By Anonymous on Sunday, July 22, 2001 - 09:35 pm:

Saturday July 14 01:39 AM EDT
HBO Bringing Paratroopers Back To Georgia
HBO is paying for 40 surviving members of a legendary WWII unit to return in less than two weeks to Toccoa - the place where WWII really began for them.

They will be returning to Toccoa to see the premiere of HBO's "Band of Brothers," the story of their role in the war.

In recent years, movies like "Deliverance," "Sleeping With the Enemy," and "The Patriot" have been shot in the region.

But the last time Toccoa hosted a big movie premiere was nearly 60 years ago.

"World War II for these men began on Stevens County soil," military historian Lamar Davis said.

The men were some of the Army's first paratroopers who arrived at Camp Toccoa for training in the summer of 1942.

"They came from every walk of life, from every crossroad of America for a new phase of training in the U.S. military," Davis said.

They were the men of Easy Company, 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division.

They were trained in the shadow of Curahee Mountain, in Georgia, parachuted in France on D-Day morning, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and captured Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Germany.

But those were costly victories. The casualty rate for Easy Company was 150 percent.

"As your original men got killed, you had replacements coming in. So if you count all of them, whose lives were lost, it amounted to 150 percent of the original company," Davis said.

Easy Company's story became the bestseller "Band of Brothers" – and that book is being turned into a 10-part HBO miniseries, set to premiere July 22 in Toccoa.

"Well, this premiere is about the biggest thing that our town community has ever had," local premiere chairwoman Betty Swords said.

The mini-series is a star-studded affair. Tom Hanks and Steven Speilberg are its executive producers.

Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes and Sen. Max Cleland (news - bio - voting record) will speak at the premiere.

But the real stars are the men of Easy Company.

"They've always been my heroes and they still are," Davis said.

Producers of "Band Of Brothers" did consider shooting parts of the mini-series in Toccoa, but decided that the town had changed too much in the last 60 years.

Instead, they recreated Camp Toccoa on a movie set in England.