Okay, I chirped in on good "Will" getting verbally hunted (by Titus) in the comment section under Titus' most recent (bet you never anticipated running into casino employees better versed in socioeconomic discourse then your Brown professor's ... did you, young William?); so I will now go into how and why an internal beef has been settled - because I'm a founding member, and I can. Not to mention - I fear were I to tackle the lad formerly known as Will any more directly, our high minded prose as demonstrated by Titus will devolve into that reminiscent of an early 20th century Rusky in search of bread ...
The Bund has always been not just a political debate site, but a historical debating club, if you will. We not only appreciate historical insight, details and knowledge, we RELISH it (if any Brown graduates are reading this, forgive me for offending your ivy league sensibilities when ending my sentence in a preposition).
For a couple of days Jambo and I (and recently badboy) have been debating when (if at all) Captain (eventually Major) Winters took sole command control of 2nd Battalion, which had 3 companies, including Easy. Jambo claimed it was when Sink promoted him during Crossroads after the capture/kill of the two SS companies. Badboy agreed, I did not. For goodness sake Colonel Strayer was in command well into Bastogne (the region and the episode). Well, I found the answer ...
That Crossroads promotion gave Winters the XO position, second in command of 2nd Battalion. If you remember Sink mentions that, "Col Strayer could use some help." And Strayer remains Batallion CO through Bastogne. After the assault on Foy Sink promoted Col. Strayer to his (Sink's) regimental staff, and made Winters acting CO of 2nd Battalion, and then gave him his oak leafs at Hageneau (sp?). Subsequent to this revelation it is my and Jambo's contention that Sink simply wanted Winters, his best man in the field, in charge of 2nd, so he promoted Strayer to get him out of the way for Dick. Not that Strayer was incompetent or anything approaching a Dike, but Winters was simply a better commander, period.
Further news ... Dike's father was a New York State Supreme Court Justice (there's the initial "connected" aspect of Dike's military career). And after the assault on Foy he was promoted to General Taylor's staff, as an aide. He died in 1985 ... in Switzerland. How's that for irony, THE quintessential neutral country.
Now having jawed on about this with Jambo he and I happen to mention how spry Carwood Lipton looked in those B.o.B interviews, and that we wouldn't mind meeting him. I looked it up. Sadly "Lip" died December 16th, 2001. He was intricately involved in both the book and HBO miniseries though. For your reading pleasure, one of his last interviews (with an entertainment correspondent named, "Jen"):
JEN: Do you think that the Stephen Ambrose book, Band of Brothers, is a fair and accurate portrayal of what it was like in E Company?
LIPTON: It's a very accurate portrayal of E Company and the men in E Company. Yes.
JEN: What do you think is the biggest misconception about war?
LIPTON: The biggest misconception might be that men getting wounded has a pronounced effect on those who are still alive. Soldiers have a job to do and when some are killed and some are wounded, you can't let that bother you. You don't let that bother you. You go on to get the job done that you're there to do. Most civilians feel that the wounds or the people getting killed have a profound effect on the other men but it doesn't have that effect.
JEN: Do you think that the general public tends to glamorize war?
LIPTON: I think that probably they do. Combat is something that you can't imagine, can only experience it. Before you experience combat, you can't know what it's like and you don't even know what effect it will have on you. You don't know how you will react to combat, but in combat situations funny things happen. Soldiers remember those funny things. When we get together, we talk about those funny things. The public does glamorize combat more than it should be glamorized. Combat is dead serious as far as the actual fighting is concerned. Funny things do happen on the periphery though.
JEN: How do you think that being in E Company changed you?
LIPTON: When I went into the army, I was...I call myself a loner. I accomplished things on my own. I felt that I...I was quite confident that I could accomplish many things, but I did it on my own. In the army I saw Captain Winters, Captain Speirs and the other officers were able to motivate a group of men and inspire a group of men, get those men to work together as a team and accomplish much more than the men could do individually. I was very impressed by their ability to organize men and motivate those men so I taught myself to do it in the army and I've done it all my life after that. Instead of trying to accomplish things on my own, I've organized groups of people to accomplish it. I've done that the rest of my life since the army. That's the biggest change, I think, that the army had on me.
JEN: Do you think that the HBO special is a fair and accurate portrayal of what it was like in E Company?
LIPTON: Oh yeah. It's about as accurate as you can get in pulling a group of people together in front of cameras. In combat, of course, there isn't much standing up and moving around. If you wanna show combat the way it really is, you'd have to have a camera on each person because men are acting individually. In trying to portray that in combat, you have to show more than one man. So you have to have more moving around than takes place in actual combat, but the spirit of combat is what they captured perfectly in "Band of Brothers."
JEN: Do you think they portrayed you correctly?
LIPTON: I think so. Donnie Wahlberg portrayed me and Donnie and I talked several times a week on the telephone. He was in England and I was here. We talked several times a week and some of the conversations would go on for almost an hour. What Donnie was always trying to do was get inside my thoughts, into my feelings about the various things that took place and that they were filming. He would tell me what they intended to film the next day or the next several days. Donnie worked very hard. He was very dedicated on doing the part correctly and so we did all that talking with each other to enable him to do that.
JEN: Do you feel that he was the right actor to portray you?
LIPTON: I can't think of another that would be better than Donnie. He has become a close friend over these months. I really like Donnie. I can't think of another. I've looked at the others, the other actors portraying the other E Company men and Donnie was the right one for me.
JEN: What was it about him [Donnie] that made him the right person to portray you?
LIPTON: I think he has somewhat the appearance I had. Not that I have now, but the appearance I had back then. His general attitude. His dedication to the part just as I was dedicated to the army. His general reactions, actions and reactions to the different situations were a lot like my own.
JEN: So they did a good casting job?
LIPTON: Not just with me, but the actors for the other men. Those actors were right for those men. Those various actors would not have been right for me, but they were right for the others. I thought that was a wonderful casting job.
JEN: Is there anything you felt that the book and/or miniseries got wrong?
LIPTON: The book of course we didn't allow anything to be wrong in the book. Ambrose didn't write that alone. He corresponded regularly with us. We corresponded with each other. We got together in meetings. So we were very careful, all of us, to make sure the book portrayed things accurately. The miniseries got some small things wrong that I would have changed but nothing glaringly wrong.
JEN: What would you have changed?
LIPTON: After we had taken the town of Foy outside Bastogne...in the series they had the men get together in a group and sing. We could not do that in combat. If we got together in a group like that, the Germans would have sent artillery shells at us. That was an example of something I would have changed. It was not of major significance.
JEN: I was told another problem you had with the series is that they used the "F"-word too much.
LIPTON: You know you're right on that. Not only the "F"-word, but other profanities. We just didn't talk that way. That came later, I guess, in the Vietnam War. In World War II we didn't talk that way. But it was in the Ambrose book as well. I can remember in a certain place there, he says that these young men away from home, quite independent used a lot of profanity (Band of Brothers p. 18), but he was wrong in that. We didn't catch that and we didn't talk to him about leaving that out of the book because it wasn't true. We didn't talk that way.
JEN: Did it surprise you when you learned that they wanted to make the book into a miniseries?
LIPTON: Well it surprised me and pleased me. I knew that E Company was an outstanding company. There were many outstanding combat companies in World War II. It so happened that the book was written about E Company. So when it was decided and we heard that HBO would make a miniseries on it, of course we were quite pleased and I would say surprised.
JEN: If you could go back, would you participate in E Company again?
LIPTON: Without a doubt. Great group of guys.
(Ha! Notice who has the better head of hair!)
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