Awaiting Our Blessed Hope!

Band of Brothers came out in 2001. And when it did, many of the soldiers portrayed in the story were still alive and well. Herbert Sobel, born in 1912, could have potentially been around to see it, too. Only he wasn’t — Sobel was a miserable man and depressed. Though Jewish, he married a Catholic lady after the war, whose family did not approve of him. When they divorced, she took their three sons with her and he didn’t see them again. Sobel plunged into deep depression. Anyway, long story short, Sobel was a deeply unhappy man. He put a small caliber gun to his temple and pulled the trigger but, alas, he was as incapable of ending himself as he was at being a commander of men — the bullet severed his optic nerve and rendered him permanently blind, but he survived. Blind, depressed and driven to the point of madness, he spent the remaining 17 years of his life living in an assisted living facility in Ohio. He received no visitors, he cut all contacts with his wartime comrades, most of whom disliked him, anyway. His own sons, his ex-wife and his grandchildren didn’t write or visit him even once during his stay. In 1987, Herbert Sobel died at the age of 75 of malnutrition after refusing to eat and drink, deciding to speed along his own demise. He never saw Band of Brothers, the series, as it came out 14 years after his death. And even if he had survived, he wouldn’t have been able to see it, as he blinded himself. As easy as it is to hate Sobel as a character played by David Schwimmer, the real man died a terribly lonely death. Many other veterans did, too. What we remember are the heroes, the happy endings, the noble sacrifices. What we conveniently forget is the countless depressed, traumatized men at odds with themselves and the world, dying bitter and angry and alone.