May 8, 2003

I just finished another episode of Band of Brothers. It's funny how coincidences happen. Just yesterday I was talking about a colonel in Catch-22 who kept raising the amount of combat flights his men had to fly before they could be sent home in his pursuit to be recognized. Of course, Catch-22 is an exaggeration, but it's grounded in truth. While Band of Brothers is also a fictitious work, it too is grounded in reality. In the episode I watched, a colonel sent a patrol to the other side of the river to kidnap some German soldiers. The patrol brought back two, the third was left for dead on the other side of the river, and one man died in the process. The colonel thought the mission was successful and received acclaim for it, so he ordered the same group (minus one) do to the same thing the next night. This was also the night before they were going to leave the area. Capitan Winters and Captain Nixon knew the mission was unnecessary, so Winters had the men sleep while Nixon faked the paper work saying they completed the mission. This is a good example of moral reasoning. On one hand, they had their obligation to obey the colonel's lawful order. On the other, they had their men who were fatigued before they went on the patrol that night, and were doubly so after it, and the knowledge that the second patrol was even more unnecessary than the first. Obviously, I support Winters and Nixon's decision and find their willingness to risk getting in trouble for the welfare of their men commendable, as well as their ability to weigh courses of action.