Last time, Easy Company and the rest of the 101st Airborne dug in to protect Bastogne, filling gaps on a stretched-thin Allied front line. The brutal winter stand was made worse by a supply, clothing, and food shortage. Joe Toye got trench foot, and medic Eugene Roe warned him it could turn gangrenous. Babe Heffron watched his foxhole friend Pvt. Julian get shot in the throat during a patrol trip to the German front lines; the soldiers had to fall back and leave the writhing man there to die alone. At Christmas, Gen. McAuliffe -- acting 101st commander -- replied, "Nuts!" when the German leader called for Allied surrender. Harry Welsh, a popular Easy platoon leader and friend of Winters, got hit in the leg and sent off to the hospital.
"I've seen death. I've seen my friends, my men, being killed," recalls one veteran. "And...it doesn't take too many days of that, and you change dramatically." Another man recalls again the shortage of food and ammunition, plus the way blistering cold cut through their insufficient layers. "Couldn't be able to fire [sic], and if you could, some crazy thing would shoot at you," he says. A third man recalls with sorrow that everywhere they looked, they saw death -- dead animals, dead enemy and Allied soldiers. "You don't have a chance, when your friends go down, to really take care of them as you might...especially if you're under attack, moving, or whatever," says a fourth man. "I withstood it well, but I had a lot of trouble later in life because those events would come back, and..." He looks down, shakes his head, and chokes away tears. "You never forget 'em," he finishes, his voice clogged with unshed tears.
The theme music gets me choked now. I can't help it. I see Eugene Roe's distressed face from last week, and I see Winters and the injured Welsh and Compton talking about his breakup, and I'm totally moved. I have become...sigh...a sucker.
January 2, 1945: Ardennes Forest, Belgium. Donnie narrates, noting that Easy's tragic but successful stance holding the line at Bastogne prompted HQ to call upon the men again, this time to push the Germans backwards. Compton and Donnie stare at a map, which is spread across hunched Malarkey's back. "We were here this morning, then we came this way," Donnie theorizes, tracing a line. Compton grins and punches the map with his pointer finger, deliberately poking Malarkey, who complains. "Stop crying, Malarkey, or I'll nail it to your head," Buck Compton grins. "Ya should, it's made of wood," Gonorrhea says. Merry at Malarkey's good-natured expense, Compton tells Gonorrhea to lead the men out, and lets Malarkey free himself from the Bitch position.
Donnie calls for 2nd platoon to fall out behind him. He narrates that he was happy to be out of his foxhole and moving, if only to get the blood flowing and generate any kind of warmth. The men fan out slowly and trudge through the snowy woods to clear the Bois Jacques, a stretch of forest overlooking the German-held town of Foy, "in preparation for what we all knew would be the eventual assault on Foy itself." In the background, scouts call for soldiers to watch for mines. Donnie recalls only light fire raining down upon them, surprisingly little resistance from a well-fortified German side. The men look cautious, but not too terrified. "Hoobler's run-in with the German on horseback was the most dramatic moment of the day," Donnie says.
Flash back to Hoobler ducking behind a tree, taking cover as the German rides past. Darting out, he fires three quick shots; the third rips through the man's helmet and drops him off the horse and onto the ground in a slump. Those helmets are outstanding. He might as well have worn aluminum foil. Hoobler grins proudly and cheers his successful snipe, bounding over to the corpse and poking it to ensure its complete expiration. His brains trickle gently out of the helmet hole. Suddenly, inspired, Hoobler bends down and searches the dead man's pockets, withdrawing with ecstasy a covered Luger pistol. His brain orgasms. Hoobler shoots it off into the distance.
"Hoobler had been talking about getting a Luger since Normandy," Donnie says. "As we dug in, he went from foxhole to foxhole telling everybody just how he got one." Hoob stops at Randleman's, Martin's, and Perconte's holes, among others, gleefully recounting his accurate shot and subsequent raid. "Outstanding accuracy, if I do say so myself," he boasts. "And you do," Donnie says wryly. "And I do," agrees Hoobler. And I do, because I can't even hit a stationary target from two feet out with a balled-up Kleenex. Hoobler jokes with Shifty Powers, the company's best marksman, that he could've challenged him for accuracy that day. "No, no, I'm not a good shot," Shifty says modestly. "Now, Dad, he was excellent, excellent, I declare, he could shoot the wings off a fly." Shifty is evidently some kind of southern belle. He should've said, "Dad could've shot the bun off that mealy-mouthed Melanie Wilkes." Hoobler wonders what a horseman was doing in the forest; Donnie suggests that it was probably reconnaissance work, figuring a horse would be quieter. Than what? A Jeep, I guess, because a huge panting, snarling, stomping animal probably makes more noise than a man on foot. Unless you're Mike Tyson. Someone snarks that the German was probably trying to escape, and they momentarily wonder whether the horse is okay. Donnie helps Shifty dig his foxhole, because he's selfless and believes in the group, not the solo career, and Jordan, we're looking at you, here.
Compton flags down Donnie, who hands his shovel to Malarkey and heaves himself out to chat with Buck. The officer wonders where Lt. Dike might be. "He's around," hedges Donnie, clearly ill-at-ease but unwilling to demean the man. "Could you be more specific, Sergeant?" Compton asks, his lips twisted into an amused scowl. "Uh, not really," Donnie says, evading an insult again. "Dammit," Buck curses in his most strapping voice. "I haven't seen him all day, I haven't since we went through the woods, and I have to figure out how we ended up." From memory, Donnie informs him that Brown and Stevens are wounded, but that's it. "Goddammit, where the hell is Dike?" Compton hisses to no one in particular, then shrugs helplessly. "Where the hell does he ever go?" Malarkey, digging a foxhole behind them, says what no one else will: "I don't know, but I wish he'd stay the hell there. Be nice if he took Lt. Shames with him, too." Donnie immediately silences them. "Shutting up, Sarge," Malarkey says pleasantly.
A lone gunshot cracks through the air, sending all men diving into the nearest foxhole -- in this case, the one Shifty and Malarkey are digging. They hear nothing else, and jumpily whisper that they can't fathom what the noise was: it's not a patrol, and it wasn't a sniper's rifle. "No one out there," Shifty reports, confusedly.
"Ah, Jesus, it's Hoob!" screams a soldier. Frantic, the men scour the area for the source of fire. "No, no, he shot himself!" screams the man, who then hollers for a medic. "Stupid, stupid," Hoobler pants, twitching and wincing from the pain. "It's my fucking leg!" he moans. It seems he had the loaded Luger in his pants and it just went off without warning. Any euphemism scouts will be happy with this. Buck scolds him. "Shit, Buck, I wasn't touching it!" gasps Hoobler, struggling for strength. Perconte shrieks for a medic again. Blood gushes from the leg wound. Everyone scrambles to help, shedding layers of their own to keep heat from escaping Hoobler's body. "It hurts like a sonofabitch," Hoobler wails. "I think I hit bone!" More screams for a doctor; the men smack their friend's cheeks to keep him conscious and try to keep him talking. Hoobler is shivering and convulsing. Blood pools on the fabric of his pants. Pvt. Eugene Roe slides into the hole and teases, "Did you think it was a German leg, Hoob?" Oh, so Roe's a joker now. Right. But, heh. Roe desperately tries to cut through Hoobler's layers to dress and treat the flesh wound itself. "Hey [Donnie],"Hoobler breathes shakily. "You said I was a great shot, right?" Donnie soothingly assures him that he is, and tries to cheer up his weakened friend. "Come on, Hoob, you can jump out of planes, you're a tough man!" someone insists. Buck props up Hoobler's head; the patient's body still jerking and twitching beyond all control. Quietly, Roe despairs that he can't see a thing and desperately must take Hoobler to an aid station. Suddenly, Hoobler stops quaking. "Doc!" Buck blurts, his hand on Hoobler's neck. Everyone looks, as Buck leans back and sighs with frustration. Everyone exhales, looking like it's the first time they've drawn a full breath in hours. Donnie stares sadly at the Luger that dehoobled the division. I always knew the Luger hunt would backfire tragically. Hasn't Hoobler been watching?
At their hovel near battalion CP, Donnie debriefs Nixon and Winters...and then tells them about the Hoobler situation. "He was wearing so many clothes, we couldn't tell how bad he was bleeding," Donnie explains. "By the time we got to the aid station, he was already dead. The bullet cut the main artery in his leg." Nixon sighs with regret, but reassures Donnie that with that main artery destroyed, Hoobler was a goner even if they'd gotten right to the wound and to the aid station. God, that really sucks -- after all that fighting, after facing danger and living, he kills himself by sticking a Luger in his trousers and breathing on it wrong. On a shallow personal level, this is why I absolutely refuse to contract Mad Cow Disease. Anything that will have people snickering at my funeral is totally out of the question. Donnie, still troubled, nods and turns to go check on his men, but Winters stops him. "Where's Dike?" he asks. Interestingly, Winters is shivering himself silly -- either the battalion HQ officers don't get special treatment, or Winters refuses any amenities that the lower-ranked soldiers on the line can't get. I prefer to believe the latter. "You want to see him, sir?" Donnie says uneasily. "No," Winters replies, pointedly. "I just would've expected to get this kind of news from him." Donnie pauses, considers the situation and swallows his basest instincts to blow the whistle on the bastard. "Well, I was there, sir," he answers carefully. "I figured it might as well be me." Winters's eyebrow twitches, his face a picture of gentle skepticism tinged with respect for Donnie's integrity.
Donnie wanders through the forest to check on all his men, making sure they're okay and set up in foxholes. He voice-overs that the question of Dike's whereabouts had plagued him, due to long stretches of time when the CO wandered away without warning. "Wouldn't have been so bad if he was just one of the guys in the company, but Lt. Dike was supposed to be leading the company," Donnie says. His narration is really quite flat, although that monotone does reinforce the idea that this is a journal entry reenacted. Donnie stops to help the men dig, pats them on the shoulders, and basically behaves impressively. He muses in voice-over that Winters was a CO everyone adored and respected, and Moose Heyliger never had a chance to follow in those footsteps because a jumpy Allied sentry felled him with a bullet in Holland. "Then came Norman Dike," Donnie tells us. "Dike wasn't a bad leader because he made bad decisions. He was a bad leader because he made no decisions."
We see Dike instructing a handful of officers and NCOs as to a battle plan involving the movement toward Foy. He blathers about tight security, then explains that the battalion is planning an S-3 move, "so I'll probably be called away regularly." Shit leaks out the coward Dike's eyeballs, so full is he of his own crap. "Uh, yeah," Buck says, biting his lip. "What's the formation you want us to go for?" Dike says, "At present, per usual, but I'll clarify that with you at a later time," but he's thinking, "It doesn't matter, because I'll be running in the opposite direction." Then, Dike does the strangest thing: He yawns. It occurs to me that despite the hardship, and the difficulty of sleeping in cold trenches with intermittent gunfire, one rarely sees an Easy soldier yawn. "All right, uh, I gotta make a call," Dike says before fleeing. Everyone watches him go, slightly disgusted at how accustomed they are to seeing this man's backside in motion. "Let's move out," Compton says wryly.
Donnie explains that someone at division HQ liked Dike, stationing him with Easy Company just to get him the combat experience he needed to climb up the ladder. Dike treated his post with the according lack of commitment, like "something unpleasant he had to get through before continuing his march up the ladder." That clicking noise you hear is Dike's offspring changing the channel and canceling HBO. Gonorrhea moans that the boys are screwed. Pvt. Extra announces that he's glad Dike is gone. "We're doing all right, even with Foxhole Norman," argues Malarkey. Gonorrhea takes issue with this -- yeah, they're fine now. "In case you ain't noticed, there's a town down the hill, and in that town are these guys. These guys are called Germans, and these Germans got tanks," Gonorrhea sasses, finishing that they're headed right into that town to knock on their doors. "We gotta do all this with a CO who's got his head so far up his fucking ass that the lump in his throat is his nose," Gonorrhea growls. I love him. He's the type of guy whose glass is half-empty, and he'll swear a blue streak at it for having the audacity to stay that way. But he's also a hell of a soldier and loyal to the end. He's charmingly brash. Apparently, I've developed a love affair with all these people. I am such a slut.
Donnie arrives and interrupts the laughter. They greet him warmly and crack that they're just sitting there freezing their asses off, singing Dike's praises. Donnie nods understandingly, then perches at the edge of the foxhole. "Well, I'll tell you, I wouldn't want to be a replacement officer coming in here, getting thrown in with a group of guys who've known each other for, what, two years?" he suggests gently, adding that it's hard for anyone to show up and lead a tight-knit group like that. "How could anyone really hope to gain the respect of the toughest, most professional, most dedicated sons-of-bitches in the entire ETO? Huh?" Donnie asks the silent group of men. "If you ask me, a guy'd have to march off to Berlin and come back with Hitler's mustache or something." Gonorrhea chuckles. I'm not sure why Donnie is the man who defends Dike and answers for his whereabouts, other than the fact that he's the company's top NCO. Why wouldn't the commissioned lieutenants, directly below Dike in the chain of command, be responsible for this? Donnie calmly tells the guys not to think twice about Dike, because as long as Easy's stellar sergeants and privates do their jobs, the company will be just fine. Everyone smiles, because he is right and he is friendly and he's going to go bald before his brother Mark does.
Donnie then answers my question, partly. He claims he doesn't know whether he believed the PR he just spewed, but "as company 1st sergeant, it was my job, not to protect Dike but to protect the integrity of the company." I'll buy that.
Winters and Nixon huddle up in their love shack and commence pillow talk. Winters deadpans that Dike's big problem is that he's another arrogant rich jerk from Yale. Nixon laughs, so I take it he is one such jerk and Winters is just yanking his chain with gentle man-love. Winters feels powerless, unable to jettison Dike just because of something so nebulous as a bad feeling. But the bigger problem: "Who would I put in his place?" Winters muses. "Lt. Shames?" We flash to an intense man screaming himself blue, eyes bugging out from the effort. "Both of you little crapheads did not listen to a word I said during that briefing, did you?" his forehead throbs, venom and saliva flying from his rabid mouth. "Shames has seen too many war movies and thinks he has to yell all the time," Winters notes. The Spanks team didn't notice that self-referential humor went out when Scream 3 tanked. Back to Winters, who says that Lt. Peacock -- another platoon leader -- is also a possibility. "Bless him, no one tries harder, but he's not cut out to take men into combat," Winters observes as we see Peacock confusedly staring at a map and trying to determine his platoon's position. We saw his uncertainty in action in "Bastogne," when he took a patrol group on a mission toward the German line and it ended in disaster and the death of replacement Pvt. Julian. Winters can't promote him to CO when Peacock struggles with commanding a platoon. Nixon pipes up that Buck Compton is an obvious choice, what with his swagger and his hotness. Nixon's reasons aren't quite those, but I know they were lingering in the back of his mind. "He's the only real choice," Winters agrees. "Buck's a real combat leader, but you know, I want Easy Company to have at least one experienced platoon leader." Still, he laments, it's a moot point because Dike is there for the duration. "Well, we all know who you'd like to have run Easy, but the trouble is, it's not your job anymore, Dick," Nixon reminds him kindly, massaging his friend's troubled thigh. Well, he might've been. Winters worries silently.
"We all agreed Buck Compton would've been the best choice to run Easy if Winters had been able to get rid of Dike," Donnie narrates. "But to be honest, Buck wasn't the same soldier...since he got shot in Holland. He was more serious somehow." Yeah, because he got shot in the ass and then dumped on it. There's no justice. No one man could be that strapping, I guess, without being fated for a fall. Buck, perched in a foxhole with Heffron and Gonorrhea, can't believe Hoobler had a loaded Luger in his pants. I feel like I've written an awful lot today about the contents of Hoobler's pants. "Don't you two do something stupid like that, all right?" Buck demands. "You, Wild Bill, I've invested too much goddamn time shaping you into something useful." Gonorrhea laughs affectionately. Yeah, G-Spot, I love him too. "If you do something crazy, get yourself knocked out of this thing..." Buck warns. "I know, you'll kill me," interrupts a grinning Gonorrhea. "Even if you're dead, I'll still kill you," Compton finishes. His warning complete, Compton stares joy-free at his friends, then leaves to go spread a little gloom and doom wherever sunshine threatens to sparkle. Heffron watches his departure. "Crazy Joe McClosky," he says. Gonorrhea figures Babe has finally gone nuts. Heffron clarifies that Crazy Joe is a Philly denizen (both these men call that city their home) who hung out in front of Delancey's and stared at people silently. "Buck reminds me of him now," Heffron says. Gonorrhea, stunned, can't fathom Heffron's assertion that Buck is loony. Upset, Heffron backs off a bit, then changes his mind. "Come on, you've seen him!" he insists. "He's all wound up like spring!" Gonorrhea flatly states that his friend is fine. "It wasn't getting shot that got him," he says, quietly. "It was being in that hospital. I've been there, okay? It ain't pretty....You saw, once he was up moving around he was his old self again. I'm telling you, Buck Compton's fine." The Jinx Fairy plops down to me and shows me her ass, which now has Buck Compton's name tattooed across it. But, since we're just getting started and she's clearly got time to kill, I pass her twenty bucks for a beer run.
Compton rains on a foxhole containing George Luz, Skip Muck, and Alex Penkala. "I'm serious!" he tells them. "Sure thing, boss. Nothing stupid. We got it," Skip and Penkala say. Compton demands the same assertion from tired, unenergized Luz, and finally gets it. Compton leaves, satisfied that he could make a run at the Grim Reaper's racket once this dang ol' war ends. "Don't do anything stupid? Who the hell is he talking to? A bunch of morons who volunteered to jump out of a perfectly good airplane," Penkala giggles. "Can it get more stupid than that?" Luz moans, "Probably not." Skip gulps and admits he swam across Niagara once on a bet. "What, in a barrel?" Luz asks, curious and dubious at once. "No, I didn't go over the Falls, I swam the river ten miles up," insists Skip. "That current is damn strong. Must've carried me two miles downstream before I got across." He laughs that he didn't find it stupid, but his mother and sister thought otherwise and blasted him for doing it; so did his girlfriend Faye. "Well, they had a point," grumbles Penkala. "You're an idiot."
Donnie sits quietly in his foxhole and cleans Hoobler's Luger. That sounds like an internal organ of the gooey, non-essential variety. "I heard about Hoobler," a voice says. Donnie looks up in surprise to see Lt. Dike standing above his foxhole. "Shame." Donnie agrees. Dike asks whether that's the Luger; Donnie says it is, but that he hasn't ascertained just what to do with the offending weapon yet. "Where'd you grow up?" Dike asks. "Huntington, West Virginia," Donnie says, shooting Dike a confused look that reflects the randomness of this quiz. "What kind of work did you do there?" Dike wonders. "My brother and I helped my mother run a boarding house," he answers. We learn that Donnie's father died in an automobile when the lad was ten. "That's sad," Dike says, as though Donnie just confessed that he's got a zit festering on his chin and no Oxy. Dike then decides to investigate why Donnie became a paratrooper, probably trying to understand something about the men he's commanding. Or, he's killing time between bathroom breaks. Donnie explains that he read an article about paratroopers in Life magazine, which discussed the grueling training and concluded that only the very best men succeed to become certified paratroopers. "I wanted to fight with the best," Donnie tells his superior yet vastly inferior officer, the irony of that situation not completely lost on the sergeant. Dike asks whether Donnie misses Huntington. "Honestly, I try not to think about it that much," Donnie replies. "What about you, where are you fr..." At that second, Donnie realizes Dike has trotted away without warning. He shakes his head in amazement, having learned that dorks come in all kinds of uniforms.
A Jeep plows through the snow and stops at Nixon's foxhole, waking up the decidedly hung over captain. The new arrival is a messenger, who hands Nixon a piece of paper and then flees the stench of whiskey, vomit, and morning breath that no doubt clouds the air around Nixon's foxhole like dirt clouds cling to Pigpen.
"Morning, sir," Nixon says jauntily to Winters, who is shaving and looks outstanding. Red hair against snow...mmm. I'm such a girl about this show. Nixon grins that a notice came from division, and he brandishes it dramatically. "Eviction notice?" Winters asks, dryly. Nixon is glowing. "I think I got something to help you with your leadership problem," he replies happily. Winters hopes against all reason that Dike has been transferred. "No, can't help you there," Nixon says. "But, division is plucking one officer from each regiment that served in the heroic defense of Bastogne and sending them back to the States for a three-day furlough, getting them out banging the drum for the war-bond drive, that sort of thing." Nixon grins that he's been plucked, and passes the notice to Winters, who is genuinely delighted for his pal but fails to see how his boyfriend's absence could possibly help him. "It doesn't. That's why I'm not going," Nixon announces. "I've been to the States. I grew up there. That's why I came to Europe. Just wish they'd told me there was a war on." Aw! Nixon's a boozehound and not cut out for combat, but he's committed to his friends and he's giving up the free ticket home and what if something happens to him now and I'm getting choked here and need to sit down. Winters is obviously appreciative of the sacrifice, as Nixon drives home the point that surely another man in the battalion could use a long trip back to the U.S.
Cut to the elated face of Lt. Peacock, who is being presented the pass and told it's some kind of honor. He's grinning, his eyes are moist, and he's genuinely thrilled. Everyone gathers around and tells him they're delighted for him, and that he's a great guy who deserves this high honor, and poor Peacock is so touched and feels so loved. How sad! He has no idea. "Thanks, guys, this really means a lot!" he chokes. Everyone offers three very low-key cheers for Peacock, lest the Germans hear them roar. This leaves Easy down one platoon leader; I assume they can slide in another officer somewhere, or they'll just do without since Peacock was sweet but barely capable anyway.
A filmmaker films Easy's men smiling and singing and toasting each other. The camera lens colors the surroundings, making everything look green and warm and rosy; then we see the man filming it and the stark contrast between the film and the harsh reality. This feels like a swipe at shallow war propaganda, and it's actually quite effective. "Remember to smile for the camera," the visiting Col. Sink says. "Got to keep morale up for the folks back home." Winters asks, "Why?" Sink shakes his head slightly. "Damned if I know," sighs the older officer. He then asks intelligence officer Nixon what awaits them in Foy. "At least one company from the 10th Panzergrenadiers dug in here," he answers, pointing to a spot on the map. "There's at least one 88 [machine gun], but we haven't been able to spot it." Nixon adds that there's a lot of artillery there as well, but Winters has spied something intriguing and takes his leave of the two men.
Joe Toye addresses the videographer in a gravelly voice as the film rolls. "How do I feel about being rescued by Patton?" he repeats. "I'd feel pretty peachy about it if it wasn't for one thing: we didn't need to be fucking rescued by Patton. Got that?" Winters smiles and greets Toye, pulling him aside for a conference. Toye immediately apologizes for his Patton remark, but Winters waves it aside, since he feels exactly the same way. He's more curious about why Toye is there. "I want to head back to the line, sir," he says. Winters insists he doesn't have to, and tries to shuttle the soldier off to an aid station. "I'd really like to head back with the fellas, sir," Toye repeats firmly, removing his helmet so he can slide his sling off and cast it aside. Winters is impressed and grants Toye permission to rejoin the line. He looks so proud of his soldier.
"Joe Toye had been at the aid station for three days," Donnie narrates. "Everybody was glad to have him back, especially [Gonorrhea]." We see the gonorrhific guy warmly greeting his friend. "Had to make sure you're on top of things," Toye postures. Gonorrhea grins and plays along. "Tied me own boots last week, all by meself," he jokes, unfortunately sounding incredibly forced with the childish pronoun manipulations. I choose to believe it's because the actor cherishes grammar. The rest of the group is equally pleased to see Toye. "Where'd you get hit?" asks one young private. "What's that?" Toye asks Skip, pointing at Webb. Ha! We learn it's Webb, a replacement. "Thought it was some guy I've known for two years but forgot his face!" laughs a relieved Toye.
Skip decides to take us all on a nostalgic tour through the men of Easy Company and the weaponry that felled them, kind of like a Sally Jessy theme but without the freaks. Joe got an arm wound on New Year's Eve, courtesy of the Luftwaffe. James Alley "landed on broken glass in Normandy and got peppered by a potato-masher in Holland," Skip explains. Heh. What if it really had been a screaming German who assaulted Toye with one of those manual potato-mashing utensils? Not as effective, maybe, but at least it's a novel approach to combat. They don't show Alley -- unfortunately, since I have no idea what he looks like and would've welcomed the chance to know him. Moving on, we're reminded that Bull Randleman took a piece of an exploding tank in Holland, Liebgott got "pinked" in the neck there, and Popeye Wynn took a butt bullet in Normandy. Interestingly, Luz hasn't ever been hit. "Lucky bastard," Skip grins. "Takes one to know one," Luz notes. The Jinx Fairy dumps out her pack of smokes and spells, "Boo-ya!" on the rug. Buck Compton's butt bullet hit him in Holland; playfully, Buck bends over and points to his bum and ahhhhhh, shake the booty, baby. Someone else notes the tradition of ass wounds within Easy. "Even [Donnie] over there got a couple pieces of a tank shell burst in Carentan," Skip notes. "One chunk in the face, [and] another chunk almost took out his nuts." Donnie snickers, leaning against a tree while eating his dinner. Gonorrhea regards him with interest. "Yeah, how are those nuts, Sarge?" he asks. "Doing fine...Nice of you to ask," Donnie says calmly, but with a slight mirthful quaver.
"On the afternoon of Jan. 3, most of Easy headed back to its old position in the woods overlooking Foy," Donnie voice-overs, as we see it happen. "A few men remained in the Bois Jacques attached to D Company to hold the main line of resistance." Gonorrhea and Toye pass the huddled Easy men and mock them. "Wouldn't drink too much if I was you," someone calls out. "Hey, be careful if he offers you a cigarette," Skip giggles. Christenson is confused. He doesn't know they're referring to Lt. Speirs, a.k.a. Deputy Dog, the company's commander with a legend of evil. Perconte supplies the rumors, which we heard in "Carentan": that Speirs shot one of his own men simply for being drunk, and that he annihilated a group of twenty prisoners right after charitably offering them all cigarettes. We've seen bits of the second incident, but not enough to comfirm the level of Speirs's involvement, and nothing of the first. Right as they dish Deputy Dog's devilish past, the man himself approaches and asks what they're all doing. "Watching the line, sir," trembles Christenson, obviously afraid that the man will determine "line-watching" a killable offense. "Well, keep up the good work," D-Dog says pleasantly. "While you're at it, you might want to reinforce your cover." Perconte pipes up that Lt. Dike told them not to bother because they'd only be there one day, to which D-Dog whatevers that they might as well do as Dike ordered. Turning to leave, D-Dog pauses and says, "Anyone care for a smoke?" Christenson stares at him in fear. No one responds.
Late that afternoon, Easy arrives at its old foxholes and Toye eagerly jumps into his. "Aaaah, you gotta be fucking kidding me!" he screams. "Someone's gonna die, someone's gonna fucking die! Look at this shit!" He means it literally. The 1st battalion saw fit to take dumps in every Easy foxhole. Woohoo! Fun with excrement! Gonorrhea attributes it to the soldiers' wimpy refusals to spend any time above ground. Donnie notes in voice-over that the 1st battalion obviously withstood heavy artillery fire in Easy's absence; the broken trees, strewn branches and shards of bark, it seems, were a dead giveaway. No cruel war pun intended.
The men inch closer to visibility, while Donnie watches the Germans in Foy through his binoculars; they're scampering from building to building, setting up heavy guns and scrambling to get in position. "Still couldn't see the artillery, but I knew it was down there," Donnie tells us. He reports to Dike that the Germans have the line zeroed, and appear to be biding their time until it's apparent that Allied troops have reoccupied the position like lambs to the slaughter. The plan is established: hold the line. Good plan, brainiac. I bet he could also explain what sweaters do. Dike then decides he's due at regimental HQ and leaves the fortification of foxholes to people with actual competence.
Donnie helps the men carry logs and enormous leafy branches toward foxholes. As usual, he's more concerned with his comrades' safety than he is in setting up his own secure spot, underscoring yet another inadequacy of Lt. Dike's. "Incoming!" someone screams. The company scrambles to take cover, diving into whatever pits are nearby and trying to shield themselves with foliage. What ensues is madness -- men running to and fro, zig-zagging between potent explosions and a barrage of gunfire. Every shell blows up a tree or hits the snow and shoots up a geyser of dirt and debris. Donnie drops into a shallow hole and watches everything unfold, a strange smile on his face. "For some reason, at that moment in that half-finished foxhole, all I could think about was the Fourth of July when I was a kid. I loved to make my own firecrackers...loved to blow up dirt clods and pop bottles," he remembers aloud to us. "What I saw that day was the most awesome display of firepower I'd seen in my life." A tree blows apart in an awe-inspiring cloud of orange flame. The forest looks like a minefield -- there's no safe spot, which makes it amazing that so many people lived. Of course, not everyone who lived did so in one piece. "I wouldn't have been laughing if I'd known what happened to Joe Toye," Donnie says.
Toye lies on the ground, a trickle of blood oozing from the corner of his mouth. He twitches, struggles for air, shivers, and coughs at the same time. He tries to sit up, or roll over, or even prop himself up on an elbow, but he's weak and in pain and stricken by what he sees on the ground. Panning out, we see it too: his leg, blown off above the knee and lying, twisted, a foot away on the snow. His stump bleeds profusely. Donnie jerks his head up, but sees nothing; still, he peers around curiously, as if he has leg empathy. Malarkey and Gonorrhea slowly start to emerge, wondering aloud whether they should check for any wounded men, but also fretting that the Germans are waiting for exactly that to happen before shelling the Allies again. "Gotta get up," Toye says, his words almost indecipherable through gritted teeth and a filter of sheer agony. "Gotta get up! I need my helmet!" He's valiantly fighting tears. In the distance, Malarkey hears noises and grimaces, trying to recognize the source. "I need help," the voice calls feebly. Gonorrhea screams, "I think that's Joe!" and runs out of his hole toward his fallen friend. Compton screams for Gonorrhea to stay under cover in a foxhole, but Wild Bill ignores him and keeps charging toward Toye.
Heffron, meanwhile, is trapped in his foxhole, a fallen tree blocking the opening. "Help," he calls pathetically. Gonorrhea gets to Toye and, to his credit, doesn't react with alarm or terror; instead, he just tries to help his pal scramble to safety. "I gotta get up," Toye mumbles, panting, anguish contorting his features. He's trying so hard, being so brave, and he can't get any leverage without that leg. "Come on, Joe, come on pal," Gonorrhea tries to reassure him, and they joke tensely that Gonorrhea always kidded about making it back to the U.S.A. first. He starts to drag Toye away. Donnie and Compton dig Heffron out from his tree prison. "Think I overdid it on the cover of my foxhole?" he laughs, sheepishly. Toye is bellowing in pain while also insisting he must return to his foxhole, utterly dedicated to his men and his job and aching for normalcy. Gonorrhea swears he's trying to get Toye to his foxhole, but the going is slow.
"Incoming!" someone shrieks again. More blasts, as terrifying as the last, besiege the area. "Hurry up!" Compton screams at Gonorrhea, petrified. "You're gonna get bombed!" Gonorrhea never loses his cool, clamping down on Toye's arms and dragging him inch by inch toward a foxhole. "Move it, Bill!" Compton begs him. Gonorrhea calmly swears, "Come on, Joe." Compton notices snow volcanoes erupting all across the forest, products of intensifying shellfire. "Hold on, I'll be there!" he yells. "I'm going to help you!" Just then, a shell hits right where Gonorrhea stood, and they disappear from sight. "NO!" screams Buck, darting forward until a blast knocks him backward into his foxhole. God, I'm so tense. I can't believe this. The special effects make that forest look like the freshest hell of all, a perilous pit of shrapnel and fire. It's worse than a Jewel concert.
Cries for a medic rip through the air. Donnie dives into a different hole, trembling. "During the second barrage I wasn't laughing anymore," he narrates. Bodies are everywhere, as is the debris of a decimated wood. Toye and Gonorrhea lie motionless on the snow, both men with mangled right limbs. No! Not Gonorrhea, too! This is awful! God, I kept wishing the other episodes had emotional resonance like this, but when it comes right down to it, I didn't want it this badly. I'm crying. Gonorrhea lost most of his leg because he's brave and loyal and utterly heroic, refusing to run and hide and abandon his legless friend Toye. I want to hug him. Luz peeks out of his hole and screams for Donnie to make sure he's all right. "Stay down!" Donnie orders. Dike runs up, barely in uniform and panting. "You get things organized here. I'm going to go for help," he pants, then takes off again from whence he came. "What the FUCK?" Luz sputters, having overheard the exchange. Donnie looks sad. "Where the fuck's he going?" screams Luz. Donnie waves off the inquiry and orders Luz to get battalion on the line.
When the dust cloud clears, Compton spies the motionless bodies of Gonorrhea and Toye, tangled in a heap, and loses the power of speech. "Mmm...mmm...MEDIC!" he stutters, aggrieved, bolting toward the duo. Gasping with shock and sorrow, he removes his helmet and stares at the horror before him, his fingers going slack and dropping his hat on the blood-soaked snow. Donnie bolts between foxholes to check on the health of his men. "Stay ready!" he calls. "Those stupid sons of bitches might be trying to come though!" Popeye Wynn proclaims himself "100% ready to kill Germans, sir!" Amen! Avenge the boys! I'm taking this awfully personally. But I've recapped their every move, and it's hard to recap their near-demise.
Donnie halts when he sees Toye and Gonorrhea, as does a startled Malarkey. He pales and asks the just-arrived Roe what he can do to help. "Got a smoke?" Toye trembles, wincing and still staring at the mangled flesh and bone mess that's where his kneecap should be. Gonorrhea likewise can't look away from his wound; his leg is still there, but only a thin strip of it connecting foot to knee. The rest is gone, blown to oblivion, carried away as ash on the winds of war. "Jesus, what's a guy got to do to get killed around here?" he breathes through his clenched jaw, equally terrified by what he's seeing where shin used to be. Roe orders for medics to load Gonorrhea onto a stretcher while he attends to Toye. The flesh left on Gonorrhea's leg twitches and jerks. "They got ol' Guarnere this time," he says, hiding tears with a pained chuckle. Donnie nods, broken, as Gonorrhea's stretcher moves toward a jeep. "Hey Joe, I told you I'd beat you back to the States," Gonorrhea calls to his buddy. Toye, agonized, can only stare. Luz walks over to Donnie, and his voice falters when he spies the horrible hit Easy Company just took. He suggests that Donnie go tend to Buck, who is seated on a branch nearby cradling his head in his hands.
Gingerly, Donnie approaches the lieutenant, crouching to him and speaking softly and with sympathy. In voice-over, Donnie reckons that the real change in Buck came after seeing his close friends Toye and Gonorrhea lying in pieces on Belgian soil. Compton looks off in the distance to avoid showing the depth of his pain.
An ambulance tears toward a town hospital, but it's unclear where, since Bastogne was left in ruins and Foy still belongs to the Germans. "One report said Compton was taken off the line because of a bad case of trench foot," Donnie says. "It didn't say anything about him losing his friends." Panning across a hospital, where soldiers visit their felled friends, we see Compton lying on a bed, alone, staring at the ceiling. "Buck was a great combat leader. He was wounded in Normandy, and again in Holland. He received a Silver Star for his part in taking out those guns on D-Day. He took everything the Krauts could throw at him, time and again," Donnie says. Except, apparently, whatever the Krauts threw at his nearest and dearest. Buck rolls over toward the camera, exposing red puffy eyes on the verge of another torrent of tears. Malarkey arrives to visit Buck, sitting by his bedside and reading aloud a piece of mail from Compton's home. "UCLA didn't make the Rose Bowl this winter, probably because you weren't there," he reads. "Gosh, how we all know what an exciting young man you are, and how your heart and love..." Buck reaches over and grabs the letter, throwing it down on the bed and burying his face in the pillow, weeping. Silently, Malarkey folds the note gently and ticks it in his former boss's pocket. "I guess he couldn't take seeing his friends Toye and Guarnere all torn up like that," Donnie voice-overs. "No one ever thought less of him for it." Compton, too, then. I can't take much more of this. I'm openly crying now.
Donnie meanders along the line, again checking up on his soldiers' morale. He notes to us that Buck's absence eliminated the only contender for Lt. Dike's spot, should a miracle remove him from command of Easy. He asks Skip Muck where Lt. Dike is; they realize he was off taking a walk, and Donnie walks away with a head-shake. Skip digs his foxhole with renewed vigor, wishing he could put the shovel to better use by ramming it up the smallest available cavity on Dike's body. We learn that Easy cleared the woods east of Foy, then moved a few days later through the western part of the forest and secured that, too. They met with surprisingly little resistance, which probably means the Germans were busy fortifying Foy. They Foy-tified it. See this? I'm reduced to a drooling, sniveling pun machine.
Luz gathers a few rapt NCOs and regales them with the unbelievable take of Dike's idiocy -- how he ran up to Donnie, clearly having been hiding near regimental HQ during the abominable shellfire, and ordered him to organize things. "I'm gonna go for...help," mimics Luz. "I need to go polish my oak-leaf clusters." Donnie, appearing behind the wannabe comic, clears his throat discreetly. Luz knows he's caught, turns around, and trots over to his boss. Donnie enthusiastically compliments his dead-on Dike impression, then begs Luz not to use it anymore. "Doesn't do anybody any good, okay?" he pleads. Luz gets it and agrees to stop. He then yawns, a direct jab at Dike again. "Wise-ass," Donnie chuckles.
Then, a familiar cry: "Incoming!" Trees explode. It's hard to imagine that any are left standing to then dissolve at the touch of shrapnel. My muscles are starting to ache from the periodic clenching. In a stunning outside shot of the forest, the deep blue night turns bright white, bathed in the glow of bursting shells. Luz sprints through the woods, but keeps tripping and stumbling, unable to reach his hole. "Hurry!" scream his hole-mates, Skip and Penkala. "Come on, get in here!" With everything in him, Luz strains to reach the foxhole but can't get there quickly enough. Suddenly, a shell drops inside the hole and disintegrates Skip and Penkala, thus exposing the fatal flaw in the foxhole plan: they're HOLES. In the middle of a battlefield. Not, in fact, bomb-repellants. Huddling inside them seems as much a crapshoot as running between the trees. Luz, eyes big as planets, lies still on the snow, covers his head, and quivers, terrified at a near-miss and rocked by the death of his close friends. Donnie yanks him inside his hole. "Muck and Penkala," sputters Luz. "Muck and Penkala got hit!" A bearded dude called Hashey gets hit in the shoulder.
Suddenly, a smoking canister drops from the sky and lands at the lip of Donnie's and Luz's foxhole. They stare at it without breathing, instantly pallid and clammy. It sizzles. They wait. It mocks them. They stiffen. It hisses. Luz slowly removes a cigarette from his jacket and lights it; Donnie reaches over and snags it. "Thought you didn't smoke," Luz whispers. "I don't," Donnie says flatly. Hell, I don't either, but that looks divine right now. I'm all unnerved and jumpy, and I'm on a comfy couch in sweats. Luz nods and lights a new one for himself. They never stop staring at the canister.
"The shell that hit the foxhole Luz and I were in was a dud," Donnie explains. "The one that hit Muck and Penkala's wasn't. That's just the way it was." He compliments Muck and Penkala, praising them as great men and alerting us that Malarkey took their deaths the hardest. His best friends in Easy were Compton, Muck, and Penkala, and "in less than a week, he'd seen two of them die." Thank God Malarkey is still with us. Someone picks a broken string of rosary beads -- the crucifix intact -- from the Muck/Penkala hole and slowly hands it to Malarkey, who cradles between his fingers. He's so crushed, he can't cry. He's dry.
"We were all worried about Malarkey," Donnie narrates, switching the scene to later that day, watching Foy and preparing to invade it. Gently, he nudges his friend. "Didn't I hear you say you wanted to bring a Luger home for your kid brother?" Donnie asks. Malarkey turns his head slightly and allows a wee flicker of a smile. "Yeah," he breathes. Donnie fumbles inside his coat and produces a Luger. "Why don't you give him that?" he offers. Malarkey takes it, staring wonderingly at it, and recognizing it as Hoobler's. He seems to thaw a bit, regarding the pistol almost as a piece of the past, a reminder of people and places and faces from Easy's combat history. Donnie then kindly informs Malarkey that Winters needs a runner for a few days, and wondered if Malarkey might want the job. Malarkey thinks for a minute, then slowly shakes his head, regaining more and more fragments of his former cheer. "Tell him thanks," he says, still gazing upon the Luger. "I'm gonna stay here." Donnie tells Malarkey to join him at HQ for an hour or two to bid Buck farewell. "All right," Malarkey agrees, still dazed. Donnie exposits that going even just fifty yards away from the front lines for a couple of hours can completely regenerate a soldier's fraying psyche. Cut to a young man on all fours, scraping frenetically at the rocky snow. "I saw a soldier try to dig a foxhole with his bare hands," Donnie recalls. "He didn't notice that he'd torn off all his fingernails. I got him out of there quickly; not for his sake, but for ours. Fear is poison in combat...destructive, contagious." Donnie gently puts the kid's helmet back on for him and helps him off the ground.
Donnie then watches as Malarkey and Compton say an awkward farewell. He repeats that Buck was forever changed that day, as we see him stoically salute Malarkey and hop atop a Jeep, riding off into the sunset. But not, fortunately, out of the opening credits, so we'll all still get our fix of strapping Buck.
And now, after all that, Donnie decides to note the obvious. "The barrages on Jan. 3 and the shelling on the ninth marked a low point in the war for many of the men in Easy," he understates. But he's got more than just no-shit-Sherlock details for us. "Few actually broke, but I knew the terror of those shellings and the unrelenting pressure we'd been under since we got to Bastogne would take a toll in many ways," he continues. "I was afraid men would lose focus, suffer a drop in morale, and that was dangerous, especially in combat...More of which lay in store for us." More combat? This is still going? Are we there yet? How much further? Mom, Julie just made a face at me! Lordy, this is the Shellacking That Wouldn't End. Someone other than Hoobler's trousers needs to fire a gun.
Donnie repeats again that they've cleared the woods on either side of Foy, but the Foy-a-thon was still imminent, and he dreaded it with every fiber of his being. The week's carnage and casualties belted home the reality not only that some men who ran Currahee together would die, but that all of them might. So, in sum, there is death all around. Thanks, big D. Blessed Perconte and Randleman are still kicking, as is my undead Liebgott, survivor of the weapon that is this Compaq keyboard. Donnie frets to us that Easy will be diving into combat again without a proper leader.
"The night before the attack, I did something as a 1st Sergeant that I would never have imagined myself doing," he voice-overs. Given what's coming, he didn't need to elucidate this for us; we've known all along that he bucked the trend and never badmouthed his boss. Waiting outside Winters's shelter, Donnie lights a smoke. "Didn't figure you for a smoking man," Winters's voice says, followed out of the darkness by the man himself. "Neither did I," sighs Donnie with war-weary typicality. They make small talk about the stillness of Foy, and Donnie's strong confidence in Easy Company's ability to carry out its part in the plan. Donnie then gulps, looks at the ground, and does the one thing he's resisted. "On the other hand, I have no confidence in our CO, sir," he begins. Winters looks up, amazed. "Lt. Dike is an empty uniform, Captain. He's just...he's not there, sir." Winters opts for the literal response, pointing out that Dike will indeed be there tomorrow. "I understand he'll be there physically, but tomorrow's the real deal and he's going to have to lead those men," Donnie argues, calling into question Dike's decision-making skills under pressure and under fire. Donnie concludes by asserting that a lot of Easy Company men will die the day under Dike's command. He's struggling to get this all out, clearly enjoying precisely none of it. Winters bites his lip and dismisses Donnie, who admits in voice-over that he knew Winters could do nothing to remove a well-connected CO, but he could stay silent no longer. He's far more generous than I am; I'd have been mouthing off like Gonorrhea. I don't fully understand why Winters, as the battalion XO, couldn't make some recommendation to have Dike removed; after all, he's the man's boss in both rank and title. But I refuse to doubt my hero; he wouldn't lie to me.
Morning dawns on Foy. Donnie isn't sure we quite get that Winters couldn't remove Dike from power based only on gut feelings, so he repeats it for out benefit and coughs up an anvil onto his shoe. Winters outlines the battle plan to Dike. The men must traverse an eighth of a mile of open field in order to reach Foy, but there's little cover on that short stretch, so speed is essential. Winters set up a group of light machine guns at either end of the field to provide covering fire. Item Company will lead the 3rd battalion toward Foy from the east to help draw attention away from Easy, and Dog Company will be in reserve, although Winters doubts Easy will need it. Dike nods and looks pensive, as though he's digesting this, although he's clearly more concerned with how far his wussy legs can carry him before he's considered a deserter. Winters sums up: get to Foy faster than the Germans can gear up the mortar and artillery fire. Speed, speed, speed. And, speed. "I'm relying on you," Winters hammers. "Get. It. Done." Dike meets his gaze, then yawns. Winters, pissed, kicks him in the nose, feeds him a box of bullets, then tickles Dike so fiercely that his mouth becomes a lethal weapon.
The attack begins. Easy scampers across the field while snipers fell a few of the fellows. At least one tank is prepared enough to fire. Liebgott makes it as far as a building, inside which three Germans have hidden; he and a few others prepare to smoke the bitches out. There's total confusion now, because gunfire is deluging the area and Dike has lost track of 1st platoon. Dike panics and tells everyone to stop, despite only having covered part of the stretch toward Foy. From the tree line, Winters frantically screams for everyone to keep moving, which directly counters Dike's confused cries to halt and fall back. This buys the Germans more time, which contravenes Winters's orders yet again. He is irate. Explosions are everywhere. The men try to take cover when ordered to, but look totally angry and annoyed at this disorganized disaster. They run every which way, while voices scream out instructions. It looks like a square-dancing convention gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Winters seethes that he wants Dike on that radio right now. Soldiers surround Dike and demand to know why they stopped. His head swimming, Dike stares at the angry faces and everything in his sights slows down to a crawl. Men are screaming at him for a plan. "I don't know!" he screams. Luz throws the phone at him and tells him to get on the horn with Winters immediately. Dike shakes off the trauma and blathers that he wants 1st platoon -- under Lt. Foley, probably Peacock's replacement -- to slink around the village and attack from the rear. Donnie yells that the rest of the men can't just stay put; it's a death trap. They're outclassed by the range and devastating power of German infantry weapons. He's also upset that 1st platoon will be alone out there. "We will provide suppressing fire!" stammers Dike. "We're gonna be kind of alone out there, Lieutenant," shouts a soldier. "WE WILL PROVIDE SUPPRESSING FIRE!" Dike shrieks, insane again.
As the platoon moves out, a man is shot and drops to the ground. Luz thrusts the radio at Dike again and demands that he speak to Captain Winters. Dike pants. His balls are actually inverted by now. Winters, steaming, paces the sideline in a right snit. A sniper shoots from the Foy church's steeple as Donnie screams for suppressing fire to abet 1st platoon's dangerous mission. Perconte drops down. No! Stop it, Spanks! Stop killing the guys I know! You're annihilating the plucky ones and have reduced me to excessive use of exclamation points! Bah!!!! Luckily, Perconte's ass is the only wounded part of his body, in fine Easy Company tradition. Donnie notes that snipers are in the building with the caved-in roof, and yelps to Dike that they're sitting ducks out there and desperately need to keep moving. Winters is screaming exactly the same thing from the forest line, and starts to charge out there. I'm totally rooting for this, but Col. Sink bellows for Winters to return because battalion commanders don't dart out into battle like that; Winters and I are both chagrined. Finally at the boiling point and feeling justified in his actions, Winters flags down Lt. Speirs and orders him to relieve Lt. Dike of command and lead that attack into Foy. Speirs trots out into the fire without a second thought to his own safety. Near Foy, Martin screams for Webb to fall back and take better cover, but when he taps the young soldier on the shoulder, he realizes Webb is dead.
Speirs charges up to Dike and grabs his chest. "I'm taking over," he seethes. Donnie briefs him: Easy is spread out all over the place, and 1st platoon is stretched across Foy's flank and unable to move because of a deadly sniper. He also points out the caved-in roof under which the worst of the snipers lurks. Speirs needs one second to make a decision. "I want mortars and grenade launchers on that building until it's gone and when it's gone I want 1st platoon to go straight in forget going around everyone else follow me," he rapid-fires, completely eschewing implied punctuation because dammit, we don't have time for pauses where commas would be. Donnie relays these orders to the other platoons, one of which he is leading in Compton's absence. James Alley sets up the mortar gun and shells the fuck out of the building with the caved-in roof. "Come on, Luz, let's get the bastards!" shouts a soldier. Shells pepper the fields as Easy finally scurries toward Foy.
Donnie arrives in town and takes cover behind a wall. Peering out, he recoils when a sniper bullet dings off the wall and scrapes his cheek. Stunned, he looks up and then notices a whole mess of German infantrymen and their weaponry approaching. He frets that Item Company is nowhere to be found, and Easy must link with those men in order to successfully capture Foy. He's also nervous that Item will just pull back and leave Easy alone. Speirs sets his jaw, then makes a rash decision. Bolting away from cover, he sprints across the town in search of Item Company. Donnie gapes at this selfless act. "At first the Germans didn't shoot at him," he narrates. "I think they couldn't quite believe what they were seeing. But that wasn't the really astounding thing." From the smoke, Speirs suddenly emerges again. "The astounding thing was that after he hooked up with I Company, he came back," Donnie informs us. Speirs slow-motion runs toward the camera, and I swear Chariots of Fire should be playing in the background as a beaming smile breaks across Donnie's face. His hairline celebrates by inching forward a few centimeters.
Jolly men sing "I've been working on the railroad, all the livelong day," as the videographer films the jubilation. Donnie exposits that they cleared Foy and took more than one hundred German prisoners in the process. Suddenly, a sniper kills two singing soldiers, and everyone races for cover. Dried blood crusts the right side of Donnie's face, still there from his earlier close call. Donnie can't see the sniper, so he leans out again and spots the rifleman aiming right at him. Whipping back around the wall, he tells Shifty Powers exactly where to shoot and melodramatically begs him, "Don't miss, Shifty." Bracing himself, Donnie then bolts out across the street to draw the sniper's attention, having drunk of the Speirs goblet and colored himself heroic. The man gets off one missed shot at Donnie before Shifty slays him with a well-placed single shot. Everyone cheers. The peril is no more.
As the men clean up Foy, Donnie reveals for us that Mellot, Herron, Sowasko, and Ken Webb died from the sniper's fire. "Would've been more if it hadn't been for Shifty Powers," he says. Randleman approaches, carrying little Perconte on his back. "Shot me right through my ass," he grins. "Hang tough," Donnie smiles back, as Jordan, Jon, and little Joey wipe their runny noses and slap a lawsuit on his been-around-the-block behind. They start to leave until Perconte calls out, "Is it true about Dike?" Donnie nods. "Thank God for small miracles," sighs Perconte. I'd have chosen much ruder language, something starting with "a" end ending with "sshole bastard wimp." Randleman and his cargo trudge away. As Donnie takes a walk and leaves smoking, burning Foy behind him, he shares his relief that the specter of the Foy offensive is finally behind them. "I guess a lot of the men thought once we'd taken Foy, they'd take us off the line and ship us to Mourmelon for a breather," he says. "That wasn't to be." Easy took two more towns, Novelle and Rachamps, a few days later, in a siege apparently not fit for television.
Inside the Rachamps church, a choir sings gentle hymns to soothe Easy's demolished spirit. Donnie tells us that it was their first night indoors in a month. Liebgott, Randleman, and Talbert stare morosely into the distance, seated in pews and letting the idyllic, peaceful setting wash over them. The room is cast in an orange glow. "It was heaven," Donnie shares, adding that the men had been told they'd go to Mourmelon soon for relaxation and recuperation. "Of course, in the morning, we found out Mourmelon would wait," because Hitler had attacked toward Alsace and Easy would be deployed to Haganau to hold part of that line. "We didn't know it yet," Donnie says. "That night, we were okay."
Panning across the tired faces, we see Luz slumped against the pew, dirty and hollow and inert. Roe's stony façade is in place, and Perconte is stretched out to him on his good cheek. Donnie, curled up in his seat with a journal, gives us the final devastating tally: of 121 men and twenty-four replacements; Easy exited Belgium with a total of sixty-three men, less than half the initial number. We then see a batch of familiar faces sitting in the pews, men we know have left Easy one way or another during the company's catastrophic month fighting for Bastogne and Foy. One by one, Donnie identifies them and recounts their circumstances; one by one, they fade away. This is incredibly cheesy and anvil-tastic, but with all the familiar faces in there, it manages to be incredibly moving as well. "Our month in Belgium cost us one good officer, Buck Compton, and one bad one, Norman Dike," Donnie says. "But we gained a good one in the end, so I guess we came out ahead." The camera stops on Lt. Speirs, who catches Donnie's eye.
After some light banter, Speirs cocks his head and says, "You wanna ask me, don't you?" Donnie is confused, so Speirs elaborates that he thinks Donnie wants confirmation of all the wild rumors. Shaking his head, he marvels that the grapevine invariably delivers gossip that claims to come straight from someone who saw the event in question unfold, but no first-hand sources ever appear. He references Tercius from ancient Rome, and how centurions probably yakked all day about how Tercius lopped off the heads of Carthaginian prisoners, blah intellect blah snore obscure reference. Donnie suggests that perhaps Tercius never denied it, which only set the embers aflame; Speirs counters that by noting that there's an advantage to being perceived as the evilest bastard in the entire army. But there, in the Church, so unfazed by his heroism, Speirs radiates good. And good looks. I knew Dike couldn't last because he wasn't gorgeous enough to be in Easy. Donnie softly assures Speirs that the men don't care about stories, instead caring most about finally regaining a strong, respectable leader. "From what I've heard, they always had one," Speirs replies. He lists the feats of one mystery man who held Easy together, proved dependable, led them through Bois Jacques, boosted morale, and gave the men invaluable direction and focus. Donnie furrows his brow in endearing modesty. Speirs calls him on it. "Hell, it was you, First Sergeant," he grins. "Ever since Winters made battalion, you've been the leader of Easy Company." Donnie can't speak, fighting hard to hold an impassive expression but clearly elated at being perceived that way by men he believes are the finest soldiers in the army. As he leaves, Speirs tosses off the final tidbit that Winters put in for a battlefield commission that would kick Donnie up from NCO status straight to lieutenant. Sink approved it. "Congratulations, Lieutenant," Speirs says softly, leaving. One thing is clear: HBO has got to make a Band of Brothers calendar for all the shameless oglers out there who, like me, got hooked on this eye candy.
Easy packs into a truck and rides away, passing pedestrians who turn out to be 1st battalion's soldiers. Luz bitterly thanks them for crapping in their foxholes. "Enjoy the walk," Randleman laughs, puffing on his omnipresent cigar. Luz passes Donnie a smoke, delighting in the officer's acceptance of this life-threatening vice. Donnie smiles, too, eager for that smooth tar taste and lung-constricting carcinogens. They motor off into the distance as someone calls out, "There they go, Easy Company, riding out again." Except the editors had the good sense to mute the latter part of that line.
"Beyond the wounded and killed, every man at Bastogne suffered. Men unhit by shrapnel and bullets were nevertheless casualties," Stephen Ambrose wrote.
"I'm not sure that anybody who lived through that one hasn't carried with him, in some hidden ways, the scars," Winters has said. "Perhaps that is the factor that helps keep Easy men bonded so unusually close together."