Band of Brothers E07 'The Breaking Point' - FULL REACTION!

This is a tiny detail, but Lugers were notorious for being tricky in terms of engaging the safety. If you didn't know what you were doing, an accidental discharge was a real possibility

Chris Truex

Episode 8 reaction coming today???

JDP11

Great episode and another great reaction. Really liked the scene in the church where Lip takes a head count and they fade out the guys that are gone. Way more emotionally impactful than just saying they're gone. Now let's talk about Norman Dike, it's pretty obvious the men of Easy did not like the guy and the way he's portrayed in the episode you can't really blame them. The author Ambrose didn't always research things as well as he should have the Blithe incident being the most vivid example. If you do a search on Norman Dike you'll find out he earned 2 Bronze Stars during the war, 1 in the Netherlands during the episode called Replacements and 1 in Bastonge for pulling a wounded soldier to safety. Everyone has their breaking point like Buck and something happened to Dike and he became as Lipton says an empty uniform. After the end of the war the 101st received a Presidential Unit award and had a parade in front of Eisenhower and the commanding generals of the 101st division. If I remember correctly in the book I think Winters mentions that Dike was on the review stand with the generals. So he was certainly a favorite of someone high up the chain of command. I'm going to get an early jump here and tell you both to have the tissue ready for episode 9 Why we fight.

Mark Valverde

💜

Sonny Mike Olsen

Back when you guys announced you’d be doing this series, I chatted with Sonny a bit about my close connection with a family of a man who served in Easy co, and how the only thing I knew about his experience was an intense disgust at the smell of pine. This episode illustrates why. The Germans specifically timed the artillery shells to explode in the tree’s, sending splinters and branches rocketing through the air like shrapnel. To paint a picture of this guy, he was a working class kid from a tough neighborhood in Detroit, i.e., not a guy who liked to share his feelings. But they say scent is the sense most connected to memory, and that smell was seared into his. He refused to be anywhere near any piney scent, he even walked off a desperately needed job because they washed their floors with Pinesol. His son told me he never really talked about the war, and he understood his father much more after watching this series. The quote from Winters about unseen scars was definitely true. Rest In Peace, Pvt. Walt Wentzel, E Co. 506th.

Doug Weldin

The videos do not seem to be working. Still a big fan, keep it up!\

Bondsy

Generstion Kill was great. They should react to thenWe Stand Alone Together documentary once they finish the actual episodes.

GV

I remember my first rewatch of this after seeing BSG and thinking "OMG, it's Apollo."

Stephanie Bedworth

Oh definitely! I assumed, since they're doing BoB, they already planned to do The Pacific. Whenever I recommend BoB and The Pacific to people I always tell them to watch GK as well. It's unrelated to the first two but the three of them make the perfect wartime miniseries trilogy

Yes I also agree they should react to generation kill! Fantastic watch!

kros

I forgot that a certain BSG actor was in this, but I guess when I watched it during the original airing, that he wasn't that we'll known!

Irfan Malik

What a great observation, thank you 🙏🏻

Sonny Mike Olsen

I agree that they should also react to The Pacific and Generation Kill.

Steven Thomas

I'd recommend they also watch The Pacific

Just curious: have you ever seen Generation Kill? If not I'd highly recommend doing a react on that. It's also a mini series (7 episodes) and takes place during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

It's a little detail, but during the near-botched assault of Foye, when Winters is seeing his men die, he actually says "Jesus Christ!" which is a big deal for his character. Winters was a religious man who never said the lord's name in vain. In the Crossroads episode when he's talking about Nix hiding his liquor in his (Winters') footlocker Nix says "I'm a captain, for Christ sake" to which Winters responds later with "You're a captain, for PETE'S sake", emphasizing his refusal to even repeat it when Nix said it. So to hear him utter "Jesus Christ!" during Foye tells you just how stressed/helpless he felt at that moment. It's just a minor detail that I always loved.

The film shoot by the Newsreel Team is acutally a real thing taken with the actual unit back then and can be found in the National Archive of America.

SirPurrsalot

In Bastonge and later in Hurtgen Forrest the Germans used a particular vicious Artillery tactic by using airburst and timefuse shells that where set to detonate in the tree tops rather than the ground. This had the nasty effect that the trees splintered and added wooden shrapnell to the metal one whilst coming from directly above meaning that foxholes provided almost no cover from it. It cause horrible wounds and casulties. Above that the germans fired a first short salvo and than waiting for the allies coming out of their holes to search for casulties and the medics to start treating and evacuating the wounded before opening the main salvo to get the bulk of them out of cover. This is shown in this episode in horrible detail. Poor Buck Compton was not the only one that get mentaly broken in this woods.

SirPurrsalot

The portrait of Norman Dike is quite false in this episode. He is portraied as a total incompetend coward wich he defenatly was not. In fact he was decorated for acts of bravery several times while his combat deployment during Market Garden. Once he lead an attack on an entrenched enemy position and on a second time he personally evacuated several of his man who got wounded while he was under constant enemy fire. The scene that show him panic at the attack on Foy actually dont show that he got wounded while moving across the field and was possibly in schock from that rather than being to coward to attack. Regarding his constant wandering off its debated today that he actually suffered from combat fatigue and PTSD.

SirPurrsalot

the fighting in and around of foy where so chaotic and brutal that parts of the woods are to dangerous to enter even today due to munitons poisoning and there are still bodys of fallen soldiers found there.

SirPurrsalot

Great reaction can’t wait for episode 8 really gives a good insight into the more day to day operations in the late stages of the war.

SBJ2117

It was Lt. Harry Welsh who said it was all a game. He was wounded at Bastogne by artillery blowing up around him, causing him to fall on a fire he built (against Winters’ better judgment). Speirs told Blithe that the reason why he hid in a ditch was because he still had hope, and he had to accept that he was already dead so he can function as a soldier should: no mercy, no remorse, no compassion. Great reaction. I love how you two watch attentively, making few remarks and never interrupting the flow of the story. The analysis in the end is so intelligent, and always keeping in mind of the human elements of the series. Looking forward to more!

Catherine LW