Band of Brothers used as training video at Sandhurst
Scenes from the acclaimed television series are studied by trainees undergoing officer training at Sandhurst
When undergoing the officer training for the British Army, one might be expected to go through rigorous lectures, gruelling drills, and early wake up calls.
But the trainees at Sandhurst are also offered a rather more unusual learning tool: watching Band of Brothers.
Damian Lewis, the British actor and star of the acclaimed television series, said pivotal scenes from Band of Brothers are studied at Sandhurst and its US counterpart West Point.
He disclosed his own nephew was currently studying at the Berkshire training centre and had proclaimed the focus on watching the scenes “quite annoying”.
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Speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival, Lewis said he was “unbelievably proud” to have appeared in the ten-part series, which is still influencing combat around the world.
His character, Richard Winters, was a pioneer of modern leadership in the armed forces, with his role in the Normandy Landings of the Second World War studied as an example of triumph over overwhelming enemy forces.
First Lt Winters successfully led his parachute regiment in the assault of Brécourt Manors to destroy a German battalion.
Lewis, who consulted with ‘Dick’ Winters and underwent two weeks of boot camp before shooting Band of Brothers, said the programme has now become a “motivational tool” for armies across the world.
“Very quickly I think what happened is it got taken up by the armed forces,” he said. “Very quickly we were in Afghanistan, Pakistan and two years later we were in Iraq. I then found myself being approached by soldiers all over the world.
“It became very clear that Band of Brothers had become a motivational tool, and morale tool, a piece of propaganda, and that every single member of the armed forces, British and American, were watching it wherever they were in the world.
“And it still goes on. That action that Dick Winters undergoes on the very first morning of D-Day at 7 o’clock, with a small group of men against a much larger enemy force, is used at Sandhurst and is used at West Point.
“I’ve got a nephew at the moment at Sandhurst who says it’s quite annoying. They are watching it.
“I feel very proud, unbelievably proud and humbled about the life it has continued to have.”
Lewis also told how the series, directed by Steven Spielberg and executive produced by Tom Hanks, influences his own life, with confused members of the public still congratulating him for his service.
If it’s not clear, I did not win the Second World War,” he joked.
“If you play a character or are lucky enough to be in a well-produced drama, you are often mistaken.
“People blur boundaries and come up to you to say ‘thank you for everything you’ve done’.
“I say ‘I know, I know. I had to get out of my Winnebago every morning at eight o’clock.
“It’s very humbling to meet these men and hear what they did. To a man, of course, they’d say ‘we weren’t heroes, we just did what anyone else would have done’.”
Lewis, who has since starred in US drama Homeland, also spoke for the first time about his role as Henry VIII in the upcoming BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall.
Saying it had been “absolutely fantastic” to play a “genocidal maniac”, he disclosed his Henry will show the king as a young, svelte lothario with a “Bullingdon Club” of young advisors and a coloured-in ginger beard.
He is now filming his part in the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, alongside Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell, Claire Foy and Jessica Raine.
He revealed his facial hair, which will be seen on screen as a sculpted, thick ginger beard, had to be faked in the early days of filming because it had not grown fast enough.
Of the Henry VIII viewers can look forward to, he said: “Hilary Mantel’s Henry is a complex, tender, brilliant, athletic, poetic, dreamer. It’s been fun playing her version of him.
“There’s a theory that pre-1536 he was an affable, likeable, party, creative, very talented intellectual individual.
“He then had this accident jousting when his horse inexplicable rolled on him and injured his leg, leaving him unable to hunt which he loved to do.
“It’s been fun playing the pre-1536 Henry, a more svelte 34-inch waist King.
“In the last ten years of his life he ballooned. He was rather like Elvis – he ate 13 courses in a meal. He as unable to hunt and ballooned to a 56-inch waist.
“He became increasingly grandiose, increasingly paranoid, self-pitying and maniacal. More people got killed in the last ten of his life.
“What’s been great is having these two Henrys and playing this younger version that people mostly don’t seem to be aware of.”
He added: “He craved normality. I think it was partly that which made himself surround himself as he got older with younger men, a sort of Bullingdon Club of youthful, vibrant, virile younger men.
“This normality is what got him into so much trouble with the ladies. He craved and sought a romantic love.
“With the ladies, he just wanted to be Henry who fell in love with a girl, write a sonnet or two and wanted them to love him back. That was very normal, that part of his courtship. The chopping off of their heads was less normal.”
Wolf Hall is to be broadcast on BBC Two in 2015.
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