Airborne E Company's Failure

Among these leaders was Bravo Company’s 1st platoon’s SFC Robert Gallagher. The platoon endured terrible living conditions including no running water and filthy living space. These inadequate living conditions must be met with some relaxation on the standards they were expected to follow. Company leadership viewed this as a bribe to keep the soldiers in high spirits. In reality, they set the stage for the erosion of the morals the enlisted soldiers are supposed to possess. While the morals were being chipped away, so was the original plan the battalion had hoped to follow. Fragmentation orders became a pseudo-standard for the boys of Bravo Company. What had originally started as short-term overnight patrol bases turned into fortified traffic control points with the exception of any form of fortification other than in notion only. Despite the fact that platoon-level leadership requested for supplies they were repeatedly turned down. A major breakdown in the communication between the leadership created a loss in faith in the higher leadership for the lower-enlisted soldiers on the ground. Very soon into deployment, Bravo Company began to experience contact with unseen enemy forces. The enemy was able to engage and plant IED’s and cause casualties while remaining elusive. After the first few casualties within the company, the mission to start set up traffic control points was to begin. While conducting patrols down the road time and time

In 1939, high tensions were rising in the world, these tensions led to a “Great War” we now refer to as World War 2. Both the movie Saving Private Ryan and the popular miniseries Band of Brothers focus primarily on this major conflict. These directors, Steven Spielberg and Phil Alden Robinson, each take the terrors of this tragedy into their own hands and each storyteller tells the story a little differently.

Douglas Brinkley uses several testimonies from the men who fought with Companies D, E, and F. These testimonies really bring the book alive, and it helps to tell the tail and connect the reader to the events. The descriptive tools used by Brinkley display a mental picture that is very detailed. These words are often used when Brinkley’s works, and he is a renowned

Stephen Lampus Ms. Weaver 3/9/15 English Summary The narrator went back to Dresden after the war with his old war buddy Bernard V. O’Hare where they were prisoners of war in a slaughterhouse. The narrator thought that Dresden was a useless memory in his mind but he was still tempted to write about it. He does end up writing about it as an anti-war book.

There are few companies in the 101st Airborne that achieved the status the men of Easy Company would gain during their career in World War II. From the making of formation of the company at Camp Toccoa, in Georgia, the men of Easy Company were destined to impact the course of the war. They became legends in American military history with their acts of bravery and heroics they showed in the face of the German army. From Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, their fame grew with each great mission they accomplished. The generations that would follow respected the uniform they wore, and the company’s comradeship grew deeper than a normal soldier’s companionship would in a war with his fellow- man. Throughout the book, Stephen Ambrose, pointed

From the beginning, things went wrong for the division. During the transit to the landing zone two of the gliders were lost, these gliders contained anti-armor guns. Missing the landing zone, the British soldiers landed too far from the bridges. The additional distance needed to reach the bridge allowed the German defenders time to prepare. Despite this, the 1st Airborne Division was able to take the northern end of the Arnhem Bridge. A combination of German preparation time and the lack of sufficient British numbers prevented the capture of the Southern end of the bridge. This left the British troops in between two forces. The second wave of airborne set to arrive the next day and reinforce the assault were delayed. “The predictions from the Allied Meteorologists proved optimistic and on Monday 18th September, the weather effectively disrupted much of the air operations and the take-off of the second wave in England was delayed.” The reinforcements did not arrive until much later in the day and met a much larger German defense supported by Panzers. The 1st Airborne Division held the north end of the bridge for six days before withdrawing. Weather delayed the third wave of support until 23 September. The troops had only gone into the operation with 48 hours’ worth of ammunition and food. Driven from Arnhem, the British troops received the order to withdraw across the Rhine River. “On the night of 25

Band Of Brothers is an excellent HBO T.V series, and is definitely a must watch. This show is a 10 part series that follows Easy company, 506th regiment of the 101st airborne division u.s. Army, through interviews by the actual soldiers of easy company, or what's left of easy company, and acted out with actors from now. The beginning two episodes are very slow, but once the troopers jump it is nonstop action throughout the rest of the show. Throughout the series we see the the struggles, reality, and gruesome images that these soldiers had to go through during WW2. Definitely the highlight of this series is episode six “Bastogne” during this episode we follow the medic of easy company Eugene Roe. As we sees the horrors that he faced while being

All objectives of this operation had been met and were met within a 48 hour period. All together the Allied forces had 2700 casualties during the fight but claimed to have taken over 2000 prisoners of war. Because of Operation Varsity “by 27 March, twelve bridges suitable for heavy armor had been installed over the Rhine and the Allies had 14 divisions on the east bank of the river, penetrating up to 10 miles.” In hindsight the airborne operation would have had less causality if the operation had been conducted at night rather than in daylight. The other consideration that was taken into account is that the operation had been performed with on two thirds of the original troops which put them at a disadvantage due to a lack of

The year is 1944, and the Allies are drawing closer to victory everyday. A daring plan arises soon after the successful invasion of Normandy; this plan, alternatively, ends in disaster. Had everything gone as the good General Bernard Montgomery had hoped, the war would have been finished by Christmas; a large blow against the Germans was needed to relieve the troops in Normandy, who were then facing both German soldiers and difficult, unfamiliar terrain. General Montgomery had devised a plan that would push the Allies through Holland and past the strongest of Germany’s defences. The idea was simple: the Allied Airborne Division would drop paratroopers in, who would then take eight important bridges around Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem. These troops would then fight through Nazi controlled Holland and into the heart of Germany, winning the war.

After the successful Allied invasions of western France, Germany gathered reserve forces and launched a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes, which collapsed by January. At the same time, Soviet forces were closing in from the east, invading Poland and East Prussia. By March, Western Allied forces were crossing the Rhine River, capturing hundreds of thousands of troops from Germany's Army Group B. The Red Army had meanwhile entered Austria, and both fronts quickly approached Berlin. Strategic bombing campaigns by Allied aircraft were pounding German territory, sometimes destroying entire cities in a night. In the first several months of 1945, Germany put up a fierce defense, but rapidly lost territory, ran out of supplies, and exhausted

“Band of Brothers: E. Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne From Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle Nest”

For many soldiers and volunteers, life on the fronts during the war means danger, and there are few if any distractions from its horrors. Each comradeship serves as a divergence from the daily atrocities and makes life tolerable. Yet, the same bonds that most World War literature romantically portrays can be equally negative. James Hanley’s “The German Prisoner”, shows the horrifying results of such alliances, while “Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemmingway reveal that occasionally, some individuals like Lieutenant Henri seek solidarity outside the combat zone.

Walcheren, a small Dutch island at the Western end of the Beveland Peninsula was the setting for one of the most underrated but critical engagements of the second world war. The summer of 1944 had saw a series of almost unprecedented successes by allied forces in northwestern Europe. The Normandy landings in June had been followed by the breakout from the beachhead and an advance of some 300 miles eastward across France to the low countries. By early October the tempo of operations had slackened. The attempt in September to jump the lower Rhine at Arnhem (Op MARKET GARDEN) with airborne troops had failed. It looked as if the battlefront would remain west of the Rhine for the winter and that the war would last well into 1945.

They were supposed to seize roads and bridges that led the the major cities they were supposed to capture. The British and Canadians were supposed to capture Caen, and the Americans Cherbourg. They were to meet up with troops that landed on the beaches.But it was very foggy and winds were strong which was not ideal at all, and paratroopers were dropped separately. The planes were supposed to fly in a V formation but lost each other because of the weather. Since no one was together, the Germans couldn’t tell how many allies landed and thought it wasn’t going to be a major

“Blood is thicker than water” is a quote that is thrown around a lot. However, instead of it meaning that one’s birth family is more important than other ties, some people have chosen to interpret it as meaning as the fact that brothers on the battlefield shedding blood together have stronger ties than the bond of genetics. The men fighting in the forefront of WWI create a bond that transcends familial roles, and is unique to the wartime situation. However, this must be a temporary bond. They form very strong homosocial bonds that do not necessarily have romance involved, and are united with each other based on their rank in the world.