By Derek D. Tircuit (Dtircuit) on Sunday, July 22, 2001 - 02:00 am:

Roderick Bain’s first visit to France was the most memorable:

He arrived via parachute, in the dark, carrying a riffle. It was June 6, 1944. D-Day

But his next visit to France is going to be pretty special in its own way.

The former Whatcom County resident and his wife, Donelle, will travel from there home in Anchorage, Alaska, to Paris, with a couple of nights’ stopover at the legendary Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. Their trans-Atlantic leg of the trip will be via charter flight, accompanied by most of the 50 surviving members of Bain’s unit” E-Company, 506th. Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.

The Company –known as EASY Company- was the subject of a recent book, “Band of Brothers” by historian Stephen E. Ambrose. The book inspired filmmaker Steven Spielberg and the actor Tom Hanks to produce a 10-part miniseries for HBO, tentavely scheduled for a September release.

HBO is providing the Easy Company Veterans with a free week in France in early June, where Bain said they expect to meet Spielberg and Hanks. On June 6, the veterans will be on Utah Beach in Normandy for the 57th anniversary of the D-Day invasion that brought Bain to France for the first time.

“Pretty scary”
Bain, 79, is a graduate of Ilwaco Highschool who was enrolled at the University of Washington when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He enlisted the Army in 1942, but his first taste of combat came in the predawn hours of D-Day, when the men of Easy Company were among the 13,000 paratroopers dropped behind German lines to help pave the way for other soldiers trying to fight their way up from the heavily defended Normandy beaches.

”It was pretty scary”, Bain said. “You come down there, and it’s dark, and you’re trying to get out of your ‘chute”.

Bain recalled spending several minutes getting his parachute untangled from an apple tree, where it was advertising his position like a big silk billboard. Then, he said: “stumbled around in the dark” until he found a buddy who needed help getting untangled from his own parachute.

The lonely twosome headed down a nearby road toward Utah Beach, where Easy Company was supposed to secure roads that would provide a route inland for the beach invaders. Eventually, they joined a group of about 80 paratroopers, some from other units, and headed towards the beach.

They captured the nearby town of Carentan, and U.S. tanks fought their way up from Omaha Beach to push the Germans out of the area.

That was just the beginning of war for Bain and the rest of Easy Company. On Sept.11, they were airborne again, parachuting into the Netherlands under British command, where Bain remembers having to survive on oxtail soup and bland British cigarettes.

Behind the lines
Later that winter, Easy Company as in the line of fire when Adlof Hitler launched a desparate, doomed counteroffensive that became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Bain and his comrads were among the U.S.troops that were surrounded in the Belgium town of Bastogne as supplies dwindled.

“We were kind of hurting for a week or 10 days,” he said. But then the skies cleared. U.S.cargo planes began dropping supplies while warplanes pounded the overextended German lines, and Easy Company was ordered back on the offensive.

“We hadn’t had a shower or change of clothes for about three weeks,” Bain said.

In spring of 1945, with the Nazi war machine collapsing, Easy Company liberated Hitler’s “Eagle’s Nest” retreat in Bavaria. Bain remembers his comrades joyriding in big limousines that had once been at the disposal of Nazi bigwigs. They also liberated Hitler’s extensive stash of champagne, cognac and schnapps at about the same time they also seized a warehouse full of motorcycles.

“Between the booze and the motorcycles, it was bad news for awhile,” Bain said.

Life after war
After the war, Bain completed his education at Western Washington State College –now Western Washington University—where he met Donelle. He taught at the old Lummi Day School for about a year before moving to Alaska, where he was a teacher and administrator for the next 25 years.

Now he’s looking forward to meeting Hanks and Spielberg. He thinks the two men did a decent job depicting the Normandy invasion in their polular Hollywood was epic, “Saving Private Ryan”.

“It wasn’t bad,” he said.