Did he kill all those Germans?

[butchd]

To all fans of "Band of Brothers": Did Lt. Speirs kill all those P.O.W.s? I don't know if it was addressed by Ambroses's book but I can't find any thing in Google that deals with it. He is showed offering them a smoke and then you hear automatic weapon's fire and see the response on the face of a witness. Later on in the series he claims that it might have been trying to seem the meanest ..... Any ideas?

 

[handejector]

You don't see it discussed often in print.
I once saw an interview with two old Brit paratroopers discussing their jump. At the briefing before it, one of "the lads" asked how prisoners would be handled.
The answer was "We sha'nt be taking prisoners the first few days...."

 

[calmex]

I too wondered the same thing and tried to see what I could find out about it and came up with ziltch. Ronald Speirs died in April of 2007, so we can't go and ask him either.

 

[walnutred]

I consider it highly probable that he killed the prisoners. I'm not so sure about the story of him killing one of his own NCO's though. Things were so confusing at that place and time who can say.

 

[walnutred]

Since your talking paras in Normandy some of you might enjoy this interview: Playing Don Jakeway: D-Day Jumper | Ohio War Stories

Mr Jakeway is still very active locally and we cross paths about every other month. I considered him a Community Organizer before the term was corrupted by the current batch of politicians. For example, when the town didn't have a public pool for the kids in the summer, he organized the local businessmen to pool their money and invest in one. The town didn't have a Little League until he organized the sports fans and started one. If he really felt something needed done to better the community he could organize people and get done what he felt was needed. That's what used to be ment by Community Organizer.

 

[klondike]

I had the opportunity to speak with Don Malarkey on two occasions. He offered to let me pay for his lunch on one of them(I did).
I asked about Spears and his response was that they had no provisions for prisoners. That was all.

 

[feralmerril]

I recall a uncle of mine telling me this story. He was in the 82nd and was with the gliders. He was in just about every glider invasion. This time they were hauling a jeep and 14 troops. He said they were cut loose at night. The maps they had to land with showed empty field but was now orchards and barriers! His LT wanted him to carry field cross,s. Uncle eldon was very supersticous and balked at that, but of course the LT won. Eldon said the Lt strapped himself right next to him. He said the LT got his head blew off by ground fire next to him.
He said they crashed, nosed over etc. He said when he woke up his face was in the radiator of the jeep. He said just him and one other guy out of the 14 lived. The other guy was badly wounded too, uncle had his back injured and face completly smashed. They crawled off together and was able to get away in the dark as the krauts mopped up. He said they hid for three days and nights before they finaly contacted other troops. He said a old farmer and his daughter helped them and hid them in some hay as the krauts were hot on them. He said they watched from hideing as the krauts exicuted the farmer and daughter. Then going back across the channel their boat got hit and they had to get rescued again. He lived with me for awhile in the 70s. He got a heart attack, had open heart surgery in the early days of it. He had a stroke on the operateing table and it affected his mind. He had never married. He committed suicide in 1973. I have some local home paper writeups on him at the end of the war. somewhere and will try to publish them here when I can find it. He also first hand told me of being one of the first in a death camp that they found and discribed the horror he seen. Some were still alive. I also have some souveniers he gave me. One is a russian pocket watch. I asked him how he got that. He laughed and said he took it off a russian solider. They were waiting at the rhine, and he said the first russian he seen he threw down on and took the watch. He said, hell I thought he was a jap!

 

[imjin138]

My father worked with a man who served in the 82nd in WWII, he told us 2 stories both about the Battle of the Bulge after Malmedy had been discovered.

One about a Belgian or a man in civlilian clothes caught trying to go through a rodablack and during a searchof his person they found a Brwoning Hi-Power. he never left the roadblock, and about not having the time nor the inclination to take prisoners after they heard about the masscre.

 

[norad45]

As far as I know, nobody actually saw him do it, and he never confessed to doing it. So I see no reason to slander a fine officer over what amounts to little or no proof.

That said, I think there is a difference--legally at least--between "not taking prisoners", and taking prisoners and then shooting them.

 

[butchd]

Lest there be a misunderstanding, I'm not making a "value judgement". I would make no condemnation of any action of any member of our troops in any action. I'm just talking about the mysterious treatment of the act in the limited scope of a TV mini-series. Maybe it was "poetic liscense" or some literary device of which I'm not familiar. I hoped that someone had read the original Ambrose book or had seen some other explanation. Whatever, it's an element that starts fairly early in the series and surfaces in brief glimpses almost to the end. It serves to magnify the intensity that battle causes, and maybe that is all that's meant to do.

 

[sigp220.45]

I think in the context of that episode of Band Of Brothers it was clear Spiers killed all of the prisoners after giving them smokes. It is referenced later when some of the guys are talking about Spiers, and when he deliberately offers a new guy a smoke to rattle him a little.

I don't know if the real Spiers did the deed, though.

 

[Dennis The B]

There were several...

...instances of "dramatic" license taken in the series -

• As mentioned, Lt Spiers allegedly killing German POW's.
• Near the end of the Battle of The Bulge, it was shown that Lt. Norman Dike was killed. He wasn't, and survived the war.

The foregoing are two. I'm sure there were more.

 

[feralmerril]

I knew someone who told me anyone caught rapeing in his outfit "got shot" by the "germans". Certain things werent tolerated.
My mother just had the one brother that I wrote about plus her sisters husband in. But my dad was from a huge family. Dad was the oldest of 10, also had 7 older half brothers and sisters for a head count of 17 kids! Dads youngest brother did korea. I think I had about 8 or 9 uncles in world war two counting aunts husbands. Every one of them came back alive! Also a couple of older half uncles in world war one. I even had a great uncle that was in the russian army about 1908. I know my grandmother lost family members that fought for germany in the war. One of my dads younger brothers was a MP, interpiter and sometimes drove patton. He is about 92 now still alive in wisconsin. I lost two uncles that were in, just this last year. Out of the 9 or so I just have the one uncle alive that was in. They are all almost gone now. My earliest memorys of them was when they all came home pretty close together, I think in a matter of a couple months. It was party time!

 

[jeffsmith]

IIRC Dick Winters Book: Beyond Band of Brothers
(Which I got as a Karma here & passed along)
says the story is true along with Spiers killing a drunk Sgt. who refused to patrol

I remember it because I always thought it was just rumor
but Winter confirms it

So if anyone has the book they can check my memory

 

[klondike]

...instances of "dramatic" license taken in the series -

• As mentioned, Lt Spiers allegedly killing German POW's.
• Near the end of the Battle of The Bulge, it was shown that Lt. Norman Dike was killed. He wasn't, and survived the war.

The foregoing are two. I'm sure there were more.

Malarkey was upset that Ambrose showed Webster; who had become friends with Ambrose, in bed with the German girl.
He said that the artillery barrage scene was 100x worse in reality than in the film, causing his hearing problem.
He also remarked on the slight color errors of the equipment and uniforms
as being different from what he remembered. After the war the were able to meet with Sobel's sister and express their thanks.
What was touching to him, was having people in the restaurant overhearing our conversation; I was speaking loudly, and coming up and thanking him for his service.

 

[MTS Cop]

Spiers did kill a drunk sergeant. But since it was the early days of the invasion and officers were hard to come by the brass just had to look the other way. I think I read about it in the Dick Winters book.

 

[m75rlg]

I have a friend whose father in law celebrated his 17th birthday by jumping out of an airplane over Normandy with the 82nd.

He tells of some "German" conscripts attempting to surrender to him that morning. He says that he was so scared and lonely, that he shrugged his shoulders, tossed a grenade toward them, and they ran one way and he the other.

There were terrible acts committed by all sides in that war.

Some still bothered my uncle, a Methodist Minister who carried a BAR throughout the retaking of the Philippines, while he was on his deathbed in the 1994.

I had another neighbor who owed his life to a German soldier who released the POWs in the barracks he was guarding into the night because he told his prisoners the SS was coming in the morning to kill the POWs. He always wondered if that guard survived.

That being said, The Allies were much better disicplined and on the whole conducted themselves better than most warring parties do.

 

[mm6mm6]

I too, had read somewhere (sorry, that sounds terrible, but I can't remember where or document it) that Spiers did shoot the German prisoners.

In Ambrose's excellent book, Band of Brothers, you read that just about everything in the mini-series is true.

I found the most interesting thing to be that Sobel tried to shoot himself after the war and failed at that too. His wife and family became estranged from him and the members of Easy Company always tried to reach out to him for reunions, but he refused their attempts.

 

[FrankD45]

From the standpoint of general interest, this link is to a site that was set up to honor Eugene Roe (the medic). Band Of Brothers : A site dedicated to Medic Eugene Roe

The site includes a bunch of links and postings including some from Ronald Spiers' family. It seems the site is light on maintenance but is quite interesting. I used the "keyword" search feature and found a lot of discussion about Spiers.

I hope that helps,

Frank

 

[Nightowl]

One day my barber was talking about being in WWll. He was a captain and told me that he and some others was assigned to escort a group of prisoners back behind the lines. He said they got over the hill and shot them all. They then came back to the front line. I don't remember more details, but that admission bothered me for a long time, until I learned more about such things. He died in 1975 and he was not really that old. I have no idea what unit he was with, heck I don't even remember his name.