William Guarnere - Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends: Two WWII Paratroopers from the Original Band of Brothers Tell Their Story

Too often, war on film becomes a glamorous action movie. The horrors of battle look thrilling as heroes defy odds and cheat death. The bullets are blanks, the explosions are special effects, and the costumed actors wear made-up wounds in an art-directed fiction that is improbably cool.

Before the characters see combat, war can look like a long camping trip. Young men get into the best physical shape of their lives, make friends and laugh at every opportunity, then perform daring acts like jumping out of airplanes. Their camaraderie is the stuff of being young, being proud, and being a part of a great adventure. In the movies, the battle is when things get exciting. In real war, its when young men kill other young men.

The European Theater of World War II is particularly attractive, as London, Paris, and the Austrian Alps are some of the locales. The D-day invasion of Normandy had an understandable geography. The Battle of the Bulge was a pure drama with a surrounding, desperate enemy. Victory in Europe was definitive, marked by the time and the place and the party that followed. And everyone knows the alliance of Good Guys won the Good War.

In the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers , we producers held an ace up our filmmaking sleeve that helped span the divide between what actually happened and how it appeared on the screenthat was the book, a marvelous piece of history told by Stephen Ambrose, a great scholar and a dazzling storyteller. The details came straight from the mouths of the charactersand what characters they are.

Easy Company of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne was a collection of fascinating men. Some of them were taciturn, others hilarious. Some were country boys, others came from the biggest of cities. Most of Americas faiths were represented, including atheism. Some were accomplished ladies men, others so shy they passed the war with their virginity intact. Each of them faced the coming struggles with a priceless advantageeach other.

To single out one or two of these Screaming Eagles as the Most Super-Duper Paratrooper or the Best Source for a free beer on VE day would be a fools errand. But to fail to single out Bill Guarnere and Babe Heffron would overlook a grand entertainment and a stirring inspiration.

Wild Bill and Babe. Even their names beg the telling of their tale, like great ball players from the 1920s, or legendary lawmenor outlawsof the Old West. They are the guys who grew up just blocks from each other in Philadelphia, yet never met until they were in England. Babe, you see, walked a certain way, with a combination of a confident stride and a cocky bounce so Bill knew, just knew , this replacement trooper had to be from Philly. Guarnere was a veteran of the jump into Normandy and had already survived the killing, the misery, and the miles of bloody territory that would have to be taken before the war would end and he could go home. Heffron, newly assigned to Easy Company, was soon to fight in Operation Market Garden and barely survive the Battle of the Bulge. They were young, strong, oversexed, and over therejust the kind of heroes that history makes out of two guys from Philadelphia.

The true measure of what Bill and Babe experienced in the warwhat they lost and suffered, what challenges they faced and conqueredcould never be fully re-created in a miniseries for television, even in a thousand hours. The best we filmmakers could aim for was capturing a true portrait of who they were.

While shooting the fifth episode of Band of Brothers , the production was on the massive back lot, once an abandoned aerospace plant north of London, which we turned into Normandy, Holland, Belgium, Germany, and even Camp Toccoa, Georgia. Two units were filming simultaneously, with actors moving between episodesfrom one false battlefield to anotheroften on the same day.

Frank John Hughes, who played Wild Bill Guarnere, had a special duty that required his wearing his uniform/costume off the set. Looking exactly like an American paratrooper of 1944, complete with his set of jump wings, his pant legs bloused into his Corcoran boots, and a Screaming Eagle patch on his shoulder, Hughes reported to Heathrow Airport. VIP guests were due in from the United States, and he was to escort them to the movie set.

With a crisp salute at ramrod attention, the actor greeted Wild Bill Guarnere and Babe Heffron upon their return to England.

When the two veterans arrived at our version of Holland, word of their presence spread like wildfire, as if Elvis Presley and the Beatles were on the lot. Shooting stopped, the production offices emptied, and the cast and crew began flocking to the back lot on foot, in vintage army jeeps, on scooters and bikes. Everyone wanted to see the men themselves, the troopers whose stories we were telling, two of the band of brothers who jumped into hell on earth in order to save the world.