Staff Sergeant Darrell “Shifty” Powers Of Band Of Brothers Fame, RIP

He passed away last month. Apparently we were all a little to busy with Michael Jackson or something to notice.

Lex has an email that's gone viral on the net from someone who says he met Staff Sergeant Powers at one point. It's worth the read.

From his local newspaper story on his life and death....

The world depended on them. They depended on each other.”

That was the tagline for “Band of Brothers” – an award-winning 2001 HBO mini-series drama on the World War II experiences of Easy Company, a U.S. Army unit that fought bravely and fiercely across Europe.

But for Bristol’s Margo Johnson – daughter of Darrell “Shifty” Powers, one of the soldiers depicted in “Band of Brothers” – two more lines could be added to describe her heroic father: “The world truly admired Darrell Powers. I absolutely adored him.”

“I loved everything about my daddy,” Johnson said. “He never bragged about what he did in the war. And for a lot of years, he never even talked much about what he did – unless someone asked him about it.

“But he truly was a hero to me,” Johnson said. “Just like he’d been to the people who know him as a soldier in a [mini-series].”

Powers, a Dickenson County native, died earlier this week at age 86 following a battle with cancer. His funeral service will be held today in Clintwood.

When I was a kid, WWI vets were a small number of frail old men who served in a long ago war. It's hard to believe that now that WWII vets, my grandfather's generation who were once everywhere, are looked at that way by kids. They may never fully understand what they and we owe to that generation but 60+ years after they came home, we are still reaping the fruits of their sacrifices and victory.

Hopefully those dwindling few survivors take comfort in knowing that while the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq are worlds away from places like Normandy and Iwo Jima, their descendant are carrying the torch for them.

More: Two interesting videos

A home video/interview with Staff Sergeant Powers

Lt. Buck Compton

Sorry about the spelling mistakes in the original post. I was trying to do to many things at once.

posted by DrewM. at 05:59 PM

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