you get used to it.

re this: what do you think was Dick's beef with Web's book?

I can only hazard a guess at the age old question of "Dick Winter, what was your fucking problem?"

I mean he did leave some MS Word R.D.W. afterword notes in a bunch of the files. So he does get a say in this one. My personal feelings are:

-that this book was not about Dick. It also wasn't about Sobel being evil.

-Dick is stupidly possessive of Nix even if what Web wrote was flattering. You didn't know him like I knew him. How could you?

- Dick is there. That's it. He's a good Captain. Big. Hard. Aggressive. Yells a lot. All he does is yell. He's not worshipped. Web is justly critical of the push on the factory at the crossroads and literally crawls through cowshit with a hole in his leg to avoid dying there. (THIS is according to Dick the greatest thing E Company ever did.) AND the biggest thing is that Web illustrates that Dick plays favorites. Major Winters is getting all the Easy guys goldbrick jobs in Austria on sports teams. Everyone knows it. You want to get out of drill, get on a sports team and the way to do it is thru one of Dick's favorites. 👀Say what now? Dick was more interested in fun and sun and balls the week after Chuck was shot? 👀

-Also the shady ass doctor gets a pass from Winters to go to Bechtesgaden with his girl on the regular and the consensus is the guy is still working for the Germans.🧐

-Captain Speirs. 🥰. Genuinely the nail in the coffin in this book is that Web just adores Ronald Speirs and reports everything he does. How he sounds. The color of his teeth. How he marches. What he says. Me too Web, he's awesome. Thank you.

-For some reason he thinks the writing too 'dreamy'. Considering he got hot and bothered over Chapter 2 of Band of Brothers, I genuinely don't know what it is he wants to read.

-It's a story. From Web's POV. Is it embellished probably. It's a story. It gives us more of a view of the 1st platoon from someone who was in it. Not the actions of the entire company based on After Actions, Special Orders, Rosters, Diary after diary after diary. This falls under my "Let Rader smell bacon" clause because it shows a state of mind.

-The man was born an observer and felt the environment and saw the people in full color. Sometimes reporting in higher definition means that reality is there that men said 'fuck' 'tits' 'ass', were horny as hell, and went through drawers to take women's underwear and used the dentist's hoes in Saalfelden when the cooks passed out. Dick says not in my parachute infantry. We admire the men, look at their scars, their slender hips, LIKE GODDAMNED MEN.

-The guys who get codenames? VD is Reese who is Tab's best friend, Tab was his best man. Tab is Dick's BEST SOLDIER EVER. VD is nasty, named appropriately. Camera Killer? Lt. Richey. Dick is favorable in his description of him, Web makes him an over the top yelling pain in the ass. Peacock? Well...I don't think anyone protested how he was shown but Web HATES HIM. It's part of the army, it's his story. But your friends kind of suck, Dick.

-Web is dead. You can't attack him through the USPS and mark up unpublished manuscripts and say he's wrong and send them back with pages of copies of Special Orders to prove it. Steve also is in love with the good writing that he can't possibly write himself and who is going to really come after you if you just make half your book Web's writing? He's dead.

-He picks on Web for not wanting promoted but will praise Popeye for not wanting the same thing. Web never volunteered...okay he says that. In fact most guys didn't. The ones that did ended being criticized for that. NO winning with you man. It doesn't negate that he was there and went from Toccoa to the end of the war. He volunteered for the paratroops. He volunteered to leave HQ Co and go to Easy. He ended up in 1st platoon who was sent in FIRST. ALWAYS. because Dick Winters sends his men 1-2-3 in that order. Always.

Bottom line, BoB was Dick's narrative and Steve kinda fell in love with Webster's writing and used it too much. Get your own book and get out of mine. If you can't be a screaming eagle about the power of the best of the best and censor all the unflattering things about men and war and sex, go die by shark attack.

Did I mention Captain Speirs 🥰? Because he is fabulous. And E company is his. And what a man.

Dick leaves us these notes under the cut , I'm sure there is more but it was a quick pull from the files. In his defense most of the guys were upset about Web being featured so much but most of them wrote novel length material for the book that wasn't used. Nobody had the chance to see who was saying 'don't include this' or knew Ambrose liked to just take other people's work and not cite it.

References to contemporary films & actors in BAND OF BROTHERS (2001)

HISTORICAL CONTEXT/SOURCES ↓

↳ THE PACIFIC: EPISODE 5

I wonder if web’s birthday has any special meanings…

✦ HBO WAR // “Personal Jesus” ‐ Depeche Mode.

I swear, I'm just waiting for the clock to hit midnight and my sanity bell goes ringing.

"It was the death of hope that bore us down. There had always been hope; hope of relief, hope of the sun, hope of victory, hope of survival. But when they came and told us that none of us were going home on rotation, we strangled hope and turned into wooden soldiers. The future looked to innumerable enemy-held islands and innumerable assaults [...]." - Helmet for My Pillow, Robert Leckie