Albert Blithe Master Sergeant Albert Blithe ( June 25 , 1923 – December 17 , 1967 ) was a career soldier who had been a Private First Class with Easy Company , 2nd Battalion , 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment , in the 101st Airborne Division during World War II . Blithe was portrayed in the HBO miniseries " Band of Brothers " by Marc Warren . Blithe ' s life story was featured in the 2010 book " A Company of Heroes : Personal Memories about the Real Band of Brothers and the Legacy They Left Us . " Blithe had also served in Korea with the 187th ARCT after the end of hostilities and later was assigned to the Military Assistance Advisory Group ( MAAG ) in Taiwan . He never retired from military service . Youth . Blithe was born and raised in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania . After completing 3 years of high school , he enlisted for the paratroopers on August 18 , 1942 in his hometown . Military service . World War II . Blithe trained at Camp Toccoa , Georgia in August 1942 under Captain Herbert M . Sobel . Blithe jumped with the rest of Easy Company into occupied France as part of the massive Airborne invasion ; however , when he landed , he found himself lost . Blithe was joined by a number of other paratroopers who were also part of the mis - drops . They teamed up together and found the rest of Easy Company . As portrayed in " Band of Brothers " by Marc Warren , Blithe was struck with a temporary case of hysterical blindness following the fierce fight to capture Carentan . He recovered and was part of a patrol investigating a farmhouse a few days later , where he was shot by a sniper in his right shoulder . He would recover from the wound and receive a Purple Heart on June 25 , 1944 , his 21st birthday . Due to his wound , on 1 October 1944 he was sent home and never returned to the European Theater of Operations . See Misreports of an early death , below . Blithe was released from the Army Hospital October 8 , 1945 which has been verified by his discharge paperwork at the end of World War II . He attended the 1st Annual Reunion of the 101st Airborne Division Association . He returned to Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , and started a career with Westinghouse Electric . He reenlisted on March 28 , 1949 and was discharged on March 27 , 1952 . He reenlisted again on March 24 , 1954 , received his Master Parachutist Badge May 13 , 1954 , and went on to serve in post - war Korea with the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team . Later , he was named the 82nd Airborne Division ' s 1958 Trooper of the Year . He then served in the 82nd Quartermaster Corps , 82nd Quartermaster Parachute Supply and Maintenance Company ( aka " 82nd Quartermaster Parachute Maintenance " ) . Before his sudden death in 1967 , Blithe had achieved the rank of Master Sergeant and had completed over 600 parachute jumps , and was given a Military Assistance Advisory Group ( MAAG ) assignment in Taiwan . Death . Blithe died December 17 , 1967 , while on active duty with the 8th Supply and Transport Battalion , 8th Infantry Division , in West Germany at Wiesbaden Air Force Hospital . A week before his death , he had attended a weekend at Bastogne , Belgium commemorating the Battle of the Bulge , from which he had returned feeling unwell . He was taken to the emergency room on December 11 and diagnosed with a perforated ulcer . Emergency surgery was performed on December 12 , 1967 . He subsequently developed peritonitis and on December 16 , he suffered renal failure and died at 0055 hours on December 17 . After a memorial service conducted by Chaplain ( Major ) Thomas F DesChamps , Blithe was buried in Arlington National Cemetery , Virginia with full military honors on December 28 . Misreports of an early death . Blithe is the subject of a particularly glaring error in the book and mini - series , " Band of Brothers " . Fellow Easy Company Currahee veterans interviewed while writing the book and mini - series had believed , in error , that Blithe was wounded in the neck , and that he did not recover . In the book , author Stephen Ambrose reported those errors as fact , and stated that Blithe had died in Philadelphia in 1948 . Ambrose ' s errors were compounded in the mini - series , in which episode 3 , " Carentan " , episode ends with a slide stating that " Albert Blithe never recovered from the wounds he received in Normandy . He died in 1948 . " After viewing the mini - series , the Blithe family publicly corrected this historical error , and requests were made to edit the mini - series to remove it . Photographs and records documenting his service after 1948 and his 1967 death are now posted on the website of the 506th Airborne Infantry Regiment Association . However , the error has not been corrected in the book ( though the 2001 UK edition makes no mention of Blithe ' s death ) and has been perpetuated in the DVD editions of the mini - series . It is still in repeated broadcast of the series as recently as the November 13 , 2012 broadcast of the episode on Spike TV , the April 27 , 2013 broadcast on SoHo in New Zealand and the May 12 , 2013 broadcast on Rai 4 in Italy . The Blu - ray version has an interactive guide called " In the field with the men of Easy Company " , stating correctly that Blithe died in 1967 , but Episode 3 still contains the error .