Hobson's choice

1629 portrait of Thomas Hobson, a man in early seventeenth-century dress

31 December 2020

Hobson’s choice is the doctrine of take it or leave it, a situation where one is given the choice between what is being proffered or nothing at all. The phrase dates to at least 1659, during which year it appears multiple times. One example is from a pamphlet on politics titled The Grand Concernments of England Ensured:

It is frivolous to think that the 14 in England, like little Babies, would be pleased with this Rattle, of Choosing; when it is evident it must be Hobsons choice, this or none; and as I have been cheated my self when a Boy, and thought it priviledge enough to choose, the Wags have cut the greatest piece of an Apple, and offered me the Remainder, and bid me take that or choose.

This instance tells us what Hobson’s choice is, but it doesn’t give a clue as to who Hobson was or why the choice is named for him. Fortunately, he was, in his day, a rather well-known person, at least among the educated elite of England. Thomas Hobson (c. 1544–1631) was a Cambridge innkeeper who also ran the post between Cambridge and London. When his horses weren’t being used for mail runs, he rented them to students, and as a result, pretty much every student who came through Cambridge during his lifetime had dealings with him. And upon his death, several students, including John Milton, wrote jocular poems as epitaphs for him. Milton’s two poems about him, “On the University Carrier” and “Another on the Same,” were published in 1640.

The choice comes into the picture because of Hobson’s method for renting his horses to students. His students, being young, preferred the fastest horses, and the horses, being rentals, were not treated particularly well by them. To avoid exhausting and ruining his best horses, Hobson instituted a rotation system, forcing the students to take the next horse in line or go without. Hobson’s system is recounted in a “letter” in the Spectator written by a Hezekiah Thrift, an obvious pseudonym, probably for either Joseph Addison or Richard Steele, the Spectator’s editors:

I shall conclude this discourse with an explanation of a proverb, which by vulgar error is taken and used when a man is reduced to an extremity, whereas the propriety of the maxim is to use it when you would say there is plenty, but you must make such a choice as not to hurt another who is to come after you.

Mr. Tobias Hobson, from whom we have the expression, was a very honourable man, for I shall ever call the man so who gets an estate honestly. Mr. Tobias Hobson was a carrier; and, being a man of great abilities and invention, and one that saw where there might good profit arise, though the duller men overlooked it, this ingenious man was the first in this island who let out hackney-horses. He lived in Cambridge; and, observing that the scholars rid hard, his manner was to keep a large stable of horses, with boots, bridles, and whips, to furnish the gentlemen at once, without going from college to college to borrow, as they have done since the death of this worthy man. I say, Mr. Hobson kept a stable of forty good cattle always ready and fit for travelling; but, when a man came for a horse, he was led into the stable, where there was great choice; but he obliged him to take the horse which stood next to the stable-door; so that every customer was alike well served according to his chance, and every horse ridden with the same justice; from whence it became a proverb, when what ought to be your election was forced upon you, to say, “Hobson's choice.”

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Sources:

The Grand Concernments of England Ensured. London: 1659, 45. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Luxon, Thomas H. “On the University Carrier.” The John Milton Reading Room. Dartmouth College, 2020.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. choice, n.

The Spectator, 509, 14 October 1712. In A. Chalmers, The Spectator, vol. 7 of 8. New York: 1883, 206–07. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image Source: National Portrait Gallery, London. Public domain in the United States as a mechanical reproduction of a work of art that was produced before 1925.

hero

Clip from the 1970 anti-war, comedy Kelly's Heroes in which Donald Sutherland explains to Don Rickles what is and what isn't a hero (13 sec)

30 December 2020 [edited 31 December]

In classical mythology, a hero is a person with preternatural courage and abilities, often the child of a god, and who achieves semi-divine status. In the real world, a hero is an exceptionally courageous or noble person or a great warrior. And a hero can also be a large sandwich. The connection between the first two definitions is rather obvious, but how did the third come to be?

Hero comes into English from the Latin heros, which in turn is from the Greek ἥρως.

Digression: ἥρως (hero) should not be confused with ἔρως (eros, sexual love). The difference between the eta and an epsilon is a big one, and it has been confused in the past. In the eleventh century, the physician Constantinus Africanus translated a number of medical texts from Arabic into Latin. One of the diseases he wrote about was heros morbo, literally meaning lovesickness. But unlike the modern concept of lovesickness, the medieval disease was thought to be fatal, resulting in the unrequited lover pining away, sickening, and eventually dying if the love was not consummated. The Arabic word that Constantinus was translating was ^cishq (passionate love). And in his coinage, he used the Greek ἔρως (eros, sexual love) as his root, and he also coined the word eriosus (sufferer of lovesickness). But his Latin transcription of heros was later confused with the Latin word hero (noble man), and the unfamiliar eriosus was given as heroicus (heroic) in later manuscripts. Thus, lovesickness was transformed into heroic sickness, associated with chivalric ideals, and became a staple of medieval romances, where the hero often suffers bodily harm from not having his love returned.

Back to the main subject: the classical sense of hero makes its English appearance by 1534, when it appears in a translation of Erasmus’s A Plain and Godly Exposition or Declaration of the Common Creed:

I passe ouer here the fayned tales of poetes / by which the gentyles or hethen people were perswadyd and brought in beleffe / that of goddes & women / and of goddesses and men / were gendred & brought forth heroes.

The sense of a great and brave warrior is recorded in English a few years earlier in Gavin Douglas’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid into Scottish dialect. A pre-1522 manuscript (which I don’t have access to) spells it herys. The passage from Book 9 of the poem, as printed in a 1553 edition reads:

And na les murnyng, haid thay in that stede
For rhamnites fund hedeles, pale and dede
To giddir, with sa mony Capitanis
And grete heros, sa wrechitlie as slane is
Sirranus ȝoung, and the gentill Numa

(And no less mourning had they in that place
For Rhamnes found headless, pale and dead,
Together with so many captains
And great heroes, so wretchedly slain,
Serranus the young and gentle Numa.)

Douglas’s use of hero here is something of a cross between the classical and the modern sense, as he is referring to ordinary men—and not someone like Aeneas himself, who was a son of Venus, but it is from a classical mythological source, the Aeneid. A fully modern use, albeit one that refers to the medieval period is from Barnabe Rich’s 1578 Allarme to England, which has Charlemagne referring to his soldiers as heroes:

Charles the great, when he had translated the name of the Empire to the Germanes, after the Saxons and Lombards were va[n]quished, gaue this honor to his souldiers saying: You shall be called Heroes, the companions of Kinges, & Iudges of offences.

Hero, in both classical and English use, could refer to either a man or a woman. But the feminine form heroine had been coined by 1587, when it appears in John Bridges’s A Defence of the Gouernment Established in the Church of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters. Bridges gives a list of noble queens from antiquity, including Cordelia, daughter of Lear, and Boudica, and says of them:

Now although that these Heroines, & a great number mo. whome I refer to their diligence that list to collect the[m], were in religion to Godward al Pagans, and therefore their gouernment (in many actions) not so commendable, & in some vicious, yea, beyond the bou[n]ds of the sexe feminine: yet hindereth not this, but yt their gouernme[n]t & authority (if they vsurped if not, nor abused the same) might notwithstanding be good & lawful in the[m].

So, we have the first two senses of hero, as well as the feminine form heroine, established in the sixteenth century, but where does the sandwich get its name?

The sandwich sense of hero is an Americanism dating to the 1930s. It can be found throughout the United States, but its use is concentrated in the greater New York City area. We don’t know for sure why New Yorkers call submarine sandwiches heroes, but the most likely explanation, one that is supported by the earliest known use of this sense, is that the sandwich is so large that one must be a hero to eat it. The earliest known use of the sandwich sense is from the Brooklyn Times Union of 23 August 1936:

"A hero" does not always mean the same thing to the initiated and Tony Jordan, election district captain of the 18th A. D. Democratic Club. It is sometimes a husky man-sized sandwich.

Recipe: One half loaf of the long French bread, sliced through the middle. Spread one side profusely with juicy meat balls with Jordan sauce and fried green peppers. Clap on the top half of the bread, etc.—a hero sandwich. It takes a hero to eat one and only sissies have to cut it in half again, to go to work on it!

Tony Jordan (or Giordano) was a very successful, Brooklyn, Democratic-machine politican of the 1930s. The second generation of a local, political dynasty, his home was frequently the site of many informal gatherings where pols mixed with the citizenry and, since Ebbets Field was just a few blocks away, with the Dodgers. His use of hero, while probably not original to him, was undoubtedly a factor in establishing the term in New York City.

It is sometimes suggested that the sandwich name comes from the Greek gyros, a sandwich of pita bread, spiced meat, tomatoes, lettuce, and tzatziki sauce. But this is exceedingly unlikely, as gyros do not make their appearance in America until decades later.

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[Edit: I added the paragraph about Tony Jordan on 31 December 2020.]

Sources:

Bridges, John. A Defence of the Gouernment Established in the Church of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters. London: John Windet for Thomas Chard, 1587. 743. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s.v. hero, n.

Erasmus, Desiderius. A Playne and Godly Exposition or Declaratio[n] of the Co[m]mune Crede. William Marshall, trans. London: Robert Redman, 1534, fol. 60. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2014, s.v. hero, n., heroine, n.

“Picked From the Throng.” Brooklyn Times Union, 23 August 1936, 7. Newspapers.com.

Popik, Barry. “Hero Sandwich.” Barrypopik.com. 11 July 2004. https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/hero_sandwich/

Rich, Barnabe. Allarme to England. London: Henrie Middleton for C. Barker, 1578, sig. F.ij. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Virgil. The XIII Bukes of Eneados of the Famose Poete Virgill. Gavin Douglas, trans. London: William Copland, 1553, 234v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Wack, Mary Frances. “The Liber de heros morbo of Johannes Afflacius and Its Implications for Medieval Love Conventions.” Speculum, 62.2, April 1987, 324–44. JSTOR.

Video credit: Hutton, Brian G., dir. Kelly’s Heroes, Troy Kennedy-Martin, writer. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1970. Fair use of a low-resolution copy to illustrate the topic under discussion.

hermetic seal

Floor mosaic of Hermes Trismegistus in the Cathedral of Siena, Italy, c. 1485

29 December 2020

A hermetic seal is an air-tight one, but why is it associated with Hermes, the Greek messenger god?

The association goes back to the beginnings of the philosophical movement of Neo-Platonism in Alexandria, Egypt in the second century C.E. In the classical world, Hermes, a god of communication, was often associated with the Egyptian god Thoth, a god of wisdom and secrecy. They were often combined in a deity labeled Hermes Trismegistus, that is Thrice-Great Hermes, and various core Neo-Platonic works were ascribed to this deity. The occult pseudoscience of alchemy, the forerunner of modern chemistry, arose out of this Neo-Platonic school.

In English, the adjective hermetic originally referred to alchemy. We see it appear in this general sense in a 1624 book about numerology, another occult practice, by William Ingpen, in which he refers to Joseph Duschesne, a.k.a. Josephus Quercetanus, a noted alchemist, as a hermetic:

There are fiue things rise among those Paracelsians, which they call as Elements; Elementa, matrices, agri, ventriculi, minerae, treated of by Quercetanus, an excellent Hermetick and Spagyrick.

(Spagyric also refers to alchemy, so Ingpen is a bit redundant here.)

But the association of seals with Hermes Trismegistus in English is even older. The phrase Hermes seal appears in a 1559 translation of Swiss naturalist Konrad Gesner’s Thesaurus Euonymi Philiatri, which gives a succinct description of how alchemists achieved an air-tight seal:

Of Hermes seal, that is, of ioyning together the mouthes of glasen vessels with a paire of hot burning tonges softlye thrusting them together, and how after they oughte to be opened againe, reade Vlstadius. cap. 20.

The phrase hermetic seal appears by 1650 in a translation of alchemist Arthur Dee’s Fasciculus chemicus. The translator was Elias Ashmole, an alchemist and antiquary whose collection formed the core of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University:

You shall make choise of a forme of the glassy Vessell round in the bottom or cucurbit, or at least ovall, the neck an hand breadth long or more, large enough, with a straight mouth, made like a Pitcher or Jugg, continued & uncutt and thick in every part, that it may resist a long, and sometimes an acute Fire: The cucurbit or Bolts head is called blind, because its eye is blinded with the Hermetick seal, lest any thing from without should enter in, or the Spirit steal out.

Hermetic seal can also be used figuratively, as seen in this 1663 sermon by Jeremy Taylor at the funeral of John Bramhall, the Anglican archbishop of Ireland:

But in the whole Christs Resurrection and ours is the Α and Ω of a Christian; that as Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to day, and the same for ever; so may we in Christ, become in the morrow of the Resurrection the same or better then yesterday in our natural life; the same body and the same soul tied together in the same essential union, with this onely difference, that not Nature but Grace and Glory with an Hermetick seal give us a new signature, whereby we shall no more be changed, but like unto Christ our head we shall become the same for ever.

Word origins are not always straightforward and obvious, but when they aren’t, there’s almost invariably some interesting historical tidbits involved.

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Sources:

Dee, Arthur. Fasciculus chemicus or Chymical Collections. James Hasolle (Elias Ashmole), trans. London: J. Flesher for Richard Mynne, 1650, 241. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Gesner, Konrad. The Treasure of Euonymus Conteyninge the Wonderfull Hid Secretes of Nature. London: John Daie, 1559, 66. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Ingpen, William. The Secrets of Numbers. London: Humphry Lowns for John Parker, 1624, 43. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hermetic, adj. and n., seal, n.2.

Taylor, Jeremy. A Sermon Preached in Christs-Church Dublin, July 16, 1663, at the Funeral of the Most Reverend Father in God, John [Bramhall], Late Lord Archbishop of Armaugh, and Primate of all Ireland, third edition, enlarged. London: J.G. for Richard Royston, 1663, 6–7. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Image credit: unknown photographer, public domain image.

hello

Thomas Edison on the telephone, using his “Telescribe” device to record telephone calls, c. 1915

28 December 2020

The use of hello as a greeting is a relatively new use of the word, dating to the mid nineteenth century and only becoming popular with the advent of the telephone, but the word has precursors that date back centuries.

Holla or hola, a cry meaning to stop or to cease an action, can be found as far back as 1523, when it appears in a translation of Jean Froissart’s Cronycles:

Whan they were come in to the place / there speares were delyuered them / and so ran eche at other / and myssed by reason of stryuinge of their horses. The seconde course they met and ataynted. Than therle of Buckyngham sayd / hola: cease for it is late.

And to hollow, an early form of to holler, meaning to yell, comes a few years later. From a medical text by Andrew Boorde from 1542:

Also they must abstayne from drynkynge of wyne, and vse not to drynke ale and beere the whiche is ouer stronge: vocyferacyon halowynge, cryeng, and hygh synging is not good for the hed.

And toward the end of that century, the word was being used as a cry to attract attention or to indicate that one should listen. Poet and dramatist John Lyly used the word in that sense in his 1589 tract Pappe with an Hatchet. The tract was part of an ongoing propaganda war between Puritans and supporters of the Church of England known today as the Marprelate Controversy. A Puritan using the punning pseudonym of Martin Marprelate published a series of ribald and mocking pamphlets attacking Anglican bishops. Lyly and others attempted to use the same tactics. Lyly wrote in his:

Hollow there, giue me the beard I wore yesterday. O beware of a gray beard, and a balde head: for if such a one doo but nod, it is right dudgin and deepe discretion.

But the hello spelling doesn’t appear until nineteenth century America. The Connecticut Norwich Courier of 18 October 1826 uses hello in the same fashion that Lyly used hollow several centuries earlier:

I guess I’ll play a trick on these plaguy Methodists. Hello, Jim! I tell you what: I’ve got a sharp knife and feel as if I’d like to cut up something or other: and now if you’ll git some of their harness. I vow I’ll make short work of it.

It is easy to see how this attention-grabbing word could slip over into a greeting, and this happens in a 28 May 1853 article in the New York Clipper:

Hello ole feller, how are yer?

Hello becomes associated with the telephone because the earliest models of the device did not have a bell to signal an incoming call, so some sort of attention-grabbing term was needed. Alexander Graham Bell was in favor of using ahoy, but that lost out to hello, which was favored by Thomas Edison, among others. Edison makes note of this in a 15 August 1877 letter to T.B.A. David, the official in charge of a demonstration of the technology in the city of Pittsburgh:

Friend David, I do not think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What you think? Edison

Three days later, on 18 August 1877, the Pittsburgh Evening Chronicle records the word hello being used just this way:

The word “Hello” was called into the Fourth avenue box, and directly a still small voice answered at the ear, “Hello, what do you want?”

And after bells were added to telephones, people continued to open their telephone conversations with hello, and from there it worked its way into other modes of communication.

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Sources:

Boorde, Andrew. Hereafter Foloweth a Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Helth Made in Mou[n]tpyllier. London: Robert Wyer for John Gowghe, 1542 chapter 33, sig. M.iii. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Edison, Thomas A. Letter to T.B.A. David, 15 August 1877. In Allen Koenigsberg. “The First ‘Hello!’: Thomas Edison, the Phonograph and the Telephone—Part 2.” Antique Phonograph Monthly, 8.1, 1987.

Froissart, Jean. Here Begynneth the First Volum of Sir Iohan Froyssart of the Cronycles of Englande, Fraunce, Spayne, Portyngale, Scotlande, Bretayne, Flau[n]ders: and Other Places Adioynynge. John Bourchier, trans. London: Richard Paynson, 1523, fol. 241r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Lyly, John. Pappe with an Hatchet. London: John Anoke and John Astile, 1589, Cv. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. hello, int. and n.; second edition, 1989, holla, int. and n.

“Rightly Served.” Norwich Courier (Connecticut), 18 October 1826, 4. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: unknown photographer, c. 1915. Public domain image.

malarkey

Scene from HBO’s Band of Brothers, set in 1943, in which Private Donald Malarkey, played by actor Scott Grimes, undergoes weapons inspection by his company commander, played by David Schwimmer

24 December 2020

Malarkey is a slang term for nonsense, humbug, or bullshit, and it is a favorite of President-Elect Joe Biden, who uses it with regularity. The origin is unknown, but there are several conjectures. The word is primarily an Americanism, but one of the possible origins roots it in northern English dialect.

Malarkey or Mullarkey is also an Irish surname, as the video clip from HBO’s television series Band of Brothers demonstrates—one of the soldiers in E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment during World War II was Sergeant Donald Malarkey (1921–2017). But how that surname might be connected to the slang meaning has never been explained. There is no person of that name who is particularly associated with nonsense or foolishness.

The Oxford English Dictionary also lists the suggestion that it comes from the Greek μαλακός (malakos), meaning soft. This seems a stretch, to the point of absurdity, in my eyes.

More plausibly, Green’s Dictionary of Slang raises the possibility that it is from the northern English dialect marlock, which, with various spellings, is well attested in nineteenth century. It is no stretch of the imagination to think that English immigrants brought it to the United States, with the diminutive -ey suffix being attached to it along the way. Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary gives several definitions for marlock, several of which align with the American slang meaning:

A prank, frolic, “lark”; a trick, practical joke; a noisy disturbance, an uproar, “row.”

A fraudulent contrivance or trick.

One who plays pranks, a fool.

1922 cartoon by T.A. Dorgan featuring a man and a woman watching two men trying to talk on adjacent telephones

The American slang sense is recorded in the early 1920s. The earliest uses I’m aware of are by two noted and widely circulated newspapermen, cartoonist Theodore Aloysius (Tad) Dorgan and Independent New Service sportswriter Davis J. Walsh.

Dorgan uses Milarkey in a 9 March 1922 cartoon to designate a telephone exchange. Milarkey would stand for the letters MI, which on a telephone dial would indicate the numbers 6 and 4:

Listening to two blokes battle as they try to phone in a joint without a booth [...] Aw, go chase yourself!!! No– No– Not you Central—I’m talking to a fish faced dodo here opposite me—no on my word Central—yes Milarkey 609 J. What? Say...

1924 cartoon by T.A. Dorgan featuring lawyers arguing in a courtroom while four policemen converse in the gallery

This particular use is not, in and of itself, relevant to the slang usage, except that two years later, on 2 April 1924, Dorgan uses malachy in another cartoon, this time clearly in the sense of nonsense or humbug. In the cartoon, a group of policemen are discussing two lawyers:

I don’t trust ‘em either—they might be framin’ up the poor prison at that

Malachy—you said it—I wouldn’t trust a lawyer no further than I could throw a case of scotch

In light of his later use, it seems clear that Dorgan chose Milarkey for the fictitious telephone exchange because it was associated with nonsense. Dorgan’s various spellings hint that he hadn’t seen the word in print; he had only heard it spoken.

And in between the publication of Dorgan’s two cartoons, syndicated sportswriter Davis Walsh used malarkey in a column about Argentinean boxer Luis Firpo. From an 8 September 1923 column:

Indeed the challenger has been so unimpressive in public that a coterie of volunteer pallbearers has made a practice of attending all workouts at the dog track and laughing immoderately at every move the Latin makes They seem to think he is a lot of “malarkey,” as it were

The periods are missing in the original.

Walsh would use malarkey a number of times in the first half of the 1920s. From a 17 February 1924 column:

Some attempt has been made to account for the defeat of the United States hockey team by the Canadians in the Olympic games by declaring the result was the fruit of team work rather than individual brilliancy. This is as so much malarkey, according to the best informed sources.

From 12 March 1924:

From a potpourrie [sic] of affirmations and denials in circulation today on matters of heavyweight business it was declared on the plumb-bob level to be fact and not fancy that there would be only two heavyweight championship bouts to be held this summer, to wit: Jack Dempsey versus Tom Gibbons in New York during the early part of June; Jack Dempsey versus Luis Firpo in Jersey City early in September.

The rest of the chatter is so much malarkey, according to a tip so straight that it can be passed thru a peashooter without touching the sides.

From 19 April 1924:

That the business is not so much malarkey is indicated by the fact that English and American sections of an international intercollegiate committee, already appointed, include the names of some of the most prominent men in the tennis world.

And from 6 December 1924:

However, all talk of Eddie Roush figuring in any deal with the Giants is so much malarkey, according to Hendricks.

Both Dorgan and the less-well-known Walsh were syndicated writers and their work appeared in newspapers across the United States. While it’s highly unlikely that either coined the word malarkey, they undoubtedly played a significant role in popularizing and spreading the slang term.

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Sources:

Dorgan, T.A. “Indoor Sports” (cartoon). San Francisco Call and Post, 9 March 1922, 23. California Digital Newspaper Collection.

———. “Indoor Sports” (cartoon). Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin), 2 April 1924, 11. NewspaperArchive.com.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. malarkey, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. malarkey, n.

Walsh, Davis J. “College Tennis League Formed.” Marion Daily Star (Ohio), 19 April 1924, 6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

———. “Cubs Won’t Part with O’Farrell.” Minneapolis Daily Star, 6 December 1924, 12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

———. “Firpo Is Real Actor Even if Does Nothing Else in Proper Way.” Defiance Crescent-News (Ohio), 8 September 1923, 8. NewspaperArchive.com.

——— [“Walsh, David” recte Davis]. “The Sport Crucible.” Tampa Sunday Tribune (Florida), 17 February 1924, 10-D. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

———. “Sport News.” Indiana Evening Gazette (Pennsylvania), 12 March 1924, 13. NewspaperArchive.com.

Wright, Joseph. The English Dialect Dictionary, vol. 4 of 6. Oxford: Henry Frowde, 1905, s.v. marlock, sb. and v.

Video credit: Ambrose, Stephen E. and Erik Jendreson (writers), Phil Alden Robinson (director). “Currahee.” Band of Brothers, HBO, airdate: 9 September 2001.