A Band Of Brothers essays

A Band Of Brothers essays This book takes the reader on a great journey, one filled with excitement and sadness. The reader is a rifleman in Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army, the greatest rifle company in the world. It all starts at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, then escalates to D-Day (Their first combat jump), and then to Hitlers Eagles Nest at Berchtesgaden. Basic Training at Fort Toccoa was the toughest BT in the Armed Forces. At Toccoa, they took in baby-faced recruits and turned them into lean, mean killing machines. Each of the 140 men and 7 officers who had come to Ft. Toccoa had either been an athlete or a hunter in high school. Toccoa was so tough that many of the OFFICERS didnt make it through there. The instructors in Georgia were very tough on these men. They knew that they had to be in supreme physical condition, or else they would never survive. To get these men in top physical condition, the drill sergeants ran the men up and down a hill that they called Currahee (Indian for We stand alone.) This hill was 3 miles up and 3 miles back. The men ran this hill at least once a day, if not twice. By the time the men shipped out of Georgia 8 weeks later, they were in the best fighting shape of their lives. On the night of June 6, 1944, the men from Easy Company loaded up into 8 c-47 carrier planes. Flying over Normandy, many planes were hit and began to go down, so men had to jump from 250 feet while going 150 miles an hour. When they actually hit the ground, many of the men could not find their gear and had to sometimes make do with just a field knife. As the men landed, (they were scattered about 5 miles apart, as the planes had been blown off course by the Anti-Aircraft fire.) they tried to group together in bands and make their way to the rallying point. Many men were killed, because they would accidentally walk right into a German ma ...