“You Tell The Truth, And That’s It.”
The words of William "Wild Bill" Guarnere, one of the surviving members of E Company, 506th Infantry Regiment, immortalized as "Easy Company" in Band of Brothers, both the Stephen Ambrose book and the miniseries of the same name. Guarnere, along with fellow Easy Company member and lifelong friend Edward "Babe" Heffron have written their own book about the war and their lives both before and after it. The title quote refers to the fact that they tell their story unflinchingly, warts and all.
PHILADELPHIA - After parachuting into Europe during World War II, battling along a strip of road called Hell's Highway in the Netherlands and surviving the freezing woods of Bastogne surrounded by German troops, William Guarnere and Edward Heffron do not consider themselves heroes.
Guarnere, 84, and Heffron, 84, are among the surviving members of the fabled Easy Company memorialized in the HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers." To them, the real heroes are the men whose bodies stayed buried in that foreign soil and the mothers who sent their sons off to war, praying for a safe return.
It is so their sacrifices are not forgotten that Guarnere and Heffron have written "Brothers in Battle: Best of Friends," recently published by the Berkley Publishing Group.
"Sitting there in the plane, you wonder why you're up there," says Heffron. "You could be home, but then when you land there, and you go through these villages and you look at those people's faces … now you know why we're here."
Heffron sits in Guarnere's Philadelphia house, surrounded by pictures of soldiers the two served with and mementos emblazoned with the Screaming Eagle of the 101st Airborne Division, of which they were part.
The book, with a foreword by actor Tom Hanks, one of the miniseries' producers, tells the story of how the two young men from South Philly became paratroopers, fought in some of World War II's major battles and survived to form a lifelong friendship……
……Guarnere's voice has a raw, unvarnished "tell it like it was," quality while Heffron's is an often-introspective look at the war and life. But neither is sanitized or rosy-eyed. Both speak plainly about killing German troops, the looting that sometimes occurred and the drinking and partying that went on after the war and when they were on leave.
But they said it was important to give as an accurate picture as they could about what they experienced, saying that they were simply trying to do their job the best they could and protect their friends.
"Once you start lying and trying to change things, it's no good," Guarnere says. "You tell the truth, and that's it."
Guarnere lost a leg during the Battle of the Bulge while Heffron served all the way through the rest of the campaign as told by Band of Brothers. After the war, the two became inseparable friends. They see each other almost daily. There are only about 23 members of Easy Company still alive now and the number shrinks each year. I think this book will be on my must read list.
By Jerry Inman, Saturday, 13 October , 2007 @ 2:14 pm
Guarnere lost his leg not Babe Heffron.
By Gaius, Saturday, 13 October , 2007 @ 2:21 pm
The AP must have done a secret correction, I took that right from the article. I have the Band of Brothers set, but have not watched it recently, so I used the article as reference. Thanks for pointing that out.