Edward Shames, The Last Surviving Band Of Brothers Officer
Public DomainEdward Shames, who was the last member of Easy Company featured in Band of Brothers to pass away, clashed with historian Stephen Ambrose over Ambrose’s depiction of his unit.
When Edward Shames died in 2021 at the age of 99, it was a poignant moment. Shames was the last Band of Brothers officer left alive and his death undoubtedly marked the end of an era. He appeared just briefly in the show — and he was portrayed in a somewhat unflattering fashion — but Shames was an integral part of Easy Company during World War II.
Born on June 13, 1922, in Norfolk, Virginia, Shames joined the Army in 1942 and eventually became a sergeant with Easy Company. He stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, volunteered with Operation Pegasus, and fought in Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge.
Shames was there when Easy Company took “Eagle’s Nest” at the end of the war, and he stole bottles of cognac marked “for the Führer’s use only” that he later used to toast at his son’s bar mitzvah. Shames was also one of the first men of Easy Company to see the horrors of Dachau, which he later described as “something that no other human being should witness.”
HBOJoseph May, who portrayed Edward Shames in Band of Brothers, had a relatively small role in the miniseries.
In Band of Brothers, Shames, portrayed by Joseph May, is depicted as a soldier with a quick temper, a depiction that Shames took issue with. (Shames had such serious disagreements with historian Stephen Ambrose that Ambrose almost cut him out of the story entirely.)
“They also started this thing about me yelling at the men and the other officers. Of course I yelled at them! I meant business. This is why I brought more men home than most of the officers in the 506th,” Shames told HistoryNet in 2020. He then added: “[T]hey didn’t even relieve me once. I must have been doing something right.”
He also claimed that one of his fellow officers approached him at an Easy Company reunion and said: “Shames, you are the meanest, roughest son of a bitch I’ve ever had to deal with. But you brought us home.”
