Easy Company G.I.s Carved Their Names Into Trees In This English Village



‘Easy Company G.I.s Carved Their Names Into Trees In This English Village’

During the Second World War, the picturesque village of Aldbourne in Wiltshire, United Kingdom, hosted thousands of American servicemen and paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division before they departed for Normandy on 6 June, 1944. The village has gained particular fame for being the village in which Easy Company, portrayed in the iconic TV series, ‘Band of Brothers’, was stationed from late 1943.

In the second episode of this three-part series, Luke Tomes explores the advice given to American G.I.s before they arrived in England on how to adapt to the British way of life. Shortly after, Luke travels with archaeologist Dan Miles to the forests around Aldbourne, where members of the 101st Airborne Division have left their traces behind through various, remarkably preserved tree carvings.

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00:00 Introduction
02:14 “A Welcome To Britain”
06:13 Blue Boar Pub
07:31 Uncovered Foundations Of Nissen Hut
09:21 WW2 Tree Carvings
14:54 Next Time…

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46 thoughts on “Easy Company G.I.s Carved Their Names Into Trees In This English Village”

  1. We hope you enjoyed this second instalment of our 'Digging Band Of Brothers' series. Stay tuned next week where we'll be revealing all of the incredible objects found in this year's dig… Don't forget to Like, Subscribe and Comment!

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  2. The phrase of “it doesn’t mean anything what side our grandfathers fought on in the civil war. It doesn’t mean anything now.” Is something many modern Americans would stand well to be reminded of.

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  3. I wonder if the hard lessons learned from American troop deployments in Australia influenced the creation of this rulebook? They certainly wouldn't have wanted to see a repeat of the Battle of Brisbane in the UK.

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  4. Loving this series. So much so I've started watching Band of Brothers again. Been at least a year since I last watched it all 🙂 Looking forward to the next episode

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  5. Born, raised and watching from S.C. Crazy looking around at that area and that SC carving thinking, If I would have been born in that time…That could have been me. Leaving everything I've ever known with a very good chance of never seeing it again. I can't imagine how lost and scared they must have been. Was another breed of men back then it seems. RIP for all those we lost on all sides in a war I hope the world never sees the like of again. The world forever owes y'all a debt of gratitude that we can never repay.

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  6. Years ago – 1983 – I went to England on holiday and met up with people that mum and dad knew growing up in the town where they lived. I don't remember how the topic came up now but I remember more than one comment about how the US servicemen seemed to target women whose husbands were away fighting overseas (think it might have been because one of the women targeted was friends with my grandparents (my grandfather was in the ARP, medically unfit for service) and there were some very very harsh words for them even after all that time. It really wasn't appreciated when married women with husbands who'd been serving overseas for the past 3 years or more were deliberately targeted by the ''yanks'' because they were seen as easy prey.
    And I often heard comments growing up in NZ about how the ''yanks'' treated the Maori soldiers they met in the war, and the comments weren't very polite either. We even covered it in a topic when we learned about the war in history, we were also told that they allegedly treated many of the commonwealth soldiers from Africa and the pacific islands in the same way though I don't know how true this is. Would be interested in finding out if anyone knows the answer.

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  7. Carwood Lipton was born and raised in Huntington West Virginia and attended Marshall University for one year before leaving school due to financial hardships, he was not from South Carolina. He read an article in Life Magazine about he paratroopers and enlisted in 1942.

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  8. 11:30 It's unfortunate to say that it is not Carwood Lipton, as he was not from South Carolina. He was born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia, where he eventually attended the local Marshall University for a year before enlisting.

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  9. Dear History Hit. Love your series. I'm Australian but one of our ancestral residences, Askerswell House in Askerswell Dorset was used as a POW camp for captured German servicemen during WW2. Apparently there is swastika carved in a beam in one of the outbuilding lofts. Would that be of interest to you as a subject to investigate?

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