Band of Brothers Ep. 6: Bastogne. Brutal.

Episode 6 of Band of Brothers is entitled "Bastogne". Really it could be titled "Battle of the Bulge", because that well known WWII campaign is what it's about. But at the same time it's not about the Battle of the Bulge. It tells the story of Easy Company's piece of it, not the story of the whole thing. As with Ep. 5's simplification of the Nijmeger Salient this is ultimately a good choice. Band of Brothers is not about telling the comprehensive military history of WWII, it's about tracing the experiences of one group of soldiers who saw a lot of tough combat.

Speaking of tough combat, this episode is dark. I mentioned a few blogs ago that the miniseries was shifting in tone. This is where it really goes from "War is hell but we're making progress" to "War is hell, period." The 101st Airborne is sent to hold a position in the Ardennes forest outside the town of Bastogne. Foreshadowing that it's going to be bad appears at the end of the previous episode. They don't have winter clothes, enough food, enough medical supplies, or enough ammunition. And they're heading out to relieve soldiers who are coming back, dazed and wounded. They get to their assigned area, in the forest, and dig in. Nothing's around them... except the German army at a distance, which shells them mercilessly. There's nothing for them to attack, nothing to defend other than trying not to be blown up, as they take cover in their foxholes against the frequent rounds of explosions. Oh, and they're freezing and starving. It's brutal.

The writers took a different approach in structuring this episode. It centers around the persona of combat medic Eugene Roe. Amid the horrors of frequent explosions and men living like wild animals in holes, Roe dashes from foxhole to foxhole to help wounded soldiers. Along the way he's constantly scrounging for supplies. There's sort of a running joke that he needs a pair of scissors. He needs bandages, too, and other items. He even goes so far as picking first aid kit off a dead enemy soldier half buried in the snow.

While the atmosphere of the setting is "We're alone out here in the wilderness, except for the enemy army shelling us from a mile away," the soldiers aren't really out in the wilderness. They're just outside a town, Bastogne.

Roe makes a few trips into town, escorting wounded soldiers to a make-shift hospital there. It's actually a church, and it's basically wall-to-wall inured bodies on cots. Roe befriends a Belgian nurse working there. She spares a few supplies from their own meager collection. She also seems to have an endless supply of chocolate bars in her pocket, though like in a video game or D&D game, she's limited to one or two per scene.

On his third or fourth trip back to town, Roe finds that the hospital/church has been bombed. There are only a few survivors staggering about. The nurse is dead, the other medics are dead, most of the injured are dead.

War is hell.

In the book Band of Brothers this miniseries is based on, Roe 's fellow soldiers thought he should have gotten a commendation for his fearlessness and seemingly inexhaustible energy that helped lift the men's spirits. He never did. Maybe the paperwork got lost, they speculated, or maybe the company commander— whom the episode portrays as a clueless officer who wasn't even with his men most of the time— was a jerk and blocked it. While he never received a silver star, the writers made him the star of this episode.

Update: More about the Battle of Bastogne/Battle of the Bulge in my next blog in this series

11 Killed in Mass Shooting Near L.A., Suspect Dead

A gunman shot multiple people at a Chinese New Year celebration Saturday night in Monterey Park, California, a city just east of Los Angeles. 10 people died, 10 more were injured. Update, Monday afternoon: The death toll is now 11, as one of the injured died at a hospital Monday.

On Sunday, police in Torrance, California, a beach city south of L.A., approached a van matching one described as fleeing the scene of the crime. Heavily armed police found the driver dead inside, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police are not releasing the name of this person or confirming whether or not he matches descriptions of the person seen committing the mass shooting.

It's also unclear what motive the shooter may have had for the murders. Because the victims were predominantly Chinese Americans, in a city with an ethnically Asian majority population, at a Lunar New Year celebration, it was speculated early on that the motive may have been hate related. But then a community member who knew a person matching the suspect's description said the motive was jealousy— that the suspect may have shot 20 people, killing 10, because he was angry that his wife invited other people to a party but not him.

Is it better that this mass shooting might not be a hate crime? Like, can we all sleep better tonight knowing that the latest mass shooting the US was a normal mass murder?

Update, Sunday evening: Shortly after I initially posted this blog, police released the name of the man found dead in the white van and confirmed he was their suspect in the mass shooting. Per modern media standards I will not repeat the suspect's name so as not to raise publicity for him or his cause (whatever that might be). The suspect does seem to be a member of the same community the 20 shooting victims come from. Thus the focus of search for a motive shifts from the hypothesis that it could be an act of racial animus to likely being personal grievance.

Update, Monday noon: Police have identified two of the deceased by name. The remaining victims they have identified only by gender and age. What's chilling is that all 20 of them are/were older adults, age 50-80. This is a different kind of mass shooting than the ones we have sadly become accustomed to in the US, where the victims are often younger adults, teens, or even children. But then again, if we are forced to accept, "Nut with guns shoots up a classroom of grade-school children" as normal, how much different should, "Nut with guns shoots up a senior citizens' dance studio" be? 😖

Hiking Brooks Falls/Montara Mountain Loop

"There's this one trail near our house I've hiked a number of times with a bench in the middle of nowhere," my friend David has often quipped, "And for years I didn't know why it's there."

Well, we went hiking at that park, San Pedro Valley County Park in Pacifica, this weekend. We hiked on that trail. And we saw that bench.



If you scrutinize the far left of the pic you'll see why the bench is there. David finally saw it on a trek a few years ago, and we all saw it Saturday morning. There's a waterfall on the opposite side of the canyon.



Here's a picture I captured with my telephoto lens. It's Brooks Falls. It's thin but it's actually pretty tall— over 150'. That makes it one of the tallest falls, if not the tallest falls in the SF Bay Area, by a large margin.

As tall as Brooks Falls is, it's highly seasonal. It only flows after a good rain. We've had three weeks of rain so we decided on Thursday— when the forecast for the weekend was clear— this would be a good trail to hike on Saturday.

We enjoyed glimpses of the falls as we climbed higher in the canyon, then we sat on that bench, that demystified bench, for a while. After that we continued higher on the trail over the flank of Montara Mountain.



From atop the ridge there are great views over Pacifica and the Pacific Ocean. There's a bench here, too, though its purpose is less of a mystery. There's more than a few days a year you can see this scene!

But even this isn't always a given. Hawk and I hiked this trail once before... about 25 years ago! Our guidebook advised us that Brooks Falls is a rare sight, so we went on a day when it had been drizzling recently. In fact it was drizzling (in this area) when we hiked. There was barely any water in the falls... and when we got to this ridge we were totally socked in by clouds. I'm so glad we caught it on a sunny day after plenty of rain.

In beauty I walk.