Spiers' run through Foy was a bit longer than depicted, and he was supposedly taunting the Germans for not being able to hit him the whole time he was running through them. The run length is verified. The taunting... none of us were there, but given Spiers conduct, it wouldn't be surprising. Now, to Dike. I've posted this same dialog on countless reactor channels, because it's worth remembering that this show is based off history, and tries for enough accuracy to be accepted by remaining Easy company survivors in 2001 - while still incorporating a good bit of "Hollywood". The actual story of Norman Dike is that he had been an officer in HQ battalion of the 2nd PIR before being assigned as Easy company's new CO (commanding officer) after Moose Heyliger was shot. Before coming to Easy, he earned his first Bronze Star for actions that took place between September 23rd to 25th of 1944 (Market Garden). During that time, he was cited as having "organized and led scattered groups of parachutists in the successful defense of an important road junction on the vital Eindhoven-Arnhem supply route against superior and repeated attacks, while completely surrounded.” As Easy company's new CO, he earned his second Bronze Star at Bastogne, in which “he personally removed from an exposed position, in full enemy view, three wounded members of his company, while under intense small arms fire”. Personally, he was a strange, detached guy who never bonded with Easy or made much of an effort to try. He had a gigantic foxhole dug for him - which further alienated him from the Easy company guys. He didn't help his own image either by constantly disappearing (it was rumored that when he “disappeared”, he was back closer to Bastogne hanging out with his old buddies in HQ battalion). And he completely froze up during the assault on Foy. It was an active attack, and his freezing up cost many men their lives. An internet rumor has sprung up that Dike was wounded, suffering from blood loss, etc. This is completely untrue! He just froze up. Although at least one member of Easy say they thought they saw him get hit, none of Easy company's reports contain anything about Norman Dike being wounded. If he was just some guy in the unit, you could make an argument that maybe it was omitted in error. But the company commander being wounded would surely make it onto multiple reports. So, he was just in over his head. A few other bits that differ from what's depicted: Hoobler had a pistol in his pocket, and it fired while he was shaking snow off his tent. It was supposedly an obscure model of Belgian pistol in .32 caliber that was smaller than a Luger. He didn't die right there in the snow, but was evacuated back to an aid station in the rear. When he arrived at the aid station, it was found he had died on the way there. Regarding Capt. Winters not going out to Easy during the attack on Foy, Winters was still the Executive officer (2nd in command) of the battalion. The battalion commanding officer was Lt. Col. Strayer, but for some reason he had told Winters to run the attack. Strayer stayed in his command post when the attack was happening (which Col. Sink was definitely not happy about!). When Dike stopped, Winters started to run out, then stopped himself - reasoning that if he went out there, there would be no one to run the attack (Easy was just the assault company - there were a lot of other soldiers involved in supporting their attack).
He did it allright. The producers of the show confirmed that Speirs killed the prisoners from the man himself through Winters. On D-Day plus one there was no possibility of keeping German prisoners and treating them as they should be. Guarded and fed. The paratroopers were told not to take prisoners and Speirs was doing as he was told.
The story about Spiers killing the prisoners is true, although it may have been under different circumstances than was portrayed in the show. It was confirmed in an interview with Dick Winters. Dick said once that Spiers was the cruelest man he knew, but you needed cruel men in war. The guy doing the interview asked Dick about this, and Dick told him about it. He said that Steven Ambrose called him one day and told him they had a problem. Lawyers from Simon and Shuster called him and were worried about potential lawsuits from some of the stories that were in the book. The Spiers story was one of them, the portrayal of Nix drinking too much was another. Dick told him not to worry about it, he would handle it. He said he wasn't worried about Nix, he knew that wouldn't be an issue, but the Spiers story was something else. Dick said he called Spiers and said 'hey Sparky, you know those rumors that were floating around, about D-Day, were they true? He said Spiers said 'oh yeah Dick, they're true'. He told Speirs about the phone call from Ambrose and the Lawyers concerns and Spiers said don't worry about it. He would write them and letter and tell them what happened. Apparently he did just that, and Dick said it was never an issue after that, because it was true. The interview with Winters is out there on youtube, which is where I got this info from. I may have paraphrased a little.
Hi, it’s so interesting to see how the way a ‘character’ is portrayed sways your view of him or her. According to various websites Lt. Norman Dike had been in the Army since at least May 1942 and whilst his earlier involvement in the war isn’t mentioned at all in BoB he was probably a competent officer and had already been decorated for bravery in Europe and had put some hard yards in by the time he arrived with Easy Company. All we see however is the tired, burnt out loser who falls apart having been actually shot during the attack on Foy. Contrast this view with Buck Compton and his portrayal as a good leader and great guy etc, etc. however he too is tired and burnt out by the end of this episode having been through similar events as Dike. Maybe the mental state of these two guys is not dissimilar. Justice for Norman Dike.
Or...The connected guy got connected with connections and we shouldn't be ignoring all of easy company and their entire experience with him. There is always 1 guy who writes this evidence-free copypasta on this episode when reacted.
@@betathoughtexperiment I think it’s a reflection of our culture now, where the cruelest thing you can do is say something someone thinks isn’t kind enough, so we want to rehabilitate a guy who was viewed as being a poor combat leader. Instead of realizing that one may be a decent human being AND a poor combat leader, we try to airbrush his performance. I am fully with you that his Bronze Stars were fluff for his resume. When you compare what he got his two Bronze Stars for to all the things even other officers did which got no medals (like Dick Winters’ masterstroke at The Island in episode 5, for which he received absolutely nothing except a lot of extra unpaid duties), we should be able to suss out what’s up with Dike’s service record. Yes, he may have been wounded at Foy. This is in dispute. He did not receive a Purple Heart and wasn’t evacuated to a hospital, but still - maybe. He may have decided out of embarrassment not to go for fuller treatment. Winters did concede that he and the rest of battalion staff likely missed early signs of combat fatigue with him. What is NOT in dispute is that he failed in the field so badly that he was an overt threat to get them all killed. Winters flat-out states that Speirs saved many lives at Foy *because* he was an informed, thoughtful, resourceful, and clear-headed combat leader. How did he get to be that way? He STUDIED. Lt. Shames says he used to debrief privately with Speirs after every patrol (apparently they got along well with each other), comparing notes, discussing situations (“what would you do here?” “What’s the better approach here?”) and learning from each other constantly. They were both very determined to be the best combat leaders they could be. Winters, too, re-read and studied infantry tactics textbooks and journals all the time, even in Bastogne. Dike ever do that? No? I rest my case. How did Dike get where he was? He was tall, athletic, handsome, square-jawed, deep-voiced, rich, and educated. He checked all the boxes for the image the Army wanted to project. But he did not seek to lead these men by his quality, and so lacked the combat skills and leadership presence to be a combat leader. I think Guarnere summed it up best when he was putting up a half-hearted defense of Dike against Lipton after the war: “he was a boy amongst men”. Again, for any of these Dike apologists, this doesn’t mean he was a bad person. Like you said, we can’t just make these copypasta BS excuses. Dike was *never* going to lead those men like Speirs did. Dike was a paper-pusher - maybe even a good one. The Army does need paper-pushers. He did retire a Lt. Col. from the National Guard. But he was irresponsible in his field command, as evidenced by the fact that the Easy guys never could stand him and like Sobel he was never given a combat command ever again.
@@betathoughtexperiment I just think it’s very easy for us watching the events of the war unfold on screen to get very high and mighty. I have never done military service, but I listened closely to my grandfather who served in WW2 in an artillery regiment with 3rd Canadian Division, and was there with the first wave at Juno Beach on D-Day. He was like the vast majority of soldiers: average-ish. He was not out to be the greatest Canadian hero ever, although he did his duty, some of it extremely dangerous, was wounded twice, and escaped capture once. But he was a bit of a discipline problem (get-rich-quick schemes, he was Scottish after all) and was promoted and demoted repeatedly. He never would have been an officer, he never would have won the Victoria Cross- and that’s ok. He was *my* hero and I don’t need to embellish his record for him to be that. To me, it’s ok that he in essence stole blankets the army ordered decommissioned and disposed of, had a convent launder, then sell them to French civilians, and pocket the entire proceeds. To me, that’s charming. I don’t need to pretend like he was going to jump into Berlin and cut Hitler’s windpipe just before Joe Toye could, because he wasn’t. What he did was enough.
Norman Dike got more justice than he deserved, seeing as how his lack of action at Foy cost his company so many casualties. He was taken to the rear - to become the assistant operations officer for the 506th Regimental HQ - then was promoted to Captain and made one of several aides to General Maxwell Taylor. After the war, he returned to Yale to earn his law degree, and eventually retired from the army as a Lt. Col., having also served in Korea. Your call of "Justice for Dike" is grotesquely inappropriate when you consider how many men under his command received no such justice when his lack of actions changed or ended their lives forever! Buck is only praised in this series, and he's remembered favorably by the men he served with that were close to him. Winters liked Buck, but considered his breaking as a sore spot between the two (as the entire company endured everything Buck did, yet few men broke). After the war, at one of the reunions, Nixon told Buck to his face that he was a coward!
Spiers' run through Foy was a bit longer than depicted, and he was supposedly taunting the Germans for not being able to hit him the whole time he was running through them. The run length is verified. The taunting... none of us were there, but given Spiers conduct, it wouldn't be surprising.
Now, to Dike. I've posted this same dialog on countless reactor channels, because it's worth remembering that this show is based off history, and tries for enough accuracy to be accepted by remaining Easy company survivors in 2001 - while still incorporating a good bit of "Hollywood".
The actual story of Norman Dike is that he had been an officer in HQ battalion of the 2nd PIR before being assigned as Easy company's new CO (commanding officer) after Moose Heyliger was shot.
Before coming to Easy, he earned his first Bronze Star for actions that took place between September 23rd to 25th of 1944 (Market Garden). During that time, he was cited as having "organized and led scattered groups of parachutists in the successful defense of an important road junction on the vital Eindhoven-Arnhem supply route against superior and repeated attacks, while completely surrounded.”
As Easy company's new CO, he earned his second Bronze Star at Bastogne, in which “he personally removed from an exposed position, in full enemy view, three wounded members of his company, while under intense small arms fire”.
Personally, he was a strange, detached guy who never bonded with Easy or made much of an effort to try. He had a gigantic foxhole dug for him - which further alienated him from the Easy company guys. He didn't help his own image either by constantly disappearing (it was rumored that when he “disappeared”, he was back closer to Bastogne hanging out with his old buddies in HQ battalion).
And he completely froze up during the assault on Foy. It was an active attack, and his freezing up cost many men their lives.
An internet rumor has sprung up that Dike was wounded, suffering from blood loss, etc. This is completely untrue! He just froze up.
Although at least one member of Easy say they thought they saw him get hit, none of Easy company's reports contain anything about Norman Dike being wounded. If he was just some guy in the unit, you could make an argument that maybe it was omitted in error. But the company commander being wounded would surely make it onto multiple reports.
So, he was just in over his head.
A few other bits that differ from what's depicted:
Hoobler had a pistol in his pocket, and it fired while he was shaking snow off his tent. It was supposedly an obscure model of Belgian pistol in .32 caliber that was smaller than a Luger. He didn't die right there in the snow, but was evacuated back to an aid station in the rear. When he arrived at the aid station, it was found he had died on the way there.
Regarding Capt. Winters not going out to Easy during the attack on Foy, Winters was still the Executive officer (2nd in command) of the battalion. The battalion commanding officer was Lt. Col. Strayer, but for some reason he had told Winters to run the attack. Strayer stayed in his command post when the attack was happening (which Col. Sink was definitely not happy about!). When Dike stopped, Winters started to run out, then stopped himself - reasoning that if he went out there, there would be no one to run the attack (Easy was just the assault company - there were a lot of other soldiers involved in supporting their attack).
He did it allright. The producers of the show confirmed that Speirs killed the prisoners from the man himself through Winters. On D-Day plus one there was no possibility of keeping German prisoners and treating them as they should be. Guarded and fed. The paratroopers were told not to take prisoners and Speirs was doing as he was told.
They also confirmed that Speirs did shoot a drunken Sergeant too, for giving away their positions by not following orders for noise discipline.
Yup its amazing that Spears can run like that with those massive titanium orbs hanging down there.
The tank was considerate enough to move out of the way to give him all the room he needed.
"Speirs is like invincible" Just wait like 3 minutes lol
The story about Spiers killing the prisoners is true, although it may have been under different circumstances than was portrayed in the show. It was confirmed in an interview with Dick Winters. Dick said once that Spiers was the cruelest man he knew, but you needed cruel men in war. The guy doing the interview asked Dick about this, and Dick told him about it. He said that Steven Ambrose called him one day and told him they had a problem. Lawyers from Simon and Shuster called him and were worried about potential lawsuits from some of the stories that were in the book. The Spiers story was one of them, the portrayal of Nix drinking too much was another.
Dick told him not to worry about it, he would handle it. He said he wasn't worried about Nix, he knew that wouldn't be an issue, but the Spiers story was something else. Dick said he called Spiers and said 'hey Sparky, you know those rumors that were floating around, about D-Day, were they true? He said Spiers said 'oh yeah Dick, they're true'. He told Speirs about the phone call from Ambrose and the Lawyers concerns and Spiers said don't worry about it. He would write them and letter and tell them what happened. Apparently he did just that, and Dick said it was never an issue after that, because it was true.
The interview with Winters is out there on youtube, which is where I got this info from. I may have paraphrased a little.
Lugers were notoriously known to misfire or go off on their own.
they either did NOT fire when you pulled the trigger or they fired when you were NOT even touching them.
Especially he obscure Belgian knock off Hoobler had IRL
Pub, you'll like the next episode.
Hi, it’s so interesting to see how the way a ‘character’ is portrayed sways your view of him or her. According to various websites Lt. Norman Dike had been in the Army since at least May 1942 and whilst his earlier involvement in the war isn’t mentioned at all in BoB he was probably a competent officer and had already been decorated for bravery in Europe and had put some hard yards in by the time he arrived with Easy Company. All we see however is the tired, burnt out loser who falls apart having been actually shot during the attack on Foy.
Contrast this view with Buck Compton and his portrayal as a good leader and great guy etc, etc. however he too is tired and burnt out by the end of this episode having been through similar events as Dike. Maybe the mental state of these two guys is not dissimilar. Justice for Norman Dike.
Or...The connected guy got connected with connections and we shouldn't be ignoring all of easy company and their entire experience with him. There is always 1 guy who writes this evidence-free copypasta on this episode when reacted.
@@betathoughtexperiment I think it’s a reflection of our culture now, where the cruelest thing you can do is say something someone thinks isn’t kind enough, so we want to rehabilitate a guy who was viewed as being a poor combat leader. Instead of realizing that one may be a decent human being AND a poor combat leader, we try to airbrush his performance. I am fully with you that his Bronze Stars were fluff for his resume. When you compare what he got his two Bronze Stars for to all the things even other officers did which got no medals (like Dick Winters’ masterstroke at The Island in episode 5, for which he received absolutely nothing except a lot of extra unpaid duties), we should be able to suss out what’s up with Dike’s service record.
Yes, he may have been wounded at Foy. This is in dispute. He did not receive a Purple Heart and wasn’t evacuated to a hospital, but still - maybe. He may have decided out of embarrassment not to go for fuller treatment. Winters did concede that he and the rest of battalion staff likely missed early signs of combat fatigue with him.
What is NOT in dispute is that he failed in the field so badly that he was an overt threat to get them all killed. Winters flat-out states that Speirs saved many lives at Foy *because* he was an informed, thoughtful, resourceful, and clear-headed combat leader. How did he get to be that way? He STUDIED. Lt. Shames says he used to debrief privately with Speirs after every patrol (apparently they got along well with each other), comparing notes, discussing situations (“what would you do here?” “What’s the better approach here?”) and learning from each other constantly. They were both very determined to be the best combat leaders they could be. Winters, too, re-read and studied infantry tactics textbooks and journals all the time, even in Bastogne. Dike ever do that? No? I rest my case.
How did Dike get where he was? He was tall, athletic, handsome, square-jawed, deep-voiced, rich, and educated. He checked all the boxes for the image the Army wanted to project. But he did not seek to lead these men by his quality, and so lacked the combat skills and leadership presence to be a combat leader. I think Guarnere summed it up best when he was putting up a half-hearted defense of Dike against Lipton after the war: “he was a boy amongst men”.
Again, for any of these Dike apologists, this doesn’t mean he was a bad person. Like you said, we can’t just make these copypasta BS excuses. Dike was *never* going to lead those men like Speirs did. Dike was a paper-pusher - maybe even a good one. The Army does need paper-pushers. He did retire a Lt. Col. from the National Guard. But he was irresponsible in his field command, as evidenced by the fact that the Easy guys never could stand him and like Sobel he was never given a combat command ever again.
@@va3svd now that is a balanced response.
@@betathoughtexperiment I just think it’s very easy for us watching the events of the war unfold on screen to get very high and mighty. I have never done military service, but I listened closely to my grandfather who served in WW2 in an artillery regiment with 3rd Canadian Division, and was there with the first wave at Juno Beach on D-Day. He was like the vast majority of soldiers: average-ish. He was not out to be the greatest Canadian hero ever, although he did his duty, some of it extremely dangerous, was wounded twice, and escaped capture once. But he was a bit of a discipline problem (get-rich-quick schemes, he was Scottish after all) and was promoted and demoted repeatedly. He never would have been an officer, he never would have won the Victoria Cross- and that’s ok. He was *my* hero and I don’t need to embellish his record for him to be that. To me, it’s ok that he in essence stole blankets the army ordered decommissioned and disposed of, had a convent launder, then sell them to French civilians, and pocket the entire proceeds. To me, that’s charming. I don’t need to pretend like he was going to jump into Berlin and cut Hitler’s windpipe just before Joe Toye could, because he wasn’t. What he did was enough.
Norman Dike got more justice than he deserved, seeing as how his lack of action at Foy cost his company so many casualties. He was taken to the rear - to become the assistant operations officer for the 506th Regimental HQ - then was promoted to Captain and made one of several aides to General Maxwell Taylor. After the war, he returned to Yale to earn his law degree, and eventually retired from the army as a Lt. Col., having also served in Korea.
Your call of "Justice for Dike" is grotesquely inappropriate when you consider how many men under his command received no such justice when his lack of actions changed or ended their lives forever!
Buck is only praised in this series, and he's remembered favorably by the men he served with that were close to him. Winters liked Buck, but considered his breaking as a sore spot between the two (as the entire company endured everything Buck did, yet few men broke).
After the war, at one of the reunions, Nixon told Buck to his face that he was a coward!
Montana Jordan?
Sever the femoral artery, and, you can bleed out in as little as 2 minutes.
Great reaction! It is very interesting to see your detailed reaction to the film Robocop 1987. This is a cool movie 🦾🤖🔥