Canter Bridge

Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg have honored the Greatest Generation as it deserves with this superb based-on-a-true-story film version of Easy Company’s long march through various kinds of warfare from D-Day through the fall of the Third Reich.

Others have written extensively about its dramatic and cinemagraphic achievements. Let me add a word about its value as a lens on the phenomenon of leadership under profound stress. The men of Easy Company surprised themselves with what the had in them. This is one of the enduring lessons of battle.

However, Easy Company was better than it would have been because it was led by a man of integrity, honesty, humility, self-abnegation, and truthfulness. He was not a man of many words and he occasionally led the charge because it would have been more awful to send someone else first.

I often sell dvds after viewing them. However, this collection of HBO’s ten Band of Brothers episodes will go to my children when I’m gone as a family treasure.