Herbert Sobel, the controversial first commander of Easy Company whose harsh training methods were immortalized in “Band of Brothers,” died alone and blind in a rundown nursing home in 1987, his death initially unknown to family members who had lost touch with him over years of estrangement and mental decline.
Sobel, who was born on January 26, 1912, in Chicago, Illinois, passed away at age 75 from malnutrition, according to records and family accounts. His sister Maxine handled the burial arrangements and had him cremated several days after his death. She later phoned his ex-wife Reva to deliver the news.
The story of Sobel’s tragic final years stands in stark contrast to the disciplined, demanding officer who shaped Easy Company into one of the most effective fighting units of World War II, even as his men grew to despise him and ultimately orchestrated his removal from command.
Sobel was the second of four children to Hungarian-born Max Sobel and his wife Dora. He was raised in a Jewish family and attended Culver Military Academy, a strict boarding school in Indiana, where he excelled on the swim team. He later studied business at the University of Illinois and graduated in 1933.
Commissioned as an officer in the organized reserves, Sobel was promoted to first lieutenant by 1937 and elevated to active duty in 1940, the year before Pearl Harbor. He was stationed at Camp Grant near Rockford, Illinois, before enlisting in the military police corps and being sent to Fort Riley, Kansas.
In 1942, Sobel volunteered to join the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division at Camp Toccoa, Georgia. He became the first member of Easy Company and its first commanding officer, charged with transforming civilian volunteers into elite combat soldiers.
It was at Toccoa that Sobel’s reputation was forged. Standing six feet one inch tall with a slender build and long face, he was a strict disciplinarian known for grueling training exercises, including running his men up and down Currahee Mountain. To his credit, despite his lanky build, he performed every exercise alongside his soldiers, shouting “Hi Ho Silver” as he ran.
Sobel was notorious for punishing the tiniest infractions, including lint on chevrons, rust on rifles, dirty weapon slings, and even dirty ears. A favorite punishment was making offenders dig a six-by-six-by-six-foot hole and then fill it back in.
While his nitpicking seemed excessive, there was purpose behind it. A rusty rifle becomes useless, and a useless rifle can get men killed. Being able to dig a deep foxhole could save a soldier’s life when shells were falling.
Sobel’s harsh treatment mirrored what special forces instructors do today, and in many ways, his training approach was ahead of its time.
Colonel Robert Sink, the regimental commander, noticed that Sobel got results. His men could march further, perform better in the dark, and physically outperform other companies. Years later, almost every veteran who served under Sobel would credit him with being the reason for their success and survival.
In a strange way, it kind of filled you with pride, recalled Tech Sergeant Don Malarkey. You got the idea he was hardening us for tougher times to come.
Some veterans have openly stated that the book and miniseries were unjust to Sobel. Private First Class Bill Wingett said he does not believe that Bill Dukeman getting chewed out by Sobel for having a loose collar ever happened. I don’t remember that, said Wingett.
I stood in ranks right behind Bill Dukeman every damn formation we had at Toccoa. I don’t know why anybody made that up, but somebody sure as hell did.
Wingett added: I think Sobel was as fair a guy as anybody who came down the road. He was tough, yes, he was as tough as anybody you’ll ever know, but he was not a bastard.
However, Sobel’s high-pitched, raspy voice and tendency to shout rather than speak irritated his men. Dick Winters recalled that his tone did not change during meetings with officers either. He was very dominating there.
There was no give and take, Winters said.
According to historian Stephen Ambrose, Sobel had no friends. None went on pass with him. None socialized with him.
No one in Easy Company knew anything about his previous life, and no one cared. Winters recalled that at the end of the day, Sobel went one way and the officers went the other, hoping not to run into him at the officers’ club.
Yet Ambrose’s statement was excessive and meant to sell Sobel as a character everyone detests rather than reflect reality. First Sergeant Evans was a favorite of Sobel’s, and Evans demonstrated loyalty by choosing not to participate in the NCO mutiny against Sobel in England.
Colonel Robert Strayer, the second battalion commander, expressed admiration for Sobel in a 1992 letter to Winters. Strayer wrote that Sobel had a lot to do with bringing the men together as a rigid disciplinarian, which was really needed to induct civilians into a true fighting force in a short time. He was also strict with himself.
Sobel was the only company commander who was always on time and did as he was told.
Strayer also noted that Sobel would fight for his men, including George Lavenson, whom Strayer was going to remove from the company until Sobel fought for him and convinced Strayer to make Lavenson his adjutant to keep him away from troops who did not like him.
While Sobel was highly effective at turning civilian volunteers into robust combat-ready soldiers, his ability to lead men on the battlefield was another story. In his letter, Strayer told Winters: I did think Sobel was a good training officer but definitely not a leader of troops.
Sobel was inept at making tactical decisions and was often confused during combat exercises. The series showing him unable to read a map and acting impulsively during field exercises was accurate. The men feared Sobel would get them killed if he led them into combat.
Sergeant Amos Buck Taylor recalled that some men downright hated him, even to the point where Sobel’s life was in danger. As NCOs, we had all heard comments from other enlisted men such as, boy, if I ever get Sobel in my sights, he’s a goner, stuff like that. There was a strong feeling among the men that Sobel couldn’t be trusted in a combat situation.
On one occasion, Easy Company was going through a combat range with live ammunition firing at pop-up targets. Sobel experienced near misses. Edward Tipper recalled that more than one shot was aimed from the rear and side to crack by close to Sobel’s head.
He’d flop down, kind of bounce around and shout something, and jump up again. There was much laughing and gesturing from the men.
Other pranks included Private George Luz imitating Major Oliver Horton’s voice during a field exercise. Unlike what was seen in “Band of Brothers,” the real incident happened at night while Easy Company was leading the battalion on a cross-country march. Sobel was in front, and barbed wire fences were slowing the battalion down.
While pretending to be Major Horton, Luz called out, Captain Sobel, what’s the hold up? The barbed wire, Sobel replied, believing he was addressing the battalion executive officer. Cut those fences, Luz called out.
Yes, sir, Sobel replied.
The next morning, a group of Wiltshire farmers complained to Colonel Strayer, enraged that their fences had been cut and their cows had gotten out. Strayer called in Sobel. Why did you cut those fences?
I was ordered to cut them, sir. By whom? Major Horton.
Horton’s on leave in London. Sobel was given hell. He never found out who tricked him.
The most malicious prank played on Sobel was not shown in the series. During a training exercise where several men, including Sobel, volunteered to be casualties so medics could practice bandaging wounds and evacuating the wounded, the medics gave Sobel an anesthetic that knocked him unconscious. They then made a small incision to make him think they had performed an appendectomy on him.
They sewed up the incision and covered it with bandages and surgical tape.
When Sobel came to, he was understandably livid, but the guilty medics were nowhere to be found, and no one in Easy Company would give them up. In Winters’ memoir, he recounts this story but does not mention that the incision was deep enough to need stitches. It is possible Ambrose embellished the incident.
Sobel’s harsh treatment of his men worsened after they arrived in Aldbourne, England. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne stationed nearby told members of the 101st about their combat experiences in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. Everyone in the 101st, especially officers, felt the pressure of being on the cusp of warfare.
Captain Sobel was especially affected. It showed up in his disposition, said Winters. He was becoming more sour and sadistic.
It was reaching the point that it was unbearable.
Things came to a head when Sobel initiated a court-martial against Winters for failing to inspect the latrine at a time Sobel specified, despite Sobel supposedly modifying the time without successfully notifying Winters. Colonel Sink decided it would be best to transfer Winters out of Easy Company, making him battalion mess officer.
Sobel despised Winters. As Ambrose noted, Sobel had authority over the men, but Lieutenant Winters had their respect. Unlike Sobel, Winters was a natural-born leader.
Sobel could see it and hated Winters for it.
After Winters’ transfer, the non-commissioned officers of Easy Company intended to resign their ranks in protest, refusing to go into battle under Sobel’s command, believing he would lead them to their deaths. Colonel Sink gave the NCOs hell for their attempted mutiny, but in the end decided to replace Sobel, removing him as Easy Company commander and assigning him to command a new parachute training school in Chilton Foliat, Wiltshire.
The transfer was a crushing blow. Easy Company had been his baby since its inception at Toccoa. Now he had lost it.
The message was clear: after transforming the men into elite soldiers, Colonel Sink no longer had confidence that Sobel could lead them into battle.
Ironically, the man who replaced Sobel, First Lieutenant Thomas Meehan, would die on D-Day when the Douglas C-47 Skytrain aircraft he was aboard was shot down by German anti-aircraft fire. All 21 men on board were killed, including the entire company headquarters. First Sergeant William Evans was among the dead.
The plane had been loaded with Bangalore torpedoes. This was the plane Sobel would have been on if he had remained in charge of Easy Company. Sergeant Bill Guarnere later commented, in reality, we saved Captain Sobel’s life.
Sobel did jump into Normandy on D-Day, but not with Easy Company. He did so as part of regimental headquarters. Upon landing, he gathered four lost paratroopers, and they used grenades to take out a German machine gun nest.
He then joined the rest of the division near Carentan. His efforts earned him a combat infantry badge.
After jumping into France, Sobel returned to the training school at Chilton Foliat, only this time as assistant commander. On March 8, 1945, he was appointed the regiment’s S4, the logistical officer for the 506th, responsible for ferrying supplies to and from the front.
It was in Mourmelon, France, that Sobel was walking down the street and saw Dick Winters coming in the opposite direction. Sobel dropped his head and tried to walk by Winters without saluting. Winters called out, Captain Sobel, we salute the rank, not the man.
Winters had recently been promoted to major, and Sobel was still a captain. It was an angering and humiliating moment.
Sobel was one of the only members of Easy Company who did not have any physical wounds from the war. However, according to Ambrose, he experienced deep mental ones.
After World War II, most of the men from Easy Company would never see Herbert Sobel again. He returned to Chicago and worked as a credit manager for a wholesaler and then for a telephone equipment company. He stayed in the Army National Guard for many years and eventually retired as a lieutenant colonel.
While visiting a wounded fellow soldier at Hines VA Hospital in Chicago, Sobel met Reva, an attractive blond-haired, blue-eyed American nurse nine years his junior. She herself was a veteran, having worked as a nurse in a hospital in Italy during the war. They married and had three sons.
They also had a daughter who died shortly after birth.
Sobel was said to be a devoted family man, a stern but also supportive and loving father. He doted on his wife, waking early every morning to make her breakfast. In winter, he would clear the snow from her car and warm it for her after pulling it up to the front of the house.
Herbert’s son Michael explained in Marcus Brotherton’s book “We Who Are Alive and Remain” that his father was Jewish and his mother was Catholic. His father’s side of the family never really accepted his mother, as they were not in favor of Herbert marrying a Catholic. Growing up, the children attended Catholic church with their mother.
Herbert would occasionally attend and sometimes went to synagogue with his sister.
Michael stated that his father never used profanity or lost his temper. He was a great dad, said Michael. It appeared that the civilian Herbert Sobel was a very different man from the one who had presided over Easy Company.
Sobel never talked to his wife about his time in the war. His son Michael would ask his father, but Sobel never offered any information. Like many veterans, he kept the war to himself.
However, Sobel harbored deep mental wounds that would begin to show.
Clarence Hester, who had been Sobel’s executive officer after the formation of Easy Company, was on a business trip in Chicago in the early 1960s. He contacted Sobel, and they had lunch together. Hester said that Sobel was bitter toward Easy Company and life in general.
During the 1960s, Sobel gradually became estranged from his family. The conservative Herbert Sobel became at odds with his son Michael, who attended Berkeley and became involved with political activism.
Then things would forever change. One day in 1970, Sobel put a small-caliber pistol to his left temple and pulled the trigger. He survived, but the bullet severed his optic nerves and left him permanently blind.
It also left him with brain damage that seemed to have affected various parts of his memory.
After hearing the news, Michael went home to see his mother, who was inconsolable. She did not know why Herbert would try to do such a thing but postulated that he thought he had cancer and was unwilling to get tested for the disease.
Herbert Sobel spent the next 17 years of his life in care facilities, first in a Veterans Affairs assisted living facility in Wauconda, Illinois, before being transferred to a rundown private nursing home. Though he had friends in the VA ward and was ambulatory, he fell in and out of being lucid and was at times in a semi-vegetative state.
Some time after he entered the VA facility, Herbert and his wife Reva divorced, and he mostly lost touch with his sons. In the 1980s, Sergeant Bill Guarnere, who was involved with the 101st Airborne Association, tried to reach out to Sobel to see if he wanted to be part of the association. Guarnere was able to track down Sobel’s sister Maxine, who told him that Sobel was in a bad mental state and that he directed his anger at Easy Company.
In an act of kindness, Guarnere decided to pay Sobel’s membership dues, but Sobel never became involved with the association.
Herbert Sobel died of malnutrition at the private nursing home in 1987 at age 75. His immediate family members who had lost touch with him over the years were initially unaware of his death. His sister Maxine tended to the burial details and had Herbert cremated.
Several days, perhaps even a week after he died, Maxine phoned Herbert’s ex-wife Reva to give her the news. According to Maxine, his death was received by all our family as a release for him and for us.
Stephen Ambrose misleadingly stated in “Band of Brothers” that neither Herbert’s ex-wife nor anyone from Easy Company attended his funeral service, calling it a sad 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇. After Herbert’s sister Maxine read the book, she pointed out, actually, we had no funeral, so for the book to say no one attended, there was nothing to attend. Ambrose seemed to have been intentionally distorting the truth to reinforce the theme in his book that no one liked Sobel.
The more one learns about Herbert Sobel, the more sympathy he garners. He was significantly more complex than the petty tyrant that Ambrose and the HBO miniseries tried to make him out to be. Both present a one-sided and exaggerated portrayal of a man whose life was far more nuanced than what is seen in the series.
“Band of Brothers” needed a villain, and according to Sobel’s son Michael, his father was the obvious fall guy. In “We Who Are Alive and Remain,” Michael said that he found it interesting that just prior to the release of the series, HBO flew the veterans and their immediate families to various premieres, including to Europe. However, the Sobel family was never contacted.
It was not just Sobel’s son and sister who spoke out against his portrayal. Some of the veterans who served with Sobel have spoken out as well. When Easy Company veteran Private First Class Bill Wingett was in Paris with HBO for the premiere of the series, he was talking with Colonel Robert Strayer and General Salve Matheson.
All three men had served with Sobel.
Colonel Strayer, who had been the battalion commander, spoke up with regard to the series’ portrayal of Captain Herbert Sobel. You know what they did to Sobel was not right, said Strayer. General Matheson added that was the wrong thing for them to do.
Wingett told the two men that he had voiced similar concerns while discussing the series with other people.
It is obvious that episode one of “Band of Brothers” would be less enjoyable without David Schwimmer’s Sobel as the heel. The series needed an antagonist to pit the men against during basic training before the Germans became their antagonists in the episodes that followed them into combat.
Herbert’s sister Maxine said that Stephen Ambrose’s description of her brother is incomprehensible to her. Herb was always a wonderful brother to my sister and me and a devoted son to our mother, she recalled. He was attentive, caring, and always considerate.
His sense of humor was acknowledged by all who knew him. These attributions were his before, during, and after the war.
It is this side of Herbert Sobel that Stephen Ambrose never knew about. This is because he never reached out to Sobel’s family during his research, instead shaping his entire depiction of Sobel from what he was told by several men of Easy Company.
In 1993, after the release of Ambrose’s book, Herbert Sobel’s sister Maxine wrote to Dick Winters, upset over her brother’s portrayal. Winters then wrote to the men, asking them to write Maxine and share some of their positive stories about Sobel. She has read your stories in “Band of Brothers” about her brother, Winters wrote, but as we all know, there are many more stories, and let’s be honest, there are more than just a few good stories that could be told.
Winters was essentially acknowledging that the book does not tell the whole truth about Herbert Sobel. Winters himself even admitted that Sobel was the finest training officer they could have hoped for.
In 2002, Herbert Sobel’s son Michael was an impromptu guest speaker at the Easy Company reunion in Arizona. One of the men’s sons hugged me through tears, Michael recalled. I can’t even tell you who it was.
It was such an emotional time, and he said, my father told me that if I ever had the honor of meeting you, to let you know that it was because of your father that I am alive today.
That was pretty much the sentiment of the men I had the honor to meet that day, said Michael. I received calls from men who served with my father and who praise him to this day.
Herbert Sobel deserves a legacy that is not defined by what works best for a book or a Hollywood miniseries, but rather one that is defined by how he actually lived. At the very least, his service deserves respect.