1944.įellow soldier Earl “One Lung” McClung described Shifty this way: “He was an excellent shot, as well as an excellent friend. When it came to shooting rifles-and hitting what needed to be hit-he was the best of the best. His paratrooper unit didn’t have snipers by name, but if a man was particularly handy with a rifle, he could qualify as an “expert marksman.” Shifty Powers was one of only two men in a company of 140 soldiers who initially achieved this designation. Shifty Powers fit well into this group of elite soldiers. The series won six Emmys and numerous other awards and still runs frequently on various networks around the world. In 2001, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg turned Ambrose’s book into a 10-part HBO miniseries by the same name. The company was first chronicled in 1992 by historian Stephen Ambrose in his book Band of Brothers. Along the way they encountered horrors and victories, welded themselves into a family of soldiers, and helped swing the tide of World War II and, ultimately, the course of history. They fought their way through Belgium, France, and Germany, faced overwhelming odds, liberated concentration camps, and drank a toast to victory in April 1945 at Hitler’s Berchtesgaden hideout in the Alps. They parachuted into Normandy on D-Day and later into Holland for Operation Market-Garden. After training stateside, the men rode the troop ship Samaria to Aldbourne, England, for further battle preparation. The Band of Brothers formed and trained at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, under the tough and controversial Captain Herbert Sobel. Shifty Powers was a soldier with the now-legendary Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Yet, despite this humble life, the world knows his name today.Ĭertainly much of Shifty’s notoriety has to do with his association with the Band of Brothers. He never chased any of the contemporary definitions of success-popularity, power, or position. After the war, he was never the boss of anything. He began the war as a lowly private and ended the war as a squad leader, never leading a group larger than 12 men. He enjoyed fishing, hunting, working in his vegetable garden, and shooting rifles at targets from his front porch. Shifty was a self-described mountain man, a hillbilly. Aside from a few years he spent working in California and his years in the war, he seldom traveled outside his tiny hometown. He was born, grew up, got married, raised his family, worked, retired, and died in Clinchco, a remote mining town in southwest Virginia. Darrell “Shifty” Powers was a soft-spoken machinist who never aspired to greatness.
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