In the Footsteps of the Band of Brothers

Paratroopers of Easy Company, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne in Austria, 1945
Photographer - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIsVDwhUMAItVKc.jpg

Memorial Day Weekend at our house is typically spent watching HBO’s Band of Brothers—all ten episodes—often more than once. The story of Easy Company is told so magnificently in this production and each time I watch, I decipher new bits of dialogue or notice a subtle something in the background of a scene that I’d missed, a foreshadow of what’s ahead. Earlier this year, I wrote about our visit to Georgia’s Camp Toccoa, where Easy began its training. So naturally, when we learned the National World War Two Museum had designed a two-week tour that traces Easy’s battle path across Europe—from England to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest—we had to follow their footsteps across the Atlantic.

We spent a few days in London and Cambridge before the tour began, giving us the opportunity to see Bletchley Park, nerve center of the codebreakers; Thorpe Abbotts Air Field (read more in this blog); and to wind our way through Churchill’s War Rooms—the underground bunkers, offices, and bedrooms built to keep the British government functioning amid the relentless bombing and the threat of German invasion. And all that was before our official tour began.

The Mansion, constructed in 1883, provided office space for Allied codebreakers at Bletchley Park. Additional buildings expanded the campus dramatically: 10,000 people eventually worked there—7500 of them women.

On Day One, our group of 30 met at Heathrow Airport, then boarded a motor coach heading south, to Aldbourne, England, (pronounced All-born) the rural village that became home to Easy Company in 1943. Soldiers lived and trained here leading up to D-Day, returning briefly before they deployed to The Netherlands for Operation Market Garden. While most soldiers lived in Nissen huts in a meadow on the edge of the village proper, some were fortunate to bunk in extra bedrooms in the homes of villagers, Lt. Dick Winters among them. He lived in a spare room above a little store, where the British civilians he met grew quite attached to him and the other young soldiers. Other companies were billeted nearby, in the villages of Chilton Foliat, Froxfield and Ramsbury, with regimental headquarters located inside a 15th century Tudor manor called Littlecote House.

Aldbourne, Wiltshire, UK

Aldbourne has lost none of its charm over these 80 years, with its the narrow winding lanes, low-ceilinged shops, and white-timbered houses with thatched roofs. But the village is no longer the remote outpost it may have seemed in the 1940’s, and today, is something of a bedroom community. Commuters can catch the train in nearby Swinton and be delivered to London’s Paddington Station in about an hour. Our guide reported that homes listed for sale here are snapped up quickly.

Row of homes in Aldbourne

Shop in Albourne

Above the village, stands the Church of England parish church of St. Michael, first constructed in the early 13th century from remnants of a Norman church. Easy Company soldiers worshipped in this sanctuary, our guide pointing out a bench in the cemetery behind the church where Lt. Winters was often seated, conversing with townspeople who happened by—reflecting, perhaps, on what lay ahead.

St. Michael’s Church, Aldbourne, UK

Inside St. Michael’s Church

Our group lunched at The Crown pub on roast beef, popovers, and a pint—so British!—and toured the other pub in town, The Blue Boar, the de facto officers club for the men. Here, where the soldiers drank, played darts, and drank some more, familiar names are visible on replicas of memorabilia that hang on the walls. Hard-drinking Lewis Nixon and tee-totaler Winters were among the members of the “Kegler’s Club,” founded in January of 1944. You’ll see several other familiar names here, including Lt. Thomas Meehan. He was appointed leader of Easy Company after a revolt by company sergeants against Capt. Herbert Sobel.. Meehan and 16 others would be lost when their transport plane was shot from the sky in the early hours of D-Day.

Inside the Blue Boar Pub, Aldbourne

We were welcomed inside the Aldbourne Heritage Centre, a lovely museum full of artifacts ancient and more recent. Displays detail the pre-historic roots of Aldbourne through the 1940’s when the Americans descended, up to present day. Currently, Operation Nightingale is underway in Aldbourne to recover even more relics. Teams of workers—many of them British and American military veterans—are sifting through the fields the Nissen huts once occupied. Actors from Band of Brothers have stopped by to lend help and encouragement in the months-long effort. This story from the BBC offers additional details.

Operation Nightingale underway

Tours by The National World War Two Museum employ local guides and we had a bona fide British historian accompany us from London through Aldbourne to Portsmouth. In addition to presenting a lecture on the movement of troops across England leading up to D-Day, he shared family stories about life during the Blitz and how the dutiful British carried on during the lean war years. (As he spoke, I was reminded of the 1942 Oscar-winning movie "Mrs. Minerva," that depicts a steadfast British family’s quiet courage amid piercing losses—the very embodiment of “keep calm and carry on.”) We bid this guide goodbye as we boarded our ferry at Portsmouth to cross the Channel into Normandy, and found French and Dutch experts waiting on the far shore to guide us through France, the Netherlands, Belgium and beyond. These guides, too, shared family stories about the war.

Our Dutch guide Edwin, along with Maddie and Robin

Throughout the trip, our group was herded by British tour manager, Maddie, who was simply second to none. I do not think there is a single country she hasn’t toured, a language she hasn’t mastered, a crisis she hasn’t deftly managed without anyone being the wiser. She is brilliant—and paid me the high honor of reading WAR BONDS, admitting the story caused her to shed a tear or two

We  also had a celebrity on the motor coach! Actor Robin Laing, whom you’ve seen in Outlander and lots of British series, portrays Private Babe Heffron in the Band of Brothers. His kind presence and profuse patience with all of us rowdy, inquisitive Americans enriched our trip immeasurably. Years ago, Easy veterans accompanied this tour, but as they aged and travel became too arduous, the actors from the series picked up the mantle. As we wound through the hills of northern France, Robin shared stories of the friendship he developed with the late Babe Heffron, a friendship he continues to this day with Babe’s family.

You can learn more about that here.

Actor Robin Laing; Robin as Pfc. Babe Heffron in Band of Brothers, with Shane Taylor as Doc Roe

We watched Band of Brothers on the coach, and after each episode, Robin highlighted details we may have overlooked—the shape of the misted breath when the soldiers are freezing in Bastogne, the hundreds of bullet tracers—both elements added by CGI after filming. (Even 20 years on, the special effects hold up.) Robin’s imitation of Doc Roe saying “Babe” in Episode 6 is the single funniest moment in the series—rivaled only by a line in Episode 3 by Rick Gomez as radioman George Luz. (“I have no idea”) when the assault on Carentan goes awry). It’s a bit of a stunner how Robin, a red-headed Scotsman with a proper accent and refined Continental manners, transforms into loose-limbed, replacement soldier Heffron, swallowing his syllables as a good Philadelphian would—so brilliantly, so beautifully, so pitch-perfectly. That, I suppose, is why they call it ACTING.

Next up: Normandy