Joe Toye After Band of Brothers: Surviving 2 Amputations & Caring for His Severe [5:03-10:06]

of the toughest times of the war. In Don Malarki's memoir, he recalled an incident when Easy Company was in Oldborn, England, and he approached a drunken soldier named Duet Lowry, who was sitting on the side of his bed, crying. Malarki put his hand on Lowry's shoulder and was about to ask him if he was okay, when Lowry suddenly jumped up and pulled a knife, sticking it an inch from Malarki's gut. Stay away from me, Malarki, Lowry said. Malarki described what followed, that's when it happened, he said. These two strapping arms came at Lowry from behind, lifted him up, spun him around, pinned him to the wall, and clamped a hand to his throat. It was Joe Toy, it scared the living hell out of Lowry, and for a moment, me, damn you Lowry, Toy said, you ever threatened Don Malarki again, and I'll kill you, got that? I'll kill you. Lowry apologized to Malarki the following morning. While helping to take out the German 105mm artillery guns at Breikort Manor on D-Day in the series, Joe Toy is shown using brass knuckles to punch a panicked German POW, who was babbling loudly after he was captured during the assault. While it helps to establish Toy's persona as a tough guy in the series, he was not the one who threw the punch in real life. According to Richard Winters, the man who threw the punch was private Gerald Lorraine, Colonel Saint's driver, who had volunteered to join the assault because he couldn't find the Colonel. Lieutenant Buck Compton states in his memoir that the German began bleeding all over and spitting out teeth, with Compton describing it as senseless. While Compton refuses to mention by name the man who threw the punch, he also hints that it was Lorraine by saying that it was a guy from headquarters. According to Winters, who detested such treatment of prisoners, the German lay there moaning for about half an hour. The fictionalized punch with brass knuckles in the series alludes to the fact that the real Joe Toy had been an amateur boxer and indeed knew how to throw a punch. However, he was also a devout Christian and his fellow easy company soldiers described him as a good man who cared deeply about others. It would have been somewhat out of character for him to inflict that level of abuse on a German who was willingly surrendering. As depicted in the series, it's true that Joe Toy had two close calls during the break-court manner assault on D-Day. The first happened when a German lobbed the grenade known as a potato master at them, which landed in the trench between Joe Toy's legs. Lieutenant Winters yelled, Joe, look out, and Toy flipped over and scrambled to move. He bounced up and down from the concussion. Fortunately, the stalk of his rifle took the brunt of the explosion and saved his life. He was sprayed with some wood splinters but was largely unharmed. An easy to miss detail in Band of Brothers is that as Joe Toy and Buck Compton storm one of the 105mm howitzer shortly after this, you can see that Toy's M1A1 Thompson submachine gun doesn't have a stalk, reflecting the fact that it had been blown off. In real life, Toy carried an M1 Grand Rifle during the assault, not a Thompson submachine gun. His gun was likely changed for the series because it's much easier to remove the stalk of a Thompson than a Grand in order to include this detail. During the same assault in the series, we see Buck Compton fumble a grenade and it drops into the trench next to the men. It explodes before Toy can make it out of the trench. He is covered in dirt but uninjured. In his memoir, Buck Compton contested this account and said that what really happened is that they jumped down into an empty German gun replacement. A wooden ammunition box was in the hole with a potato master lying on top. He bumped the ammo box and the potato master rolled off and the pin fell out. Regardless, it was another close call for Toy. Joe Toy was wounded several times during World War II and earned a total of 4 purple hearts, which according to author Steven Ambrose was more than any other member of Easy Company. His first wound happened during the jump on D-Day. He thought he could get out of the plane easier if he wrapped the excess rope from his leg bag around his right arm. When he exited the plane, it was going faster than expected to avoid flak. As a result, the prop blast was so intense that the leg bag shot backward and tore free, but not before the rope pulled tight and skinned his arm down to his hand. His medical card described it as a friction wound. Friend and fellow Easy Company member Don Malarkey said that Toy's arm looked like a skinned deer. He landed in severe pain, bandaged his arm and told Lieutenant Winters, I can still fire a weapon Lieutenant, I didn't come here to sit in no aid station. The wound is not depicted in band of brothers. After participating in the initial fighting in Normandy, Medics became worried about gangrene setting in and Toy was sent back to England for treatment. His second wound came during an artillery bombardment in Operation Market Garden that killed fellow soldier James Campbell right next to him.