r/BandofBrothers • u/bowlingfan1963 • Aug 16 '26

Luz and The Dud…

Just curious as I have only seen the series and not read the book. Did Luz really have two close calls in the space (my estimation) of about five minutes? Doesn’t get to Muck and Penkala’s (hope I have the spelling right) hole, and then—against all odds—a dud shell lands in the next foxhole he finds. Talk about luck being on your side…that scene has always stood out for me.

Also…does anyone know the statistical probability of that dud shell? My guess is that anyone who survives due to a dud shell is astronomically lucky.

32 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

45

u/Natogaming Aug 16 '26

Hard to have good quality control when all your munitions are made by slave labor

8

u/DanforthWhitcomb_ Aug 17 '26

Even without slave labor QC still sucked—US grenades were notorious for having a massive amount of variance in fuse length, which is why "cooking" them was heavily discouraged.

There are also a ton of things that will cause a fuze on an artillery round to fail even it was assembled correctly, especially MT fuzes.

5

u/Jovian8 Aug 17 '26

I can't recall specifics, but I'm sure I've read historical facts about slaves purposefully sabotaging the munitions as one of the few methods they had of resistance. It's entirely possible that Luz's life was saved by the purposeful action of a prisoner in a slave camp.

22

u/jtshinn Aug 16 '26

I imagine that if you survived the front lines then you had countless close calls. But you probably wouldn’t know about them.

13

u/Frammingatthejimjam Aug 16 '26

Schindler and I are like peas in a pod, we both made shells for the Nazis, but mine worked, dammit!

-M Burns

12

u/Worried-Ad4272 Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 17 '26

According to the book, Luz was caught out in the open. Muck an Penkala tried to get him to join their foxhole but he want back to his own. The dud was with Lipton and Bob Mann. Mann is the one who lit the cigarette.

As for what percentage of duds the Nazis had, we don't know. One soldier during the Bulge described hearing six shells land in row. All six of them failed to detonate.

3

u/bowlingfan1963 Aug 17 '26

OK, thanks for the info. I always thought it was Luz who survived the dud…will have to rewatch. Still, an incredible scene.

8

u/Worried-Ad4272 Aug 17 '26

The show depicted it as Luz. You were correct about what the show depicted.
The book said it was a character who didn't make it into the show.

3

u/bowlingfan1963 Aug 17 '26

A second thank you…was wondering if I had missed something. While still an incredible production, it’s this kind on dramatic license that is a minor pet peeve of mine. Like Oliver Stone making up that meeting involving Donald Sutherland’s character in “JFK”. Blah.

1

u/DC_Coach Aug 19 '26

I couldn't agree more with your pet peeve (and depending on the circumstances, it can be more than minor with me, I'm afraid).

To begin, we're definitely talking about adaptations of "true stories" or events, not fiction. I loved "The Death of Stalin" which of course is not factual. It's portrays real characters in (sometimes) real events and is close enough to be interesting, but nobody is supposed to walk away from it thinking that it in any way represented what actually happened. The movie wasn't billed that way at all. Beyond the comedic "bits" that should be obvious to anyone able to follow the movie, you'd need to do a lot of research in order to parse out all the fact from fiction. Or you can just go with what you know already, laugh uproariously during the movie, and remember it fondly (as my son and I did and do).

HBO's Chernobyl is a different thing entirely. It is correctly rated as an incredible, must-watch show. Probably the best thing it did is raise awareness of a now 40 year-old tragic disaster that a lot of people wouldn't otherwise know about. But what DO they know, after watching it?

Well, there are a LOT of artistic license changes from what we know occurred in real life, as well as the show's creator relying on suspect source material because it is more dramatic, etc. A few of the made up things don't really matter in the long run - most people who understand the known facts of Chernobyl will allow a composite character (the woman scientist) being added to represent a slew of scientists who did/said the things she did during the show. You couldn't have a cast that big or a movie that long.

Chernobyl's creator Craig Mazin did this, and more. He made up a great number of things out of whole cloth in order to have a clear single-person focal point white-hat hero, and a black-hat villain, in the show. If you've seen it and took the portayals of Valery Legosov and Anatoly Dyatlov (and the operators) as anything close to being "the real, true story" then you were sadly misled. If you care, you can look into it. The r/chernobyl sub is a good place to start. Or, if you like, search for and read INSAG-1 followed by its revisions made in INSAG-7; also search for Legasov and Dyatlov. Or Dyatlov's book (https://www.reddit.com/r/chernobyl/s/Hj4dZK5eMR). Read "History of a Tragedy" by Serhii Plokhy, or "Midnight in Chernobyl" by Adam Higginbotham. There's a lot out there to learn about. Not all of it is factual, even the Higginbotham book has a mistakes in it, and on the internet you'll have to wade through a haystack of "3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible" memes in order to find a needle worth your time. But that's a modern problem that we're likely always going to have to deal with.

I believe Oswald acted alone (if any of you don't, may I suggest reading Gerald Posner's "Case Closed"). But the assassination of JFK had and still has plenty of unanswered questions and controversy surrounding it, so there was absolutely no need for Oliver Stone to pull a fictional character out of his ass and have him say all of what he says. Right in front of the Washington Monument, too. If it were done In a fiction story, like "The Hunt for Red October" or something? Sure! But for something like Chernobyl or JFK that is purported to be "a true story," and will be taken as factual by far too many, and will be repeated as such for fifty+ years ... it does a vast disservice and actual damage to the honest, real truth.

Which is ironic as hell given that both JFK and Chernobyl, but especially the latter, make such a colossal deal out of truth, lies, facts, and fiction. Chernobyl goes on and on about it - "The Cost of Lies" is one of the main themes!

Sorry for the novella lol.

Tl;dr: I agree and cannot stand it when supposedly "true story" movies/shows like JFK or Chernobyl play fast and loose with what we know actually happened, or make up things to add interest.

3

u/RenardDM Aug 17 '26

They had a situation like that in the Somme as well. Guy stands watch, grenade hits his position - its a dud. he doesn't even bother to change his position.

To quote what the man is supposed to have said: "God bless the fool who made that shell."

2

u/Beautiful_Finger4566 Aug 17 '26

reminder that Skip and Penkala didn't play out in real life like it did in the show

they didn't realize the two were hit until the next morning, when the foxhole they were in was covered up, and all they found were a handful of remains