10 Things in Band of Brothers That Never Happened in Real Life

I'm about to reveal 10 things in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers that didn't actually happen in real life. As with almost every movie or TV series based on a true story, Band of Brothers took numerous liberties for dramatic effect. Let me know in the comments which of the following things you already knew before watching this video. Number 10. The co-pilot on Winter's plane is killed by Flack during the D-Day drops. During the D-Day drop sequence in Episode 2 of Band of Brothers, titled Day of Days, the C-47 Dick Winters is on, encounters heavy anti-aircraft fire as they head over Normandy. A shell explodes near the nose of the plane and the co-pilot sustains a graphic wound to his face and head, killing him instantly. The pilot panics and hits the green light, resulting in Winters and his stick jumping early as the plane is moving too low and too fast in an attempt to avoid the Flack. As a result, the prop blast rips off Winters' leg bag that contains his equipment and the paratroopers end up scattered when they reach the ground. In real life, the planes did encounter heavy Flack, including Winters' C-47, and the drops were chaotic, but there is no record of the co-pilot or pilot of Winters' plane being killed by Flack. In his memoir, Winters mentions that the pilot was Lt. William Sammons, and from historical records, we know that the co-pilot was Lt. William Ogletree. The plane indeed took some Flack hits, including in the tail, and the pilot, Lt. Sammons, was lightly wounded in the foot, but no one was killed. The co-pilot, Lt. Ogletree, helped to fly the plane back to England safely. Many C-47 crews and paratroopers on board did sustain significant casualties from Flack. For example, the plane-carrying Easy Company commander, Lt. Thomas Meehan, was shot down, killing everyone on board. However, the specific incident involving the co-pilot on Winters' plane in the series is fictional. Number 9. Ronald Spears shoots Don Malarkey's neighbor from Oregon As seen in episode 2, Day of Days, it's true that Don Malarkey befriended a German prisoner from Oregon who had worked at a plant in Portland that was right across the street from the plant where Malarkey had worked, albeit at different times. The young German had answered the call and returned to the fatherland to fight for Germany. In the series, Lt. Ronald Spears approaches the group of German POWs immediately after Malarkey parts ways with the prisoner and heads down the road. Spears greets the German POWs by offering them cigarettes. The scene then cuts back to Malarkey as he hears Spears executing the group of POWs with his Thompson submachine gun. It makes for a dramatic moment in the series as Malarkey is confronted with the harsh realities of war and Ronald Spears is established as being a fearsome killer. But the scene is an embellishment of at least two separate events. While it's true that Ronald Spears was rumored to have shot prisoners and admitted to doing so in a letter to Dick Winters, there is zero evidence that Spears ever encountered that particular group of prisoners on the morning of D-Day and executed them, including the prisoner that Malarkey befriended. Malarkey himself said that he believes that Spears shot prisoners several days later when they were on the outskirts of Carentan, though he didn't witness it first hand. Private Art DiMarzio gave one of the only first hand accounts of Spears shooting prisoners, but it happened earlier, in the first few hours after they landed on D-Day, when they had no means to take prisoners. Number 8 Joe Toy's Brass Knuckles Punch A short time later during episode 2 of Band of Brothers, Joe Toy is shown using brass knuckles to silence a babbling German soldier who has just been taken prisoner during the Braycourt Manor assault. The punch is perhaps a nod to Toy's real life history of being an amateur boxer, and it helps to establish him as a tough guy in the series. However, Joe Toy wasn't the one who threw the punch in real life. According to Dick Winters, the man who threw the punch was Private Gerald Lorraine, Colonel Sink's driver, who had volunteered to join the assault because he couldn't find Sink. Buck Compton corroborated this in his memoir by saying that the man who threw the punch was a guy from headquarters. Compton said that after the man delivered the punch, the German began bleeding all over and spitting out teeth. Compton described it as senseless. Winters, who detested such treatment of prisoners, said that the German lay there moaning for about half an hour. Having spent weeks researching Joe Toy's life for a previous video, I can also say that the depiction of Toy delivering the brass knuckles punch in the series is out of character for what we know about the real Joe Toy. While fellow soldiers indeed called him the toughest of the tough, he was also a devout Christian. His fellow soldiers described him as being a good man who cared deeply about others. It would have been somewhat out of character for him to inflict that level of abuse on a soldier who was willingly surrendering. Number 7. Albert Blythe overcoming his fear of battle. Almost the entire story arc of the third episode of Band of Brothers, titled Carentan, revolves around Albert Blythe trying to overcome his fear of taking part in the fight. The fear grows so intense that he even suffers a bout of hysterical blindness during the Battle of Carentan and he is unable to see. It is true that the real Albert Blythe did experience an instance of hysterical blindness during the chaos of the battle. Essentially, the intense psychological stress resulted in adverse physical side effects. In Blythe's case, it was a period of blindness. He was that scared that he blanked out, recalled Dick Winters. The writers of the series took this one detail and expanded it into Blythe being too scared to fight for most of the episode, until he eventually musters the courage to fire his weapon. This story arc is fiction. In fact, during an interview with Pennsylvania State Representative John Payne, Dick Winters said that the way Blythe's story is presented in Band of Brothers is unfair to the man. Toward the end of the episode, Blythe volunteers for a patrol outside Carentan and gets shot in the neck by a German sniper. The wound is apparently so severe that we're told as the episode closes that Blythe eventually died from this wound in 1948. Only this is not true. Albert Blythe did get shot, but he was hit in the collarbone, not the neck. Easy Company veteran Joe Lesniewski said that the bullet caused a piece of Blythe's collarbone to come out. Though this was a significant wound, Blythe eventually made a full recovery from the compound fracture. He did not die in 1948, as is stated on the screen at the end of the episode. Not only didn't Albert Blythe die, he made a career of the military and went on to serve in the Korean War as part of Ronald Spears' regiment. While discussing the significance of Blythe's service, Dick Winters said that Blythe receiving the Purple Heart, the Silver Star, and the Bronze Star is not too shabby. It speaks for itself, said Winters. Albert Blythe's years in combat took its toll on him, as it does to so many of our veterans. He battled alcoholism while still in the military, and eventually died in December 1967 at age 44 while stationed in Germany. Oh, and the memorable speech that Ronald Spears gives to Albert Blythe during the episode, telling him that the only way he'll be able to function as a soldier supposed to function is to accept the fact that he's already dead. That entire speech was made up by the screenwriters. Once again, Albert Blythe was never so afraid that it kept him from joining the fight for a prolonged period. On a side note, it was that speech that earned actor Matthew Settle the role of Ronald Spears during the Band of Brothers auditions. Number 6. Dick Winters Flashbacks in Paris In episode 5 of Band of Brothers, titled Crossroads, Dick Winters is on a 48-hour pass in Paris and he sees a boy on a train who reminds him of the young German soldier he shot during the Crossroads battle in the Netherlands on October 5th, 1944. As he looks at the boy, he begins to have flashbacks to the face of the young German soldier who smouted him before he shot him. Winters loses track of time and space until the train reaches the end of the line. While the scene depicts the psychological toll of combat, including its lasting effects, the real Dick Winters said that the scene on the train never happened in real life. In fact, in a 2004 interview with American History Magazine, he didn't hold back in expressing that he wasn't a fan of the scene. I remember when I was interviewed for the movie, recalled Winters, I told one of the writers that as I shot the German, he looked up at me and smiled. Well, I kept going with my story, but later, as it turns out, the writer wanted to play up the thing about the smile. He wanted to play that up as a flashback, the type of bad flashbacks you can have. I have flashbacks every day, but the writer wanted to play up that point. And that is why, in the series, that German is portrayed as a kid, and why later on, when I am in Paris, they portray me looking at this kid on the train and having another flashback. It's stupid, but I didn't get the chance to review the scenes. As Dick Winters indicates, the writers of the series turned the German soldier who smiled at him into a kid to heighten the dramatic impact of the scene. In his memoir, Winters simply refers to the soldier as a German sentry and never mentions anything about him being a teenager. Author Stephen Ambrose also simply refers to the soldier as a German sentry in the Band of Brothers book, noting nothing exceptional about his age. Author Larry Alexander, who interviewed Dick Winters extensively for the biography Biggest Brother, refers to the German sentry as a man in his book. Again, the Band of Brothers writers have clearly twisted the true story in order to heighten the drama. Number 5. Bill Garnier gets hit at Bastogne while dragging Joe Toy to safety. During an intense artillery barrage in the Bois Jacques near Foy, Belgium on January 3, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge, both Joe Toy and Bill Garnier received severe wounds to their right legs from artillery shells, which ultimately resulted in both men having their legs amputated. In Band of Brothers Episode 7, titled The Breaking Point, Joe Toy gets hit first and then Bill Garnier gets hit after he reaches Joe Toy and starts dragging him to safety. This is how it is described in Stephen Ambrose's book as well. However, in a recording of the real Joe Toy that was played by Toy's stepson for the YouTube channel Vinyl-E, Joe Toy explained that while his friend Bill Garnier did risk his life and get his leg blown apart trying to get to him, Garnier never actually reached him in real life. �Bill never made it to me, but he tried, and it cost him,� Toy stated in the recording. Shifty Powers further confirmed this in his memoir by stating that when the shelling stopped, Bill Garnier was lying some distance away from Joe Toy, not right next to him as we see in the series. In the book that Bill Garnier and Babe Heffron released together called Brothers in Battle Best of Friends, Garnier states that he was in a foxhole about six to eight feet away from Toy when Toy got hit. Garnier said that Toy looked to be wounded so badly that he thought Toy was dead. He ran out to try to get Toy to safety, but as soon as he got to him, a tree burst exploded above our heads, he stated. I was hit. I fell next to Joe. I felt like I was on fire, like someone took a sizzling hot poker and was burning me. I thought I was dead. My right leg was blown off, and the snow was red from all the blood. While Garnier's recollection contradicts Joe Toy's recollection somewhat, in that Garnier believes that he actually made it to Joe Toy, Garnier never mentions that he started to drag him as we see in the series and as Ambrose states in his book, which clearly seems to be an exaggeration. Of course, this in no way detracts from Garnier's heroism in trying to help Toy, it just means that Garnier didn't get quite as far in his efforts as we see in the series. Toy's recollection of the event perhaps makes the most sense since it explains why he didn't die from the shell that blew off much of the lower portion of Garnier's right leg and why there's no mention of him being wounded further. Number 4 on our list of things in Band of Brothers that didn't happen in real life is Colonel Sink yelling at Dick Winters at Foy. During the attack on Foy in episode 7 of Band of Brothers, the then commander of Easy Company, Lieutenant Norman Dyke, is depicted as freezing up and halting the company shortly after the start of the attack, leaving many of the men in exposed positions. Captain Dick Winters yells at the men to keep moving forward. In a moment of desperation, we then see Winters start to run toward the men with the intention of taking the attack in himself. Colonel Robert Sink, the regimental commander, yells at him to stop, telling him that as battalion commander it's not his job anymore. Winters returns and sees Lieutenant Ronald Spears close by and orders him to relieve Dyke and get the attack moving. Dick Winters recalled the moment in his memoir, stating that he grabbed his M1 and started out to take command of Easy Company to get them moving again. I had only taken a few steps when I decided that my job was to lead the battalion, not a company. I turned around and walked back and there was Lieutenant Ronald C. Spears, a natural killer, standing in front of me. Spears, I said, take over that company and relieve Dyke and take that attack on in. As Winters indicates, Colonel Sink never yelled at him in real life and ordered him to stop and come back. Rather, Winters reconsidered his decision on his own and stopped himself. The inclusion of Colonel Sink yelling at Winters in the miniseries was done for dramatic effect to heighten the tension and highlight the chain of command. There's also been dispute over whether Lieutenant Norman Dyke stopped during the attack on Foy because he panicked and froze or because he was wounded, which is not shown in the series. An eyewitness, Easy Company veteran Clancy Lyle, stated in his book that Dyke stopped because he had been shot in the right shoulder. I address this in a separate video about Dyke that I'll link to at the end. Number 3. Roy Cobb's Arrest Band of Brothers paints Private Roy Cobb as a bitter, abrasive antagonist, despite many of the real life veterans saying that he was a likable, effective soldier. Private David Kenyon-Webster wrote that Cobb was invariably good-natured and friendly outside of specific incidents when he drank too much. Toward the end of episode 8, titled The Last Patrol, Easy Company is in Hagenau, France in February 1945. Roy Cobb is intoxicated and gets into a verbal altercation with Private David Kenyon-Webster and Lieutenant Henry Jones Jr. This particular altercation is fictional. In real life, Roy Cobb had been drinking with at least two other men, Donald Wiseman and Bill Morganti. A drunken Roy Cobb got into a physical altercation with Private Bob Marsh at Observation Post 2 when Cobb insisted on running a belt through a new machine gun they had been given. Stephen Ambrose states in his book that Cobb also mouthed off at Lieutenant Jack Foley and charged at him before being tackled by two other men. Foley then ordered Cobb arrested. However, this description by Ambrose is almost certainly incorrect. According to David Kenyon-Webster, it was actually Donald Wiseman, not Roy Cobb, who mouthed off at the platoon commander, Lieutenant Foley, at the platoon command post and then got into a violent argument with Captain Ronald Spears at the company command post. We know that Webster's account, written not long after the events occurred, is likely correct because the Easy Company Mourning Report, dated February 23, 1945, states that Donald Wiseman was confined to the regimental stockade on February 17, 1945. There is no mention of Cobb being arrested as well. It appears that Ambrose got the men mixed up or was told the wrong information during his interviews with the veterans. At the very end of the episode, we falsely see Cobb being loaded into a jeep and taken away by military police. Ambrose incorrectly states in his book that Cobb faced a court-martial as a result. It would then be logical to conclude that Cobb likely would have faced a dishonorable discharge. However, none of this is true. We know it's not because, for one thing, in real life, Cobb received the Award of Good Conduct medal less than two months later on April 12, 1945. It's not something that someone facing a court-martial would have received. He also appeared in this July 1945 photo of Easy Company taken in Kaprun, Austria, which indicates that he was still in the army. And according to his military records, Cobb later re-enlisted into the regular army on January 9, 1946, which definitively shuts down any notion of a dishonorable discharge. Number 2 Easy Company Discovers the Concentration Camp The ninth episode of Band of Brothers, titled Why We Fight, is one of the most emotionally gripping episodes of the series. It depicts Easy Company discovering and liberating the Kaufering 4 concentration camp located near the town of Landsberg in southwest Bavaria, Germany, roughly 40 miles west of Munich. The problem with this depiction is that Easy Company didn't actually discover the camp. It was the 12th Armored Division that first discovered the camp on April 27, 1945 and began liberation efforts. Members of Easy Company came upon the camp the next day and assisted with the liberation efforts that were already underway. The recreation of the Kaufering 4 camp in this series is largely accurate. Members of Easy Company, including Frank Perconti, encountered skeletal survivors, mass graves, and nearby rail cars filled with bodies. Like in the series, Easy Company helped to distribute food and medical care. Some members of the company gave the emaciated prisoners some of their rations, only to later learn that doing so could put them at risk for re-feeding syndrome. In the series, Joseph Liebgott, who speaks German, is given the tough assignment of announcing to the prisoners that they have to stop eating and go back inside the camp so that their food intake could be controlled. While the real Joseph Liebgott did speak German and acted as one of Easy Company's interpreters, including at the camp, that particular scene involving Liebgott making the announcement is fictional. In fact, the real Joseph Liebgott was not Jewish. According to his family, he was a German Roman Catholic. Many of the other soldiers in Easy Company believed that he was Jewish due to his last name and he never bothered to correct them. Liebgott died in 1992, the same year that Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers book was published. Ambrose, who began work on the book in 1988, never interviewed Joseph Liebgott and only learned about him second-hand through some of the other men. This is why he mistakenly thought Liebgott was Jewish, an error that is carried over to the series. Number 1. Major Dick Winters lets the German officer keep his pistol In the final episode of the series, titled Points, German soldiers are surrendering in Austria and we see a German colonel standing before Major Dick Winters, who is seated at a desk. The colonel unholsters his sidearm, a Luger P08, and offers it by the barrel to Major Winters. Please accept this as my formal surrender, Major, the colonel says. Winters stands, looks the German colonel in the eye, and replies, You may keep your sidearm, colonel. The colonel then salutes Major Winters before turning and leaving. Band of Brothers presents this as a gesture of respect that Winters is extending to the colonel. However, this isn't the way that it went down in real life. In real life, Winters accepted the pistol from the German officer instead of telling him he could keep it. And the real account did not involve a German colonel, it involved the German major from a panzer unit. What we don't see in Band of Brothers is that Winters had spent time getting to know the major the day prior, talking to him about tactics and soldiering in general. Winters discovered that he had fought the man at Bastogne. He learned that the German major had been wounded six times during the war, but was always able to return to the fight. In real life, due to the fact that he had gotten to know Winters, the German major presented his weapon to Winters as both a token of friendship and as a formal surrender to his captor. However, he did so on his own volition, wrote Winters in his memoir, rather than leaving his pistol on a desk in some office. Not accepting the pistol, which was actually a Walther PP, not a Luger, would have been an insult. Winters kept the pistol for the rest of his life. The ten things presented here from Band of Brothers that never happened in real life are by no means the only things that this show embellishes. For example, as I've discussed in other videos, EZ Company in the 506th did not win the race to the Nazi mountain retreat of Berchtesgaden and Hitler's Eagle's Nest as the show depicts. That credit goes to the 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division. Also Buck Compton fired back at Band of Brothers depiction of him falling apart at Bastogne, explaining that in real life, he wasn't experiencing shell shock, rather he was overcome with anger and frustration that EZ Company's commander, Lt. Norman Dyke, was never around when they needed him, including immediately following the shelling that severely wounded Bill Garnier and Joe Toy. Then there are other minor things that were changed. For instance, George Luz never got rejected and slapped by a German farm girl. The rejection happened to a different soldier, Corporal LaVon Reese, who's not focused on in Band of Brothers. And the list of fabrications certainly doesn't end there. When Dick Winters complained to producer Tom Hanks about Band of Brothers' lack of historical accuracy, telling Hanks that he was hoping the series would be at least 80% accurate, Hanks told him, Look, Major, this is Hollywood. At the end of the day, we will be hailed as geniuses if we get this 12% right. We are going to shoot for 17%, and if we succeed, you need to be satisfied. Fair enough, replied Winters. While it's hard not to get frustrated after discovering the number of things in Band of Brothers that were exaggerated, twisted, or outright made up, the series is still more historically accurate than most WWII movies and series. For example, about 80% of Saving Private Ryan, which itself was inspired by three lines from Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers book, is mostly fiction. Other D-Day movies, like 1962's The Longest Day, prioritize Hollywood spectacle and outsized heroics over the gritty realism captured in Band of Brothers. Nearly all movies and TV series based on true stories contain significant embellishments, usually in an effort to make the story more enjoyable. With that said, Band of Brothers stands above almost all others in its genre, which is one reason why it is still revered and talked about to this day, despite its numerous inaccuracies. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like. If you want to learn more about how Band of Brothers compares to the true story of Easy Company, as well as what became of the soldiers after WWII, check out the videos linked on the screen, and be sure to subscribe to our channel. Anchors away my friends!