Twenty sets of eyes watched the TV screen as it showed a scene from "Band of Brothers," an HBO mini-series. On the screen, young men of the 101 Airborne Division shouted above the din of the airplane’s propellers and bursts of anti-aircraft fire as they prepared to parachute into France on D-Day.
In the classroom sat two, real-life veterans, Don Malarkey and Buck Compton, who actually made that jump, and upon whom characters in the series were based. Once the screen went dark, the seventh-grade students in Amy Jo Clark’s American History class peppered the men with questions about their experiences.
After meeting the men, at least two of the students were in awe. "It was pretty amazing," said Charlie Webb, 13.
"It's pretty cool to actually meet them," said Kelly Williams, 12.
The men didn’t know of anyone who backed out on D-Day. While in the plane, or hanging in the air during the parachute jump, the soldiers felt exposed. "Everybody was just anxious to get on the ground," Malarkey said.
Once there, the scene was chaotic. Compton needed to cut himself out of his harness because the quick-release mechanism jammed. During the drop, the soldiers had gotten so intermixed that the first American soldier he saw on the ground was from a completely different division.
He and the others trickled toward their objective, a road that his group was to secure. "A group of us committing what minor vandalism we thought might help the cause," Compton said. He explained that it took five or six days before the 140 men in his division were able to coalesce into a group.
THE TWO VETERANS also talked about their experiences during the Battle of the Bulge. "Prior to the Bulge, we were at the base, and the war was going well. We thought it was over, and we were planning a football game," Compton said.
Later that day, they started hearing rumors that the Germans had broken through the lines, and the men were ordered to that area. As they drove south, they could see the signs of a major battle going on. "We were told to go out to a wooded area and dig into a defensive position," Compton said.
The men had just come back from another battle, and their equipment was in poor condition, but they were able to scavenge some from other retreating soldiers, Malarkey said.
They reached the area and were able to dig in and prepare for a fight. "In all of World War II, there’s no single instance of any unit performing the feat of arms of the 101st," Malarkey said. "How in the world young men like that survived that thing was unbelievable."