At the end of Carentan it says he never recovered from his wounds and died in 1948.. I looked this up just for confirmation and discovered that not only did he recover from that wound, but lived until 1967.. what gives and why would the show lie??
shareInteresting, I hadn't known this. Checked it out & it looks like he'd stayed in the military & developed a perforated ulcer more than 20 years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Blithe
Article notes that this was a mistake in the show (never recovered, died soon after). That kind of thing happens, called the 'Swiss Cheese" effect in quality control whether film-making, manufacturing or services. A mistake gets through a 'hole' in one persons attention, then another's, possibly a third and maybe more.
Well movies and shows make mistakes all the time it doesn't mean they're intending to lie. The show was based primarily on Stephen Ambrose' book and it's therein the error first rears it's head.
When Blithe was shot at the farm house evidently he appeared to have been shot in the neck severing the carotid artery as shown in the series which, even using modern techniques, is invariably fatal in minutes. However he was actually shot in the collar bone. Here's where the problems start. Blithe was taken to a military hospital and sent home. He never returned to the European Theater. By all accounts Easy Company who returned to England, back to the ETO and lost a whole load of buddies on the road to Germany didn't actually know what happened to him and it seems it was assumed he had succumbed to his injuries in Normandy. When Ambrose interviewed them for his book this is the story he was told and went with it. When Hanks and Spielberg picked up the project they accepted this version of events and that's what we see in the series.
It was still pretty poor researching considering the entire episode was based on him but the ending was as a result of error, not lies!
Considering the mistake is in text rather than in footage, it would have been relatively easy to correct.
Why they didn't is the bigger question.
If HBO ever do a Korean War series they should fix this mistake and include Blithe in an episode, Albert Blithe also fought in Korea.
shareI never understood the way they wrote Blithe or what they were trying to say with all the character’s weird mannerisms and existential staring at the clouds. Not to mention his sudden pacifism and moral dilemmas a few months into volunteering for the airborne infantry. Seemed such a strange portrayal for a guy who in reality stayed in the Army until 1967. I heard a podcast where the actor, Marc Warren, converses with Blithe’s real life son. Blithe had a ton of heroic combat experience in Europe and Korea including a silver star, two bronze stars and three Purple Hearts. He loved being a paratrooper and a soldier. His son said Blithe died just months before his Army retirement by “basically drinking himself to death” and strongly suggested it was connected to PTSD. So perhaps in one sense, his Band of Brothers epitaph was correct in that he never did recover from his wounds in France
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