew at the time,

you would not do what you'd done.

There could've been 200 men there.

It could've been 10 there.

You don't have no idea.

Captain, second squad.

- Yes, sir. - All right, you heard the word.

Let's move, let's move.

I divided the group into two units.

Lieutenant Compton was with me.

I gave him half the men

and I took half the men.

Gave instructions, I went,

"Compton, crawl through the grass.

And as you throw your grenades,

I'll charge up with the rest of the guys."

I get out through this hedge,

and I peek.

I look up and I peek through the bushes

and I see a couple of Germans over here

about 30, 50 yards away.

And about that time,

Guarnere comes running across

and he jumps in beside me.

Buck Compton, yes.

Him and I were tossing some grenades, just attacking.

It's stupid when you look at it, but we were lucky.

Very fortunate.

I think the Germans were very, very surprised

that we attacked them.

They thought they were being attacked by a greater force.

Let's go! Let's go!

Follow me!

Compton, covering fire!

You know, when Popeye was hit

on D-Day morning, he was right beside me.

So I can speak firsthand on this.

And when he was hit and he

went down, he was hit hard.

After I got hit,

and I didn't want to leave him,

you know.

I'm sorry, sir!

I screwed up!

You don't want to get in another

situation with people you don't know.

And I'd been with these people for

going on three years.

He said, "I'm sorry, Lieutenant.

I goofed.

I'm sorry."

For the simple reason that in crawling

across that field of grass,

he had got his butt a little too high

and he got one right through both cheeks.

And he was hurt hard.

But he said, "I'm sorry, I goofed."

He didn't say, "Help."

That is a man.

Oh shit.

Hey Popeye, how bad is it?

I'm sorry sir, I didn't mean...

He did all the rest of it.

He is a good man.

One, two, three.

Get down.

Get down.

I needed to get

this guy's journey across, you know?

I needed to tell Popeye's story

for his family

and not mess it up.

He felt like he'd let people down.

It's just a testament to...

to these guys and

the...

the brotherhood they had, I guess.

Don't that make you our commanding officer, sir?

Yeah, it does.

Your big fear is the fact that you don't

want to let your buddy down.

You don't want to let the fellow down beside you.

And if you're a leader, you don't want to

let your men down.

I think we had made a decision.

Let's not make this guy

Superman

from episode one.

Let's see him become Superman.

Let's see him do incredible things.

But there's still doubt.

He's a young man.

He's just jumped in to

liberate Europe

out of an airplane.

He's 26 years old.

He's got control of 50 men.

And let's just see him grow.

And I don't think Dick liked that.

He wanted to characterize him thinking,

growing into the role.

He said, "I just knew."

I came back to him after

he'd seen the whole thing. I said, "Now what do you think?"

He put his hand in my shoulder and went,

"Kid, you nailed it."

This is called "Operation Market Garden".

In terms of airborne divisions involved,

this one's even bigger than Normandy.

We're dropping deep into occupied Holland.

Winters came out when we were shooting

episode four, and we get ambushed.

Jump off when one of our other lieutenants

gets shot, and guys jump off the tanks.

Dick Winters left.

He went home.

He said, "I've seen enough."

They couldn't watch it.

It was too real for them

to watch what we were doing.

That was the biggest compliment that we

could have been given.

Were people shooting you when you--

Oh, yeah, that's when I found out

that when you can hear bullets sing,

it ain't going to touch you.

But when they snap like that around your ears

ears, they're getting close.

And were they whistling or snapping?

Snapping.

Fall back!

Fall back!

Fall back!

Let's go, let's go, let's go!

Keep moving, keep moving!

In Holland...

Let's go!

And we have a tough, tough

battle there

so that

as far as the regiment's concerned,

yes,

we survived it and we won it.

But we lost many engagements.

Come on!

Quiet!

Elements of the first and sixth SS Panzer Division

have broken through in the Ardennes Forest.

We'd been in Normandy.

We'd been in Holland.

We knew that we were a

capable fighting outfit.

When we left for Bastogne,

we were short of equipment.

We didn't have enough ammunition.

We didn't have enough warm clothes.

But we had confidence.

Hey, pal.

Hey, pal. Hey, pal.

What happened?

Where the hell are you going?

They came out of nowhere.

They slaughtered us.

You've got to get out of here.

We just got here. Get your ammo.

The soldiers that we saw as we went in

were completely demoralized.

I mean, they were just

trying to get out of there.

Make a hole! Hey!

Make a hole!

I got ammo!

Grab what you can!

Lieutenant, you're a godsend.

I played Lieutenant George C. Rice.

He made nine runs,

which is unbelievable.

I'll try to make another ammo run if I can

but don't count on anything.

Thank you, sir.

I'll take this guy.

Panzer division is about to cut the road south.

Looks like you guys are going to be surrounded.

We're paratroopers, Lieutenant.

We're supposed to be surrounded.

I remember my grandfather didn't really

talk about the war, what he went through.

Even my own dad didn't talk much.

Just that generation, just

they're just pretty humble and they're just quiet.

And so to get these stories is rare.

It's a gem, and it really happened.

And I think, you know,

when you look at this, it's like

it's a history lesson. And you go, "Whew!

Can you just imagine?"

Good luck.

Thanks.

Really, when you're into it,

you kind of start feeling

how young everyone was

in World War II and how you go, "Wait, these were kids."

I don't remember whether it was,

the coldest winter on record, the coldest in

30 years or 50 years.

But it was a terribly cold winter.

I mean, I can't imagine what these guys went through.

I would guess that

the glaring part of Bastogne

would be how vulnerable you are.

As they start to surround us,

and the defense continued to build,

until we had this 16-mile perimeter

around Bastogne,

which we ended up holding.

We got a man down!

We referred to this later

as the hole in the donut.

They got donuts. They got a hole in the middle.

There's no way you can miss that hole.

You're surrounded.

All they do is just keep shelling you.

There's no way you can miss shelling.

Get your boys out of here! Pull him back!

Let's go!

I remember up in Bastogne,

I was wondering, "Guarnere and I would

share this hole together."

And we got very close.

And you, wild Bill.

I've invested too much goddamn time

shaping you into something useful.

Guarnere, no question about Guarnere, is

that tough, hard...

type of guy.

There were others, I'm sure.

Well, a guy by the name

of Joe Toye, I remember.

He was a tough guy, you know.

And I don't mean that in a

pejorative. I mean tough...

in terms of fiber.

Incoming!

Take cover!

Take cover!

Shit!

You know, in Episode 7, Bill

and Joe Toye lose their legs.

Shit!

Come on, Joe.

Come on, buddy. Come on!

Hold on! I'll be there! I'll be there!

No!

I wanted to know how Bill

handled that.

He talked about how horrible Bastogne was

and how that constant

bombardment was really terrible.

But

he said, he wouldn't--

"Yeah, I got hit. And I was, you know."

He really played it down down, so I called Carwood.

And I talked to Mr. Lipton and he said

I said, "When he got hit..."

And he got very quiet

and I realized he was upset.

And I said, "You know what,

Mr. Lipton, we don't have to talk about it.

I know it was so raw."

I went over to Guarnere.

He was sitting on the ground.

His leg was badly mangled.

He was holding his leg and

it was jerking like that.

And...

He said, "Lip,

They got old Guarnere this time."

He had been hit before, but

they really got him there.

I got you.

I didn't save Joe Toye's life.

Maybe I did. I don't know.

But like I say, he's my buddy.

I'd have done it for anyone.

It helped so much as an actor

when you had the practical trees blowing up.

It wasn't on a green screen.

It was...

You know, I really felt like

Buck was with me on that moment.

Medic!

And to see my buddies getting blown up in front of me,

I felt like Buck.

And I think that's why that moment was so truthful, because

we were a band of brothers.

We were meant to survive.

All right.

And we mourn and grieve in a bunch of

different ways, and we hold the weight of

a situation with us.

And these men held the weight of the situation with them for

the rest of their lives. And they only know the

thoughts they had in their head.

And they only know how difficult it was

to go to sleep or not

for them.

That was deeply personal to them.

To lose those two men, it...

It shook him up.

Winters decided he was shaking...

shaken up too much to stay in the company,

so we transferred him out.

Compton was a fine officer.

A fine soldier.

It just happened to hit him at the wrong time there.

You know, he would never say,

"This is how I felt when this happened."

It would be like that

thousand-yard stare

when I'd ask him

what it was like on that day.

Guys like that

speak volumes by saying very little.

He got to know his men really well and cared for his men,

which, of course, Dick Winters was like,

"You can't get too close to your men."

But that just wasn't

who Buck Compton was.

If he loved something, he loved all in.

And I admire that so much about Buck

and that's why it was so hard for him in the end.

There wasn't a thing called PTSD back then.

101st Airborne had been made

famous by what it did in the Battle of the Bulge.

The newspapers called them

the battered bastards of Bastogne.

These were ghosts for these men.

When you call yourself Penkala

or Muck or Luz,

these were not character names.

They had deep, intimate

relationships with these guys.

They loved these guys, and

you were representing them.

We toured

in the footsteps of Easy Company.

We bonded, Frank and I.

So this is the only original house?

No, at the other side in the road

at the headquarters of the Germans-

I remember the minute we all got off the bus in Bastogne.

We all started to walk in.

A lot of these men have never been back,

most of them have never been back.

And...

we kind of pulled back.

Okay.

Home sweet home, Bill.

Yes, it is.

Yes, sir.

Who knows who laid in this hole today?

So walking through there,

you would just see them.

"Well, I would...

Well, if he would have been right here, well...

Well, yeah, I probably would have been right here.

I would have been right here."

And you'd just go, "Wow."

We had our foxholes right over here,

and the other area, and the other area.

Wherever we had to move out and dig in again.

Because the Krauts had plenty of artillery.

Most intentional-

That went through right here.

Shelling.

Most intentional one of them.

You couldn't believe it. You had to be here.

You just dove in the hole

and just pray, that's it.

If it comes in, you ain't going to know it.

A couple of arms

went around each other.

Crying, some of them were crying,

and some of them would make a joke,

and there'd be a laugh cry.

This is where you can't believe that shell's going, sir.

- Yeah. -Shelling, I don't remember no shelling.

Or no Snow, I said.

You don't believe this guy.

It was just so impactful for a young man

for me, and I know it's not about me,

to be there and witness that, because it changes you.

He said, "Come with me, sir."

What, what, what, what?

Frank, Frank, what is it?

I don't know, sir.

I don't know.

Took me up to this fence, and

I was looking at some victims.

Were in a concentration camp.

And this was, of course, turned out

to be called a Holocaust.

And they had killed them,

starve them to death, and

buried them like we do garbage in this country.

Make a ditch and push them all,

wad them all in there

and cover them up.

So you opened the gates and went in?

There's no words to describe it,

but as you looked at them in the eye,

they would drop their head,

they would drop their eyes.

And it would remind you of a,

a dog that

was mistreated and been beaten.

And frankly to myself

I said, "Now I know why I'm here."

You've been starving to death,

you've been freezing to death,

people have been shooting at you.

Why am I here?

And after you looked at that,

you'd say, "I know."

Nobody had any concept or idea

that we would see anything like this.

Ask them what kind of campuses,

what, uh...

So when we...

Saw it for the first time,

it was a shock.

But uh...

I had no idea what to do.

And...

Our mission

was to push on to end this war.

By design,

production hid that set from us.

We were not allowed to see it.

We didn't even know it was being built.

It was built on the other side.

So when we got to that episode,

David Frankel,

who directed the episode,

he had family on both sides

in camps.

So it was really, really personal to him.

You know, that episode in particular was

a very, very tough episode for everybody.

And I think it's because it's the one that

really hits home, and again,

the clue's in the title, "Why We Fight".

They're Jews.

You just really recognize

the weight of the series,

and what it's gonna mean

to an audience.

It's very difficult to find a war

where there was a clear cut right

and a clear cut wrong.

And...

The Second World War

is that.

I think there is a real sense

that if we had not won it,

we would be living in a different world.

We took Berchtesgaden May the 5th.

Had no fighting, no shooting.

The war was over May the 8th.

Throughout the world, throngs of people

hailed the end of the war in Europe.

The only thing we cared about,

Easy Company was gonna watch it.

If this thing won every award and they went,

"I don't know.

I don't know."

"Very Hollywood."

It would mean nothing.

I don't think you can

get anything bigger in life

than to be on Normandy Beach

for the premiere of Band of Brothers

with the actual Easy Company men.

Even more important than what

we thought of it, was gonna be

what these guys thought of it.

And I remember just being like,

"I hope we did them proud."

I think all the actors are a little nervous

waiting to see

how the veterans will respond to the

portrayal of that man.

Immediately after the screening and they saw it,

immediately half of them were like, "You son of a bitch."

You know?

It was so visceral for them.

I'd never seen Buck

get emotional.

And to get a bear hug

from Buck Compton was...

You can keep the Academy Awards.

You can keep the Emmys, keep all that stuff, but...

That was my greatest award.

You never know.

You can look around the room

at the cast and crew screening.

You can go and slap backs

with the executive producers.

And they were like, "This is quite good."

But you never know how the market is gonna respond.

Well, it was crazy.

We premiered on

9/9,

and then two days later the towers came down.

A few moments ago, something,

believed to be a plane, crashed into the south tower

of the World Trade Center.

And smashed directly

perhaps purposefully, into...

- Oh my goodness. -Oh, God.

There's another one.

So we'd only aired one episode.

HBO took a big breath and was like,

"Well, we're gonna let it air out and

then we have bigger things to focus on."

Tipper!

Answer me! Tip!

Hang in there, buddy.

Okay, we're gonna get you fixed up, all right?

- Okay. -Is this the last thing people want to see?

Other people dying when the country's

grieving so deeply for what's happening?

But it kind of became

this rallying point to kind of unite people.

That's when I heard the explosion.

That's when the second tower came down again.

I would always ask Bill,

"If it happened today,

do you think today's generation

would do the same thing?"

And he said,

"If it happened today,

kids would do the same thing."

And 9/11 happened.

My phone rang and it was Bill.

And I picked it up and he said,

"See what I mean, kid? They're doing it.

They're just dressed like firemen and cops now.

And EMTs.

They're going right into those buildings.

Same thing."

All of us were glued to the television

and we had it on

and there was a

firefighter that came on.

And they were asking him a question

and he said, "I don't know if you guys are

watching that series, Band of Brothers,

but that's who we are. We are a band of brothers."

And we were all just floored by that.

Something like that really hits home

and you realize, "Man, this project is doing

more things than I could ever imagine."

I don't think anyone realized that it was

going to sort of become the

sort of warm hug that

that the country was going to need,

especially the military families and

specifically the moms and dads who were

sending their kids off to war.

In a weird way,

I think

it let them know that they were going to be

taken care of by each other,

even if they couldn't take care of them anymore.

And knowing that they wouldn't be alone,

knowing that they would have

found family with them.

A good friend of mine said,

"Hey, have you seen this book

called Band of Brothers?"

And I said, "No, I haven't seen it."

So I read it and

absolutely clearly

fell in love with the story,

but in particular, incredible respect for

Dick Winters.

I started getting all these letters

from all the members of Easy Company.

One of the last letters I got was

actually from Dick Winters.

He was just a really good guy.

He became like almost

the grandfather I never had.

And whenever I read that book,

I took my book

and I gave it around to everybody

and said, "Hey, you have to read this book.

This guy's the model

for who we have to become."

Get them going, Buck!

Follow me!

Move up!

Move out, men!

Go!

They knew

that he loved them.

His way of showing love to them was

he treated them

as men.

He treated them with respect,

but he held them accountable.

Understand?

Yes, sir.

And it wasn't just in World War II

where they got

the moniker of the Greatest Generation, right?

It's what they did after the war as well.

Nobody has ever asked me that question.

About...

About adjusting to civilian life.

Nobody has brought that thing up.

Trying to get adjusted to civilian life

was very difficult.

To go out and

communicate and talk to people.

It was up to me to make the adjustment, not them.

I was the one who was out of line.

They weren't out of line.

But it was very, very difficult.

Lewis was around.

So from time to time,

maybe once or twice, I'd get to see him

and I could sit and talk to him.

And he could talk to me.

That was a big help.

But it took time.

I think we're all looking for heroes right now, aren't we?

I think we could all say that

the world needs a hero.

And these guys were our heroes.

They were all our heroes.

I don't think I'm a hero.

Because part of that time,

what I have done is

saving my own hide first.

Well, unless you were running out into

- ...a rain of fire to go get your friend... -Yeah.

to throw him over your back.

I mean, you did some heroic things.

Two Bronze stars

would argue with you.

I just figured I'd done what needed to be

done at the time and had done it.

I think, and this is my personal feeling,

that accomplishing something

is what makes a man a hero.

Not what happens to him,

but what he gets done.

And so, as I say,

I think the word "hero" is overused.

How can they say you're a hero

or you did what you...

Nah, it's...

Them kids that didn't come back.

They're the guys.

They're the guys.

They didn't have to make a judgment call.

Their judgments were already being made.

That's...

I don't want to get sentimental, but

this is what you live with.

And it's not easy.

Believe me.

We were ready to hear the stories

of our veterans.

We were ready to

allow them to be

not flawed, I would say, but

hurt and in need of things.

This came along at the time

when it was needed.

It was an honor. It was a privilege and an honor.

The show is never about celebrity.

We're honoring them.

It was about

a legacy

of a company who

saved the world.

I'm proud to have served

with each and every one of you.

We lost all the guys now.

So, I guess we are

the guys that keep that little fabric,

that little through line to them.

We wear it as a badge of honor.

When I got the news,

it was...

It was heartbreaking

because this

incredible energy had left the world.

It was not a tragedy in that sense.

You couldn't have lived your

life fuller than this guy did.

It's hard to put into words

how much Buck means to me

and still means to me and how much

I think about him all the time and

all the guys and everything else

and how much I draw from that

as an artist.

But even more importantly, how much

I draw from that as a man.

I was just asked, you know,

"What does Dick mean to me now?"

13 years, 14 years after he died.

I...

I think about him a lot.

A lot.

I defy anybody

not to get a lump in the throat

at the end of episode ten.

We cut to all the veterans after every episode

and then you cut to Dick

and he tells the story.

Do you remember

the letter that Mike Ranney wrote me?

You do.

Do you remember how I ended it?

I cherish

the memories of a question

my grandson asked me the other day

when he said,

"Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?"

Grandpa said, "No."

But I served in a company of heroes.

It's the most moving thing.

And his mouth goes to the side and he just

so you can just see him hanging on.

I remember our chats.

You know, those two days in Hershey.

I remember thinking,

exactly as the men must have thought

that fought with him,

"I don't want to let him down.

We've got to honor him the right way."

I've lived through the day

that I did my job.

I didn't leave my men down

and my men are in pretty good shape.

I'm very thankful.

Do your best.

And the ones that did their best,

you never forget them.

You'll never forget them for the rest of your life.