Reading Rainbow: Band of Brothers
Book: Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from
Author: Stephen Ambrose
Publisher: Touchstone: Reprint 2001
Chapters/Pages: 19/313
My Rating: 15/10
Band of Brothers is easily the best book I have ever read. I have owned it for a over a year, but have just not made the time to read it. The TV mini series is my favorite DVD of all time, so I opened up the book with considerable expectations. It didn’t disappoint.
After reading the book, it is amazing how well the producers recreated it in the miniseries. Between BoB & Citizen Soldiers, everything is in the series. The problem is that the movie changed some pretty noticable things. The book is much better than the movie, if that is possible. BoB centers around Dick Winters, like movie, however far less emphasis is put on Lewis Nixon. One of the episodes, Last Patrol, is narrated by Webster. He plays a far greater role in the book. His literature & memoirs add a ton of vitality to the book. Although he plays a big role in the series, Ronald Speirs is huge in the book. You end of loving the man even more.
With every turn of the page you feel like you are freezing your rear off in a foxhole or fixing your bayonette for a charge into battle. The experience is amazing. I mentioned some things that were changed in the movie earlier, producers also left a lot of the lighter moments of the book that were simply hilarious. For example, after taking Hitler’s retreat, Easy had some fun with Hitler’s cars. Regiment wanted them to turn over Hitler's high end cars to the higher ups in the military, they instead decided to do some research first…
“Before Talbert turned over his Mercedes, he too did some experimenting. He was able to report to Winters that the windows were bulletproof, but that if you used armor-piercing ammo, it would get the job done. Winters thanked him for his research, agreeing that one never knew when this ,kind of information would come in handy….They decided that before turning it in they would see if it could survive a 30-meter crash, so they pushed it over a cliff.”
I could write for hours & hours on Band of Brothers, just know it’s an amazing book, easily the best read of my life. I loved every minute of it. I’ll close with a quote from the the book…
“They thought the Army was boring, unfeeling, & chicken, & hated it. They found combat to be ugliness, destruction, & death, & hated it. Anything was better than the blood & the carnage, the grime & filth, the impossible demands made on the body-anything that is, except letting down their buddies. They also found that in war, men who loved life would give their lives for them…In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked ‘Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?’ ‘No,’ I answered, ‘but I served in a company of heroes.’”
It is one of those books you remember for the rest of your life. I definitely recommend it, but don’t take my word for it…
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