Comrades of Easy Company
Easy Company from its inception in July of 1942 to its disbandment at the end of World War II was an elite paratrooper force made up of “voluntary citizen soldiers” meaning they were in Easy Company of their own accord and for the most part where all previously not in any form of military. (Ambrose p. 16-17) "Easy company included three rifle platoons and a headquarters section. Each platoon contained three twelve-man rifle squads and a six-man mortar team squad.” Easy also had one machine gun attached to each of its rifle squads, and a 60mm mortar in each mortar team. The training they would endure was much more rigorous, as the conditions would be more perilous, “of the 500 officers who had volunteered, only 148 successfully completed the course. The enlisted men had it equally tough, with only 1,800 men being selected out of 5,300 volunteers” (Ambrose, 18) this left them feeling that themselves and the man watching their back would be much more prepared for battle than your average draftee.
Easy company starts training in July of 1942 and ends in December of the same year; their setting is a basic training camp for US Army called Camp Toccoa. Here the men are weeded out due to a lack of inner determination, and a growing base of the relationship between the men was founded here. The men’s relationship with one another was a major point of emphasis making it obvious that the company could never have completed such amazing tasks without a trust between the men that went beyond friendship; the idea that you would not only die for your fellow man, but murder for him, it is regarded by the men as being comrades. Leaders were made and broken Toccoa such as Major Winters at this time was platoon leader o...
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...ponded with a counter attack. Easy company would stay on the counter attack all the way to Hitler’s “Eagles Nest”. Once the men arrived at Hitler’s palace it was a matter of waiting to receive your papers home, most of the men in easy went home to very normal almost mundane lines of work, which really drove home the reality that these men set out to survive the war and the process won it.
Many best-selling books have been written on the men of easy company as well as a popular HBO series that was named Band of Brothers. Beyond the gore and action of these stories it is still easy to see why millions want to learn about these men. I believe it is so well documented because they exemplify what it is to be American, that many men from different backgrounds can come together and complete unbelievable tasks through un-daunting determination, even in the face of death.
The Boys of ’67 Charlie Company’s War in Vietnam, by Dr. Andrew Wiest, is an account of Charlie Company’s involvement in the Vietnam War: from the activation of the Ninth Infantry Division, the draft and training, the arrival in Vietnam, the battles and losses, the replacements, the Freedom Bird, and ultimately for some, to the return home. The author writes of boys who were just becoming men and how they were brought together, the only division during the Vietnam War to be trained together and deployed together, to create a group of soldiers who became a band of brothers. The Boys of ’67 is the story of that brotherhood and how they walked through a year of living hell and were changed forever. As Dr. Wiest writes, “That jarring transformation, along with the transformation of the country to which they returned, changed the lives of the boys of Charlie Company forever.”
After America was brought into the Second World War, The 82nd Infantry Division was reactivated back into the United States Army under the command of General Omar N. Bradley. With this division being reactivated meant there was many untrained and unexperienced men in this infantry division. Most of the soldiers volunteered after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. All of the paratroopers were volunteers. Bradley taught these men how to use a gun, conditioned these men to run for long periods of time, and made all these men muscularly stronger. By August 1942 the 82nd...
The United States of America has come a long way in getting to the status it holds today in the world in terms of its military muscle. One of the major milestones in this journey was the establishment of the First Special Service, otherwise called the Devil’s Brigade or the Black Devils’ Brigade. The special unit among the United States forces was formed in the course of the World War II. Initially, the plan was to incorporate Canada and Norway in establishing a special elite force that would help in the activities of the war. However, Norwegian forces withdrew leading to collaboration between the United States Forces and Canada .
But after experiencing ten weeks of atrocious basic training at the hands of the small-minded, vindictive Corporal Himmelstoss and the inconceivable cruelty of life on the front lines. Paul and his comrades realize that the ideals that made them enlist are merely empty clichés. They no longer believe that war is magnificent or respectable, and they live in unceasing physical terror that each day that goes may be their last. When Paul’s company receives a short reprieve after two weeks of fighting at the front lines, only eighty men of the original 150-man company return from the front. The cook , Ginger, doesn’t want to give the survivors the rations that were meant for the dead men He insists that he is only allowed to distribute single rations and that the dead soldiers’ rations will simply have to go to waste but eventually gives in.
... sense I would not think that the men were out of the ordinary. Prior to the war many of the men who were in this battalion were middle aged family men who were from the working or lower class looking for jobs. I think that the men who were in battalion started off as “ordinary men.” They were men who had no idea what it was like to be in German territories, many were thinking this a job. The fact that many of the men had become wrapped with the guilt with what they had been doing shows that this was not something they had enjoyed but was something that they had to do. I feel that this proves that they were indeed ordinary men because the situation they were placed in was out of the ordinary and something that today we may not be used to this was a job to them. They had no idea what it would entail all they knew that it was job that they were told had to be done.
Making the Corps As a Wall Street Journal Pentagon correspondent, Thomas E. Ricks is one of America’s elite military journalists. He has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and awarded a Society of Professional Journalists Award for his writings based on the Marines. Thomas E. Ricks lectures to military officers and was a member of Harvard University’s Senior Advisory Council on the project on U.S. Civil-Military Relations. As a Pentagon correspondent, he can access information where no other civilian can step foot—traveling with soldiers abroad, his eyes tell the tale of the life of a Marine. In December of 1992, U.S. troops landed in Somalia.
I chose Ordinary Men because I wanted to come to some understanding as to how people can commit mass murder without a second thought. One of the most disturbing facts regarding the men is that they were given a choice to extricate themselves from the very beginning and so few chose to do so. I found myself trying to find valid reasons as to why they did what they did, but could not. I think it is only human to want to find a rationale for such contemptible, uncivilized actions. Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men; Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. 1st edition. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.
Group dynamics is defined as the various patterns of interaction between groups and individuals and the way a group is influenced to both achieve a great goal, or commit horrendous crimes. This documentary concentrated on the Third Platoon, First Battalion, 506th infantry, better known as the “Band of
One of the worst things of war is the vigorous training that Paul and other company members must go through. Corporal Himmelstoss, the sadistic drillmaster in charge of basic training, torments Paul and the other recruits. Himmelstoss is a vertically challenged and quarrelsome man who sports a waxed mustache. He has a reputation of being the strictest disciplinarian in camp. For that Himmelstoss earns the name "Terror of Klosterburg" because of his nick-picky de rigueur style (24). Himmelstoss puts his platoon through anguish and suffering causing some of the recruits to leave the army. They would wake up very early in the morning and go to sleep late at night. Even though they crawl in the sloppy, grubby mud, Himmelstoss makes them clean it for the next morning. Paul having a very strict drillmaster only makes the war seem even more dreadful. They have to execute eve...
All of the men came in as individuals, as unique and irreplaceable parts of a functioning society. However, their status and identity was changed step-by-step while in training. Their heads were shaved, they were dressed the same way, they ate the same food, and they exercised on the same field in the same conditions. These features indicate that they are not allowed to stand out of the group, they must
How could you develop a bond so great, that you were willing to die for someone even though you have only known them for a short amount of time? This is what the men of Easy Company experienced during World War II. Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st airborne of the U.S. Army was one of the first airborne units to ever be created. They were the first of a new type of soldier who could parachute out of an airplane, and fight 3 days non stop when they hit the ground. These men did exactly that and more. These soldiers fought from Normandy Beach, France all the way to Hitler’s private mansion in the heart of Germany, Eagle’s Nest. They were the workhorse of the U.S. Army, fighting in several different countries, and experienced some of the toughest fighting in World War II.
The word "men" is plural which is implying, along with the phrase “then in groups”, that every boy in the platoon went through the process of becoming a soldier again after the firing ended. Despite expectations that the soldiers must act as brave tough and strong men, each soldier is internally aware that he is just a boy and that when the bullets flew around him, he had acted as such. Each soldier then makes his best effort to hide this side of him from his fellow soldiers as they shift their attention back to showcasing the illusion of what society calls manliness. O’Brien describes them shortly after they have reassembled themselves to become soldiers again, “They would squint into the dense, oppressive sunlight. For a few moments, perhaps, they would fall silent, lighting a joint and tracking its passage from man to man, inhaling, holding in the humiliation. Scary stuff, one of them might say. But then someone else would grin or flick his eyebrows and say, Roger-dodger, almost cut me a new asshole, almost”(#) This quote shows that by emotionally withholding themselves from one another, the soldiers are hurting
The book summarizes the struggles that Bravo Company faced from the start even before deployment. The unit was initially sent to JRTC at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and made many tactical errors during their rotation. 1st platoon had many individuals captured from the start, and the leadership automatically decided that Captain Goodwin would be incompetent for the following deployment while LTC Kunk would be difficult to work with for the upcoming year. Once they came out from JRTC, Bravo Company and Charlie Company were both given the toughest missions. Bravo Company was assigned to the most dangerous AO in the so-called triangle o...
The time spent at training camp prepared the boys for what was to come, by making them tough and brutal, while at the same time creating an army that does not stop to question its orders.
...nd embarrassed with their true desires not to fight. There is no freewill at this point because they feel obligated to be the patriotic men. They are confused not knowing the reason for this war but that it is “to stop the Communists, plain and simple” (O’Brien 45). Unfortunately is it not plain and simple, even a million words would not be able to express the experiences that these young men endure. Unlike the Lone Ranger, the soldiers would rather flee due to the natural human instincts toward a dangerous situation. Yet, they suppress their true feelings and fight with all they have. As we can see, the ones that fight to help people that they hardly know are indeed the regular, normal, and everyday human beings. With this in mind, we cannot count on the Lone Ranger to come to the rescue; rather, the heroes are right before our eyes. They are an “everyman.”