News - Local News

POSTED: Monday, Nov. 02, 2009

Bellingham writer chronicles 'Band of Brothers' soldiers

Growing up, Marcus Brotherton's exposure to the military was pretty much limited to watching "M*A*S*H" on TV and to renting a room in college from a veteran who slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow and who told coarse, repetitive and sometimes riveting stories about World War II.

Nonetheless, the Bellingham writer has become an important contributor to the growing legacy of the "Band of Brothers," members of the WWII paratrooper infantry company made famous by the bestselling book and the hit TV miniseries of the same name.

Many soldiers and military units did brave and worthy things during the war, but few have become as well known as the members of Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, U.S. Army.

Historian Stephen Ambrose thrust them in the national spotlight with his gritty account of the mostly cohesive group and the horrors and honors they experienced fighting through Europe.

"They became iconic because of the book," Brotherton said.

The follow-up HBO miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks further cemented them in the nation's psyche, and stoked the fire for more memoirs and accounts.

Brotherton, 41, became a "Band of Brothers" chronicler in a roundabout way. He grew up in Kelowna, B.C., in a household steeped in the Word and the word. His father was a minister; his mother a newspaper writer.

He pursued that dual path himself, seeing the ministry and journalism as two helping professions. He studied religion and writing in Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles, and worked as a youth pastor for several years in Custer before honing his reporting skills at a small newspaper in southwest Washington.

While at the paper in Battle Ground, a former journalism professor of his who had taken a publishing job persuaded him to write a teen version of "The Prayer of Jabez," a bestselling inspirational book published in 2000 by Bruce Wilkinson.

Brotherton soon became busy ghost writing and collaborating on books. He dove into full-time book writing four years ago, and has now written or co-written 20 books, many of them collaborations with public figures, inspirational leaders and military personnel.

Then, through an agent, Brotherton won the chance to help Lynn "Buck" Compton, a lieutenant in the "Band of Brothers," write his memoir, "Call of Duty." After the war, Compton, who now lives in Skagit County, became a detective, a judge, and the lead prosecutor in Sirhan Sirhan's trial for the murder of Robert Kennedy.

That project led to Brotherton's book released last May, "We Who Are Alive and Remain, Untold Stories from the Band of Brothers." The book presents the recollections of 20 more members of Easy Company, plus stories by relatives of three deceased members.

"I wanted it to sound like the guys were in the living room with you," Brotherton said.

It does. The book is full of memorable scenes and details. Soldiers coping with wet and freezing feet. Two soldiers laughing as they zigged and zagged across a field while German artillery gunners tried to anticipate their next move. A soldier who turned a corner and found himself impaled upon a German's bayonet, but had the wherewithal to fire his gun first.

Next spring, Brotherton has another "Band of Brothers" book coming out, likely his last on the subject. "A Company of Heroes" features stories from the families of 26 deceased members of Easy Company.

Now the father of two young children, Brotherton has come to know and appreciate veterans in ways he never imagined before.

"Ordinary men doing extraordinary things," he calls them.

Contact Dean Kahn at dean.kahn@bellinghamherald.com or 715-2291.