I’ve been terribly distracted lately, but did manage to finish a book before the end of the month. Band of Brothers was sometimes a little hard for me to follow. I don’t know much about the military. For example, if I can’t correlate a rank to a character on M*A*S*H then I won’t know who is the boss of whom. A major is higher than a captain, because Frank Burns somehow outranked Hawkeye. The colonel (Potter) is in charge. A corporal (Klinger) is higher than a private (Radar). That’s all I’ve got. I also can’t identify weapons or vehicles. It turned out to be very helpful that I’d seen the miniseries. Having Damon handy would have been even more helpful. His dad was in the Navy and he knows a lot more about military matters than I do. (I do know that the book is not about the Navy.) But most of my reading happened on the subway so I was on my own.
All that said, it’s a moving book. My Grandpa fought in WWII and was awarded a Purple Heart when he got shot running out from cover to save a wounded fellow soldier. He wasn’t a paratrooper, but his story (which he only told once as far as I know) gave me a more visceral touchstone for books like this.