Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World

In Toccoa, Georgia, 1942, a disparate group of young men begins voluntary training to become members of one of America's newest military regiments -- the paratroopers. Under the harsh leadership of Lt. Sobel, members of the newly formed Easy Co. go from green civilians to some of the Army's most elite soldiers.

On June 6, 1944, D-Day, planes with thousands of paratroopers cross the English Channel to France, where they come under heavy fire. None of the men land where they expected to, and many lose their weapons and supplies. Winters links up with solitary soldiers, and is later chosen to lead an attack on a fortified German artillery position.

Two days after D-Day, Easy Co. is sent to take the town of Carentan, engaging in a successful battle that results in several casualties. Some soldiers, including Pvt. Blithe, have a difficult time adjusting to combat. After 36 days in Normandy and several fierce battles, Easy returns to England, but their celebrations are short-lived.

Due to heavy casualties, a group of fresh paratrooper replacements joins Easy Co. in time for a massive drop into German-occupied Holland for Operation Market-Garden. While met with no resistance in Eindhoven, Easy and a cluster of British tanks are repelled from a nearby town by a superior German force, sustaining many casualties as they retreat.

In this episode, directed by Tom Hanks, Lt. Winters leads a contingent on a risky mission over a Dutch dike. Meanwhile, Easy is left in the hands of Lt. "Moose" Heyliger, who undertakes a rescue mission in the besieged town of Arnhem.

In the dead of winter, in the forest outside of Bastogne, Belgium, the men of Easy Company struggle to hold the line alone while fending off frostbite and hunger, having arrived with no winter clothes and little supplies and ammunition. Medic Eugene Roe is overwhelmed, on edge and close to combat exhaustion as the men spend a miserable Christmas in the trenches.

Having thwarted the Germans at Bastogne, the exhausted Easy Co. must now take the nearby town of Foy from the enemy. Several are killed and wounded in fierce shelling, compounded by the incompetence of their commander, Lt. Dike, about whom Winters can do nothing. Easy takes Foy, but at an enormous cost.

Easy Co. arrives in the Alsacian town of Haguenau near the German border, and are ordered to send a patrol across the river to take enemy prisoners. Lt. Jones, fresh from West Point and eager for combat experience, volunteers to lead. While successful, the mission costs another paratrooper's life, prompting Winters to ignore the order to send a second patrol the next night.

Easy Co. finally enters Germany, to little resistance, and has a chance to relax for the first time in a long time. A patrol in a nearby forest discovers an abandoned Nazi concentration camp, still filled with emaciated prisoners. The local citizenry, unbelievably disavowing knowledge of its existence, is made to clean it up, as the news arrives that Hitler is dead.

Once home to the top officers of the Third Reich, Easy Co. enters the Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden, and captures "Eagle's Nest," Hitler's mountaintop fortress. Facing imminent deployment to the Pacific Theater, the men compare their "points" to see who has earned enough to go home. However, the Japanese surrender ends the war.