u/PatChristensonSon

My father was T/Sgt. Burton “Pat” Christenson, an original Toccoa man with Easy Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne. Michael Fassbender portrayed him in Band of Brothers.

Dad went from Normandy through Holland, Bastogne and Germany, but there was another part of his story that very few people knew. Throughout the war, he drew what he saw and wrote about what he and the men around him experienced.

After he died in 1999, I was left with his writings, wartime letters and a remarkable collection of his original drawings. For years I felt that someday I needed to put his own record of the war together so people could know Pat Christenson as more than a character on a television screen.

That became A Screaming Eagle: His Drawings. His Words.

I made this short video for the 25th anniversary of Band of Brothers. For those of you who have followed Easy Company for years, I thought you might appreciate seeing a little of the man I knew as Dad. ascreamingeagle.com

>The drawing above is my father's. T/Sgt. Burton "Pat" Christenson, Easy Company, 506th PIR. Second man out the door behind Winters on the Normandy jump, and the only man in the company who could draw.

His caption for it: "My German was not good enough to convince this German paratrooper to surrender when he came around the corner and I had the drop on him, but my Thompson machine gun convinced him adequately."

That German lived. This is about one who did not.

Austria, after V-E Day. Easy Company was at Saalfelden waiting on orders home. The first sergeant came to Don Moone's quarters with a serious expression and told him to get his rifle. No explanation. Moone picked up his harness, loaded his M-1, and followed.

They drove into the foothills with a German-speaking soldier from company headquarters. On the way the first sergeant explained it. Captain Speirs had given him an order to locate a known Nazi party member he had learned about through various means.

Moone, in his own words:

"Here we are speeding to assassinate some Nazi we know nothing about, based on the stories some D.P.'s gave to Speirs. But commanding officers give orders and enlisted men carry them out. Even so, I'm not complying with this bull-shit."

He fixed it in his mind on the drive that if someone was going to do the shooting, it would not be him.

They found the man. Liebgott interrogated him in German. Talbert was satisfied this was the right man. They loaded him into the vehicle and drove to a small ravine.

My father's account of what happened there:

"The German-speaking American soldier drew his pistol and with complete composure put two rounds into the Nazi's body. With that, the Nazi began to run hysterically up the hill. At this point, the sergeant shouted to Donald Moone to shoot him. Donald Moone's reply: 'You shoot him. The war is over.' Hesitantly, the sergeant grabbed the rifle from Moone and proved his efficiency with a rifle by dropping the Nazi with one round. He was left in the supine position that he fell."

Five words. The war is over.

My father did not editorialize. He wrote it out, sent the narrative to Moone for corrections, and left the verdict to the reader. Was the man guilty? Probably. Were the atrocities real? Almost certainly. Did Speirs have the legal authority to order an execution? No.

Ambrose used the story in Band of Brothers but took the names out. My father had named them. He wrote to Winters afterward saying the full truth mattered, and named them again in a letter to Winters in August 1992. Fifty years he had held those names.

Moone was one of his closest friends. He is the same man my father nearly killed by accident with a revolver on the Island, cleaning a weapon he was certain was unloaded.

The full account is in the book, with all forty-six drawings and his own words throughout. Out September 8. ascreamingeagle.com

May they never be forgotten.

Tim

That's my father on the right. T/Sgt. Burton "Pat" Christenson, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne, the company Stephen Ambrose wrote Band of Brothers about.

Aldbourne was a small English village and it became Easy Company's home for the months leading up to D-Day. They trained out of Nissen huts like the one behind him, did night problems and endurance marches, and on passes they went to Swindon, Bath, Bristol and London. He wrote that Aldbourne became a second hometown for men who were a long way from their own.

On the night of June 5, 1944 he went out the door of a C-47 over Normandy, second in the stick behind Lieutenant Dick Winters, carrying twenty-eight pounds of light machine gun. He was twenty-two.

Easy Company jumped in with 139 officers and men. When they came off the line on June 29 there were 74 left.

He was also the only man in the company who could draw. He came home in December 1945, worked thirty-eight years for the phone company, raised three sons, and almost never spoke about the war. He drew it instead, at a drawing board after dinner, for forty years.

He died December 15, 1999.

Tim

D-Day, June 6th 1944. Normandy, France. This has never been posted anywhere, and I am putting it here first on purpose.

My father wrote this to go with it:

The eagles swooped down into withering fire, their quest to best the enemy was their only desire. They trained for this mission for two solid years. Trained to a knife's edge to better their peers. Though eagles were sacrificed on that moonlit night, for many of them died during that God-awful fight, but for every one in tan that lay on the ground, there were ten in Wehrmacht green that made not a sound. The eagles were victorious, that volatile night and their devastating ferocious determination proved they could fight.

T/Sgt. Pat Christenson

He was second man out the door behind Lieutenant Winters that night. He carried the light thirty caliber. He was the only man in Easy Company who drew, and he spent the years after the war at a drawing board getting it right. Over seventy drawings, over three hundred pages, seven volumes written out by hand.

The eagle is the division. The man under it is one in Wehrmacht green, in his words. He put the whole night into one picture and then wrote it out in rhyme, which is not a thing I ever once heard him do out loud.

He came home, worked thirty eight years for Pacific Telephone, raised three sons, and did not talk about it. He died December 15, 1999.

The drawing and his words are Plate I from his book. ascreamingeagle.com

This one is a gift to this room. You have been good to my father and to me, and I wanted you to have it first.

May they never be forgotten.

Tim

Right is my father in 1944. T/Sgt. Pat Christenson, Easy Company, 506th PIR. Left is Michael Fassbender at Bastogne in his first screen role.

We had nothing to do with the casting. Nobody asked us and nobody sent us a photo. The first time we saw him was on screen.

My father was an original Toccoa man, second man out the door behind Dick Winters on the Normandy jump, and the only man in the company who could draw. He carried a sketchpad through Normandy, Holland and Bastogne.

He died in December 1999, twenty months before it aired. He never knew he had been cast.

Happy to answer anything about him or about how the production used his material.

Tim

Since I started posting here, Band of Brothers people from all over the world have written to me about my father, T/Sgt. Pat Christenson. A lot of them already knew his D-Day drawing from Ambrose's book without knowing whose hand made it.

So I decided it was time.

Nine months, twelve hours a day, seven days a week, going through everything he left. Forty six finished combat drawings and seven volumes he wrote out by hand. He was the only man in Easy Company who could draw, and he carried a sketchpad through Normandy, Holland and Bastogne. After the war he spent forty years at a drawing board getting it right, and he never showed any of it outside the family.

Stephen Ambrose called the drawings almost priceless and said that if it came down to a choice between the artwork and the photographs, he wanted the artwork. Dick Winters kept eighteen of them in his personal file for fifty years and had copies sent to Playtone as reference for the writers.

I made a promise to my father before he died in December 1999 that this would be published. It took twenty seven years.

379 pages. All forty six drawings. His words verbatim throughout, including where he contradicts the record, with endnotes where the sources differ.

It reaches Amazon on September 8, the twenty fifth anniversary. Signed copies are shipping now: https://ascreamingeagle.com/?utm_source=reddit

This community has been good to me. Thank you for that.

May they never be forgotten.

Tim

That is Michael Fassbender, twenty three years old, on location wearing my father's uniform. It was sent to our family during production. It was his first screen role.

He played T/Sgt. Pat Christenson, Easy Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne. Second man out the door behind Dick Winters on the Normandy jump.

My father was the only man in the company who could draw. He carried a sketchpad through Normandy, Holland and Bastogne, working in barns and billets and foxholes while the other men wrote letters or played cards. After the war he spent forty years at a drawing board turning what he had seen into forty six finished drawings, and he wrote seven volumes by hand. Nobody asked him to do any of it. He never showed the work to anyone outside the family.

Here is the part most people do not know.

Dick Winters had kept about eighteen of those drawings in his personal file and never told us. When Playtone started building the series, he had copies sent to the production as reference for the writers. In a letter dated January 6, 2000, written to my two brothers and me by name, he told us the file was being used in the writing of the script. Three weeks earlier he had written that the paintings were prominently displayed in the Playtone conference room.

So a man who had been dead a year was hanging on the wall while they wrote the show about him.

My father died in December 1999, before the casting. He never knew the production existed. When Michael got the part there was nobody in our family who could hand him anything but the drawings and the seven volumes.

We spent a week with him in Paris before the Normandy premiere. He asked questions the whole time. Not about what my father did in the war. About who he was.

I wrote to HBO myself after that. Quentin Schaeffer and Nancy Lucher. Same message every time: my father spent his life on this work and I promised him at the end that I would see it published. Quentin made something happen. Forty five of the drawings were exhibited at the Hollywood Bowl premiere on September 25, 2001. I wrote and told him that walking up from the shuttle and seeing a photograph of my father hanging beside his own artwork was exhilarating, and that he had brought my father back for us that night.

That was twenty five years ago. The drawings went back in the boxes afterward and stayed there.

Forty six drawings. Seven volumes. Stephen Ambrose called them almost priceless.

Happy to answer anything.

Tim

My father, T/Sgt. Pat Christenson, Easy Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne, the unit Band of Brothers was written about. He was the only man in the company who could draw and he carried a sketchpad through the whole war. Michael Fassbender played him in the HBO series.

Market Garden was a daylight operation. 2,023 jump planes and glider tugs left twenty four American and British bases on the morning of September 17. 478 gliders were in the formation, each needing its own tug.

Here is what he wrote about the sight from inside his C-47:

"The sky trains extended as far as the eye could see. The noise was so great it was difficult to talk to the person next to you. The magnitude of this operation was greater than we ever dreamed of. The gliders, Horsa, Wacos, and the enormous Hamilcars were being lifted by their tugs."

The glider lifts were devastating. Of the 70 gliders in the 101st's first lift, three aborted over England, one ditched in the Channel, and two broke loose over Belgium. The Germans brought down six of the 64 planes that crossed their lines and damaged 46 others. Nine percent losses and a seventy percent damage rate made Holland far more lethal for the troop carriers than Normandy had been.

Equipment, men and horses all coming in through the same guns that were firing at the paratroopers.

Signed B.P. Christenson, lower left.

He finished forty six of these after the war. They are published now, along with his own account: https://ascreamingeagle.com/?utm_source=reddit

Tim

T/Sgt. Burton "Pat" Christenson, Easy Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne, the unit Band of Brothers was written about. He was the second man out the door behind Dick Winters on the Normandy jump and the resident artist of the company.

He carried a sketchpad through the entire war. In the barns and billets and foxholes, while other men wrote letters or played cards, he drew what he had just seen. After the war he took those field sketches and what he carried in his memory and refined them into forty six finished drawings.

The monument was erected in 2008 near Brécourt Manor, where Winters and a dozen men knocked out the German battery firing on Utah Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944. Two field stone bases with black granite plaques. The center panel carries the Screaming Eagle, and below it an etching of one of my father's drawings, the same one Stephen Ambrose used in his book.

The flanking panels list the Easy Company men killed in Normandy between June 6 and June 18, 1944. Lieutenant Meehan is on the left panel with the men who went down in the headquarters plane.

T/Sgt. Burton Pat Christenson. Toccoa man, Easy Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne. Second man out the door behind Dick Winters on the Normandy jump, the night of June 5th into the 6th. He carried the .30 caliber machine gun and the company guidon. Two combat jumps, four battle stars.

December 1944 the division was cut off at Bastogne. No winter clothing, low on ammunition, the coldest winter Europe had seen in years. Men lost feet in those holes.

He came home in December 1945 and did the thing nobody writes movies about. Went to work for the phone company, climbed poles for thirty eight years, raised three sons in a house in California. If you had met him at a barbecue you would have met a quiet telephone man.

But every Christmas he sat down at a drawing board and made a card for the men of Easy Company, and mailed it. Not once. Nearly every year for the rest of his life. Dick Winters called those cards famous and kept copies in his own file. Winters wrote that Pat sent them faithfully so the men would remember Bastogne.

This is one of them. He took the poem every American child knows and rewrote it around that December. The third stanza is the one that gets me. The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow, and what it showed was the dead.

That is the part people miss about that generation. The war was three years. The remembering was fifty. He never took an art lesson. He never spoke about the camp at Kaufering to the day he died. When I asked him about the war as a boy what I usually got was that some things you don't need to talk about. He worked it out alone, after dinner, at a drawing board, while his sons slept upstairs.

Forty six finished combat drawings, all of it from memory, decades after the fact.

Father Maloney was real, the chaplain who came out to the men in the snow. The spelling in the poem is his and it stays that way.

He died in 1999, twenty months before the series aired. He never saw any of it.

Ask me anything about him.

The man on the right is my father, Pat Christenson, and beside him is Woodrow Robbins. They served together in 1st Squad, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne. Dad was the light machine gunner and Robbins was his assistant gunner. Dad carried the .30 caliber machine gun and Robbins carried the tripod. Most people who know Dad today know him because of Band of Brothers, where Michael Fassbender portrayed him, but what many people don't know is that Dad was an artist. He carried a sketchpad through the war and was known among the men of Easy Company as the resident artist. When there was time between the fighting, Dad drew in barns, billets and foxholes, sometimes on whatever paper he could find. Some of those original field sketches survived and I still have them today. Dad fought from Normandy through Holland, Bastogne and into Germany, and after he came home he continued drawing the war and writing about what happened. He spent decades checking his memories against his journals, books and the accounts of the other men because getting it right mattered to him. If something didn't match, he kept working until he was satisfied that he had it right. Dad once wrote that writers and artists had never been able to capture the true realities of combat, the confusion, hunger, fear and sleeplessness, and that the true picture of war was impossible to convey even by those who had done the bleeding and the fighting. I'm Timothy Christenson, Pat's son. Dad died in 1999 and I still have his wartime letters, journals, photographs, field sketches and finished drawings. I have been sharing them because this is the record Dad spent much of his life preserving, and I want people to know the men of Easy Company as he knew them.

My father is the man at the back, against the wall, no helmet.

T/Sgt. Burton "Pat" Christenson, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne. Original Toccoa man, second out the door behind Lt. Richard Winters on the Normandy jump. Easy Company jumped into Holland on 17 September 1944 as part of Market Garden and spent seventy two days on the Island.

He kept this print in his own photograph book for the rest of his life.

Happy to answer questions about the unit or the campaign. Band of Brothers.......

T/Sgt. Pat Christenson, Easy Company, 506th PIR. He kept these in his journal with that caption on them.

The RAF bombed the Obersalzberg on 25 April. The 506th came up in early May, almost unopposed by then. This is what was left.

The war in Europe ended on 8 May while Easy Company was there. Here is what he wrote about that day, word for word:

"Nor did we have the enthusiasm to celebrate the wars end on May 8th 1945. We were almost unopposed during our drive through Germany. The end was inevitable."

No cheering. They were just finished.

A week or so later came orders for Austria, and this is the part I love. Earl Hale, 1st Platoon sergeant, had taken his pick of confiscated vehicles and chosen a fire truck from the Berchtesgaden fire department. My father went along as his assistant. In his own words:

"The vehicle was a large panelled truck, loaded with booze that we had procured in Berchtesgaden from the defeated Wehrmacht... The vehicle had a large bell and siren that could be activated from inside the cab...... If the Fuhrer could see us now..... Siren and bell going full blast through each village... tolling out the sound of victory over the Third Reich....."

Then the road climbed and they came over the top of the pass:

"Below us, an enormous valley appeared, surrounded by rugged snow capped mountains. The sight was something to behold, awesome.....absolutely beautiful. Reminding me so much of the movie Shangri-La."

Three years, three months and thirteen days after he enlisted, that was the end of it.

His seven volumes and all forty six of his drawings are published now, twenty six years after he died. A Screaming Eagle: His Drawings, His Words, at ascreamingeagle.com