Band of Brothers 1x3 | Watch Along
Comments (13)
God this series is so good..
After that, I would fully believe that flower is cursed.
Army issue socks, at least when I was in during the 2000s, are thin OD green and scratchy as hell. Super uncomfortable. A lot of us, during deployments, would wear regular white cotton socks. Every dude in my company in Iraq that was hit, myself included, was wearing white socks when it happened. Doesn't mean the socks were cursed. Just means most of us wore them rather than the issue socks we were supposed to, because they were more comfortable. That said, i totally believe the white socks were cursed.
Lt Spears really is a scary guy!!! glad he was on OUR side!
Since everyone else in the comments is talking about Blithe, I’ll share some other cool info about this episode! Tipper—the guy who was blown up in the shop and seriously shredded by the explosion—actually survived those grievous injuries. You might be surprised to know that he's one of the men speaking in the beginning. He’s the man wearing glasses and a coral/orangish-pink shirt—and even more impressively, he ended up being one of the last surviving members of Easy Company to pass away from natural causes! Also the end where they were scrapping their training was during R&R back in England since Normandy was a success for the multiple Airborne groups, so it has been several weeks since we saw Blithe in the hospital bed, since Smokey (3 purple hearts guy) is back with the company.
Anyone know when the edited versions of these are out ?
Probably when they're done with the Squid Games season 2 edits, so in a month.
Maple's comment at the end made me curious about the survival rates for injuries then versus now, so I looked it up. In WWII, combat fatalities were approximately 55%. Modern conflicts have seen that rate drop to around 12%.
On Blithe, I've been wondering for a long time why they don't change that bit at the end, where they say he died. Doesn't seem like it would be a big deal to do technically, and you'd think they'd want to once they realized it was wrong.
It always bugs me too, but it's not unusual to me that the folks who made this have never acknowledged it. Band of Brothers has always been, first and foremost, an entertainment product, which means every writing decision, even those based on real people and events, is in service to the story the creators want to tell. That's not me accusing anyone of not caring about historical accuracy. But, I do think they were inclined to run with the Blithe misinformation precisely because it made for a perfect story arc. Nothing wrong with wanting to tell a good story, and BoB tells a fucking fantastic one. It might be the best WWII film/series, period. And...any good writer will tell you that sometimes you can't let the truth get in the way of a good story.
They really did Blithe dirty he wasn't shot in the neck but in the collar bone, a more survivable wound. He fought with distinction in the Korean War, where he received the Bronze and Silver Stars. He actually died while serving in Germany of a perforated ulcer and complications due to surgery in 1967. After the show aired and his family was made aware of the mistake, they provided documents to reveal the truth. They amended the later editions of the book, but didn't with the TV series.
Hey for the record I just want to say, the series made probably their biggest historical inaccuracy when they stated that Blithe died in 1948. He actually lived until 1967. The general concensus is that this happened because the other members of Easy Company lost track of him after the war.
That was part of it, but there was also a HUGE coincidence that occurred that really caused it. Another man who was also named Albert Blithe, and who had received similar wounds and was from the same state, died of complications relating to his wounds in 1948. This caused a lot of confusion, and the surviving E Co. men assumed that it was their Blithe.