Talk:Darrell Powers

Backwoods Upbringing

This article states: "a testament to the extraordinary gifts his backwoods upbringing brought to Easy Company, was the story...about the time in Bastogne when Shifty mentioned to his commanding officer that he noticed a tree that was not in the distant forest just the day before." While this certainly proves he was very observant, it is not clear that this had anything to do with "his backwoods upbringing." How often do trees pop up overnight? When would he have had a similar experience in his ubringing to draw upoon - do wild animals erect fake trees to conceal their artillery? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.51.66.153 (talk) 11:20, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Been looking through Guarnere and Heffron's book "Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends" (my copy is from the October 2008 paperback printing so things may be different in other editions). Chapter 3, page 74, second paragraph (assuming this is from Guarnere as the chapter is titled Wild Bill's Revenge; also a section in Chapter 7 which I know is Guarnere talking) says of Shifty Powers "He was from mountains of Virginia, born and raised with a gun in his hand, not like us city slickers. He was like an Indian, lived of the ground, was very observant, was in tune with nature. He could pick out movement a mile away."

Then there's Chapter 7, page 178 discussing the tree incident, this time I know for certain it's Wild Bill discussing Shifty as the beginning of the chapter says any italicized section of text in the chapter is from him. Guarnere states that everything looked the same day after day. But Shifty was able to pick out one tree a mile away in a group of trees and told zlipton it hadn't been there the day before and that it was moving as there was German artillery behind it. Lipton had to use binoculars to see what Shifty could see unaided.

Guarnere goes on to say "Brad Freeman and Buck Taylor also had skills like that, they were also outdoorsmen, but not like Shifty. The kids who grew up in the mountains and farms with guns in their hands had talents we city slickers didn't have. All we knew was robbing, stealing, going to jail, wreaking havoc. But that came in handy, too! Each man had their individual talents."

All that's really saying was that Shifty was more observant, not nessicarily because he was from the backwoods. Though as it seems to suggest he grew up hunting which the men from the cities may have been less likely to do, he was able to develop observation skills others didn't have.

-annonymous 05/29/2023 71.181.44.118 (talk) 23:41, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Comment on wild animals erecting fake trees

A backwoods upbringing might give a person the life experience and familiarity with non-urban settings to recognize a much more detailed visual map of their outdoor environment, from blades of grass to individual trees... I'm not sure many urban upbringings would give the same life experience.Sufidav (talk) 22:27, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Citation / location

What is this Author/Location # in the citations? Is it supposed to be a page number? It's ambiguous since there are multiple sources by one author. Toddst1 (talk) 14:52, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

This is only a guess, but I think it's something to do with how far along the reference is in the ebook, in which the pages are not numbered. That's not a lot of help (to me) because I have no idea how to find location 758, for example, in the ebook.--Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 19:10, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Gravesite

Castlewood,Virginia is in Russell County,Virginia NOT Dickerson and so is the Gravesite. Please fix. 104.251.79.12 (talk) 05:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)