For the first time I met Ed Tipper in Normandy on June 6, 2001 during the world premieres of the TV-series "Band of Brothers" and the commemoration of D-Day. We met again in 2002, during the Phoenix reunion. I asked him if he would be so kind to co-operate in making a page about him and he was. In april 2003 he did sent me the letter below.

Not 'just' a WWII veteran (known from the book and the tv series) but most of all a proud house father and a warm and humble man.

Thank you very much Ed.

April 26, 2003

Dear Peter,
Sorry to hear that you will not be at the reunion this year. We will miss you, but hope to meet again sooner or later. If you or your family come to the States again, please spend a few days with Rosy, Kerry and me in Colorado. We can show you the spectacular Rocky Mountains and much more.
We are all doing well at present.
Kerry is finishing her second year at the University of Denver and majoring in International Studies. Her school has an Interchange Program with many European institutions and Kerry plans to attend the University of Salamanca in the 2004-5 school year.

Here is some personal information, as requested:
I was born in 1921 at Detroit, Michigan, in a stable, ordinary family.
Three years later my parents decided to return to their home country, Ireland, where we lived for a couple of years before returning permanently to the US.
Ireland at that time was a wonderful place for a small child. Even now I can remember the pure air, the countryside, the fields and animals, and the small village where we lived.
Children my age were plentiful and were able to wander safety everywhere all day long.
The local people treated us as family at all times, always with hugs and welcomes.
This idealized life, of course, had to end at some time. If my parents had remained in Ireland, as an adult it now seem likely that I would have been a subsistence farmer or perhaps a small shopkeeper at best, and inevitably with some terrorist connection with the out-law Irish Republican Army.
It could never have been the future I later found in the US. My parents returned to Detroit three years before the Great Depression, the most difficult economic time this country has ever experienced. Large cities such as Detroit had massive unemployment, hopelessness, frustration and for some, real hunger.
Very few people in the US today have any memory of these times, but we in the Band of Brothers do.
I remember that in my high school class of about 50 students in 1939, not one could afford to go to college and while all of us had been endlessly looking for work only one had found a job by graduation time. Yet everyone helped everyone else and shared, and we alt survived.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, hundreds of young men lined up for hours to join the military. I was one of them.
My choice was the US Marines (motto: "First to Fight") but their physical standards were incredibly high and I was rejected because my teeth had a slightly less than perfect bite. I was furious, and vowed to take until I found something actually better.
Soon information about the Army Paratroops came my way and I enlisted on August, 1942.
The Paratroops accepted very good teeth in place of perfect and I was off to Toccoa, Georgia, becoming one of E Company's original members.

Of 140 men in the Company at that time, perhaps 19 survive today. Our physical training was beyond belief. Some enlistees just could not last beyond a few days and dropped out or sent away. Replacements came and went and were replaced by others who also came.
The book and the TV Series are also authentic about combat.
In the TV episode showing the Normandy jump, friends have asked me if the anti-aircraft fire and planes being hit just before we left the planes was not a bit exaggerated.
I tell them nothing was exaggerated; that was absolutely the way it happened.
My total combat time was only six days, but highly intensive.
The incident in which I was badly wounded is well described in the book in what was a routine action as we attacked Carentan. My medical treatment and evacuation were alt under fire and I was surprised to arrive safely at the beach hospital. The Red Cross flag on our jeep with three stretchers carrying seriously wounded men didn't protect us at all. The jeep accelerated, slammed on the brakes and accelerated again to avoid direct fire we were taking. I remember thinking that even if we made it safely, that driver could not go back and make very more such runs without being killed.
After a year in Army hospitals I returned to civilian life minus my right eye and walking with a cane and enrolled at the University of Michigan at US government expense.
One of the very best things this country has ever done was to give returning war veterans the opportunity for a higher education. As a consequence most of us have lived fuller, richer lives.

Our expense was paid but later our in-creased earnings resulted in very large tax payments over our lifetimes that more than compensated the US government for what it had paid out initially for our university expenses. Without an education, I probably would have been a truck driver or construction laborer, paying little tax. With the education my dream of a better life could be fulfilled. I could be a teacher, a job I felt best suited for and a job which I have always felt is one of the most important in our society.

Unlike most secondary teachers I had the good fortune to receive national recognition for excellence in my work with the award of a John Hay Fellowship in 1960 at the University of California at Berkeley.
That recognition of the constructive part of my life means as much to me as the "Band of Brothers" experience. Not more, but of equal value.
In 1979 deteriorated hearing became a problem. In class the female students' voices didn't always fully register, and the situation kept getting worse. The only solution, really, was to leave teaching, which I did, taking early retirement.

My only regret at that time was than marriage and a family had been missed. I soon found that even in my early sixties, life could be full of surprises. As I visited a former student teaching at the University of Costa Rica in 1982, he introduced me to a beautiful, intelligent young woman who also had never been married. In violation of all reason and good sense, we felt in love and a year later married.
Her family, my friends, her friends, and it seemed every-one everywhere opposed our plans, and often not very politely. They were all wrong. Last February Rosy and I (R) celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary and we have a daughter, Kerry, who makes us proud as we can be.
Rosy is a foreign medical graduate but is not licensed to practice in the US. She chose to be a homemaker white Kerry was growing up, but is now back in the University of Colorado in a graduate program leading to Certification in Public Health. After finishing that, she hopes to enroll in a Masters degree program in the same field.
Our family motto is "It's never too late". In our family. Rosy and Kerry are doing all the work.
I am focusing on keeping in shape and holding together for two or three years and see my wife and daughter finish their educational efforts.

Signed: Ed Tipper.

Ed Tipper (l) - Norman Neitzke en Clancy Lyall (r) Emmy Awards 2002.

Ed Tipper's daughter Kerry (r)

I don not intend to infringe on any copyrights. I just want to promote Band of Brothers© and pay a tribute to everyone who was involved in giving back our freedom in WWII

If anyone has problems with the text or photos on this page please mail me