Joe Toye After Band of Brothers: Surviving 2 Amputations & Caring for His Severe [0:00-5:03]

Staff Sergeant Joe Toy was one of Easy Company's toughest soldiers. He was wound in multiple times during the war and was finally taken out of the fight at Bastone when a German shell blew off most of the lower portion of his right leg. And band of brothers were not told what became of Joe Toy after he suffered the critical wound that nearly ended his life. In this video we're going to follow up with Joe Toy shedding light on his life before during and specifically after WWII. This includes his leg loss, how he met his wife, and his role as a devoted father to his severely disabled son. It is this latter aspect of Joe Toy's life that I can relate to on a personal level and it is part of what inspired me to want to dig deeper into his story. Joseph John Toy, who went by the name Joe, was born in Hughes Town, Pennsylvania on March 14th, 1919 to Peter and Beatrice Toy. He was the youngest of nine children in a large Catholic family. Sadly, Joe's father passed away when he was just 13 years old and he had to drop out of school in the 7th grade to go to work in the coal mines to help support his family during the Great Depression. When he entered military service at age 22, Joe had been working in Reading, Pennsylvania at the Grey Iron Foundry, which produced small and medium-sized Grey Iron castings. Joe was living in Reading with his brother Thomas at the time, who was a state policeman. Joe Toy enlisted in the army in the days after the December 7th, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was originally in the medic corps. He volunteered for the paratroopers because like many of the men, he was enticed by the higher pay. Joe became part of Easy Company at Camp Takoa, Georgia, training under the strict command of Captain Herbert Sobel, who is memorably portrayed by actor David Schwimmer and band of brothers. He then received this jump wings at Fort Benning, Georgia. While training with Easy Company at Camp McCall, North Carolina, on March 30th, 1943, Joe Toy broke his leg during a parachute jump due to strong ground wind. It was his 7th overall jump. Dick Wenders recalled the windy jump in his diary, stating that he himself could not collapse his shoot and as a result, the wind dragged him 150 yards. The next day, the guys in Joe Toy's platoon all pitched in and bought him a radio to listen to in the hospital as he recovered over the next several weeks. The injury is not depicted in band of brothers. In Marcus Brothers' book, A Company of Heroes, Joe Toy's son Steve pointed out that in the series, actor Kirk Acevedo portrays his dad more like a tough Italian guy from the Bronx instead of a hard-nosed Irishman from Pennsylvania Cole Country. Joe was 100% Irish with blue eyes and spoke with a part Philly, part-reading Pennsylvania accent. It's likely that the filmmakers turned Joe Toy into a tough New Yorker for the series in order to help the characters stand apart from the Philly boys, Bill Garnier and Babe Heffron. Joe's family also pointed out that while they were happy with the series and extremely grateful that Joe was represented in it, they were disappointed that actor Kirk Acevedo never contacted them during his research for the role. Joe's son Steve also noted that his dad is never portrayed as a leader in the series, despite him having been a squad sergeant who was in leadership roles in many combat situations. In Dick Winters' memoir, he stated that next to Floyd Talbert, Sergeant Joe Toy was the best soldier in Easy Company. Absent from the series are some of the moments that exemplify this, including the time shortly after the liberation of Aindhoven in the Netherlands, when Easy Company ran head-on into the German 107 Panzer Brigade near the town of Noonan. Pinned down, Captain Winters wanted to know what they were up against. He told Toy, Joe, get me a live prisoner. Joe, who was a squad leader, left his squad behind and ventured out on the risky assignment by himself into No Man's Land. Impressively, he returned with a live prisoner. Of the feet, Winters remarked, action like that in combat, wins the respect for life of every man that was in the company. Fellow Easy Company veterans all described Joe Toy as the toughest of the tough. He'd gotten strong from having to go to work in the coal mines. He was also an amateur boxer. One Malarki described him as being a great guy who always thought beyond himself and was built like steel. He came across like Superman, Malarki noted in his memoir, a guy who had all this strength but never let it go to his head. Frank Prakanty echoed the same, saying that Toy was a tough son of a bitch, but he never had to go around trying to prove it. He was also described as having a good sense of humor. Fellow soldiers recalled Toy, singing Irish songs to lift the men's spirits during some