Band of Brothers

Throughout the narrative, Ambrose focuses on what distinguishes a good leader from a bad leader. Because the Army is organized in a hierarchical fashion, what makes a good leader varies according to the level of responsibility.

For example, Eisenhower is a very distant, powerful figure who appears in Ambrose’s accounts of war strategies and large-scale planning and thus has very little contact with the men, who nevertheless respect him. When he does deign to engage with the men personally, they are aware that these gestures take him away from his very important duties as Supreme Commander and are flattered by those brief moments of attention he gives them as a unit (243).Even in instances in which his miscalculations place the men in harm’s way, the men blame those who are closer to them in the leadership chain. Winters blames Taylor for the use of Easy Company for the operation at Noville, while Ambrose makes it clear that this plan was simply a part of Eisenhower’s overall plans for the war (213-214).

On the other hand, those in positions just above the enlisted men—Sobel,Speirs, Winters, Compton, and Dike, for example—are expected to manage the men under them through respect, superior knowledge,strong interpersonal skills, or the ability to inspire fear.