Renée is thought to have represented Renée Lemaire: a Belgian volunteer nurse that offered her services to the allies when she found herself trapped in Bastogne during the German offensive. On Christmas Eve during the bombings, Renée was killed while evacuating wounded soldiers from the aid station, having gone back to rescue a 7th soldier. Her body was wrapped in a white parachute that she had collected earlier in the day and had planned on using to create a wedding dress. She was remembered by many to be an inspiring presence to the wounded and someone who dedicated every minute to helping others during Bastogne. While there is no record of Doc Roe ever meeting Renée, it is entirely possible and even likely, and the shows inclusion of her does a wonderful job telling a part of warfare that is often forgotten by many: The selfless acts of strangers that wore different uniforms or no uniform at all doing their part in a very trying time of human history. Renée represents the Angels of Bastogne and all civilians that played a part and gave their lives in service of others
@@ChrisCrossClashmy guess is that since it was at night and much much closer target to the German lines that by the time they would have been able to respond the raid was over.
@@ChrisCrossClash my basic understanding of the siege of Bastogne is that awful winter weather/cloud cover greatly reduced air assets. My guess as to why the German were successful is that, like RAF bombers during the day raids, they indiscriminately carpet bombed areas regardless of collateral damage, so lack of visibility of the target meant little. I’m sure this is vastly different for fighter pilots trying to target air targets in the clouds
Walter "Smokey" Gordon, the machine gunner who was paralyzed by a sniper, actually survived the war. He was evacuated, returned to the US. It was a long recovery time, but he eventually regained the use of his limbs. He married, had 5 children. He died in 1997.
God knows if it's true or not, but the story goes that years later he returned to the forest, to the foxhole where he was hit, went down into it, and found his cup still there. I want to live in a world where that happened, so I choose to believe it.
As I understand it, the bullet entered his shoulder where you see it hit, and then it ran down the length of his spine and exited his back, hence why he was paralyzed. Bullets do weird things when they hit things, especially bodies.
I think the whole thing about Doc Roe not knowing people's names is that he is purposefully distancing himself from them emotionally. Having to be the one that sees them die and get injured over and over is extremely hard and he's trying to dissociate. But at the same time I feel that Renee, in her death, inspires him to open up more since it's part of what makes her a good nurse. He invests more in the guys (like using their nicknames) and it helps him overcome the burnout that Winters notices. I love episode so much for nuances like that, it's what inspired me to become an EMT when I watched it as a teen.
I've been watching this show for 20 years and haven't thought about it that way until reading your comment. Very good take, I think you're probably right
VERY good take. Haven't seen that perspective either. Question: Outside of just wanting supplies, why was Doc looking for morphine? I've seen this episode so many times and never thought why would Doc want more outside of just wanting another pair or scissors or more bandages. Haylo and Kiss mention something about keeping warm which never struck me until the next 45 seconds hes looking for morphine and even a solider mentioning to hide it. Was using the morphine to keep warm a thing? @@andrewrippel6164
I served in the first Gulf War in the Mechanized Infantry. There’s sort of a thing in the combat arms. In garrison combat soldiers tend to look down on medics. Soldiers are always reporting to sick call, trying to get off work and the medics are always like, “Here’s a couple of Tylenol, get down to the motor pool!” In combat, however, all that changes. The soldiers tend to look after the medics without limits. Doc Roe keeping his distance reflects his own mental & emotional defense mechanism: he can’t get too close to men that he won’t be successful saving.
Renée Lemaire and Augusta Chiwy were real people. Renée Lemaire was a trained nurse, who was visiting her parents in Bastogne for Christmas 1944. Her fiancé we a Jewish man who was taken by the Gestapo earlier in the year. When Bastogne became surrounded by the surprise German advance, Renée volunteered at the American aid station, where she served under Dr John “Jack” Prior. On Christmas Eve 1944, the Germans bombed Bastogne. Renée helped rescue 6 people from a burning building, but when she went back in to get more people, the building collapsed, and she was killed. The Airborne recovered her body, and returned her to her parents wrapped in a parachute. Augusta Chiwy was also a practicing nurse, who was also visiting her parents in Bastogne for Christmas 1944. Her father was a Belgian soldier, and her mother was from Congo. Like Renée, when the town became surrounded, Augusta volunteered at the American aid station. During the Christmas Eve bombing, Augusta was blown through a wall, but survived with only minor injuries. After the war, she continued to practice nursing, specializing in neck and spinal injuries. She married a Belgian soldier, and they had two children together. Finally, in 2012, both the United States and Belgian governments recognized Augusta’s contributions to the Seige of Bastogne, awarding her the highest civilian merit each country can bestow. Augusta Chiwy passed away in 2015, at the age of 94. Together, Renée Lemaire and Augusta Chiwy are known as the Angels of Bastogne. Both of them are buried together at a cemetery in Bastogne.
So, the story of ‘Nuts’ is even better than it was relayed in the show. When Easy was trucked in to Bastogne, the commander of the 101st was, I think, at a conference and the deputy commander was at a wedding. The 101st’ 3rd in command, Gen. Anthony McAuliffe was acting commander. The way the story goes, he’s been up for 3 straight days, organizing the defense and was able to catch a few minutes sleep. That was the exact moment the German’s demand for the surrender of Bastogne arrived. McAuliffe’s second in command came and nudged him awake, saying, “Sorry to wake you, sir, but the Germans are here to discuss surrender.” “They are? We accept!” “Uh….. no, sir…… they want us to surrender to them.” Now, McCauliffe was known as a man who never swore. He responded, “Us surrender??!!?? Aw, nuts!” McCauliffe’s aide smiled in agreement but said, “Ok, sir, no problem…… but they did deliver a written request and we’ll have to write something back.” McCauliffe responded, “Ok, well, what do we write?” “Well, I like what you originally said, let’s write that.” “I haven’t slept in days….. what did I even say?” “You said ‘Nuts,’ sir.” McCaulifde takes the request for their surrender and scrawls “To the German Commander: Nuts!” When the answer was given to the waiting German officer, he reads it and is utterly confused, “Vas ist Nuss?” An exhausted GI helped him out, “It means ‘get lost!’”
Realistically, there was no way the 101st could be defeated at Bastogne. Beaten up, sure. Frozen half to death, sure. It was awful there and I don't want to take anything away from the men who fought there and defended it. But they could have defended their lines indefinitely against the siege. They actually outnumbered the surrounding Germans at that point. The rest of the attackers had bypassed the city and were trying to capture key bridges and press on to Antwerp. Taking Bastogne was not a serious objective, just an obstacle. It did, however, tie up quite a few German soldiers who could not help with the attack to the northwest. Of course, the Americans didn't know that, but they did know they didn't want to surrender, and also on some level I think they knew if the Germans were capable of taking the town, they would just go ahead and do that instead of demand a surrender. It was essentially a bluff, and the 101st called that bluff. Later, as the situation became more well understood, of course the 101st are completely correct in insisting they didn't need to be rescued. Of course, as poorly supplied as the Allies at Bastogne were, and without artillery or air support, going on the offensive and breaking out of Bastogne themselves was likely just as impossible as the Germans capturing Bastogne by force. So in that sense, reinforcements arriving and opening a supply line had to come from the outside to break the stalemate. But the Allies there were in no danger of losing. The whole Battle of the Bulge was a foolish, desperate attack by a nearly defeated Germany, and it hastened the end of the war.
Really enjoying the reaction, but just want to clarify that Doc Roe was DEFINITELY not personally dosing on the morphine! When they are talking about being short on supplies, morphine is one of those supplies, so he is trying to scrounge what he can. That is also why the soldier wounded in the leg turns it down, so others that are wounded more severely can have it.
Yeah, it wasnt used for the cold, i doubt morphine would change that. Rather, they are concerned if they donate their morphine there won't be any for them if they get hit.
@@matthewjordan7297they definitely didnt, but given those conditions I sure wouldn’t blame them if they slipped and did! I can’t imagine how hard it was.
80 years later, the foxholes are still in the forest. You can walk through and find random things like cups of china and doorknobs. The doors were taken from the nearest town to cover foxholes. Decades later, the wood rotted away, leaving the metal doorknobs for us to find today.
Proud to say my wife's Grandma was a nurse in the Battle of the Bulge. She was awarded the French Legion of Honour for her service. And she mostly cared for German POWs. When we asked her what that was like, she said "I did my very best to take care of them the way I hoped their nurses were taking care of our boys over on their side."
God Bless your Grandmother, and all of the incredibly brave and compassionate Nurses, who were always just a short distance behind the Front Lines, risking their lives, to bring care and comfort , to these wounded Boys,many, too young to buy a Beer ,
My uncle Milo fought in the Battle of the Bulge near St. Vith. He was a heavy machine gunner (like Smokey, the soldier paralyzed in this ep). On December 16th he and his squad were cut off and evaded capture in the woods for days before returning to friendly lines, on Christmas Eve. As soon as he hooked up with a larger group of men (the same day, Christmas Eve), they turned around and went right back into the battle. He was eventually evac'd to the rear with trench foot and frost bitten feet, so bad he couldn't walk. He was awarded a bronze star for the battle. He was a wonderful writer (was a writer in Stars and Stripes several times during the war) and when he got home he wrote about that Christmas Eve. I have the typewritten pages (on that super thin old typing paper) with his signature and handwritten copyright. The Bastogne episode always wrecks me.
Fascinating story about your Uncle. I'm named after my Uncle, Pfc Bruce L. Anderson, 83rd Div. He was KIA December 14, 1944 in the Hurtgen Forest. I have all his letters he wrote home. I was able to visit The Netherlands American Cemetery outside Margraten, Holland on June 6, 2018. God Bless All Their Souls.
@@bruceanderson1165 I am currently lobbying for my upcoming nephew to be named Milo. He earned the right to be remembered. I have the letters he wrote home to his brother, along with my own correspondence with him in the 1990s. ETA It is on my bucket list to follow Milo's path from Chipping Norton through France to St. Vith. Milo was in the 106th, and many of that division suffered a terrible fate. On top of that, the Battle of the Bulge was their first taste of real combat. I wish someone (looking at you, Spielberg and Hanks) would tell their story, because they also deserve to be remembered.
My uncle Bob was also at Bastogne and was evacuated because of trench foot. Other than that and once healed being reassigned, he said nothing about it.
My Uncle was Murrel Swan, he also fought in the battle of the bulge but in Luxembourg not Bastogne, he is the soldier that is a famous picture of him shaking a dog's paw from a makeshift tent/foxhole
I had watched and rewatched this series for years before i ever watched a reaction channel. Yours is the first time i've ever seen anyone notice the lack of music in this episode, and you know what? As many times as i've watched it, i NEVER noticed that until you said something.
My late father was in the Bulge. He was frostbitten and always hated cold weather the rest of his life. The worst part was sleeping in a hole on the frozen ground!)
The portrayal of the medic was essential to telling this story. It's one kind of bravery to carry a gun and stand your ground not letting the enemy advance. It's another kind of bravery to not carry a weapon yet still run into the middle of bullets, bombs, and shell bursts to try and save lives. So much respect for combat medics!
This is the episode I identify most with. I was a Navy Hospital Corpsman - Doc. (counterpart to Doc Roe's medic) I served 10 years, 8 were with Marines. Doc is a title earned, through being there with the grunts, shaing their hardships & then keeping going with your own task of patching them up. Doc is always on the move checking on his grunts then staring all over again. For another amazing movie about a medic, I highly recommend watching Hacksaw Ridge. ( If you do, I will tell my story of that battleground in a comment on it) The 2 nurses were referred to by the troops as the Angels of Bastogne. As for the morphine syrettes, Doc wasn't dosing himself, if you don't get resupplied, and you are treating wounded, sooner or later you WILL run out. As for the syrettes themselves, they had to be kept warm. If they froze solid they were useless so troops would keep them in there pockets or even in their underwear to keep warm so they could be used. Doc Roe at this point is nearly the breaking point. He hasn't had a break in weeks. As a Doc I have seen the inside of every race on the planet. The Docs in that war saw much more than me.
two dozen plus here. iIt doesn't get easier. My grandpa was in 3rd army in ww2. He drove generals around Europe in a Mercedes. He later married my Grandmother and her name was Mercedes! He would joke that " I rode a Mercedes in Europe , now I ride one here" . LOLOL
I had a great uncle who was an MP at Bastogne during the battle. He was hit by an artillery strike and hurt so badly that his comrades thought he was dead, and rolled him into a ditch by the side of the road. It got so cold that night that it stopped him from bleeding out. When someone realized he wasn't dead and brought him to a church that had been converted into an aid station he nearly bled to death once he got warm enough to bleed again. He survived, and lived to be nearly 100 years old.
"Hide your Morphene guys!" So I have some on me for when I get hit. The remark of Roe having it for personal use was just a wisecrack. He's the medic, he's the guy that should have it in abundance.
You noticed the lack of music. There’s also very little color. Except for the blue head scarf. I’ll never forget the gut punch the first time I saw Doc Roe pick up her scarf.
The "Hinkel" jokes came from Babe's unexpected drop into the snow-covered foxhole. The German soldier in it asked, "Hinkel, is that you?" When Hinkel didn't reply, the "Kraut" said "Shit!" and came up ready to shoot.
You Ladies are a credit to your parents! Keep in mind, at Bastogne, the 12,000 men of the 101st plus about 2,000 more split between several units, were surrounded by about 110,000 Germans, and three tank divisions. They said they didn’t need to be rescued because they didn’t. They held the line when the Germans had defeated our whole 3rd Army(all those guys who were retreating). The next episode is my favorite and may be the hardest to watch
The bulk of the German army had moved northwest, bypassing Bastogne. The actual sieging army was smaller than the defenders in Bastogne. The demand for the 101st Airborne and other American units to surrender was a bit of a bluff by the outnumbered Germans surrounding them. The goal was not to capture Bastogne, the goal was to capture key bridges and then reach Antwerp to deny the Allies a chance to use the port there and split the Allied forces and defeat them in detail. The plan was really dumb. In fact, top Allied commanders, and any general officers with a brain, were expecting, and hoping for just such an attack as the Battle of the Bulge. They knew, when it happened, that there were enough Allied forces already in Europe that they could crush the Germans in a decisive battle, and the rest of their army would soon collapse. Defenders generally have the advantage, and slowly advancing into Germany as the Germans were able to shorten their supply lines and reinforce themselves more easily would be much more costly to the Allies than if the Germans foolishly attacked into superior Allied forces in just this sort of manner. As soon as word reached Allied leaders that the Germans had committed so many forces to launch an attack like this, everyone scrambled to punish the mistake. And that's exactly what happened. To the men on the ground, and their tactical commanders, it seemed like they were facing a shocking onslaught of elite German troops, and were in real jeopardy. The units on the front lines, they took a lot of casualties. However, the strategic picture was very favorable to the Allies, and by launching just such an attack, Germany shortened the war and lost more quickly because of it. Huge numbers of Allied forces flooded in to attack the German advance from every direction. The Germans found the bridges very well defended, and soon they were forced to retreat. Now, just because the forces in Bastogne outnumbered the forces sieging Bastogne, did not mean the situation wasn't serious, and certainly the defenders could not attack the German lines and break out of the siege themselves. They lacked critical supplies, had no artillery, and air support was infrequent and very limited. They could defend, probably indefinitely, but they could also not advance, and the weather and Germans took its toll on the surrounded men. It was essentially a brutal stalemate. The Germans did try to convince the Americans to surrender, but it was an empty threat meant to free up those Germans from the siege so they could go to assist in the fighting that was continuing in the direction of Antwerp. Eventually American reinforcements arrived to break the siege from the outside, supplies could be brought in and the wounded could be evacuated. And because of that, the 101st was able to go on the offensive again against a rapidly collapsing German military that had just wasted some of its best units on a foolish attack. But the 101st defending Bastogne for so long served as an excellent propaganda victory for the Allies, it made them famous, and it served as a big morale boost to the rest of the Allies who had been fighting so hard for so long.
As an FYI, the retreating soldiers in Episode 5 weren't 3rd Army. 3rd Army was fighting south of Bastogne, and not in the way of the German advance. However, Patton's 3rd Army was able to turn their entire Army 90 degrees to the north and attack the German southern flank. An unbelievable military feat.
Ladies your genuine reaction to this series is unbelievably heartwarming and great to see. Glad I found your channel. Please hold on it is worth The watch trust me. You 2 are so lovely with soft and real hearts
Both of my Grandpas were in Bastogne. My paternal grandfather served as a radio operator in the 101st Airborne Division, while my maternal grandfather was a tank driver for the 4th Armored Division. The 4th Armored Division, spearheading General Patton's Third Army, was the first unit to break through the German lines and relieve the siege at Bastogne. It's really a small world we live in if you ask me.
Man I’ve seen this series so many times but your reactions have me getting teary eyed lol by far the best reactions I’ve seen to this series, you two are so smart and involved in this series
What's amazing is that this entire episode was shot in a studio. I think they did amazing at making it look cold and snowy despite the fact that it isn't.
I love that this story lives on with the two of you. As a Veteran it is an understatement to say how much it's appreciated. I re-watch it every year around Veterans Day, just to never forget.
Bastogne is a very small town, I have driven through it whilst on holiday and they have a American Sherman tank there as a memorial to the soldiers who fought and died liberating them
Haylo & Kiss This episode was very tough! That nurse was only 30 years old when building that she was bombed. Her real name was Renee Lemaire. I think that there is statute of Renee Lemaire. I believe that locals called her Saint of Bastogne because of her courage and trying to save anyone, locals and soldiers.
@@Arborhawk yeah it's widely remarked that she and Augusta Chiwy, the character named Anna in this, were named the Angels of Bastogne. Augusta lived through the war and into her 90's I believe.
The next few episodes get a little harder. It is so necessary that we watch these depictions of actual historical events to realize the true cost of war. We must never enter a war without a justifiable reason, but we must never let a madman gain so much power. It is a delicate balance. Thank you for sharing this experience with us.
I am French, I went to Normandy, I went to the first mission of the easy at the manors of Brécourt, to the parachuting museum, American cemetery. always impressive all these blockhouses on the Atlantic wall, these cannons still present, It's good that young people watch this series,...
Although he was initially paralyzed, Walter "Smoky" Gordon made almost a complete recovery. He had back pain for the rest of his life, but he could walk. He lived until the late 90s. What looked like bones sticking out of Wayne "Skinny" Sisk's leg were actually pieces of tree - like wooden shrapnel. He recovered and would rejoin Easy. He also lived until the late 90s. You guys are doing great - I look forward to each installment. Word to the wise - if you found this episode tough, it's going to get worse before it gets better. Hang tough, though. Keep bearing witness to what these men endured for this country and the world.
Best of luck from here on. Things get real from here. The fellow who served as our Boy Scout troop leader lost his tank and most of his crew members as a forward unit of Patton's Calvary outside Bastogne and was a POW in Germany till the end of the war. He weighed 180 pounds when captured and 65 pounds when he was liberated two of his friends died of wounds and starvation. He never talked about it. His wife told us what his buddies told her. Good reaction.
As a Paramedic this episode is special to me. Then men would say in later interviews that Roe always seemed to be where someone got hit within a few seconds, the man just had a knack for being there. He trained with the company at Camp Toccoa, jumped into Normandy on D-Day, was wounded in Holland during Market Garden but made a quick recovery and returned to action within a few days, and went through the battle of the bulge. He was described as skilled and dutiful by the rest of the men. There is no evidence or reference that he ever met Rene. The two of them having any kind of relationship is pure creative license by the producers to introduce her to the audience as the men of the 101st had great admiration for her determinedness and skills during the battle as her nickname is "The Angle of Bastogne." Frank Perconte was known to be hyper-focused on personal hygiene (it's not uncommon to see him brushing his teeth and such and there's a toilet paper remark later on) which is why he was disappointed when he got blood on his trousers!
I can't comment on back then, but in todays Army the most protected member of the entire platoon is the Medic. Nobody messes with Doc. Ever. While the Infantry does a majority of the combat, Doc is the one that goes into battle on our behalf - not to defeat the enemy, but to defeat Death itself.
Morphine wasn’t to keep warm, it is used to numb pain. When they said “hide your morphine” it’s because each soldiers was allocated a few doses and if the medic had them all, and couldn’t reach them when wounded, they had nothing to dull the pain.
He needs the morphine to treat the wounded not for personal use or to keep warm. They had no supplies. Each soldier had a personal aid kit so that’s why he was asking for items that every soldier was issued.
A lot of people are also confused and come down on the Doc unfairly because they think he's freezing up, hesitating from fear in that half dug foxhole, but its actually he's been walking around all day scavenging supplies by searching the dead in no mans land (highly risky) and going to all the still living on the line to ask for stuff as well, all while in that cold, by the time he's back, he's hyper exhausted and just trying to rest a bit
I hate that, in reality Dyke was a decorated officer that has shown bravery and skill in combat multiple times and has even been decorated with the Bronze Star twice, once for savin three soldiers of his company in full sight of the enemy and under extensive small arms fire.
Doc Roe didn’t use nicknames very much, and he didn’t spend as much time bonding with the other Easy co guys to maintain emotional distance. He knew that if someone was going to die in combat, the last voice they would hear would probably be his or Ralph “doc” Spina’s. In spite of the emotional distance, the medics were well liked and closely protected by the rest of the men.
"...the medics were well liked and closely protected by the rest of the men." True even today. The one thing that'll piss off and stir a platoon to bloody rage is messing with their medics.
Each soldier was issued a personal aid kit with each one having a syrette of morphine. Doc asks everyone if they still have theirs as he needs all the morphine he can get so he can use it on those who actually need it when they are wounded.
The one member of the 101st that my father spoke to said in no uncertain terms that all they needed were supplies and a way to evacuate their wounded they didn't need rescuing.
And that 101st member was right. They actually outnumbered the Germans surrounding them. It was a stalemate, and they were in no danger of losing. Once they got resupplied and had some support they could go on the offensive again. Overall, the Battle of the Bulge had a ton of German soldiers fighting, but they mostly bypassed Bastogne and were heading for their true objectives to the north and west. The demand for the American surrender was a bit of a bluff. The Americans had excellent defensive lines, and they were mostly elite, battle-hardened troops who could hold out indefinitely against what they were facing. They just lacked supplies with which to make a proper counterattack and break the siege themselves.
I am really glad young people like yourselves are watching the series. The episodes about Bastonge are very good. You both picked on something the film makers were going for, the lack of music as it helped to make the show more realistic and reinforced that these are the real stories of Easy Company. It is in this battle that the 101st airborne became legendary. I know the show can be hard to watch, but keep it up.
This episode really gets me. I was an army medic for 9 years during OEF and end of OIF and the black screen and the cry for medic is how I can feel at times. Once you hear that yell for medic hits… that’s an experience hard to explain what happens afterwards other than there is a human life in need…
They did making the cold look very realistic. Especially when you realize they filmed this in a warehouse, where it was so hot they had to cool the guys down between takes. Not too mention the amazing added sounds and visuals such as breath or crunching snow
The beginning scene is showing how cold it is. When he pricks his finger, the blood is slow to come out and quickly stops because it freezes. His hands had to be on the verge of frostbite for this kind of thing to happen.
For me this is the hardest episode. Seeing the war from the perspective of having to treat the wounded and under these conditions, is just devastating. Also, my grandmother's brother was killed near Bastogne in this fighting. But it's shot so beautifully -- you can practically feel the cold!
This episode has special significance to me as a former medic. Civilian, not military, but I still understand the mentality of Eugene Roe. I don't know if you picked up on it, but there were a lot of hints throughout giving an insight into what he's thinking and how his behavior is based on a need to protect himself psychologically in a very difficult situation, and he does this for the benefit of the men in his care. He doesn't use anyone's nicknames. That's not because he's unfriendly, or clueless, it's because he's deliberately trying to maintain a level of emotional distance from the men he needs to treat. He can't get too attached to anyone, can't let himself care so much that he freezes up and is so worried for his friends that he can't do what he needs to do to save their lives. A medic has to keep a clear head, focus just on the job, nothing else. It's the same sort of attitude most of the officers take with the men under their command. If they care too much they might not be able to order their men into danger. They might panic and freeze up and get their men killed in their indecisiveness. Later in the episode, Eugene has been under so much stress for so long, that he starts to crack a little. It's then that we see him use somebody's nickname. That's showing that he's no longer dispassionate about his job, but he's actually being affected by what's going on around him. He's becoming much more like one of the other men in the company. By that point, hopefully he has so much experience and dedication that he will still do as good a job as he needs to, even when treating those he is becoming more like friends with, but it's going to be a lot harder for him to do that now. He'll be more emotionally damaged by it. In that sense, Eugene Roe has become another casualty at Bastogne. All the men there were deeply affected by that battle. Not all of them got Purple Hearts for it, and had physical scars to show off, but they did all suffer, and they did all get changed on the inside and he's no exception. Being a medic, or nurse, or other profession in an emergency medical role, is definitely not something anyone can do. Not everyone can emotionally detach themselves from patients, and focus just on the work. And of course not everyone can deal with the blood and gore and all the other fluids a body can leak or forcibly expel. Burnout is high, especially the first two years. By all accounts Eugene Roe was an exceptional man. He had a remarkable service record, and he was an excellent medic. I am one of those people who isn't grossed out easily, I find the human body fascinating, even the gross stuff. As a kid, going to the doctor to get shots, I always wanted to watch as the doctor gave me the shot, so I guess I've always been that way. I also am extremely calm in an emergency. The part of the job that was hardest for me was when there wasn't really anything I could do to make things better, or I struggled to come up with some way of doing so. Most of the time, things are very routine, even the really serious stuff. You evaluate a patient, there's specific procedures to do for that situation, and you just do them. It's fairly automatic, and you're trained for a lot of things and practice it a lot before you ever do it in the real world. Sometimes, however, it's something weird you've just never seen before, or the patient needs a higher standard of care than what you can offer, and you're left with just very basic stuff you do for everyone but can't really make much of a difference before you pass off the patient to that higher standard of care. The biggest fear is not knowing what to do, or not having the tools necessary to do what you're supposed to. I can understand why Eugene was spending so much time trying to scrounge up supplies, he didn't want to have nothing to offer the men in his care, and just be another soldier standing around while somebody bleeds out and dies in front of him. That feeling of helplessness is worse than anything else. But most of the time, the brain just compartmentalizes the routine stuff, and you don't really form long-term memories of it. You only remember when something went really wrong, or a mistake was made, or occasionally some kind of a miracle happens that shocks you out of the ordinary and the expected. The exception, I found, was for patients who were kids. To this day, years after I stopped being an EMT, I still remember all of those calls down to the last detail, and I remember all of the kids' names. I still handled the job fine, during those calls, but after my shift I'd go home and it'd stay with me. Thank God, none of the calls with pediatric patients I went on were very serious. But my brain treated those calls very differently from all the others.
About the morphine in WW2. The military issued medical kits to the soldiers and added morphine to the kits prior to units going into combat, then had them turn the morphine in once they came off the line. To make sure they turned them back in the morphine syriettes would be considered contraband if found on a soldier. That was why they told Doc Roe that one of the units ponied up the contraband. As several people have already pointed out, the soldiers would keep them if they could.
I've watched a bunch of reactions to this episode. You're the only two I've heard comment on the guy saying he didn't need morphine. There were a couple of others, too. This episode is special to me. My favorite uncle fought around Bastogne. I've been there many times. Thank you for "getting it."
Hold your hats, the next episode is even tougher, but it's my favorite; Breaking Point. Great job, guys. For someone my age (69) the series is endlessly fascinating because it helps explain our fathers, most of whom adamantly refused to talk about their combat experiences.
You often asked where all the help was, and it's a good question. The "Battle of the Bulge" (the Germans called it the Ardennes Offensive) involved three full German armies attacking through rough country that was lightly held by the allies. Two panzer (tank) armies and an infantry army. They broke through the allied lines and penetrated deeply into allied territory. The Germans purposely chose a time with a long spell of bad weather predicted, so that the allied air power would be useless. The 101st Airborne Division was rushed to the vital crossroad of Bastogne, and was quickly surrounded. They got no help because the other allied units were desperately fighting for their lives, too, trying to stop the German advance. General George Patton did the best job of his career at that time. His army was south of the penetration, advancing east. He got his people faced around ninety degrees and was attacking north in 48 hours, a truly amazing piece of staff work and planning. Attacking north he was pinching off the southern base of the "bulge" in the allied lines. So, you see, there WERE other guys fighting, but they were just not able to get to the paratroopers yet, despite their best efforts.
I’ve watch this episode every Christmas Eve for the past 20 years…Puts things in the proper perspective and is good for self reflection on the meaning of adversity. The conditions in Bastogne were brutal- way more brutal than what was shown in this series, and the fact that the men of the 101st dug in and did not surrender despite being surrounded, outgunned, and outnumbered is truly remarkable. They were well known before for their time in Normandy and Holland , but this is where they earned their legendary reputation as an elite division above the rest of the best.
The guy who plays Johnny Martin is an actor named Dexter Fletcher, who is now an accomplished director. He made a movie a year or two ago called GHOSTED with Chris Evans and it was lovely to see he cast a few of his BoB castmates in it. The bond between those actors is extremely strong.
I know this can be a hard series to watch, but I really appreciate you ladies being so strong and sweet, and my heart goes out to you both. When the 101st Airborne Division was sent to Bastogne, they had to hold at all cost with whatever they had because the town was a critical road junction in an area of rough terrain where few roads existed. Several roads ran through Bastonge, so the Germans desperately needed control of the town in order to continue their offensive westward. The German Army completely surrounded Bastogne, and laid siege to the town, cutting its defenders off from supply and reenforcement. Even though Allied aircraft dominated the skies, the German Army launched their offensive during the winter, so the weather not only provided them some cover from aerial attacks, it hindered Allied aircraft dropping supplies into Bastogne from the air. As one of the Easy Company veterans explained, aircraft at times mistakenly dropped supplies to the German side. The fact that the 101st Airborne Division, and other supporting American units heroically held out at Bastogne helped cause the German offensive to stall. This was critical as it provided the Allies valuable time to gather their forces to launch a counterattack against the Germans. It’s a really touching moment at the end when Eugene “Doc” Roe refers to Edward Heffron by his nickname “Babe.” Throughout this episode you see Roe distant from the other paratroopers because he didn’t want to get too attached to someone who might be killed or maimed later on. This shows you how treating people who are injured and dying, that can take a toll on you physically, mentally, and emotionally. Flares were often used to illuminate the battlefield at night so that you can see enemy troops and positions. This is why when you see a flare illuminate the battlefield, it’s often followed by gunfire. They aren’t used so much now for that purpose since night vision technology allow military forces to operate more effectively in the dark. You ladies picked up on Roe using blood to write an M for morphine on the forehead. This is meant to indicate that the wounded soldier has received treatment so that those working at the aid station will know not to overdose him on morphine. An overdose could slow the heart and breathing to a dangerous rate. It’s widely believed that the character Renée is based on Renée Lemaire, a Belgian nurse who volunteered to work at the American military aid station in Bastogne. She was renowned for working tirelessly during the siege to provide aid and comfort for the wounded. Renée Lemaire was killed in Bastogne during a German air raid on December 24,1944. She was 30 years old. Despite being shot and paralyzed by a German sniper at 19:25, Walter “Smokey” Gordon eventually regained all bodily movements. Unfortunately he suffered from severe back pain for the rest of his life. He went on to work as an independent oil and gas lease broker, and he had five children. Smokey passed away on April 19, 1997. He was 77 years old.
Love watching your reactions. I'm so happy the younger generation has discovered these heroes. Please pass them on to future generations. As for Doc, he wasn't "dosing on it (the morphine)". They couldn't get resupply and morphine to a Medic is a must have. For all of the horrific wounds to come he badly wanted a supply of painkilling morphine for his guys. When he ran out, he scrounged some from the soldiers aid kits because he was always the first one to a wounded man. PS: the "M" on the forehead is to tell the aid station in the rear the soldier's already been given morphine so they won't give him more and OD him.
Renée Lemaire and Augusta Chiwy (inspired the black nurse) are known as the Angels of Bastogne. Augusta lived a long life. I think she died in 2015. Renée Lemaire died in the aid station after saving several wounded and going back for another. There is no evidence that Renée and Eugene ever met, but it is quite possible.
5:20 "I was thinking that some of them might use morphine to fight the cold." Nope. Maybe somebody tried it, but it has no effect on cold so they wouldn't try it twice. The guy said "hide your morphine" because each soldier wanted to have his own morphine in case he got shot. Giving it to the doc might mean the doc uses it on other guys then if you get shot, you don't get any.
Really enjoying your reaction to the series! You girls are so respectful to the men and women who so bravely stood in harms way. Thanks for doing this.
My all time favorite show, I watch the whole thing regularly. It’s so awesome you two are watching this. This may be the best episode in a perfect series.
They apparently did an awesome job showing what kind of a hell it was in Bastogne. Grew up with the stories from the battle of the Bulge and until this show came out never had a clue to visualize it. It has become my all-time favorite show to bench watch and still gives me goosebumps every time i see it
We are truly spoiled to get the channel's episode 6 reaction at this rate and the comments have been so insightful, informative, helpful and mature! We're usually amped up ramped up by this point and yet the comments have been awesome! And sisters have been wonderful to go on this journey with the Band of Brothers, the men of Easy Company, and here the heroic woman of Bastogne!
You both are sweet-spirited young ladies. It's always been my thought that no human should have to witness this type of thing in his/her life. But, they do, and I'm very thankful to those who have fought for our freedom. This is one of my favorite blu-ray boxed sets. Thanks for letting us come along on your journey, and allowing this to feel like seeing this for the first time again. I love your reactions by the way! 🙂
What has always struck me is that nobody stands in front of it. You know the direction that would have helped block it from the enemies. But maybe they were concerned about being silhouetted.
If that scene was true, you can imagine 2 different German forward observers each giving a bearing of that light source, and thus you have a triangulated position worth at least one artillery fire mission.
Fun fact, the winter of '44-'45 was the coldest winter in Belgium for the next 30 years. Average temp was 20°F with 8 inches of snow at any given time.
Best tv-series ever made. Me and my two daughters saw it in 2006. After the last episode we packed the car and drove to Normandy and Bastogne to follow in Easy companys footsteps. (From Stockholm to Normandy etc). Still the best trip in our lives🤠❤️
This show is incredible, and deeply moving on it's own... but I think it helps me even more to process the emotional side of it with you two ladies sharing your thoughts throughout. Things that I might have glossed over the first time I watched, I'm forced to take a moment to absorb your reactions and think of things from a "softer" perspective. Really makes it that much more real, the terrible things these men went through. Thanks for sharing and for your pure-hearted reactions and kind thoughts.
My grandfather was wounded early in the siege. He was in the church when it was bombed and wounded again. He was evacuated back to the States after they were relieved.
Just imagine, this was filmed inside a studio. I'm sure you already know about the BoB podcast they released 2021, but it's still worth mentioning. You two are amazing!
I once visited the Bastogne war museum in Belgium. We toured the battlefield and still to this day you can find foxholes from Easy company all over. I went in January when these guys would have been there and let me tell you… it was cold. I couldn’t imagine the hell these men went through.
I know this stuff isn't easy to watch but I appreciate you guys devoting time and attention to it. There are no more members of Easy company left alive. This show was made in 2001 when there were many left. 23 years later they're all gone and this and their memoirs are all that's left to tell Easy's stories and the heroes they were to help bring the war to end. Hang tough! Currahee!
"...such a good job making it look freezing.": Too true! All the snowbound exterior shots were done in a large aircraft hanger in the middle of summer! The actors were actually sweating buckets under all that gear.
My Uncle. Sgt Louis B ( Shorty ) Flores, was there,...with this exact group. Not only did he agree that they did not need to be rescued, he actually bore somewhat of a grudge against Patton for bragging that he rescued the 101st. lol. He didn't talk a lot about his war experience, but he did stress that dealing with the cold was sometimes worse than dealing with the Germans. He was from Louisiana, so cold tolerance was not in his DNA.
Yeah, they really did not need to be rescued. They needed resupply and to evacuate their wounded. But they could have held out indefinitely against the Germans. The defenders of Bastogne actually outnumbered the surrounding Germans. The bulk of the German forces had bypassed Bastogne and were heading northwest to try and capture bridges and reach Antwerp, and frankly getting their asses kicked in the attempt. They left a relatively small force behind to maintain the siege of Bastogne and a few other pockets of resistance. The demand for surrender was a bluff, basically. The Germans did probe the defensive lines, and periodically attacked with artillery, but mostly it was a stalemate. The weather really was the biggest problem.
Growing up in the early 60s I heard the story of the famous "nuts" reply from my parents. The Battle of the Bulge / Bastogne was well known to us whose parents generation fought this battle and it is held up as one of the finest moments of the American military.
Keep in mind that without winter gear and especially food most people have no idea just how cold they really where. In conditions like that they would need to eat 3 or 4 times as much food than they normally would just to be able to produce body heat. And they obviously didn't have anywhere near enough calories to do that.
I had the great good fortune to visit Easy’s foxholes outside Foy. They’re still recognizable. So, the way the morphine worked was they came on pre-measured doses with a needle attached. I’m not sure if you ladies have seen ‘Ryan,’ but everyone received the training on the morphine: “one for the pain, two for forever.” Two doses of morphine delivered too closely together and the patient dies. The protocol was to inject morphine then mark the patient with a big ‘M’ on their forehead in pen, mud or blood.
At 12:22 the one shot through the throat actually survived and went on to serve in the military for many years and also in the CIA years later. The one that said "we'll be back for you" ran into him in the halls of the Pentagon many years after the war. He didn't know he survived and went into shock when seeing him.
He is not taking the morphine. The medics are checking in how much morphine they have since it is the only way to numb the pain from severe wounds. Also the shaking is due to cold weather. Sometimes it was as cold as -20 fahrenheit.
It's said that Eugene and Renee actually never met. But Renee is real, she died on Christmas Eve 1944 while evacuating wounded soldiers from the aidstation. Paratroopers dug out her body from the bombed aid station and delivered it to her parents wrapped in a parachute. She's known as 'the angel of Bastogne'
My maternal uncle Elmer was a mortarman in the 17th Airborne Division which took part in the Battle of the Bulge. He grew up in MN which had very cold winters but he said he was never as cold as while in Belgium in that terrible winter.
Thank you for the reaction, so far out of all the reactions to Band of Brothers, I have enjoyed yours the most so be strong ladies that was the easy part of it, next up we follow First Sergeant Lipton on a really insane, intense conclusion to Bastone and the Battle of the Bulge.
I love how this episode doesn’t have music it’s really helps to dig into the mindset of medics in way… also the way they call him “doc” and not just a name, that title is actually earned by the soldiers respect for what he can do for them. Bad medics are not called “doc”. I love y’all reactions to this series
I'm loving watching your reactions to Band of Brothers. I look forward to them. I'm hoping you'll watch The Pacific once you're done and then Masters of the Air.
Is funny because of life circumstances right now since 2 months ago, I'm almost completely isolated working and studying in the middle of the forest, next to small village (yeah i have internet still). I'm mentally fine (not always I think)... anyway is something temporary until I go back to my normal life in Barcelona. I have been watching religiously your channel to fight against the unovaidable loneliness I'm feeling right now because I really like your reactions and I have commented before you only chose shows I love, the illusion of "sharing" the reaction of some strangers I apparently like helps . I've realized that this last week I've been avoiding rewatching with you this episode and the next one until today; I guess I'm feeling kinda good today actually. I now realize how accurately I remember this episode and the next one being the hardest to watch of how intense, fucked up and real everything looks (as Haylo says at 16:26 ...); when I first watched them really really impacted me. I've come to the conclussion that the reason I avoided following your reactions to these episodes these last days, even I was not conciouss about it was because I was feeling kinda dow to my life time right now; and I didn't know if rewatching these would help these last days. Anyway, I love this show and your reactions. Keep it up! Much love from spain.
The main thing every veteran of the 101st that served at Bastogne remembers the most is the cold. The European winter of 1944 was the coldest ever recorded till that time, with a foot of snow being able to drop in less than a day and the temperature dropping below and staying below 0 for days at a time. One of the greatest showings of the military logistical superpower that the US had become is that by the end of the Battle for Bastogne, the Americans surrounded in the town were more numerous and better supplied than the Germans that were encircling them. One of the men that parachuted into Bastogne after the 101st had been surrounded was a man named Jake McNiece. He's one of the guys featured in that famous film clip of paratroopers with mohawks painting their faces with war paint before D-Day. He was dropped into Bastogne to call in these resupply runs. His story is much too long to relay here but a RUclips channel called The Fat Electrician did a fantastic video on him that's worth a reaction. Just be warned he's a military man so his humor is quite crude. Also, the strafing run was a friendly fire mishap where the P-47 pilots thought the paratroopers were Germans coming to try and steal the supplies. The Germans were singing Silent Night. I can't remember the entire story but I heard of a retreating American tank unit that was going through the city of St Vith. They picked up some German prisoners and they all started singing Silent Night, the Americans singing it in English and the Germans in German. A moment of camaraderie between enemies.
I was a Navy Hospital Corpsman (Medic) in Vietnam (3 Tours). I had 4months of basic medical training and two months of combat medical training when I was assigned to the Marines. The army medical training is similar. They don't just say you're a medic. There are not enough men that volunteer to be a medic. Tests are taken while you are in training. If your test shows an aptitude for medicine, then they ask you to volunteer or just send you to school to be a medic. If you are not good at it they send you back to infantry. Most medics that have been in combat can do the job as well as or better than some doctors or nurses. According to the Geneva Conventions medics are not to carry offensive weapons. I never carried a weapon. During times not in combat the medic is supposed give first aid lessons to his whole platoon frequently. So, anyone can take over basic first aid if the medic is killed. They can carry a pistol for their own protection and the protection of the one they are working on. Those two medics in the same fox hole should never be close to each other during combat (That’s one of the first things you learn). One of my tours in Vietnam I was on a ship on the Co Chien River in the Mekong Delta. Me and another corpsman were the only medical personnel on board. Being the only medical person onboard I did everything medical. If you were on a ship or with the Marines, you were called Doc. We were taught that during combat conditions we were to be on opposite ends of the ship. The 2 corpsmen we replaced were together during a fire fight and they both got killed. You never remember all the ones that you have treated but you never forget the ones you can’t save.
Help was far away. The Allies didn't expect a counter attack there in winter. So it was lightly defended. Reinforcements did arrive. Because of Gen. Patton. And his 3rd Army. Which was an amazing achievement. Patton was a GREAT General. He was the best General the USA ever had in my opinion.
The Allies absolutely expected a counterattack and were hoping for it, because they knew the German situation was getting desperate, and an attack of this nature would signal that the end was near. They planned for, and then executed when the opportunity came, to punish just this sort of attack. Of course, the ordinary soldiers on the front lines did not know this. From their limited perspective, it was a startling, brutal assault, that sent a lot of them running. More seasoned units stood their ground and put up plenty of resistance blunting the attack. And meanwhile the top brass was excitedly moving a lot more units into the area to win the decisive battle and break the German military for good. The counter-counterattack was swift and indeed decisive. The Germans achieved essentially none of their objectives, and in the process they lost their best units, and the air attack that came with it basically ended the German air force. It was a foolish gamble made by a losing military. But yes, generals like Patton did move quickly to capitalize on the mistake, but the reason why he and others were able to move so swiftly was because they were expecting it and already knew what they would do in response.
Renée is thought to have represented Renée Lemaire: a Belgian volunteer nurse that offered her services to the allies when she found herself trapped in Bastogne during the German offensive. On Christmas Eve during the bombings, Renée was killed while evacuating wounded soldiers from the aid station, having gone back to rescue a 7th soldier. Her body was wrapped in a white parachute that she had collected earlier in the day and had planned on using to create a wedding dress. She was remembered by many to be an inspiring presence to the wounded and someone who dedicated every minute to helping others during Bastogne.
While there is no record of Doc Roe ever meeting Renée, it is entirely possible and even likely, and the shows inclusion of her does a wonderful job telling a part of warfare that is often forgotten by many: The selfless acts of strangers that wore different uniforms or no uniform at all doing their part in a very trying time of human history. Renée represents the Angels of Bastogne and all civilians that played a part and gave their lives in service of others
I always wondered about that German raid on Bastogne, where was the RAF and US air force night fighters during all that?
Renée Lemaire and Augusta Chiwy The Angels of Bagstone.
@@ChrisCrossClashmy guess is that since it was at night and much much closer target to the German lines that by the time they would have been able to respond the raid was over.
@@ChrisCrossClash my basic understanding of the siege of Bastogne is that awful winter weather/cloud cover greatly reduced air assets. My guess as to why the German were successful is that, like RAF bombers during the day raids, they indiscriminately carpet bombed areas regardless of collateral damage, so lack of visibility of the target meant little. I’m sure this is vastly different for fighter pilots trying to target air targets in the clouds
She definitely reps one of the Angels of Bastogne
Walter "Smokey" Gordon, the machine gunner who was paralyzed by a sniper, actually survived the war. He was evacuated, returned to the US. It was a long recovery time, but he eventually regained the use of his limbs. He married, had 5 children. He died in 1997.
God knows if it's true or not, but the story goes that years later he returned to the forest, to the foxhole where he was hit, went down into it, and found his cup still there.
I want to live in a world where that happened, so I choose to believe it.
I would like this comment but it has 101 likes, in honor of the 101st, lol nobody else touch it!
Came here to say this
As I understand it, the bullet entered his shoulder where you see it hit, and then it ran down the length of his spine and exited his back, hence why he was paralyzed. Bullets do weird things when they hit things, especially bodies.
I think the whole thing about Doc Roe not knowing people's names is that he is purposefully distancing himself from them emotionally. Having to be the one that sees them die and get injured over and over is extremely hard and he's trying to dissociate. But at the same time I feel that Renee, in her death, inspires him to open up more since it's part of what makes her a good nurse. He invests more in the guys (like using their nicknames) and it helps him overcome the burnout that Winters notices.
I love episode so much for nuances like that, it's what inspired me to become an EMT when I watched it as a teen.
dang.. Trying to do that alone is a battle in of itself
I've been watching this show for 20 years and haven't thought about it that way until reading your comment. Very good take, I think you're probably right
VERY good take. Haven't seen that perspective either. Question: Outside of just wanting supplies, why was Doc looking for morphine? I've seen this episode so many times and never thought why would Doc want more outside of just wanting another pair or scissors or more bandages. Haylo and Kiss mention something about keeping warm which never struck me until the next 45 seconds hes looking for morphine and even a solider mentioning to hide it. Was using the morphine to keep warm a thing? @@andrewrippel6164
I served in the first Gulf War in the Mechanized Infantry. There’s sort of a thing in the combat arms. In garrison combat soldiers tend to look down on medics. Soldiers are always reporting to sick call, trying to get off work and the medics are always like, “Here’s a couple of Tylenol, get down to the motor pool!”
In combat, however, all that changes. The soldiers tend to look after the medics without limits.
Doc Roe keeping his distance reflects his own mental & emotional defense mechanism: he can’t get too close to men that he won’t be successful saving.
Well said.
Renée Lemaire and Augusta Chiwy were real people.
Renée Lemaire was a trained nurse, who was visiting her parents in Bastogne for Christmas 1944. Her fiancé we a Jewish man who was taken by the Gestapo earlier in the year. When Bastogne became surrounded by the surprise German advance, Renée volunteered at the American aid station, where she served under Dr John “Jack” Prior. On Christmas Eve 1944, the Germans bombed Bastogne. Renée helped rescue 6 people from a burning building, but when she went back in to get more people, the building collapsed, and she was killed. The Airborne recovered her body, and returned her to her parents wrapped in a parachute.
Augusta Chiwy was also a practicing nurse, who was also visiting her parents in Bastogne for Christmas 1944. Her father was a Belgian soldier, and her mother was from Congo. Like Renée, when the town became surrounded, Augusta volunteered at the American aid station. During the Christmas Eve bombing, Augusta was blown through a wall, but survived with only minor injuries. After the war, she continued to practice nursing, specializing in neck and spinal injuries. She married a Belgian soldier, and they had two children together. Finally, in 2012, both the United States and Belgian governments recognized Augusta’s contributions to the Seige of Bastogne, awarding her the highest civilian merit each country can bestow. Augusta Chiwy passed away in 2015, at the age of 94.
Together, Renée Lemaire and Augusta Chiwy are known as the Angels of Bastogne. Both of them are buried together at a cemetery in Bastogne.
Wasn't prepared to cry tonight, but here we are.
Thorough summary.
So, the story of ‘Nuts’ is even better than it was relayed in the show. When Easy was trucked in to Bastogne, the commander of the 101st was, I think, at a conference and the deputy commander was at a wedding. The 101st’ 3rd in command, Gen. Anthony McAuliffe was acting commander.
The way the story goes, he’s been up for 3 straight days, organizing the defense and was able to catch a few minutes sleep.
That was the exact moment the German’s demand for the surrender of Bastogne arrived.
McAuliffe’s second in command came and nudged him awake, saying, “Sorry to wake you, sir, but the Germans are here to discuss surrender.”
“They are? We accept!”
“Uh….. no, sir…… they want us to surrender to them.”
Now, McCauliffe was known as a man who never swore.
He responded, “Us surrender??!!?? Aw, nuts!”
McCauliffe’s aide smiled in agreement but said, “Ok, sir, no problem…… but they did deliver a written request and we’ll have to write something back.”
McCauliffe responded, “Ok, well, what do we write?”
“Well, I like what you originally said, let’s write that.”
“I haven’t slept in days….. what did I even say?”
“You said ‘Nuts,’ sir.”
McCaulifde takes the request for their surrender and scrawls “To the German Commander: Nuts!”
When the answer was given to the waiting German officer, he reads it and is utterly confused, “Vas ist Nuss?”
An exhausted GI helped him out, “It means ‘get lost!’”
This is an amazing story! This needs more likes!
And now it's even an acronym meaning Not Understanding Terms of Surrender
@@matthewjordan7297It is true that word of their Commander’s defiance was spread along the line and did help to boost morale.
Actually it was a crusty old sergeant that translated for the German messenger.
“In case you don’t know it means ‘Go to Hell!’”
Realistically, there was no way the 101st could be defeated at Bastogne. Beaten up, sure. Frozen half to death, sure. It was awful there and I don't want to take anything away from the men who fought there and defended it. But they could have defended their lines indefinitely against the siege. They actually outnumbered the surrounding Germans at that point. The rest of the attackers had bypassed the city and were trying to capture key bridges and press on to Antwerp. Taking Bastogne was not a serious objective, just an obstacle. It did, however, tie up quite a few German soldiers who could not help with the attack to the northwest. Of course, the Americans didn't know that, but they did know they didn't want to surrender, and also on some level I think they knew if the Germans were capable of taking the town, they would just go ahead and do that instead of demand a surrender. It was essentially a bluff, and the 101st called that bluff. Later, as the situation became more well understood, of course the 101st are completely correct in insisting they didn't need to be rescued.
Of course, as poorly supplied as the Allies at Bastogne were, and without artillery or air support, going on the offensive and breaking out of Bastogne themselves was likely just as impossible as the Germans capturing Bastogne by force. So in that sense, reinforcements arriving and opening a supply line had to come from the outside to break the stalemate. But the Allies there were in no danger of losing. The whole Battle of the Bulge was a foolish, desperate attack by a nearly defeated Germany, and it hastened the end of the war.
Really enjoying the reaction, but just want to clarify that Doc Roe was DEFINITELY not personally dosing on the morphine! When they are talking about being short on supplies, morphine is one of those supplies, so he is trying to scrounge what he can. That is also why the soldier wounded in the leg turns it down, so others that are wounded more severely can have it.
I was about to comment on that. No one out there was using morphine recreationally, absolutely not!
I seriously doubt any of them believed Roe was using it personally. It was just soldiers ribbing each other.
Yeah, it wasnt used for the cold, i doubt morphine would change that. Rather, they are concerned if they donate their morphine there won't be any for them if they get hit.
@@matthewjordan7297they definitely didnt, but given those conditions I sure wouldn’t blame them if they slipped and did! I can’t imagine how hard it was.
The nurses were indeed real. I believe there's a memorial there still.
There is. I visited in 2003 and last month.
If you Google the angel of bastogne, you can learn about her.
The good news is that Augusta Chiwy, the Congolese nurse, survived and lived in Bastogne, much celebrated, until the age of 95.
Oh, and Smokey Gordon, the guy who was paralysed, ultimately recovered and was able to walk again.
@@peterireland4344Congolese and Belgian. Her dad was Belgian. I believe he met her mom in the Congo!
80 years later, the foxholes are still in the forest. You can walk through and find random things like cups of china and doorknobs. The doors were taken from the nearest town to cover foxholes. Decades later, the wood rotted away, leaving the metal doorknobs for us to find today.
Proud to say my wife's Grandma was a nurse in the Battle of the Bulge. She was awarded the French Legion of Honour for her service. And she mostly cared for German POWs. When we asked her what that was like, she said "I did my very best to take care of them the way I hoped their nurses were taking care of our boys over on their side."
Unfortunately, the Battle of the Bulge is particularly notable for Germans murdering quite a lot of Allied POWs in a fairly systematic way.
God Bless your Grandmother, and all of the incredibly brave and compassionate Nurses, who were always just a short distance behind the Front Lines, risking their lives, to bring care and comfort , to these wounded Boys,many, too young to buy a Beer ,
My uncle Milo fought in the Battle of the Bulge near St. Vith. He was a heavy machine gunner (like Smokey, the soldier paralyzed in this ep). On December 16th he and his squad were cut off and evaded capture in the woods for days before returning to friendly lines, on Christmas Eve. As soon as he hooked up with a larger group of men (the same day, Christmas Eve), they turned around and went right back into the battle. He was eventually evac'd to the rear with trench foot and frost bitten feet, so bad he couldn't walk. He was awarded a bronze star for the battle. He was a wonderful writer (was a writer in Stars and Stripes several times during the war) and when he got home he wrote about that Christmas Eve. I have the typewritten pages (on that super thin old typing paper) with his signature and handwritten copyright. The Bastogne episode always wrecks me.
Fascinating story about your Uncle. I'm named after my Uncle, Pfc Bruce L. Anderson, 83rd Div. He was KIA December 14, 1944 in the Hurtgen Forest. I have all his letters he wrote home. I was able to visit The Netherlands American Cemetery outside Margraten, Holland on June 6, 2018. God Bless All Their Souls.
@@bruceanderson1165 I am currently lobbying for my upcoming nephew to be named Milo. He earned the right to be remembered. I have the letters he wrote home to his brother, along with my own correspondence with him in the 1990s. ETA It is on my bucket list to follow Milo's path from Chipping Norton through France to St. Vith. Milo was in the 106th, and many of that division suffered a terrible fate. On top of that, the Battle of the Bulge was their first taste of real combat. I wish someone (looking at you, Spielberg and Hanks) would tell their story, because they also deserve to be remembered.
My uncle Bob was also at Bastogne and was evacuated because of trench foot. Other than that and once healed being reassigned, he said nothing about it.
My Uncle was Murrel Swan, he also fought in the battle of the bulge but in Luxembourg not Bastogne, he is the soldier that is a famous picture of him shaking a dog's paw from a makeshift tent/foxhole
I hope you've scanned those papers to preserve them digitally.
I had watched and rewatched this series for years before i ever watched a reaction channel. Yours is the first time i've ever seen anyone notice the lack of music in this episode, and you know what? As many times as i've watched it, i NEVER noticed that until you said something.
My late father was in the Bulge. He was frostbitten and always hated cold weather the rest of his life. The worst part was sleeping in a hole on the frozen ground!)
The portrayal of the medic was essential to telling this story. It's one kind of bravery to carry a gun and stand your ground not letting the enemy advance. It's another kind of bravery to not carry a weapon yet still run into the middle of bullets, bombs, and shell bursts to try and save lives. So much respect for combat medics!
This is the episode I identify most with. I was a Navy Hospital Corpsman - Doc. (counterpart to Doc Roe's medic) I served 10 years, 8 were with Marines. Doc is a title earned, through being there with the grunts, shaing their hardships & then keeping going with your own task of patching them up. Doc is always on the move checking on his grunts then staring all over again. For another amazing movie about a medic, I highly recommend watching Hacksaw Ridge. ( If you do, I will tell my story of that battleground in a comment on it)
The 2 nurses were referred to by the troops as the Angels of Bastogne.
As for the morphine syrettes, Doc wasn't dosing himself, if you don't get resupplied, and you are treating wounded, sooner or later you WILL run out. As for the syrettes themselves, they had to be kept warm. If they froze solid they were useless so troops would keep them in there pockets or even in their underwear to keep warm so they could be used. Doc Roe at this point is nearly the breaking point. He hasn't had a break in weeks. As a Doc I have seen the inside of every race on the planet. The Docs in that war saw much more than me.
Thanks for your service.
I've watched Band of Brothers for a dozen times and i still cry with you in every episode. You both have beautiful souls.
Lots of love from Turkey :)
two dozen plus here. iIt doesn't get easier. My grandpa was in 3rd army in ww2. He drove generals around Europe in a Mercedes. He later married my Grandmother and her name was Mercedes! He would joke that " I rode a Mercedes in Europe , now I ride one here" . LOLOL
@@TheFrosty1994gramps, you dirty dog, you 😂
@@TheFrosty1994 oh boy :)
fun fact: also the brand Mercedes was named after the owner's daughter :)
I had a great uncle who was an MP at Bastogne during the battle. He was hit by an artillery strike and hurt so badly that his comrades thought he was dead, and rolled him into a ditch by the side of the road. It got so cold that night that it stopped him from bleeding out. When someone realized he wasn't dead and brought him to a church that had been converted into an aid station he nearly bled to death once he got warm enough to bleed again.
He survived, and lived to be nearly 100 years old.
They don’t make ‘em like the used to.
Your uncle was a communist? Because Americans don’t use the word comrades that’s Russians/soviet union.
@@dedo7326 So, I have to ask, what are you smoking and where can I get some? If you have a promo code please let me know so I can get the discount.
"Hide your Morphene guys!" So I have some on me for when I get hit. The remark of Roe having it for personal use was just a wisecrack. He's the medic, he's the guy that should have it in abundance.
He was literally a Morphine Addict, getting high to cope with his situation, while his men die in horrible pain because he used it all up on himself
You noticed the lack of music. There’s also very little color. Except for the blue head scarf. I’ll never forget the gut punch the first time I saw Doc Roe pick up her scarf.
The "Hinkel" jokes came from Babe's unexpected drop into the snow-covered foxhole. The German soldier in it asked, "Hinkel, is that you?" When Hinkel didn't reply, the "Kraut" said "Shit!" and came up ready to shoot.
thanks i never caught on to that
You Ladies are a credit to your parents! Keep in mind, at Bastogne, the 12,000 men of the 101st plus about 2,000 more split between several units, were surrounded by about 110,000 Germans, and three tank divisions. They said they didn’t need to be rescued because they didn’t. They held the line when the Germans had defeated our whole 3rd Army(all those guys who were retreating). The next episode is my favorite and may be the hardest to watch
Second hardest. Episode 9.
The bulk of the German army had moved northwest, bypassing Bastogne. The actual sieging army was smaller than the defenders in Bastogne. The demand for the 101st Airborne and other American units to surrender was a bit of a bluff by the outnumbered Germans surrounding them. The goal was not to capture Bastogne, the goal was to capture key bridges and then reach Antwerp to deny the Allies a chance to use the port there and split the Allied forces and defeat them in detail.
The plan was really dumb. In fact, top Allied commanders, and any general officers with a brain, were expecting, and hoping for just such an attack as the Battle of the Bulge. They knew, when it happened, that there were enough Allied forces already in Europe that they could crush the Germans in a decisive battle, and the rest of their army would soon collapse. Defenders generally have the advantage, and slowly advancing into Germany as the Germans were able to shorten their supply lines and reinforce themselves more easily would be much more costly to the Allies than if the Germans foolishly attacked into superior Allied forces in just this sort of manner. As soon as word reached Allied leaders that the Germans had committed so many forces to launch an attack like this, everyone scrambled to punish the mistake.
And that's exactly what happened. To the men on the ground, and their tactical commanders, it seemed like they were facing a shocking onslaught of elite German troops, and were in real jeopardy. The units on the front lines, they took a lot of casualties. However, the strategic picture was very favorable to the Allies, and by launching just such an attack, Germany shortened the war and lost more quickly because of it. Huge numbers of Allied forces flooded in to attack the German advance from every direction. The Germans found the bridges very well defended, and soon they were forced to retreat.
Now, just because the forces in Bastogne outnumbered the forces sieging Bastogne, did not mean the situation wasn't serious, and certainly the defenders could not attack the German lines and break out of the siege themselves. They lacked critical supplies, had no artillery, and air support was infrequent and very limited. They could defend, probably indefinitely, but they could also not advance, and the weather and Germans took its toll on the surrounded men. It was essentially a brutal stalemate. The Germans did try to convince the Americans to surrender, but it was an empty threat meant to free up those Germans from the siege so they could go to assist in the fighting that was continuing in the direction of Antwerp.
Eventually American reinforcements arrived to break the siege from the outside, supplies could be brought in and the wounded could be evacuated. And because of that, the 101st was able to go on the offensive again against a rapidly collapsing German military that had just wasted some of its best units on a foolish attack. But the 101st defending Bastogne for so long served as an excellent propaganda victory for the Allies, it made them famous, and it served as a big morale boost to the rest of the Allies who had been fighting so hard for so long.
As an FYI, the retreating soldiers in Episode 5 weren't 3rd Army. 3rd Army was fighting south of Bastogne, and not in the way of the German advance. However, Patton's 3rd Army was able to turn their entire Army 90 degrees to the north and attack the German southern flank. An unbelievable military feat.
Ladies your genuine reaction to this series is unbelievably heartwarming and great to see. Glad I found your channel. Please hold on it is worth The watch trust me. You 2 are so lovely with soft and real hearts
Dude, I never realized this ep has no music. Good catch ladies.
Both of my Grandpas were in Bastogne. My paternal grandfather served as a radio operator in the 101st Airborne Division, while my maternal grandfather was a tank driver for the 4th Armored Division. The 4th Armored Division, spearheading General Patton's Third Army, was the first unit to break through the German lines and relieve the siege at Bastogne. It's really a small world we live in if you ask me.
Man I’ve seen this series so many times but your reactions have me getting teary eyed lol by far the best reactions I’ve seen to this series, you two are so smart and involved in this series
What's amazing is that this entire episode was shot in a studio. I think they did amazing at making it look cold and snowy despite the fact that it isn't.
I love that this story lives on with the two of you. As a Veteran it is an understatement to say how much it's appreciated. I re-watch it every year around Veterans Day, just to never forget.
Bastogne is a very small town, I have driven through it whilst on holiday and they have a American Sherman tank there as a memorial to the soldiers who fought and died liberating them
Haylo & Kiss
This episode was very tough! That nurse was only 30 years old when building that she was bombed. Her real name was Renee Lemaire. I think that there is statute of Renee Lemaire. I believe that locals called her Saint of Bastogne because of her courage and trying to save anyone, locals and soldiers.
I believe they named her the Angel of Bastone.
@@Arborhawk yeah it's widely remarked that she and Augusta Chiwy, the character named Anna in this, were named the Angels of Bastogne. Augusta lived through the war and into her 90's I believe.
@@Arborhawk
Oh that's right...thanks for the correction
The next few episodes get a little harder. It is so necessary that we watch these depictions of actual historical events to realize the true cost of war. We must never enter a war without a justifiable reason, but we must never let a madman gain so much power. It is a delicate balance. Thank you for sharing this experience with us.
I am French, I went to Normandy, I went to the first mission of the easy at the manors of Brécourt, to the parachuting museum, American cemetery. always impressive all these blockhouses on the Atlantic wall, these cannons still present, It's good that young people watch this series,...
Although he was initially paralyzed, Walter "Smoky" Gordon made almost a complete recovery. He had back pain for the rest of his life, but he could walk. He lived until the late 90s. What looked like bones sticking out of Wayne "Skinny" Sisk's leg were actually pieces of tree - like wooden shrapnel. He recovered and would rejoin Easy. He also lived until the late 90s.
You guys are doing great - I look forward to each installment. Word to the wise - if you found this episode tough, it's going to get worse before it gets better. Hang tough, though. Keep bearing witness to what these men endured for this country and the world.
Best of luck from here on. Things get real from here. The fellow who served as our Boy Scout troop leader lost his tank and most of his crew members as a forward unit of Patton's Calvary outside Bastogne and was a POW in Germany till the end of the war. He weighed 180 pounds when captured and 65 pounds when he was liberated two of his friends died of wounds and starvation. He never talked about it. His wife told us what his buddies told her. Good reaction.
As a Paramedic this episode is special to me. Then men would say in later interviews that Roe always seemed to be where someone got hit within a few seconds, the man just had a knack for being there. He trained with the company at Camp Toccoa, jumped into Normandy on D-Day, was wounded in Holland during Market Garden but made a quick recovery and returned to action within a few days, and went through the battle of the bulge. He was described as skilled and dutiful by the rest of the men. There is no evidence or reference that he ever met Rene. The two of them having any kind of relationship is pure creative license by the producers to introduce her to the audience as the men of the 101st had great admiration for her determinedness and skills during the battle as her nickname is "The Angle of Bastogne."
Frank Perconte was known to be hyper-focused on personal hygiene (it's not uncommon to see him brushing his teeth and such and there's a toilet paper remark later on) which is why he was disappointed when he got blood on his trousers!
Perconte's personal grooming also explains why he was so annoyed that Sobel complained about his pants crease!
@@JPDillon Indeed, that was probably like a kick in the nuts to him!
I can't comment on back then, but in todays Army the most protected member of the entire platoon is the Medic. Nobody messes with Doc. Ever. While the Infantry does a majority of the combat, Doc is the one that goes into battle on our behalf - not to defeat the enemy, but to defeat Death itself.
Morphine wasn’t to keep warm, it is used to numb pain. When they said “hide your morphine” it’s because each soldiers was allocated a few doses and if the medic had them all, and couldn’t reach them when wounded, they had nothing to dull the pain.
He needs the morphine to treat the wounded not for personal use or to keep warm. They had no supplies. Each soldier had a personal aid kit so that’s why he was asking for items that every soldier was issued.
A lot of people are also confused and come down on the Doc unfairly
because they think he's freezing up, hesitating from fear in that half dug foxhole,
but its actually he's been walking around all day
scavenging supplies by searching the dead in no mans land (highly risky)
and going to all the still living on the line to ask for stuff as well,
all while in that cold, by the time he's back, he's hyper exhausted and just trying to rest a bit
Don't worry - Lieutenant Dyke is going to prove his worth in the next episode!
can someone tell me where Lieutenant Dyke is? lol
The next episode, without giving away any spoilers, doesn't actually represent what happened with Dyke IRL.
I hate that, in reality Dyke was a decorated officer that has shown bravery and skill in combat multiple times and has even been decorated with the Bronze Star twice, once for savin three soldiers of his company in full sight of the enemy and under extensive small arms fire.
@@adamrickman2461 I know.
Apparently Captain sobel committed suicide in a VA hospital , there's some sad stories here.
Doc Roe didn’t use nicknames very much, and he didn’t spend as much time bonding with the other Easy co guys to maintain emotional distance. He knew that if someone was going to die in combat, the last voice they would hear would probably be his or Ralph “doc” Spina’s.
In spite of the emotional distance, the medics were well liked and closely protected by the rest of the men.
"...the medics were well liked and closely protected by the rest of the men."
True even today. The one thing that'll piss off and stir a platoon to bloody rage is messing with their medics.
Each soldier was issued a personal aid kit with each one having a syrette of morphine. Doc asks everyone if they still have theirs as he needs all the morphine he can get so he can use it on those who actually need it when they are wounded.
The one member of the 101st that my father spoke to said in no uncertain terms that all they needed were supplies and a way to evacuate their wounded they didn't need rescuing.
And that 101st member was right. They actually outnumbered the Germans surrounding them. It was a stalemate, and they were in no danger of losing. Once they got resupplied and had some support they could go on the offensive again. Overall, the Battle of the Bulge had a ton of German soldiers fighting, but they mostly bypassed Bastogne and were heading for their true objectives to the north and west. The demand for the American surrender was a bit of a bluff. The Americans had excellent defensive lines, and they were mostly elite, battle-hardened troops who could hold out indefinitely against what they were facing. They just lacked supplies with which to make a proper counterattack and break the siege themselves.
I am really glad young people like yourselves are watching the series. The episodes about Bastonge are very good. You both picked on something the film makers were going for, the lack of music as it helped to make the show more realistic and reinforced that these are the real stories of Easy Company. It is in this battle that the 101st airborne became legendary. I know the show can be hard to watch, but keep it up.
8:58 Whenever flares are fired into the sky, its a signal to either begin an attack or to light up the battlefield and catch soldiers in the open.
26:58 - Yes. Bring tissues for the rest of the episodes.
This episode really gets me. I was an army medic for 9 years during OEF and end of OIF and the black screen and the cry for medic is how I can feel at times. Once you hear that yell for medic hits… that’s an experience hard to explain what happens afterwards other than there is a human life in need…
They did making the cold look very realistic. Especially when you realize they filmed this in a warehouse, where it was so hot they had to cool the guys down between takes. Not too mention the amazing added sounds and visuals such as breath or crunching snow
The beginning scene is showing how cold it is. When he pricks his finger, the blood is slow to come out and quickly stops because it freezes.
His hands had to be on the verge of frostbite for this kind of thing to happen.
Yeah it looks like he did it on purpose to check for frostbite.
For me this is the hardest episode. Seeing the war from the perspective of having to treat the wounded and under these conditions, is just devastating. Also, my grandmother's brother was killed near Bastogne in this fighting. But it's shot so beautifully -- you can practically feel the cold!
This episode has special significance to me as a former medic. Civilian, not military, but I still understand the mentality of Eugene Roe. I don't know if you picked up on it, but there were a lot of hints throughout giving an insight into what he's thinking and how his behavior is based on a need to protect himself psychologically in a very difficult situation, and he does this for the benefit of the men in his care. He doesn't use anyone's nicknames. That's not because he's unfriendly, or clueless, it's because he's deliberately trying to maintain a level of emotional distance from the men he needs to treat. He can't get too attached to anyone, can't let himself care so much that he freezes up and is so worried for his friends that he can't do what he needs to do to save their lives. A medic has to keep a clear head, focus just on the job, nothing else. It's the same sort of attitude most of the officers take with the men under their command. If they care too much they might not be able to order their men into danger. They might panic and freeze up and get their men killed in their indecisiveness.
Later in the episode, Eugene has been under so much stress for so long, that he starts to crack a little. It's then that we see him use somebody's nickname. That's showing that he's no longer dispassionate about his job, but he's actually being affected by what's going on around him. He's becoming much more like one of the other men in the company. By that point, hopefully he has so much experience and dedication that he will still do as good a job as he needs to, even when treating those he is becoming more like friends with, but it's going to be a lot harder for him to do that now. He'll be more emotionally damaged by it. In that sense, Eugene Roe has become another casualty at Bastogne. All the men there were deeply affected by that battle. Not all of them got Purple Hearts for it, and had physical scars to show off, but they did all suffer, and they did all get changed on the inside and he's no exception.
Being a medic, or nurse, or other profession in an emergency medical role, is definitely not something anyone can do. Not everyone can emotionally detach themselves from patients, and focus just on the work. And of course not everyone can deal with the blood and gore and all the other fluids a body can leak or forcibly expel. Burnout is high, especially the first two years. By all accounts Eugene Roe was an exceptional man. He had a remarkable service record, and he was an excellent medic.
I am one of those people who isn't grossed out easily, I find the human body fascinating, even the gross stuff. As a kid, going to the doctor to get shots, I always wanted to watch as the doctor gave me the shot, so I guess I've always been that way. I also am extremely calm in an emergency. The part of the job that was hardest for me was when there wasn't really anything I could do to make things better, or I struggled to come up with some way of doing so. Most of the time, things are very routine, even the really serious stuff. You evaluate a patient, there's specific procedures to do for that situation, and you just do them. It's fairly automatic, and you're trained for a lot of things and practice it a lot before you ever do it in the real world. Sometimes, however, it's something weird you've just never seen before, or the patient needs a higher standard of care than what you can offer, and you're left with just very basic stuff you do for everyone but can't really make much of a difference before you pass off the patient to that higher standard of care. The biggest fear is not knowing what to do, or not having the tools necessary to do what you're supposed to. I can understand why Eugene was spending so much time trying to scrounge up supplies, he didn't want to have nothing to offer the men in his care, and just be another soldier standing around while somebody bleeds out and dies in front of him. That feeling of helplessness is worse than anything else. But most of the time, the brain just compartmentalizes the routine stuff, and you don't really form long-term memories of it. You only remember when something went really wrong, or a mistake was made, or occasionally some kind of a miracle happens that shocks you out of the ordinary and the expected. The exception, I found, was for patients who were kids. To this day, years after I stopped being an EMT, I still remember all of those calls down to the last detail, and I remember all of the kids' names. I still handled the job fine, during those calls, but after my shift I'd go home and it'd stay with me. Thank God, none of the calls with pediatric patients I went on were very serious. But my brain treated those calls very differently from all the others.
About the morphine in WW2. The military issued medical kits to the soldiers and added morphine to the kits prior to units going into combat, then had them turn the morphine in once they came off the line. To make sure they turned them back in the morphine syriettes would be considered contraband if found on a soldier. That was why they told Doc Roe that one of the units ponied up the contraband. As several people have already pointed out, the soldiers would keep them if they could.
I've watched a bunch of reactions to this episode. You're the only two I've heard comment on the guy saying he didn't need morphine. There were a couple of others, too. This episode is special to me. My favorite uncle fought around Bastogne. I've been there many times. Thank you for "getting it."
Hold your hats, the next episode is even tougher, but it's my favorite; Breaking Point. Great job, guys. For someone my age (69) the series is endlessly fascinating because it helps explain our fathers, most of whom adamantly refused to talk about their combat experiences.
My favourite episode in the series. They portrayed the bleakness so well. Brutal.
You often asked where all the help was, and it's a good question. The "Battle of the Bulge" (the Germans called it the Ardennes Offensive) involved three full German armies attacking through rough country that was lightly held by the allies. Two panzer (tank) armies and an infantry army. They broke through the allied lines and penetrated deeply into allied territory. The Germans purposely chose a time with a long spell of bad weather predicted, so that the allied air power would be useless. The 101st Airborne Division was rushed to the vital crossroad of Bastogne, and was quickly surrounded. They got no help because the other allied units were desperately fighting for their lives, too, trying to stop the German advance. General George Patton did the best job of his career at that time. His army was south of the penetration, advancing east. He got his people faced around ninety degrees and was attacking north in 48 hours, a truly amazing piece of staff work and planning. Attacking north he was pinching off the southern base of the "bulge" in the allied lines. So, you see, there WERE other guys fighting, but they were just not able to get to the paratroopers yet, despite their best efforts.
I’ve watch this episode every Christmas Eve for the past 20 years…Puts things in the proper perspective and is good for self reflection on the meaning of adversity. The conditions in Bastogne were brutal- way more brutal than what was shown in this series, and the fact that the men of the 101st dug in and did not surrender despite being surrounded, outgunned, and outnumbered is truly remarkable. They were well known before for their time in Normandy and Holland , but this is where they earned their legendary reputation as an elite division above the rest of the best.
The guy who plays Johnny Martin is an actor named Dexter Fletcher, who is now an accomplished director. He made a movie a year or two ago called GHOSTED with Chris Evans and it was lovely to see he cast a few of his BoB castmates in it.
The bond between those actors is extremely strong.
See him in Layer Cake! Top-notch!
@@genghisgalahad8465Or as the incredibly annoying host of Gamesmaster in the early 1990s...
Hey I live in Bastogne! The city is filled with memorials and artifacts of the war, it's really anchored in the local history and culture
Truly outstanding episode ladies 🙌 this show reaction's & your commentary are unmatched 🙏 sending both good vibes and happiness 🌻💖🐝🌺🐝
I know this can be a hard series to watch, but I really appreciate you ladies being so strong and sweet, and my heart goes out to you both.
When the 101st Airborne Division was sent to Bastogne, they had to hold at all cost with whatever they had because the town was a critical road junction in an area of rough terrain where few roads existed. Several roads ran through Bastonge, so the Germans desperately needed control of the town in order to continue their offensive westward. The German Army completely surrounded Bastogne, and laid siege to the town, cutting its defenders off from supply and reenforcement. Even though Allied aircraft dominated the skies, the German Army launched their offensive during the winter, so the weather not only provided them some cover from aerial attacks, it hindered Allied aircraft dropping supplies into Bastogne from the air. As one of the Easy Company veterans explained, aircraft at times mistakenly dropped supplies to the German side. The fact that the 101st Airborne Division, and other supporting American units heroically held out at Bastogne helped cause the German offensive to stall. This was critical as it provided the Allies valuable time to gather their forces to launch a counterattack against the Germans.
It’s a really touching moment at the end when Eugene “Doc” Roe refers to Edward Heffron by his nickname “Babe.” Throughout this episode you see Roe distant from the other paratroopers because he didn’t want to get too attached to someone who might be killed or maimed later on. This shows you how treating people who are injured and dying, that can take a toll on you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Flares were often used to illuminate the battlefield at night so that you can see enemy troops and positions. This is why when you see a flare illuminate the battlefield, it’s often followed by gunfire. They aren’t used so much now for that purpose since night vision technology allow military forces to operate more effectively in the dark.
You ladies picked up on Roe using blood to write an M for morphine on the forehead. This is meant to indicate that the wounded soldier has received treatment so that those working at the aid station will know not to overdose him on morphine. An overdose could slow the heart and breathing to a dangerous rate.
It’s widely believed that the character Renée is based on Renée Lemaire, a Belgian nurse who volunteered to work at the American military aid station in Bastogne. She was renowned for working tirelessly during the siege to provide aid and comfort for the wounded. Renée Lemaire was killed in Bastogne during a German air raid on December 24,1944. She was 30 years old.
Despite being shot and paralyzed by a German sniper at 19:25, Walter “Smokey” Gordon eventually regained all bodily movements. Unfortunately he suffered from severe back pain for the rest of his life. He went on to work as an independent oil and gas lease broker, and he had five children. Smokey passed away on April 19, 1997. He was 77 years old.
That church survives to this day. It’s a beautiful facility.
Love watching your reactions. I'm so happy the younger generation has discovered these heroes. Please pass them on to future generations. As for Doc, he wasn't "dosing on it (the morphine)". They couldn't get resupply and morphine to a Medic is a must have. For all of the horrific wounds to come he badly wanted a supply of painkilling morphine for his guys. When he ran out, he scrounged some from the soldiers aid kits because he was always the first one to a wounded man. PS: the "M" on the forehead is to tell the aid station in the rear the soldier's already been given morphine so they won't give him more and OD him.
I figure someone has pointed this out by now, but they weren’t Recreationally using the morphine. They were just cut off and unable to be resupplied.
Renée Lemaire and Augusta Chiwy (inspired the black nurse) are known as the Angels of Bastogne. Augusta lived a long life. I think she died in 2015. Renée Lemaire died in the aid station after saving several wounded and going back for another. There is no evidence that Renée and Eugene ever met, but it is quite possible.
5:20 "I was thinking that some of them might use morphine to fight the cold."
Nope.
Maybe somebody tried it, but it has no effect on cold so they wouldn't try it twice.
The guy said "hide your morphine" because each soldier wanted to have his own morphine in case he got shot.
Giving it to the doc might mean the doc uses it on other guys then if you get shot, you don't get any.
Really enjoying your reaction to the series! You girls are so respectful to the men and women who so bravely stood in harms way. Thanks for doing this.
My all time favorite show, I watch the whole thing regularly. It’s so awesome you two are watching this. This may be the best episode in a perfect series.
They apparently did an awesome job showing what kind of a hell it was in Bastogne. Grew up with the stories from the battle of the Bulge and until this show came out never had a clue to visualize it. It has become my all-time favorite show to bench watch and still gives me goosebumps every time i see it
Very good reaction ladies. I appreciate your tears for the sacrifices these men made. It’s a way of honoring them in my book.
So far I have watched every one of episodes you have done. Watching you two if like watching perfection
thank you and God bless you both
We are truly spoiled to get the channel's episode 6 reaction at this rate and the comments have been so insightful, informative, helpful and mature! We're usually amped up ramped up by this point and yet the comments have been awesome! And sisters have been wonderful to go on this journey with the Band of Brothers, the men of Easy Company, and here the heroic woman of Bastogne!
You both are sweet-spirited young ladies. It's always been my thought that no human should have to witness this type of thing in his/her life. But, they do, and I'm very thankful to those who have fought for our freedom. This is one of my favorite blu-ray boxed sets. Thanks for letting us come along on your journey, and allowing this to feel like seeing this for the first time again. I love your reactions by the way! 🙂
I love how Nixon says ‘Are you out of your mind’ and immediately crouches down to get nearer to the fire 😂
What has always struck me is that nobody stands in front of it. You know the direction that would have helped block it from the enemies. But maybe they were concerned about being silhouetted.
If that scene was true, you can imagine 2 different German forward observers each giving a bearing of that light source, and thus you have a triangulated position worth at least one artillery fire mission.
But it's in a Dell!
Fun fact, the winter of '44-'45 was the coldest winter in Belgium for the next 30 years. Average temp was 20°F with 8 inches of snow at any given time.
Best tv-series ever made. Me and my two daughters saw it in 2006. After the last episode we packed the car and drove to Normandy and Bastogne to follow in Easy companys footsteps. (From Stockholm to Normandy etc). Still the best trip in our lives🤠❤️
This show is incredible, and deeply moving on it's own... but I think it helps me even more to process the emotional side of it with you two ladies sharing your thoughts throughout. Things that I might have glossed over the first time I watched, I'm forced to take a moment to absorb your reactions and think of things from a "softer" perspective. Really makes it that much more real, the terrible things these men went through. Thanks for sharing and for your pure-hearted reactions and kind thoughts.
My grandfather was wounded early in the siege. He was in the church when it was bombed and wounded again. He was evacuated back to the States after they were relieved.
Just imagine, this was filmed inside a studio. I'm sure you already know about the BoB podcast they released 2021, but it's still worth mentioning.
You two are amazing!
I once visited the Bastogne war museum in Belgium.
We toured the battlefield and still to this day you can find foxholes from Easy company all over. I went in January when these guys would have been there and let me tell you… it was cold. I couldn’t imagine the hell these men went through.
I know this stuff isn't easy to watch but I appreciate you guys devoting time and attention to it. There are no more members of Easy company left alive. This show was made in 2001 when there were many left. 23 years later they're all gone and this and their memoirs are all that's left to tell Easy's stories and the heroes they were to help bring the war to end. Hang tough! Currahee!
"...such a good job making it look freezing.": Too true! All the snowbound exterior shots were done in a large aircraft hanger in the middle of summer! The actors were actually sweating buckets under all that gear.
My Uncle. Sgt Louis B ( Shorty ) Flores, was there,...with this exact group. Not only did he agree that they did not need to be rescued, he actually bore somewhat of a grudge against Patton for bragging that he rescued the 101st. lol. He didn't talk a lot about his war experience, but he did stress that dealing with the cold was sometimes worse than dealing with the Germans. He was from Louisiana, so cold tolerance was not in his DNA.
Yeah, they really did not need to be rescued. They needed resupply and to evacuate their wounded. But they could have held out indefinitely against the Germans. The defenders of Bastogne actually outnumbered the surrounding Germans. The bulk of the German forces had bypassed Bastogne and were heading northwest to try and capture bridges and reach Antwerp, and frankly getting their asses kicked in the attempt. They left a relatively small force behind to maintain the siege of Bastogne and a few other pockets of resistance. The demand for surrender was a bluff, basically. The Germans did probe the defensive lines, and periodically attacked with artillery, but mostly it was a stalemate. The weather really was the biggest problem.
Growing up in the early 60s I heard the story of the famous "nuts" reply from my parents. The Battle of the Bulge / Bastogne was well known to us whose parents generation fought this battle and it is held up as one of the finest moments of the American military.
Keep in mind that without winter gear and especially food most people have no idea just how cold they really where. In conditions like that they would need to eat 3 or 4 times as much food than they normally would just to be able to produce body heat. And they obviously didn't have anywhere near enough calories to do that.
I had the great good fortune to visit Easy’s foxholes outside Foy. They’re still recognizable. So, the way the morphine worked was they came on pre-measured doses with a needle attached.
I’m not sure if you ladies have seen ‘Ryan,’ but everyone received the training on the morphine: “one for the pain, two for forever.” Two doses of morphine delivered too closely together and the patient dies.
The protocol was to inject morphine then mark the patient with a big ‘M’ on their forehead in pen, mud or blood.
At 12:22 the one shot through the throat actually survived and went on to serve in the military for many years and also in the CIA years later. The one that said "we'll be back for you" ran into him in the halls of the Pentagon many years after the war. He didn't know he survived and went into shock when seeing him.
My dad's father was stuck in Bastonge during the Battle of the Buldge. He mentioned how cold it was and that he never wanted to go camping again
He is not taking the morphine. The medics are checking in how much morphine they have since it is the only way to numb the pain from severe wounds. Also the shaking is due to cold weather. Sometimes it was as cold as -20 fahrenheit.
It's said that Eugene and Renee actually never met. But Renee is real, she died on Christmas Eve 1944 while evacuating wounded soldiers from the aidstation. Paratroopers dug out her body from the bombed aid station and delivered it to her parents wrapped in a parachute. She's known as 'the angel of Bastogne'
My maternal uncle Elmer was a mortarman in the 17th Airborne Division which took part in the Battle of the Bulge. He grew up in MN which had very cold winters but he said he was never as cold as while in Belgium in that terrible winter.
Thank you for the reaction, so far out of all the reactions to Band of Brothers, I have enjoyed yours the most so be strong ladies that was the easy part of it, next up we follow First Sergeant Lipton on a really insane, intense conclusion to Bastone and the Battle of the Bulge.
I love how this episode doesn’t have music it’s really helps to dig into the mindset of medics in way… also the way they call him “doc” and not just a name, that title is actually earned by the soldiers respect for what he can do for them. Bad medics are not called “doc”. I love y’all reactions to this series
I'm loving watching your reactions to Band of Brothers. I look forward to them. I'm hoping you'll watch The Pacific once you're done and then Masters of the Air.
Is funny because of life circumstances right now since 2 months ago, I'm almost completely isolated working and studying in the middle of the forest, next to small village (yeah i have internet still). I'm mentally fine (not always I think)... anyway is something temporary until I go back to my normal life in Barcelona. I have been watching religiously your channel to fight against the unovaidable loneliness I'm feeling right now because I really like your reactions and I have commented before you only chose shows I love, the illusion of "sharing" the reaction of some strangers I apparently like helps . I've realized that this last week I've been avoiding rewatching with you this episode and the next one until today; I guess I'm feeling kinda good today actually. I now realize how accurately I remember this episode and the next one being the hardest to watch of how intense, fucked up and real everything looks (as Haylo says at 16:26 ...); when I first watched them really really impacted me. I've come to the conclussion that the reason I avoided following your reactions to these episodes these last days, even I was not conciouss about it was because I was feeling kinda dow to my life time right now; and I didn't know if rewatching these would help these last days. Anyway, I love this show and your reactions. Keep it up! Much love from spain.
The main thing every veteran of the 101st that served at Bastogne remembers the most is the cold. The European winter of 1944 was the coldest ever recorded till that time, with a foot of snow being able to drop in less than a day and the temperature dropping below and staying below 0 for days at a time.
One of the greatest showings of the military logistical superpower that the US had become is that by the end of the Battle for Bastogne, the Americans surrounded in the town were more numerous and better supplied than the Germans that were encircling them. One of the men that parachuted into Bastogne after the 101st had been surrounded was a man named Jake McNiece. He's one of the guys featured in that famous film clip of paratroopers with mohawks painting their faces with war paint before D-Day. He was dropped into Bastogne to call in these resupply runs. His story is much too long to relay here but a RUclips channel called The Fat Electrician did a fantastic video on him that's worth a reaction. Just be warned he's a military man so his humor is quite crude.
Also, the strafing run was a friendly fire mishap where the P-47 pilots thought the paratroopers were Germans coming to try and steal the supplies.
The Germans were singing Silent Night. I can't remember the entire story but I heard of a retreating American tank unit that was going through the city of St Vith. They picked up some German prisoners and they all started singing Silent Night, the Americans singing it in English and the Germans in German. A moment of camaraderie between enemies.
The medic isn't scrounging morphine for himself. HE'S A MEDIC. He needs it to do his job - treating others who are wounded. Geez.
Relax they didn’t know
I was a Navy Hospital Corpsman (Medic) in Vietnam (3 Tours). I had 4months of basic medical training and two months of combat medical training when I was assigned to the Marines. The army medical training is similar. They don't just say you're a medic. There are not enough men that volunteer to be a medic. Tests are taken while you are in training. If your test shows an aptitude for medicine, then they ask you to volunteer or just send you to school to be a medic. If you are not good at it they send you back to infantry. Most medics that have been in combat can do the job as well as or better than some doctors or nurses.
According to the Geneva Conventions medics are not to carry offensive weapons. I never carried a weapon. During times not in combat the medic is supposed give first aid lessons to his whole platoon frequently. So, anyone can take over basic first aid if the medic is killed. They can carry a pistol for their own protection and the protection of the one they are working on.
Those two medics in the same fox hole should never be close to each other during combat (That’s one of the first things you learn). One of my tours in Vietnam I was on a ship on the Co Chien River in the Mekong Delta. Me and another corpsman were the only medical personnel on board. Being the only medical person onboard I did everything medical. If you were on a ship or with the Marines, you were called Doc. We were taught that during combat conditions we were to be on opposite ends of the ship. The 2 corpsmen we replaced were together during a fire fight and they both got killed. You never remember all the ones that you have treated but you never forget the ones you can’t save.
We are used to see Kiss emotional, but seeing Haylo emotional is something else.
So heartbreaking.
Help was far away. The Allies didn't expect a counter attack there in winter. So it was lightly defended. Reinforcements did arrive. Because of Gen. Patton. And his 3rd Army. Which was an amazing achievement. Patton was a GREAT General. He was the best General the USA ever had in my opinion.
The Allies absolutely expected a counterattack and were hoping for it, because they knew the German situation was getting desperate, and an attack of this nature would signal that the end was near. They planned for, and then executed when the opportunity came, to punish just this sort of attack. Of course, the ordinary soldiers on the front lines did not know this. From their limited perspective, it was a startling, brutal assault, that sent a lot of them running. More seasoned units stood their ground and put up plenty of resistance blunting the attack. And meanwhile the top brass was excitedly moving a lot more units into the area to win the decisive battle and break the German military for good. The counter-counterattack was swift and indeed decisive. The Germans achieved essentially none of their objectives, and in the process they lost their best units, and the air attack that came with it basically ended the German air force. It was a foolish gamble made by a losing military. But yes, generals like Patton did move quickly to capitalize on the mistake, but the reason why he and others were able to move so swiftly was because they were expecting it and already knew what they would do in response.
@@fakecubed And in what History book is that in? I never heard that before. Let me know please.
Thank you for reacting to Band of Brothers. While difficult to watch, it honors those who sacrificed for our freedom.
26:49 Might be the best one-day thumbnail I've seen in a long time! XD
It gets harder from here on out, but you will be rewarded with a masterpiece ending.