The Real Life and Tragic End of Private Roy Cobb | Band of Brothers [10:09-15:11]

However, this description by Ambrose is almost certainly incorrect. Lieutenant Foley would not have been present at observation post two nor would John Martin have been there. Almost all communication with Martin was done by phone with Martin at the platoon command post. According to David Kenyon Webster, it was actually Donald Wiseman who mouted off at the platoon commander Lieutenant Foley at the platoon command post and then got into a violent argument with Captain Ronald Spears at the company command post. We know that Webster's account is likely correct because the easy company morning report dated February 23rd, 1945, states that Donald Wiseman was confined to the regimental stockade on February 17th, 1945. There is no mention of Cobb being arrested. It appears that Ambrose got the men mixed up or was told the wrong information during his interviews with the veterans. In his book, Ambrose also likely falsely states that Cobb faced a court martial as a result. However, Ambrose never spoke to Cobb for the book since Cobb had died decades earlier. And once again, Ambrose failed to do his due diligence when it came to research, instead relying mostly on the recollections and assumptions of a handful of men 50 years after the events occurred. The series dramatizes the claims in Ambrose's book and shows Cobb later being escorted in a Jeep by military police. It's logical to conclude from the series that Cobb faced a court martial in a dishonorable discharge, a false claim that is often repeated online in articles, wickies, and fan discussions. Further supporting that Cobb was never court-martialed and dishonorably discharged from the army is the fact that he received the award of good conduct medal less than two months later on April 12, 1945. How could he possibly be given a good conduct medal if he was facing a court-martial? Interestingly, at the time he received the medal, he was not with Easy Company, but was with Headquarters Company. It's possible that he was temporarily moved from Easy Company to Headquarters Company as part of a disciplinary measure and the good conduct medal was to encourage continued good behavior, aka less drinking, but that's only speculation. Then there's this photo of Easy Company, taken in Caprune, Austria in July 1945, roughly two months after Germany surrendered. A man identified as Roy Cobb is present in the photo. If it's indeed him as it appears to be, he is still clearly in the army. According to Clancy Lyle, he stated in his biography that the notion that Cobb had been upset because he didn't get promoted as some have stated is not true. I don't think he was frustrated about that, said Lyle. He was a private first class back then, just like me at the time. Lyle said that Cobb made it to corporal after Hagenau and also became an assistant squad leader. We also know for military records that afterward were two, Roy Cobb re-enlisted into the regular army on January 9, 1946, which definitively shuts down any notion of a dishonorable discharge since he would not have been allowed to re-enlist. While stationed in post-war Europe, Cobb met and fell in love with a Belgian woman named Marie, who was four years his junior. She had herself served in World War II as part of the British Auxiliary Territorial Service. It is believed that they married in Belgium in 1946. They had a son, Raymond, who was born in Belgium in 1947. Cobb was discharged from the army on February 27, 1948. He and his wife relocated back the Cobb's home county of Harlan, Kentucky, where he struggled to find work as a coal miner. In 1949, their daughter Rose was born. In the following years, they would have a third child, a boy named Gary. As stated earlier, Roy Cobb had an older brother named Ty Cobb. Yes, his brother coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, had the same name as the famous baseball player. Ty served in World War II in the field artillery. After World War II, he re-enlisted in December 1945. However, Roy's brother Ty passed away the following year in Babylon, New York on July 19, 1946, at just 25 years of age. His cause of death is unknown. Around 1950, Roy, his wife Marie and their children were living with Roy's mother Nancy in some of Roy's younger half siblings. It is unclear if Roy and Marie moved in with his mother directly after returning from Belgium in 1948. It is likely they did since Roy's stepfather Lonnie passed away that same year at age 64. In the 1950 census, a 28-year-old Roy Cobb was listed as a prisoner in the Harlan County jail under the name Ray Cobb. As stated earlier, Ray is the name he has believed to have went by instead of his birth name Roy.