Welcome back to the HBO Band of Brothers podcast, this is Roger Bennett, you say flash,

I say thunder. Today I'll focus his episode 5, Crossroads, a connective episode linking the front

half of the series to the back half, to structurally nuanced affair, which unfolds partially in flashback,

and moves the men from Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands to the gruesome slog that

awaits them at the Battle of the Bulge. The episodes acrossroads, not just for easy company,

but also for its leader, our hero, Dick Winters, as we seem promoted to Battalion Commander,

and move which coincides with Easy's transition from well oil fighting force to undersupplied,

and demand, and outgun unit. More than any, the episode has a meta quality,

by filtering the story through Winters viewpoint to meditation on leadership,

the retelling of war stories about memory, the trauma of combat, and how that trauma's processed

by those who endure it. Directed by Tom Hanks himself, the episode uses a cinematic masterstroke,

contrasting Winters hammering the keys of his typewriter,

against the sound of him squeezing the trigger of his M1 grand,

firing a shot that will stay in his mind decades later. This episode is one of the most

indelible of the entire series, and one that grows in meaning for me every time I watch it.

All of that, and a Jimmy Fallon cameo.

My guest today is the very first person attached to the Band of Brothers project,

who is not a Hanks or a Spielberg. A gent who threw himself into the task of meticulously

studying all things Easy Company, from primary documents and diaries, to interviews with the

men themselves. A process that led not just to the creation of the Band of Brothers Bible,

an enormous opus that served as the formative text for the show, but also a deep lasting friendship

with the real Major Dick Winters, whose eulogy he had the privilege of delivering upon his death.

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