Posted: 10/29/2005 11:18:58 PM EDT
| In Carentan after Blithe kills the German paratrooper, he follows the blood trail and finds the soldier that he killed. When he does he stops and looks at him for a bit, and then takes the flower off of his uniform. Why did he do this? |
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the flower he took was the symbol of a german paratrooper being a real paratrooper. The flower only grew above the treeline in the alps and the only way to get it was to climb up and get it. Blithe took it because in his eyes that because he had killed an enemy, he was a real trooper. atleast thats my take on it |
Because of what Nixon told him. About how the soldiers would climb to the top of the alps to get the flowers, and how it was supposed to be the mark of a true soldier. |
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Doesn't Nixon tell him that its some kind of right of passage for German paratroopers to have one because the flower is only found on certain mountains and is difficult to get to? It's something like that. Anyhow, Blithe considers the battle he just fought as his right of passage because he thought of himself as a coward before. So he takes the flower as a symbol of what he's just accomplished. |
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As far as I know, harvesting flowers wasn't a pre-req of paras anywhere. Some armies have mountain-dedicated divisions, including Nazi Germany. The Americans occupied southern Grmany, which is their mountainous region, and would have foughtr with them. Their insignia was the edelweiss, a white flower found at high altitudes in the alps. |
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Next question: In the second movie of the series, did anyone notice Buck Compton hit the German with the grenade dead square in the back and it blew up? I had them! I called bullshit and said "Grenades don't explode on contact." I was wrong. At least on this count. Somewhere I read in the real persons bios that Buck was a catcher at UCLA or some college, and nearly went professional. Apprently, he threw the grenade like a baseball, and it just happened to go off just before or immediately after hitting the Kraut dead square in the back. Gotta love that! 
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Maybe twenty years down the road...  ETA, actually I think Blithe gets wounded at the end of this segment, never fully recovers from the wound and eventually dies in '46 or '47. So I don't think he has twenty years..Bummer. |
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Ambrose was full of shit. Blithe did not die in 1947. He died in 1967. Albert Blithe, Sergeant |
| Ambrose was known not to always have checked his facts. I think while interviewing many of the vets of E/2/506 he just took too much info on face value. Ambrose was accused after writing one of his last books of writing terribly incorrect information. Ambrose was also not well regarded by many of his contemporaries. He had a very inflated ego and was at times hard to work with. Read Dick Winters book and he wrote about how difficult it came at time to get Ambrose on board with the book and then Ambrose wanted to do everything his way and not tell the story right. Ambrose has been called one of the best writers in our nations history, I call horse shit. I've liked his books for their readability, but they may have not always been 100% correct. |
Wow ! |
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Yeah, 3 purple hearts and 3 bronze stars and a silver. |
Very interesting!! Apparently Ambrose just took the word of the 101st vets and did not check. Well here's another little gotcha. The series ends with the 101st capturing Berchtesgaden and the Eagles Nest. However in reality it was units of the US 3rd Infantry Division that grabbed those honors. And a French outfit was with the 3rd when entering the Eagles Nest. There are numerous accounts of this but heres one. Band of Brothers is still a damn good series. Edited to add the bit about the French unit. |