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canyonwalkerEpisode 5 of Band of Brothers is entitled "Crossroads". The title refers mostly to the story arc of main character Richard Winters, IMO, though there are also respects in which Easy Company more broadly is at a (proverbial) crossroads... plus, at the end of the episode, they are assigned to defend a literal crossroads area, setting up the drama for the next episode.
The personal crossroads Winters faces is that he's being promoted away from Easy Company. His superiors recognize he's a sharp tactician and a strong leader of soldiers. They make him executive officer (XO) of the battalion. As XO he will directly assist the colonel in planning operations as well as briefing and supervising company commanders. He still has the rank of captain... though an assignment like is key for promotion to higher rank.
Winters's struggles with accepting the new assignment because being battalion XO pulls him away from Easy Company. Instead of being "in the trenches" with them, he'll be supervising multiple companies from battalion HQ. The element of brotherhood with his fellow soldiers is real. The NCOs under him committed a near act of mutiny in Ep. 1 to protest an incompetent senior officer trying to remove him from command. They risked their lives for him. He feels he's abandoning them by moving to a position where he no longer literally risks his life minute-to-minute with them in battle. (As a note, battalion HQ is still in the field. It's just not on the front lines of combat like the soldiers of the elite light infantry 101st Airborne are.)
This episode follows a different narrative structure than others. It's told as a series of flashbacks and callbacks. In the episode's present tense, Winters is struggling to write an after-action report about a battle in which his company suffered several injuries and at least one death— but succeeded in securing the operational objective, plus killed or captured (mostly captured) well over 100 enemy soldiers. This success is why Winters is being elevated to battalion XO. But he's stalling in writing the report. It seems to take him at least a whole day, maybe even more. It's his last duty as company commander before he moves up to battalion, and he's conflicted about leaving. His struggles at a desk with a typewriter are interspersed with flashbacks to the battle.
Normally I dislike flashback/callback plot structures as a cheap narrative device. It's like the showrunners are saying, "We're too lazy and cheap to create a solid, linear plot, so we're just going to film the main characters sitting around & reminiscing after it's all over, cutting in little snippets of action so it's not just one long living room scene." Here, though, it works. And in doing a bit of research afterward I think they chose this narrative device well.
The combat Winters is reporting on is the Battle of the Nijmegen Salient (Wikipedia link). Even just skimming the Wikipedia page shows the scope of the full thing is complex. With so many combat units doing so many things in so many different places it would have been hard to show a real-time path through it. Organizing the story as a few individual scenes shown in callbacks makes it simple enough to present in a one hour episode while showcasing the real-life characters' skill, bravery, and sacrifice.
The personal crossroads Winters faces is that he's being promoted away from Easy Company. His superiors recognize he's a sharp tactician and a strong leader of soldiers. They make him executive officer (XO) of the battalion. As XO he will directly assist the colonel in planning operations as well as briefing and supervising company commanders. He still has the rank of captain... though an assignment like is key for promotion to higher rank.
Winters's struggles with accepting the new assignment because being battalion XO pulls him away from Easy Company. Instead of being "in the trenches" with them, he'll be supervising multiple companies from battalion HQ. The element of brotherhood with his fellow soldiers is real. The NCOs under him committed a near act of mutiny in Ep. 1 to protest an incompetent senior officer trying to remove him from command. They risked their lives for him. He feels he's abandoning them by moving to a position where he no longer literally risks his life minute-to-minute with them in battle. (As a note, battalion HQ is still in the field. It's just not on the front lines of combat like the soldiers of the elite light infantry 101st Airborne are.)
This episode follows a different narrative structure than others. It's told as a series of flashbacks and callbacks. In the episode's present tense, Winters is struggling to write an after-action report about a battle in which his company suffered several injuries and at least one death— but succeeded in securing the operational objective, plus killed or captured (mostly captured) well over 100 enemy soldiers. This success is why Winters is being elevated to battalion XO. But he's stalling in writing the report. It seems to take him at least a whole day, maybe even more. It's his last duty as company commander before he moves up to battalion, and he's conflicted about leaving. His struggles at a desk with a typewriter are interspersed with flashbacks to the battle.
Normally I dislike flashback/callback plot structures as a cheap narrative device. It's like the showrunners are saying, "We're too lazy and cheap to create a solid, linear plot, so we're just going to film the main characters sitting around & reminiscing after it's all over, cutting in little snippets of action so it's not just one long living room scene." Here, though, it works. And in doing a bit of research afterward I think they chose this narrative device well.
The combat Winters is reporting on is the Battle of the Nijmegen Salient (Wikipedia link). Even just skimming the Wikipedia page shows the scope of the full thing is complex. With so many combat units doing so many things in so many different places it would have been hard to show a real-time path through it. Organizing the story as a few individual scenes shown in callbacks makes it simple enough to present in a one hour episode while showcasing the real-life characters' skill, bravery, and sacrifice.
