Band of Brothers
Episode 10
The true story of the men of Easy Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne
Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4 – Episode 5 – Episode 6 – Episode 7 – Episode 8 – Episode 9 – Episode 10
Episode : 10/10
Titre : Points
Réalisateur : Mikael Salomon
Berchtesgaden
This last episode of the series presents the latest movements of the Easy Company and its men in Europe.
The Easy is sent to capture the Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest at the top of the Kehlstein mountain in Berchtesgaden, southern Germany in Bavaria. The roads are blocked by obstacles put in place by Hitler’s last faithful and the members of the E-Company take care of clearing them.
The 3rd Battalion of the 506th Regiment arrives in the town of Berchtesgaden via a route other than the one taken by the Easy and finds itself under the fire of two 88mm German guns located on their right flank. Because of this bombardment, Nick Kozovsky of the Staff of the 3rd Battalion and Claude Rankin of Company H were killed. William C. Knox of Company I was injured. Soldiers of Company H attacked the German gunners and pursued them.
But the Easy was not the first to enter Berchtesgaden and the Berghof complex. A battalion of the 3rd American infantry division arrived in Berchtesgaden followed by the second French armored division (the famous “2nd D.B.” of General Leclerc) followed by the first Battalion of the 506th led by C Company.
The French soldiers, under General Leclerc, were the first to enter Hitler’s “eagle’s nest” at the top of Kehlstein Mountain, followed by company C and members of the 321st GFA Battalion.
The end of the war
Each US soldier during the war earned points that allowed a number of people to return home. These points were “earned” by being injured in combat or simply depending on the time spent on the front.
This episode shows that even though the war in Europe was over (VE -Victory in Europe – was proclaimed by the Allies after the surrender of the German army in early May 1945), it continued in the Pacific for the Americans and Winters set up a training system for his men in case the Easy would be sent to fight the Japanese soldiers.
The end of the episode is as follows: the Easy men, surrounded by the magnificent landscape of the Austrian Alps, play baseball when Winters announces the unconditional surrender of the Japanese to the Pacific. For the Americans, for those men who had spent more than a year in contact with war, far from home, the war was really coming to an end and life could resume where it had stopped in 1941.
