Dan Snow's History Hit - Band of Brothers: A New Discovery

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

In part 2 of this series on Easy Company and the American 101st Airborne Division, we are back in the village of Aldbourne, following in the steps of the infantrymen as they trained, relaxed and got to know Britain in preparation for the liberation of Europe. The team make an exciting discovery that gives them a direct link to soldiers of Easy Company.This episode was produced by Marian Des Forges and James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hey everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. You're back. It's a little mini-series. This is part two. Very exciting. Go back and check out part one. It was broadcast yesterday. It'll be just below this on your feed. It's all about the Friendly Invasion, the so-called Friendly Invasion. 80 years ago, after America was dragged into the Second World War following the attack on Pearl Harbour and Hitler's declaration of war, American troops started flooding into Britain. It would be a gigantic armed camp as troops prepared for the liberation of Europe, which would begin on D-Day, June the 4th, 1944. But they had plenty of time in the meantime to prepare, to train, to fall in love,

do some drinking in the local pubs to get to know Britain. And that's what one particular unit did in the beautiful village of Alborne. That unit of the millions of Americans that arrived in Britain during the war is probably the most famous. They are easy company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the 101st Airborne Division. They are the famous band of brothers, so-called, because they feature in the best-selling history book and the smash hit TV show that we all remember, know and love. Well, now a team of volunteers, including archaeologists

and military veterans, have been digging in the village of Oldbourne in Wiltshire, where Easy Company spent the lion's share of their time here in the UK. I went to visit in May, I went to check out the dig, we took Team History hit down, we made a documentary for the TV, we made this podcast and when we were there the team discovered something extraordinary, something that licks us directly to the men who served in the Band of Brothers. Enjoy this part two of our Band of Brothers miniseries. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king.

No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. These are the beautiful country lanes of Wiltshire. Quiet, peaceful. You'd never guess that 80 years ago, this was the site of an invasion of Britain, but not by an enemy force, by Britain's ally, the Americans.

On the 26th of January 1942, as war raged across the world, the first of millions of US soldiers started arriving on British shores. Amongst them, perhaps the most famous military unit of World War II, the men that would become known as the Band of Brothers. Now a group of volunteers is digging beneath an idyllic English village to discover the traces those men left behind. In part one, they started digging in search of one of the huts that Easy Company would have slept in. That's amazing, isn't it? Brilliant.

So that is the first sign of the hut. And they found something that could only have come from the Americans. There's an Emrand rifle clip. Oh my goodness. Just found another one. Look at that. But the best finds are yet to come. What have we got?

For almost a week, the Project Nightingale team of archaeologists and military veterans has been digging in a football field in Oldbourne, Wiltshire. They've uncovered the outline of a hut. This was the location of Easy Company, the Band of Brothers, made famous by the book and TV series. It's their story we've come to rediscover. Showing me around is the lead archaeologist, Richard Osgood. Because you can see some footings there, can't you?

Yep, these are the original post pads on which the Quonset hut was found, and the veterans on our programme have excavated this by hand over the last week. It would have been wooden floors? Wooden floor, and it would have been pretty much at the level of just above those concrete pads. Right, OK. So that's what you're looking at, with an arched frame that would have met another one that's no longer here. So a big rectangle with a curved roof of corrugated iron.

And this would have been, what, for sort of recreation, warming up a bit? You've got a parade square, as they called it, here, but this is where they are living. This is their home from home. Some around the village green and some here. And we think this is easy company based on veterans' reports. Based on this sketch map drawn by an eyewitness, Richard's been able to work out the layout of the camp. The enlisted privates lived in the huts, including the one now being excavated. The junior officers, including Dick Winters, were mainly billeted in the village,

taking rooms in many of the houses. And the commanding officers were based in Littlecut House, a Tudor mansion about four miles away. But it's the enlisted men of Easy Company that we're interested in. Is it a drop in the sink? That's the question. Do they leave anything behind? Do you know what? The Brits that were here before were very good, kept it very clean. We have had bits of Americana, finds that are definitely left by an American soldier. It does make you wonder, because you've got items like that. Yep. Oh, it's like a piece of grenade. It is indeed. Top of an American grenade.

Wow. It's entirely safe, but it is palpably a piece of American ordnance. Little spring there, that's great, isn't it? So you can just imagine your GIs with these things, you know, a crucial piece of kit for when you're in action. Yeah, wonderful. And then another item, GIs with these things, you know, a crucial piece of kit for when you're in action. Yeah, wonderful. And then another item, whenever we find these things, it always makes me think, why do people

ever do prehistory? Because it's much more difficult. This thing, we can tell you that's a Garand round and it was made in Denver, Colorado in 1942. So basically it's a rifle round. Yep. It's not been fired. So it's 42 there, doesn't it?

Yeah, and Den. Denver? Denver, Colorado. It's that simple. I think it's 42 there, doesn't it? And Den. Denver. Denver, Colorado. It's that simple. I think I could be an archaeologist. I think you should. Wow. So it's a nice American piece of equipment. And there's no strike mark there. No strike mark. It hasn't been fired, but there's no propellant, no bullet in it. So it is a safe item. So we can imagine the men of Easy Company here. It must be great for your veterans, Dignus, because there's a kinship across the decades. That's right. I mean, they view themselves in some ways as being brothers and sisters of the Band of Brothers

because there's that link over time. They understand what these people went through because they've done it themselves. And I, as an archaeologist, the best will in the world, I'm never going to get that. The 101st Airborne arrived in England on the 15th of September, 1943. But plans for the liberation of Europe,

Operation Overlord, as it would become known, had only just been settled that May at the Trident Conference held in Washington. At that conference, it was decided that the Allied assault would be on the coastline of France. So when the time came, following their training, the 101st were transferred from Alborne to an airbase in Devon, ready for their flight to Normandy. So what happens to this site after all? When do all the houses pop up? Well, actually they made use of the army camp to start with because they had decent structures, and they used after the war for people that became known as squatters. So your houses have been bombed out in the cities and towns you live in, and it provides an immediate solution to that

problem before you're given council housing. So these people are living in those until the early 50s and in 1953 the hut camp is demolished and they all go apart from one. Oh yeah? And I've got a nice surprise for you because around the corner here is the last surviving hut camp of Oldbourne camp. That's classic isn't it? Isn't it beautiful? That's of Nissan shape with the corrugated, that's amazing.

Wow. So this is, in fact, the Red Cross structure. In fact, we think of it as Red Cross being medical, but they had their food in these buildings. Okay. And they do talk about it. The guys in Easy Company talk about having their food in the buildings on the camp. So they pack in here, they eat, socialise.

Everything happens in here. You know how you talk when you're having your food and having something to drink? This is where you make your bonds of friendship and discuss things. You usually have a moan about the officers. You do that in your own hut as well as a unit, but they're all of mixture. I think, you know, Easy Company, Fox Company, all in here. A bit of banter and rivalry between them. And yes, this building is where a lot of those stories were forged.

I love it. It's such an immediately recognisable shape. Showing its age a little bit, isn't it? It is, but at least it's got a use. So it's taken from that camp and it's now used as a workshop and it's a functional building and it's much loved by its users. The camp at Alborne was actually quite small in comparison to some of the other GI training camps. Some were built to house thousands of servicemen

and featured all the comforts of home, including a barber's and sports fields. Traces of these sites can be found all over the South Coast, but it's here in Oldbourne that the most famous unit of all, Easy Company, were based. Back at the dig site, it's time for me to lend a hand. Hey Giselle, how's it going? It's going well.

So we've basically been taking down lots and lots of layers of dirt. We've been exposing all of these post pads all around. So we have the general structure of the Nissen hut. And now we're going to be going and looking through the inside of the hut. And we're looking with metal detectors, trying to get little pings and noises to see if we have anything left in the inside. Okay are you gonna let me do a little bit of trail? A little bit. I'm not very reliable but I think should we try this one? Yeah sure. Yeah sounds good. Definitely coming up with something so if you want to dig right. Okay.

Okay. Maybe a bit more to the left. Okay. Here's something, there's something metal right here. You can tell because it also gets this bit of an orangey look to it. If there's something metallic. Oh, hang on, we got more metal here. Oh, there you go.

Yeah, go for it. Yeah. Yeah, that's loose. So actually what that looks like to me is a bit of corrugated metal. Oh okay potentially from the roof. Yeah and the sides of it as the corrugation would go the whole way, well most of the way. I'm very excited by that. Good. I was hoping for perhaps a little you know something connecting me directly with Dick Winters but I'll take that. I was hoping for perhaps a little you know something connecting me directly with Dick Winters but I'll take that. You may have slept under there. He may have he may have. What else you've been finding here? We've been finding a bunch of different things really this

whole inside area has been giving us a better look at what the people were like who lived here so we had not only were the people during World War II living here the soldiers, but we also had squatters afterwards who moved in from the area. And so we have some finds from that earlier in one of these metal detector hits. We found this little lead pig. Oh that's cool. Which is most likely from one of the squatters who came in after the soldiers had left. Like a kids toy maybe? Just a little kids toy, something like that.

And we also found this ATS lapel pin. Hang on a second. ATS, Auxiliary Territorial Service. That was the branch of the army, effectively, that the women could join. Yes, they're the female branch of the military, of the British army. Yeah. That's interesting. So what do you think that's doing in

a hut full of men? Well these ladies were the ones who provided kind of the comfort the food and then the biscuits and teas and things like that and there was a Red Cross hut just over there so they probably were coming by for that maybe lost one but who knows really how that happened. we'll get to that later let's go inside unsurprisingly this massive surge of young, highly paid, fit young men into Britain revolutionised the dating scene. Young women hooked up with Americans. In fact, Lieutenant Spears, who had gone on to achieve fame in the epic retelling of the Easy Company story, got married in this church to a local lady. of the Easy Company story, got married in this church to a local lady. In all, it's been estimated something like 225,000 babies

were born to British women fathered by American GIs. It sounds like, unsurprisingly, some of the advice about fraternisation in this book was widely ignored. You listened to Dan Snow's history. We're hunting for the band of brothers. More coming up after this.

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To be continued... and popes who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Of course, the Americans weren't here for romance, but for war. D-Day was approaching, when the men of the 101st Airborne would face one of the most difficult tasks of the initial operation, a night jump behind enemy lines five hours before the coastal landings. The 101st had a number of objectives, but their main job was to secure the four causeway exits behind Utah Beach between Saint-Martin-de-Varville and Poupville to ensure the exit route for the 4th Infantry Division from the beach later that morning. Doing so would help ensure troops who had landed on the beach could move up inland, thus securing their foothold. Failure to do so would have drastic consequences for the Allies' hopes of securing a beachhead and ultimately the liberation of Europe.

Which is why the training that was going on in the football field was so crucial. It's very hard to imagine the tension that would have been felt by the men at camps like this across the UK in the weeks and days leading up to D-Day. They've checked and rechecked their kit, they've practiced their weapons drills, and rechecked their kit. They'd have practised their weapons drills. They'd have talked through their plans. Their officers would have tried to keep morale going. The Commander-in-Chief General Eisenhower knew the importance of communicating with the men.

He visited the 101st Airborne with a very simple message. Full victory. Nothing else. With the dig nearing its conclusion, I caught up with Richard to find out if they discovered anything new. So, day six, what are we looking at? Well, we're looking at the foundation levels of the huts that we think are used by Fox Company, opposite to their counterparts in Easy Company.

And they're quite a different construction style. And we found this as a result of the metal detecting survey we've done to corroborate the results of the geophysics and the radar. A bit of reinforcement. That's right the reinforcement bar within the brickwork so we've enabled our team to open it up to evaluate it and just to see if we can match these results to the rest of the buildings so we can come up with a strategy. So we think the huts here would have been facing across a mirror image. Yeah absolutely I think you know both companies would have been able to stare at each other through the glass in the mornings.

You can imagine, can't you? So that's good. What else have we got? Lots of finds here, all bagged up. Yeah, that's right. They're in bags, so we know where they are. We can then do proper GPS locations for them and then match it to it when we come to excavate it.

And it's all metal detecting work here? It's all metal detecting to start with, and we'll make archaeology after that. The crucial thing is we've already made some great finds in this particular area i've got a selection here and these are probably some of the most interesting and they're quite variable now we'll start with a question what do you think that is i would say that is some kind of clothing buckle that's a good start however it's a reed for a mouth organ. Right. So, you know soldiers have a lot of downtime.

Yeah. And you can see them sitting in the huts maybe playing a bit of blues or something like that. I think it's got a nice human touch but there's a lot of martial stuff as well. You've got things like that which is a webbing buckle. It's all part of the accoutrements that hold the grenades, hold the ammunition and part of those key things that enable you to carry weaponry into battle. Lovely and you must be thrilled to find so many US related objects. It's the key thing for us was to be able to find palpable Americana so that we can refer to the

team that the reason we're here is looking for easy company or Fox company the 506 and we're getting little things now we were pleased with that because that's American but this I love this Wow so is that transport token that looks like a you know you use it on the New York subway or something yeah well you're close good for one fare good for one fare and the wonders of the internet shows that the the Howard bus line Wow they're from atlanta georgia someone's got his bus token from georgia and you think where the jump school was tokoa in georgia okay so maybe that's a weekend pass a day pass and they've been able to get out and visit

explore atlanta i love that and just come back with it you tried to spend it here to get into salisbury and they've said no good luck with that i mean that much money yeah incredible so that's another real american link and then we come on to the things that i think are starting to get into Salisbury and they've said no. Good luck with that, I mean that much money, yeah incredible. So that's another real American link and then we come on to the things that I think are starting to get you right to the soldiers. Look at that. That's a beautiful thing. And that's a thing of beauty isn't it, never mind the links to the Americans, it's a really beautiful object. So that's a buttoned on tunic. It's from this position on the uniform. Wow. Palpably American, it's got that coat of armor. American eagle, yeah. Any speech that any president makes has got that behind them. Wow. And there you go. Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. The old, the classic American motto. It's beautiful. It takes you back to those soldiers perfectly, isn't it? Out of many soldiers, one unit. Yeah, absolutely. Now, if I was to say D-Day,

American kit that isn't weaponry related, there's one thing I think that everybody thinks about, and it's prompted probably by the film The Longest Day, but everyone recognises this when it's shown to them. Aha. Is this that little clicky thing that gives a sound that you know if it's their friend or foe? It's exactly that. It's a cricket. So you have one click,

which is meant to be replied with to show that you've been recognised. Brilliant. That's issued to the guys for D-Day, and I believe it's only ever used on that particular engagement. They come back to Aldebaran after D-Day before Operation Market Garden,

but they're not used in Market Garden. So this could be D-Day veterans that were just tossed out. It's D-Day. Wow. The clicker is an iconic object from D-Day. The team thought they were unlikely to top that, but they were wrong.

What have we got? What's that? No way. Let's see the name on that. Richard Blake. No way. Richard A. Blake. Yep.

There's his number. And you see the next thing, it says T-43-44. So he's had his tetanus. Okay. 43-44. Next letter, A. A. So that's his blood group.

Okay, blood group A. And then you see C. He's a Catholic. No way. So he is from New York State. We know a lot about him then, don't we? He was a he was a 20 year old so you've managed to track him down you know the research capabilities of the internet we've got so much material on him he was 20 years old when he presumably lost this he jumps in on d-day wow he comes back he then jumps again on operation market garden the

island campaign and he loses part of his finger, his middle finger, which renders him medically discharged. So he survives the war. That is amazing. What an amazing thing to have. You are linked to a paratrooper from the 506th. Wow, that's so great. And he survives the war. He died about 10 years ago. But that's a direct link to a paratrooper that was in these fields.

We have a picture of him. Look at that. So there he is, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment's Able Company. And would he have worn this tag around his neck? He's meant to have two to identify him. So one for the neck and then one will eventually go around the boot for the feet.

So he could well be wearing this. He might be wearing it, yeah. That is extraordinary. I think losing it would be an embarrassing conversation with the RSM, wouldn't it, the Sergeant Major, to tell them that you've lost this. It's a key part of your kit.

Richard, that is fantastic news. You know, you're holding a piece of D-Day again. You've got the clicker, but now you're with a person, an identifiable person. So they'd found an item that belonged to an identifiable D-Day veteran from Able Company. The only thing that could top that

would be something belonging to a member of Easy Company itself. But that would be too much to hope for, wouldn't it? Oh, wow. What's her name? Carl Fenstermaker. Carl Fenstermaker, yeah. That's it? She'll be in there somewhere. Oh, my God. So where was that from?

You're kidding. What, another dog tag? And this? Oh. It's from Easy Company, man. No, the famous Easy Company, one've got another dog tag. And this is for an Easy Company man. No, the famous Easy Company, one of the Band of Brothers. So he's called, interesting name, Karl Fenstermacher. Now that sounds German doesn't it? So he's actually Pennsylvania Deutsch.

Okay so recently arrived German immigrant families, Pennsylvania. And again, service number? Service number, tetanus, O group, blood group O, Protestant. Not surprisingly, perhaps. German, yeah, German-German. And why is it bent? Do you think they deliberately chuck it away? We've been discussing this and chatting it through,

and I wonder whether because, you see, the tetanus is 4243. Okay. So maybe he's issued another one to be in date for tetanus, and also his middle initial is incorrect. So there's a small mistake. So maybe, just maybe, he's issued another one to be in date for tetanus. And also his middle initial is incorrect. So there's a small mistake. So maybe, just maybe, he was issued another one. That is beyond my wildest expectations. You know, you wanted to find easy company.

Congratulations. It's been an absolute thrill. Mission accomplished. It was a fantastic conclusion to the week here at Oldbourne. But that wasn't quite the end of the story. A few days later, I caught up with Giselle online to see what she'd discovered about the owner of the dog tag. Giselle, how's it going? Good to see you. Good to see you as well.

Tell me about what you found about, how do we pronounce your name, Fenstermacker? I believe it's Fenstermacker. He is a Pennsylvanian Dutch, so he's going to have a bit of influence from Europe. Fenstermacher. He is a Pennsylvanian Dutch, so he's going to have a bit of influence from Europe. So his full name was Carl Luther Fenstermacher, but he kind of went by Dutchie or Dutch as well. And he and two of his best friends all signed up for paratroopers together. And then they took the train ride south to Georgia, where they ended up in Easy Company. So he is one of the famous band of brothers. He is. He is. And not only is he just a regular paratrooper, but he also ended up being a pathfinder as well, which is one of the people who go ahead of all the paratroopers,

placing these special Eureka signals down, which would help the planes of the paratroopers in and guide them to where they needed to then jump. So that's, I mean, the brave is the brave. That's incredibly dangerous work. Yeah, it was basically a suicide mission every time. Did he jump on D-Day with the rest of Easy Company? He didn't do it with the rest of Easy Company, but he was part of that Pathfinder group. So a couple of them, actually him and just one other guy, they were the jumpers at D-Day representing, I suppose, Easy Company. But their plane actually went down over

the channel and they were rescued from the water. And thanks to Karl Fenstermacher speaking in German, the HMS Torder that found them ended up thinking that they were maybe German and held them hostage until their identities could be proven. Oh, I guess he assumed he was being picked up by a German ship. So he's like, hey, don't shoot. Exactly. Exactly. Well, how about the rest of the campaign? Was he reunited with Easy Company eventually? He was. So after he did the jump in D-Day, he went back to England. He was probably in Wiltshire then. He did a bunch of training at different Pathfinder schools as well because they would have to do trainings before they ended up doing their jumps. But he did end up back in Oldbourne. And then he jumped again

for Market Garden, which was in the middle of September, September 17th, 1944. And he was one of the very successful team members for that. In general, the whole operation Market Garden isn't really looked on as a very successful mission. But for the Pathfinders, it was extremely successful. And they all made their marks, they were able to get on the ground and get resupplying gliders in. After that he ended up at Battle of the Bulge and they had Pathfinders who were the key people for Battle of the Bulge. There was a resupply that was necessary to make sure that the troops that were on the ground were going to be able to survive. There was hardly any supplies in the area. These Pathfinders came in, only 20 of them.

He was one of 20 people to drop down, put these Eureka signals out, and were able to get the planes to deliver these items that were necessary for survival for all the people on the ground. So hang on, Giselle. He jumped into an encircled unit in the Battle of Bulge. He jumped into a cauldron, what people thought might at that point be a hopeless last stand. Yes, and he was one of only 20 men to do it. Wow, his wartime service is insane. What happened after the Bulge? Did he jump across the Rhine as well? No, that was where he sort of ended.

As far as we know so far, that's pretty much his jumping repertoire. But he did join up with the troops of Easy Company and other 101st Airborne. And he ended up helping relieve two different concentration camps, including Dachau, which we have a very detailed story about how he helped relieve them. And basically, it's because he was able to speak German. And so he was able to ask what's going on, what's going on, and find out from all the people who were left behind in these concentration camps what was going on. They weren't going to be nice scenes.

They were quite gruesome scenes. And what's been written about, you know, that's going to leave a really rough mark on someone on top of all of the other wartime things that happened. So he had an extraordinary war and you have found his dog tag. I mean, this must be, well, you couldn't have hoped for a better find to make. It's incredible. The veterans who were working on this dig together, they find connections with the past. And especially if they can find a connection with someone so important in the war, someone of easy company, someone recognisable, this is incredible to them

and for someone to find a dog tag adds a whole other level of history and it makes these veterans are so proud of this find, so incredibly proud of it. And we managed to track down someone else who we thought would be excited about the find, Carl's grandson Andrew, who we chatted to from his home in the US. Hi Andrew. Hi. Hey Andrew, great to meet you man. We are very, very excited to meet you and I hope that you are going to be excited about some of the news we're going to share. But let's start with Giselle, who's the archaeologist, she's the legend who has been working on this dig. Giselle, take it away.

Can you tell Andrew some stuff about what you've been up to? We've got this project called Operation Nightingale that works with veterans from all over the world. And we do digs that help promote mental health and well-being through the use of archaeology. So we were just doing a dig in Oldbourne, Wiltshire, which is where your grandfather was. And he was there with Easy Company.

And so we ended up recovering some finds. We found some foundations of the huts that they were staying in. So it was a really incredible story that we were able to tell. And these veterans helped us do it. Yeah, that's awesome. That's really cool. We know very little, really really he wasn't willing to to talk much about it and tell many stories so i hope you guys aren't depending on me for much as

far as that goes but i was really excited to hear about you know what you found and maybe what kind of stories you've uncovered absolutely we found a surprising amount on him so yeah this will be good this will be great even if he didn't tell that many stories did you know him well were you close to him no he died before i was born actually the year i was born so yeah i don't know much i talked to my dad a little bit really looking for any stories that pertain to his time in the 101st airborne And we've uncovered just a little bit since then. I told Giselle I did a school project, but that was in like seventh grade, I think. So I was able to find some of that stuff and breeze over it a little bit. But we know that his plane was shot down

on the way to D-Day. He never made it by plane, but he was actually transported then to the infantry. So he did make it, but wound up with the infantry instead of by plane in the airborne. That's exactly right. That's what we've got. So he did jump, sort of. The plane started to go down at D-Day and he ended up jumping into the channel he was recovered by the HMS Tartar which is a boat out there but he yelled out in German for safety reasons and they ended up holding him and his crew hostage until they could confirm their identities which is quite an interesting story I've actually got a picture of him just before D-Day with some of his mates. So he's the one in the middle smoking the pipe. So we only know two of the guys there, but really cool. I mean, this guy, your grandfather

was, despite not talking about it much, he was an incredible guy. Yeah, you guys have really inspired me to dive back in and learn more about his story. And we have a very special personal connection that we found to this remarkable man. We were all incredibly excited. I have to tell you, we found his dog tag with his name on it. Oh, wow. That's awesome. That's incredible.

Also with this, Andrew, you can see that it says Carl F. Fenstermacher, which that's not actually his middle initial. He was Carl L. Fenstermacher. And then also underneath below that, you can see his service number, which is 13099212. And then there's two Ts, and that's not normal. Normally there'd only be one T. There'd be a space and then a T and that

stands for tetanus and then it has the time that he got the tetanus and then down in the bottom corner is the religion. Oh and right next to where the tetanus date is is the O which is for his blood type. So this actually gives a lot of information but the fact that it's a bit, the information's skewed, it's got the wrong middle initial and it's kind of misprinted. And it's folded in half. It means that it might actually have just been something he got a bit frustrated about since it wasn't really his dog tag. It was something misprinted. And he folded it in half and just tucked it to the side.

And then here comes us years later and a veteran, one of our team is metal detecting and ends up finding it. Yeah, that's crazy. This is something that, you know, he may have wore around his neck. He may have thrown away. He may have handled that. Is that a pretty cool connection with your grandpa? Yeah, I mean, it's something that I'm excited to definitely share with my dad and my aunt and uncles. All of his kids are still alive. And I know that several of them have taken a lot of interest in this

and they'll be very excited to find this out. Carl was just one of the hundreds of volunteers who came to Old Bourne for training before their date with destiny. Late on the night of the 5th of June, into the early hours of the 6th of June 1944, thousands of aircraft engines roared. And Richard, Carl, the men of Easy Company that camped here, thousands of their comrades boarded Dakota C-47 transport planes for the

journey across the Channel into the skies above German-occupied France. The liberation of Western Europe was about to begin.