1/22/2024 0 Comments Lt. lynn buck compton![]() As this memoir so ably details, Buck Compton’s performance in battle demonstrates that firmness and strategic thinking can save lives. Indecisiveness can be costly poor judgment deadly. When bullets begin flying and fighting grows thick, the ability of any individual to make correct decisions is sorely tested. In the course of my military service, I have learned what it’s like to fight on foreign soil. Later, after being wounded in an operation aimed at seizing bridges in the Netherlands, Buck returned to his unit in time for the month-long siege that would in time become known as the Battle of the Bulge. Buck was awarded the Silver Star for that action. In an episode familiar to any viewer of the “Band of Brothers” series, in 1944 Buck Compton and others assaulted a German battery operating four 105 mm howitzers directed at Utah Beach, disabling the guns and routing the enemy. Second Lieutenant Compton commanded the second platoon of Easy Company in the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the famed 101st Airborne Division about which so many tales are told. Through his life and his words, we can find much to admire in men like him. He knew that there is no greatness without courage, no faith in country without devotion to fellows, no commitment to duty without service to others. Buck Compton knew this, and this understanding shaped his life and destiny. Men and women, no matter how meager their origins or difficult their circumstances, possess within them the potential to alter the course of history. ![]() We today, and all who follow, are in their debt. In choosing this course, no matter its cost, an entire generation of men and women helped save the world from the evils of Nazism. The “Band of Brothers,” that company of citizen- soldiers who helped our country wage and win World War II, represented that timeless virtue, the unselfish determination to serve a cause greater than our self-interest. America has relied throughout its history on the courage and honor of extraordinary citizens who, though they may come from the most ordinary of situations, stand up when duty calls them to act. In telling of that remarkable generation of men who risked everything – everything – to defeat the evils of fascism, the tale of Easy Company’s bravery and valor has inspired its own, new generation of Americans.Īs rightly it should. “The “Band of Brothers” story rightly took America by storm.
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