By Joanna Orland
Band of Brothers showcases characters from different socio-economic backgrounds and military ranks, and portrays what they experience on the battlefield. The viewpoint slightly changes per episode, depending on who the narrative is following. No episode of Band of Brothers has as much of a perspective shift as the extraordinary “Bastogne”.
”Bastogne” follows medic Eugene Roe (Shane Taylor), and his role during the gruelling Battle of the Bulge. Alongside seeing the typical soldier fighting on the front line, it’s even more harrowing to witness Roe as he tends to the injured, dying, or dead. The episode zooms out from the intense fighting we’ve become used to in Band of Brothers, to take a look at the scale of trauma that war inflicts.
“Bastogne” Shifts Perspective From Soldier to Medic
By following the story of the medic in “Bastogne”, Band of Brothers hammers home how gruesome the battles of World War II were. While still a soldier, the medic role is completely different to that of a frontline fighter. Medic Eugene Roe isn’t fighting with a gun in hand, but instead he scours the snow-strewn battlefield looking for wounded, who he transports to a nearby church for treatment.
At the church, Roe meets a young Belgian nurse, Renée Lemaire (Lucie Jeanne). They bond over their experiences with the wounded, and the tireless work they do to try and help them. As Roe returns to the church to find it destroyed and Lemaire killed in action, a spotlight is shone on the futility of war. Even though these medics are doing important work, the amount of death and destruction makes them question what it is all for.
Lemaire’s function in the show is as a narrative device to help Roe emotionally connect, but it also has more significance than just that. She is one of the rare female characters featured in Band of Brothers, and although she isn’t long for the show, she’s a means to represent the many women, nurses or otherwise, who sacrificed themselves serving in war. Their contribution to the war effort is often overlooked as the soldiers are our focus, but as “Bastogne” highlights the role of the medic, it cannot omit the contribution women made in the Second World War.
With a Wider View of the War, ‘Band of Brothers’ Assesses the Damage
More important than the specificity of the medic or nurse experience in “Bastogne”, is the wider view on the war that the medical angle explores. The scale of loss for the allies is never so apparent as it is in this episode, as the bodies pile up, wounds are treated, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. The sheer amount of dead and wounded, the seriousness of the injuries, the hopelessness, the trauma, the loss — it all comes into focus in this one episode.
While his fellow soldiers’ physical health declines, Roe’s mental health is suffering as he does his job under near impossible conditions. He’s witnessed more death than any person should witness, and he’s only a young man, in over his head, bravely serving for what is right. Once the audience takes a step back from the immersiveness of the fighting, the dreadful situation of the battles becomes all the more dire from this outsider perspective.
Of course every episode of Band of Brothers is important and distressing, no matter who the story follows. Major Richard Winters (Damian Lewis) shooting an unarmed youth and the death of Albert Blithe (Marc Warren) are key moments, to name but a few. While struggle is shown physically and emotionally throughout the entire series, “Bastogne” brings it all to a head with its heaviest and most powerful episode, about the scale of loss suffered from war.
–
Band of Brothers is available on Max