Easy company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division; almost everybody has heard of them one way or another. They were paratroopers, landed in Normandy at the D-Day invasion, and fought in the Netherlands for months during and after Operation Market Garden. They defended Bastogne in Belgium during Hitler’s last desperate offensive in the December 1944, liberated a concentration camp and finally took the Eagle’s nest at Berchtesgaden. Quite impressive!
Steven Ambrose thought so too and he wrote their stories in his book Band of Brothers, which was later turned into the HBO miniseries.
After Band of Brothers was released in 2001, the men of Easy Company became the stars of the Second World War. The series also rekindled the fire of remembrance in a new generation. That came not a moment too soon, because the WWII Veterans will not be with us for much longer. Now these veterans have been given the chance to tell their stories, and we have been able to record them.
In this video, we will look at the real Easy Company soldiers and the actors who immortalized them.