Friday, January 1, 2021

My Year with Easy Company and WWII


My reading year of 2020 was a very different year. In 2018 and 2019 I took part in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. In 2018 I read 50 books; in 2019 my goal was set for 55, however I reset it to 30 and managed to read 37. By the middle of 2019, I was getting worn out with trying to keep up with my books which is why I reset my goal. So in 2020, I chose not to do the reading challenge, but I didn't know what to read. That's when I came across Band of Brothers.

As I've written before, I love WWII, but I never really studied the war or the battles. I was curious about the Band of Brothers mini-series, but before I watched it, I wanted to read the book first. I got the book from the library and was immediately immersed in the lives of the men from Easy Company. Afterwards, I saw the mini-series and from there till the end of the year, most of my 2020 reading was centered on the paratroopers of Easy Company.

Altogether, I read 10 books about Easy Company, therefore creating my own library. Although there are numerous biographies that are still being written about Easy Company, my own series consists of the the original book and the books that were primarily focused on the men that were featured in the mini-series and their biographies that were published from 2001 (when the mini-series premiered) to 2011. This also includes Parachute Infantry by David Kenyon Webster that was posthumously published in 1994. 

Reading Band of Brothers, watching the series and subsequently reading more about these men in 2020, was an unexpected miracle for me. With all the madness that was going on in the world, I would go and read about young men who left their homes, families, everything they knew and love to travel to the other side of the world and fight some of the greatest threats to mankind. They dealt with terrible leadership, harsh weather conditions, unspeakable horrors of battle and bloodshed, loss of comrades, PTSD, alcoholism, and trying to put their lives back together.

When reading about these men, reliving the war with them, gaining knowledge and understanding from their hardships, victories and defeats, all of a sudden what was going on in 2020 seemed so little and insignificant. I'm not saying that 2020 wasn't difficult, however, it's nothing compared to the real suffering of those who lived and fought in WWII. Even when I was having a difficult time returning to work, I would read about Dick Winters and what he endured under Captain Sobel and how he rose above and beyond all that Sobel threw at him. Remembering what I read helped me get through a lot of personal problems. 
  • Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends by William Guarnere, Robyn Post and Edward Heffron 
  • Easy Company Solider by SGT. Don Malarkey
  • We Who Are Alive and Remain: The Untold Stories from the Band of Brothers by Marcus Brotherton
  • A Company of Heroes by Marcus Brotherton
  • Call of Duty by Lynn "Buck" Compton
  • Shifty's War by Darryl "Shifty" Powers and Marcus Brotherton
These are other excellent books I read about WWII as well.
  • The Bedford Boys by Alex Kershaw


4 comments:

  1. This is so interesting!
    And that's so true. 2020 was a hard year, but it could have been worse. Much worse.
    Great post.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! This is why I love history. Whether good or bad, you can still learn so much from it.

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  2. You read a lot!
    I had a similar experience after watching shows like The Book Thief and Jo Jo Rabbit.
    It really helped put what we were dealing with in perspective, and helped me work through everything.

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    Replies
    1. Sometimes I think I don't read enough, but I got a lot of good reading in last year.

      That's good when you're able to look back on history and understand how far we've come an how we are so much better off than before. We really have nothing to complain about at all.

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