By ChrisDFW on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 - 11:54 pm:
| By ChrisDFW on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 - 11:54 pm: |
Carwood Lipton in his own words...
http://www.hbo.com/NASApp/band/site/client/stories/curated_story.jsp?exid=38
| By Chrisdfw (Chrisdfw) (209.245.231.193 - 209.245.231.193) on Sunday, October 14, 2001 - 12:20 pm: |
Lipton during World War II. He later became an executive at Owens-Illinois. PHOTO COURTESY OF CARWOOD LIPTON
| By ChrisDFW on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 - 11:28 pm: |
Carwood Lipton - WWII era
| By Lillian Cherith Elliot (Lillian) (63.225.152.9 - 63.225.152.9) on Friday, November 02, 2001 - 04:40 pm: |
Dear Mr. Lipton,
I am over come with emotion since I began watching The Band of Brothers. I’m so late in finding the rich history that lies within that era. I am so grateful I’m not too late relay to how it’s touched me so deeply.
Your particular story has moved me very much. Your amazing leadership, your courage, your strength…all in such superhuman quantities, moves me to face my own fears and try to be a better person. The unthinkable things you saw and did, makes me love life more. The fearful losses you suffered, and the bittersweet victories you could be thankful for, make me embrace my freedom…yet knowing I’ll never really know what it feels like. My heart aches knowing what little I know of what you endured for the country, and in essence, for me. My heart rejoices knowing you survived. I feel I have so much to say, and no way to say it. I wish you love and all good things
Thank you for everything you sacrificed and everything you did. Thank you for sharing your stories and please know they are preserved in my soul. You are sincerely one of my heroes, and you are in my prayers always.
Very truly yours,
Lillian
| By Chris Langlois (Chrisdfw) (209.245.226.179 - 209.245.226.179) on Saturday, November 17, 2001 - 12:56 pm: |
Donnie Wahlberg and Carwood Lipton at the premiere in Normandy.
| By TSanders (Theo51) (63.99.156.5 - 63.99.156.5) on Tuesday, December 18, 2001 - 07:55 am: |
Here's an obit article from the local newspaper about Mr. Lipton.
http://www.thepilot.com/news/121701WorldWarII.html
| By Jocelyn (Jocey) (64.109.200.98) on Friday, May 03, 2002 - 04:38 pm: |
dear sir,
as i read the stories i am overcome i think while watching the movie BOB i have caught myself crying too many times to count. the thought of you men puting your lige on the line for my generation makes my cry i get choked up. There are not enough words to say to thank you forwhat you did. thank you is all i can say
jocey
| By Chris Langlois (Chrisdfw) (12.239.86.117) on Sunday, May 19, 2002 - 10:10 pm: |
Carwood Lipton in an interview with WRAL's (FAYETTEVILLE, N.C) Melissa Buscher before the premiere of the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers.
| By Chris Langlois (Chrisdfw) (12.239.86.117) on Tuesday, May 21, 2002 - 08:17 pm: |
| By Chris Langlois (Chrisdfw) (12.239.86.117) on Thursday, June 27, 2002 - 02:02 pm: |
Article published Sunday, October 14, 2001
A SOLDIER’S TALE
Former Toledoan helped inspire HBO’s Band of Brothers
By CHRISTOPHER BORRELLI
BLADE STAFF WRITER
The Thursday night before the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, Carwood Lipton, 81, an unassuming former Owens-Illinois executive from Toledo, sat before the Council on Foreign Relations and had a prescient moment. Beside him was Stephen E. Ambrose, the celebrated war historian. In the audience sat a sprinkling of heavy hitters: presidential advisor David Gergen, America Online CEO Steve Case, and Home Box Office Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes. They all focused on Lipton, some with tears in their eyes.
The occasion was the premiere of the cable network’s $120 million, 10-part, World War II miniseries, Band of Brothers, based on Ambrose’s acclaimed 1992 book tracing the story of Easy Company, the famed 506th regiment of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. In the film, Lipton is played by Donnie Wahlberg. Lipton was a lieutenant in E Company and one of the first men to enlist in the regiment, which found itself dropped in nearly every hornet’s nest in Europe.
(PHOTO COURTESY OF CARWOOD LIPTON)
At the HBO event, after credits rolled and the lights came up in the room, the audience peppered Lipton with questions, mostly the usual stuff: What did he think of the proposed WW II memorial in Washington? Was the film as historically and emotionally accurate as executive producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg claim?
Then someone asked a question so prophetic that employees of the Council on Foreign Relations still buzz about it. The question: Did he think today’s military would fare well if faced with a new threat?
"Yes," Lipton said. "They would react if challenged the way we reacted when challenged. They would find the strength somehow to rise to the occasion."
And he backed that up, mentioning extreme sports, snowboarding, bungee jumping, then laughing that the current generation is more daring then his own generation.
When the applause died down, a young woman, an instructor at West Point, stood. "On behalf of the Me-Generation," she said, "we’d protect our country at any cost!"
More applause. "You’re damn right they would!" Lipton shouted above it.
A couple of weeks after the premiere, he and his wife, Marie, still talk about that night, their voices falling between poignancy and pride. Speaking by phone from his home in Southern Pines, N.C., Carwood said he expected the HBO miniseries’ relevancy to be largely about correcting a half century’s worth of sensationalistic war stories. He said it’s the most honest depiction of WW II ever seen in any movie or on any television show - and that includes Spielberg’s own Saving Private Ryan.
"Before this, the most realistic war movie was [1930’s] All Quiet on the Western Front," he said. "The others are ridiculous. People walk around a lot and are always talking to each other and standing up to shoot, and it just isn’t like that."
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Lipton said, "It turns out that the timing of the series is more perfect than expected - the country needs something like this now." He’s talking about a miniseries that emphasizes it was "citizen soldiers," to use Ambrose’s phrase, who fought evil; it was average people, office workers, coal miners, who stormed towns and outsmarted entire battalions, not military geniuses.
Lipton knows all about ordinary people performing extraordinary feats under duress. A native of West Virginia, he joined the military when he was 20. He said he was a loner.
"But there was this strong feeling of patriotism in the country," he said. "Life magazine ran an article on paratroopers and how difficult it was to join them. Since I was in good physical condition at the time, I decided I would be one. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing until I had done it, not until after I enlisted and had to take a train to Kentucky the next morning. That way no one had an opportunity to second guess me."
After the war, for 36 years he worked for O-I as an engineer and a director of development and manufacturing, moving with the O-I job from New Jersey to Illinois to Spain to London to Geneva to Toledo; for a decade, he lived in Old Orchard - his son, Thomas Lipton, still lives in Monclova Township. In 1983, Carwood retired to North Carolina. In all that time, he tended not to mention the war to colleagues.
"I never heard him speak of his military experiences," said friend Bill Niehous (the same O-I executive who was kidnapped by a radical group in Venezuela in the late 1970s). Lipton said he wanted to stick to work topics. Thomas Lipton said his father talked a lot about the war - "though only the funny stories."
Lipton first met Ambrose in the late 1980s - E Company had been having reunions since 1947. (Of 140 members in 1942, there are 20 left today.) The historian sent him a form letter asking D-Day survivors for an audio tape of their memories.
Lipton’s thoughts spread across two tapes. He was a Zelig-like character, always on the front line. He landed at Utah Beach on D-Day, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and helped capture Hitler’s "Eagle’s Nest" - all dramatized in Band of Brothers. And although it’s a film with 500 speaking roles, Wahlberg’s Lieutenant Lipton, along with company commander Maj. Richard Winters (played by British actor Damien Lewis) and Capt. Lewis Nixon (Ron Livingston of Office Space), gets a lot of Hollywood close-up time.
When production on the miniseries began in spring 2000 - most of the 10 episodes were shot on a 1,100-acre back lot inside the Hatfield Aerodrome in England - Lipton was asked to be an on-set technical advisor for the series, but he was recuperating from back and hip surgery. So he talked to Wahlberg by phone, almost every day.
For instance, take Lipton’s parachute drop on D-Day.
The HBO series plays it as chaos, scattering the men in the wind and heightening the tension of a long drop with air singed by long trails of mortar fire. In reality, you’re not in the air very long, Lipton said. That day, they jumped lower than intended.
"My thoughts were, ‘I’m not coming down where I’m supposed to be coming down,’" Lipton said.
"You’re not thinking of being afraid. You’re thinking about what you have to do when you land. I saw lot of gun fire coming up. From the sky I remember I saw there was a fire in a town in the distance and that it was very dark everywhere else. I could recite minute by minute what happened that day."
So before each scene, Wahlberg would explain how the script read and Lipton would explain how an event actually happened. Then Wahlberg would go back to the filmmakers and argue for changes.
"You see, the book is the actions as remembered by the men and then interpreted by Ambrose," Lipton said. "The film is one more layer removed. It can end up a bit far from reality."
But Wahlberg nailed what he’s like, Lipton said. His Lipton is the most stoic, unemotional character in the miniseries, a disciplined, respected soldier who doesn’t waste a move on the battlefield.
"I was a leader but I never threw my weight around," he said. Still, Lipton adds, the film’s fight scenes show more outward emotion, more running around than real battle. What stands out to Lipton are smaller details, tweaked for dramatic reasons. In episode two, Wahlberg’s Lipton is crawling in the dirt when Warrant Officer Andrew Hill raises his head to ask where headquarters is and takes a bullet in the forehead.
In life, Lipton, though now 81, remembers better. Before leaving England, Hill married an English woman. After he left for France, he had a son and years later the son called Lipton. He wanted to know how his father died. Here’s what Lipton told him:
"I was crawling back to a gun position. The Germans were firing heavy machine gun fire right over us. Hill was behind me. Someone was in front of me - that guy turns his head back and asked where headquarters was. It was a stupid question. I turned back to Hill and he raised his head no more than four inches and a bullet hit right in the middle of his forehead and came out behind his ear.
"It stands out in my memory because it was the first American I saw killed. I had seen others, lying on the side of the road, in fields, lots of bodies, but that was the first one where I was there. I remember the moment clearly. It was about eight that morning. He was the first American I saw killed and I knew him well."
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2001110130008
| By Ilja Buschman (Bobandluzfan) (212.129.207.209) on Saturday, October 26, 2002 - 06:17 am: |
i was in Normandy this week and there i saw the book of Forrest Guth. There was a picture of Lipton in it and under it there was: " Buck Lipton, and his nickname is Carwood. Thats not right is it?! Its Lynn 'Buck' Compton.
How come Forrest made such a mistake?
Also in the book there was a picture of E company in Fort Bragg in 1943. I was looking for Sobel but he wasnot there. Anyone know why?
| By homefront41 (Homefront41) (198.81.26.142) on Saturday, October 26, 2002 - 01:40 pm: |
It turns out that Buck was also a nickname of Carwood Lipton. And a few others too, no doubt (buck private). A lot of men in these companies who were together for so long actually acquired more than one nickname before they all mustered out. They would crop up after some event or another and stick for a while and then be replaced. Some had a couple simultaneously. BK
| By Ilja Buschman (Bobandluzfan) (80.60.206.185) on Saturday, October 26, 2002 - 06:45 pm: |
yeah but in the book stood that the nickname of Lipton was Carwood, but that is his first name.
| By Marigold Papa (Marigold) (203.170.2.85) on Saturday, October 26, 2002 - 08:45 pm: |
Yes, that is his name. BK is saying Carwood must have also been called "Buck" by his comrades. Like BK said, a lot of them could have had the same nickname.
gold
| By Warren Stewart (Warreng83) (207.6.184.63) on Saturday, June 07, 2003 - 12:39 am: |
I mean no disrespect to the late Carwood Lipton, but I don't think the Band of Brothers series does him credit. I read the book, and it seemed to me that he had tremendous leadership and was a terrific soldier. After Winters made battalion, Speirs said Lip became the real leader of Easy, despite the fact that their CO was Lt Dike. However, I noticed that the Band of Brothers series kind of portrays Lipton as a flunkie to Winters. It is first seen when Winters orders him to assemble a squad in episode 5. After he recieved the battlefield commission, it mainly shows him following Winters around. I definitely don't think this does him credit at all.
| By Jocelyn (Jocey) (67.37.48.114) on Sunday, June 08, 2003 - 11:41 am: |
no offense but saying that Carwood was projected as a flunkie is ridiculous. Winters is the CO, Commanding Officer, Lipton has just recieved his Commission, do you think just because he was made an officer means he's gonns disregard Winters? Remember in that scene a man has just been brought in who has been nailed by shrapenal, and though Litpon was a nautral leader so was Winters. Lipton didn't follow Winters around because he had too, i mean he had to but, Lipton and Winters were good friends, they were both smart in techinique and strategically, they trusted one another. But Winters was in command so it was his call, he ordered everyone one around, he was the CO that's his job. Lipton followe dhim around also becasue they were in teh same unit and were both officers, you wouldn't say that Harry Welsch or Nixon were flunkies, they were all great sldiers who respected each other adn submitted to each other if the situation called for it.
currahee
jocey
| By Jocelyn (Jocey) (67.37.48.114) on Sunday, June 08, 2003 - 11:42 am: |
no offense but saying that Carwood was projected as a flunkie is ridiculous. Winters is the CO, Commanding Officer, Lipton has just recieved his Commission, do you think just because he was made an officer means he's gonns disregard Winters? Remember in that scene a man has just been brought in who has been nailed by shrapenal, and though Litpon was a nautral leader so was Winters. Lipton didn't follow Winters around because he had too, i mean he had to but, Lipton and Winters were good friends, they were both smart in techinique and strategically, they trusted one another. But Winters was in command so it was his call, he ordered everyone one around, he was the CO that's his job. Lipton followed him around also becasue they were in the same unit and were both officers, you wouldn't say that Harry Welsch or Nixon were flunkies, they were all great soldiers who respected each other adn submitted to each other if the situation called for it.
currahee
jocey
| By M. Williams (Marine) (152.163.252.100) on Sunday, June 08, 2003 - 02:03 pm: |
Jocey,
I believe you to be correct. In the military we have a chain of command that must be followed...winters gets his orders from regimental command...he passes them onto company command who pass them down to platoon leaders...who in turn pass them to squad leaders..and eventually to the squad.
In all of my years i never saw one battlion commander who liked to go hunting for a company commander. Most of the time the company commanders stayed right close to the battalion cp, or at the least the company cp so they were readily accesable to their higher ups.
often you would see officers of differing ranks together simply because it was an efficent means of passing info quickly..and avoiding the chinese telephone syndrome.
At any rate, by this point in winters and liptons relationship they were undoubtedly close friends. easy company had counted on lipton to get them through the likes of dykes....im sure there was a mutual respect few can understand.
Mike
| By Coly Hope (Wolverine) (205.188.208.106) on Sunday, June 08, 2003 - 03:40 pm: |
In the series when Lipton became officer he didn't hang around Winters, he was transferred to Paris.
| By Jocelyn (Jocey) (67.37.48.116) on Sunday, June 08, 2003 - 06:51 pm: |
Thanks mike, yes i can imagine the frustration of that can occur when people who need to be aroudn aren't. this i'm sure is also one of the reasons that Easy was kept together as long as possible. unless someone was killed they liked not bringing in replacememtns to take the place of good workign experienced officers like in liptons case, he was a smart, active and experienced leader, they didn't have time to replace him. they were in teh middle of Hitler's last counter-offensive. That's i'm sure one of the reasons why he was kept as long as possible. and yes Lipton did hang around with Winters. Lipton was commissioned in the first few weeks of January and he wasn't transferred to Paris until May. that's a good five months. See becasue Easy was on the frontlines all the time the army made one of their few good decisions of the war concerning Easy company. they didn't split them up until after the war had ended. Also even before lipton was commissioned he was a first sergeant for like four months, so becasue he was the highest ranking enlisted man he was always with the officers, for the most part.
Currahee
jocey
| By Esteban Hernandez (Esteb6644) (24.130.115.9) on Thursday, June 12, 2003 - 05:40 pm: |
Is any one here?
| By ferris (Dayoffirstse) (216.190.241.87) on Tuesday, November 11, 2003 - 06:24 pm: |
hey hope it was malarkey who was transfered to paris for the airborne exhibition lipton was transfered to battalion HQ
rest his soul
ferris
| By ferris (Dayoffirstse) (216.190.241.87) on Saturday, December 06, 2003 - 06:51 pm: |
does anyone know if the lipton/speis convorsation actually happened at the racchamps church in episode 7?
ferris
| By Chris Saunders (Space_Cowboy) (195.92.168.176) on Sunday, December 07, 2003 - 07:18 am: |
I don't think so. The book states that Spiers told Lipton he was being promoted just before in Haguenau, which was after Racchamps. The book says that Lipton got pneumonia (as seen in episode 8) while on the road to Haguenau. Speirs & Lipton stayed in a German house overnight. The next morning he was back to normal. The book goes on to say, "Speirs, delighted by his recovery, said that he & Winters had recommended Lipton for battlefield promotion..."
Whether or not the rest of the church conversation (e.g. Lipton always being a leader of Easy) is not mentioned, but we know for certain that the promotion bit was actually mentioned after Racchamps.
Even if the converation never took place, i'm sure someone somewhere told Lipton what a great leader he was.
Chris
UK
| By Jocelyn (Jocey) (68.75.65.210) on Monday, December 08, 2003 - 01:20 am: |
i thought that the conversation DID take place, maybe not in the church, it may have been in Haguenau but i remember somewhere in the book ambrose or someone commetning on the conversation. (atleast i think i remember that)i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure.
jocey
| By Mike Oszuscik (Mikey) (68.75.95.102) on Tuesday, December 30, 2003 - 10:29 pm: |
I got a question. After Lipton got promoted to 2nd Lieutenant, did he get command of a platoon in Easy then? I know Lieutenant Jones left Easy at the same time Lipton got promoted, so did Lipton take over as leader of 2nd Platoon?
In the book however it says at the end of the war Lipton was serving as a platoon leader in HQ Company, but did he serve in Easy at all as a Lieutenant?
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