Shifty Powers tells the sniper story from the battle of Foy in this short clip

For the first time on film, Shifty Powers, the legendary Easy Company sharpshooter, tells the true story of his sniper encounter during the attack on Foy in January 1945. Featured within is our all-new artwork, "The Sharpshooter," by Larry Selman, which depicts Shifty and is available for purchase with the autographs of several Easy Company paratroopers on our site at: ValorStudios.com

[@ValorArtStudios]

Want to own a piece of art hand-signed by the heroes of Easy Company? Support our channel and shop now at: www.valorstudios.com/collections/band-of-brothers

[@seamusmcsorley7638]

“Did you guys enjoy this?” Still got that dawg in him. Legends

[@darrenconger4786]

Shifty grew up and lived near some of my family. I had the honor of meeting him and was able to get his autograph. He was as nice and humble as you can imagine. I hope and pray that he and all of his comrades are able to rest in peace now. They deserve that.

[@jebesi]

My family is from Wise County Virginia outside of Clintwood VA.

[@ivand5670]

What these men endured and the sacrifices that they made must always be remembered and respected.

[@sandwormgod4771]

RIP Easy Company. Stand Down you heroes. Your memory lives on.

[@chrispierdominici3891]

I never get tired of hearing these brave men retelling of their stories and I'm glad that we have a record of their personal accounts now that they've passed on, seeing how priceless that record is.

[@BigWyatt]

Amen! God bless the people who were smart enough to interview our WW2 vets while they were still alive! Shifty, Speirs, Winters etc., and their personal recollections of the war and their sacrifices, will live on forever!

[@barrygrant2907]

SO sad that these fine men are all gone.

[@ValorArtStudios]

We couldn't agree more!

[@davecrupel2817]

I'm not so sad about it anymore, like i used to be. They're all together again. And this time none of them will ever be separated again. And that warms my heart more than them being gone from this world.

[@RedFail1-1]

They survived the war and got to live very long lives surrounded by the people they loved. Nothing sad about it.

[@thesarge4457]

GOD Bless these guys and all of the Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Airmen, men and women and civilians, for their Service of WWII. THE SARGE

[@RJLNetWork]

Two American heroes who fought against evil in WW2! RIP to these fine soldiers of the US Army!

[@sugarkane4830]

Rip to all the allies that fought evil in WW11.

[@rycheone1]

Straight from the mouth of Heros!

[@ValorArtStudios]

You said it!

[@rycheone1]

@ValorArtStudios I will give you one guess who I am? One hint - I live in Highlands Ranch Colorado and my walls are not boring...🙂 Miss y'all!

[@ValorArtStudios]

😉@@rycheone1

[@wildcat1861]

Mr. Powers was born in a town close to me and died in a town close to me. Didn’t learn that until tonight. Gave me chills.

[@panda.om2974]

I can remeber shifty coming to school on veterans day so I guess were probably close I grew up in Haysi

[@tylanp]

@@panda.om2974i grew up in clintwood right beside haysi 😂 and i am actually related to shifty

[@SandorSoptei]

my grandma worked in a slave munitions camp before going to Auschwitz. She said many people would damage the fuse, or something to sabotage nazi artillery. The prisoners got so good at making them the germans had no clue any sabotage was completed until the round did nothing. Same with bullets. That's why by the end of the war so many german weapons were misfiring, or shells not going off. Not just that, but by the end of the war 44-45 many of the resources the germans needed were long gone and taken back by the allies.

[@user-bh4ge1pm2t]

Yah, let that be a lesson to all you would be conquerors out there. You can force people to do stuff, but you need their acquiescence to do it right.

[@anthonygerace8926]

My brother-in-law's father was used as a slave laborer in Poland, so he might have been involved in this munitions manufacture/sabotage. Eventually he was shipped to Auschwitz. When the Soviet Army approached in January of 1945, the German's just fled, leaving the Jews to starve or freeze to death. He barely survived, and then he lived for another 51 years.

[@matydrum]

I knew about that and they were absolute heroes to risk their lives doing those sabotage. I guess that if she told you that she must have survived. I can't imagine the thing she must have been through. All my feelings go to her. Greetings from France. My own grand mother was a kid at the time, she had to go to school under a fake name with fake papers be s'use her dad was a wanted by the gestapo resistance member. May I ask where your grandma was from? Good day to you.

[@matydrum]

​@@anthonygerace8926woaw, the comment I just posted to the original one goes to you too!

[@imtryinghere1]

Just shows how smart Shifty is and how good his eyesight was to tell the difference between breath up off the ground in the cold air vs. being down on the ground. That's the 2nd or 3rd story I've heard about him that is demonstrates how clever and how sharp his sniping was.

[@panderson9561]

I read a story when they were in the Bastogne area. He noticed there were trees in a particular spot, that weren't there previously. So they lobbed some arty shells into the place, and the trees fell down, exposing an AA battery. In the middle of a forest, trees all look alike to most people, and he noticed the trees were new. That's crazy awareness.

[@AB-mw8oz]

When they were on the line outside Bastogne he noticed a tree that wasn't there the day prior, reported it and artillery was called in to drop a few rounds on what turned out to be an 88mm gun the Germans had moved in

[@lewismooney3941]

I love earl and shifty!

[@scottssss9136]

God bless these guys for their courage and their ability to endure things that are almost impossible to endure.

[@randolphstead2988]

I was a volunteer driver for the Canadian Red Cross for five years while recovering from an injury. What a privelege it was to transport a veteran. I had WW2 and Korean War veterans as my passengers; a pleasure to serve them.

[@user-qs7gx7rp7m]

The 80s & 90s were good times for me. Chased after vets who had retired from a busy life and were thinking about where they been. They were happy to chat with anyone who would listen. I did. Best of all, in following them up through archives that became easily available I realized I had been in good company because none of them lied. God bless them all, the olong, the short and the tall .

[@Thinkythinkerton]

Just the courage to go back THERE in WINTER alone is staggering. RIP and thank you.

[@thelastjohnwayne]

This Video was amazing and the light snow on the ground and the Cold and the Veterans wearing their gear was so great.

[@ValorArtStudios]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@user-el1lj8up4x]

This was such a great video but its sad that all of these men are not here anymore

[@preacherfrompontiac9714]

Incredible

[@lemmdus2119]

Learn something new every day. Stay low in the snow and they can’t see your breath. Looking for a hidden enemy in the cold look for their breath.

[@gartwilliams3347]

I’ll be visiting that area in the Spring for the 80th. Godspeed gentleman🙏🇺🇸

[@DMUSA536]

I’ll be in Bastogne in September

[@colmhain]

That was Earl McClung with Shifty.

[@oscargrouch7962]

Earl "One Lung" McClung and Darrell "Shifty" Powers

[@paullandry8181]

'If he'd a been close to the ground I wouldn't of seen his breath, cause of the snow.' Wow.

[@Einhildur]

Hello, great story and thank you for sharing. :) When was this recorded ?

[@ValorArtStudios]

In December 2004 we brought several of the Band of Brothers veterans to Germany to surprise soldiers of the 1st Armored Division who had rotated back from Iraq and Shifty was among them. It was during that trip that we visited Bastogne & Foy which was the first time Shifty had been back since 1944.

[@Einhildur]

@@ValorArtStudios Thank you for the answer. What a great time they must've had, sharing stories like this one!

[@Tk52781]

In the background. People just casually driving by.

[@nyca520]

TRULY THE GREATEST GENERATION RIP 🇺🇸

[@RealityOrganized]

True heroes. You can combine all your athletes, singers, and celebrities, and still not equal one of these guys.

[@BrianMc.]

Well said!

[@FOTAP97]

Sounds like a rather different story than was depicted in BOB.

[@VonDilling]

Right? No tanks or artillery? Better add some 88s and some Tigers!

[@billparry7058]

RIP gents the debt we owe all of you can never be repaid but generations to come must honour your memory.

[@cpresto2]

0:48 Ambrose wrote about this in Citizen Soliders - that allied veterans, to a man, remembered numerous duds, but that no Germans that he interviewed remembered duds falling on them. No statistical reports ever completed on the topic, but the speculation is that there was a considerable amount of sabotage committed by the enslaved labor force, obviously despite the threat to their own lives. The nature of human resistance in the face of evil never fails to astonish.

[@mexman000]

shifty's buddy there said that he thought the prisoners or slave laborers were putting horse manure in the shells, because so many didn't explode. They just might of been producing dud's on purpose. They probably saved a lot of lives, if that was the case. We may never know.

[@FrenchieQc]

Stuff like that is kinda covered in Schindler's List, when Itzhak Stern tells Schindler that they're receiving a lot of complaints about their artillery, mortar and tank shells failing quality control, and that there are rumors of Schindler going around miscalibrating the machines himself. "If this factory ever produces a shell that can be fired, I'll be very unhappy."

[@Mike-tb9xq]

So he didn't shoot him through a window like in the series then? I've seen other videos that show a window where the sniper supposedly was. Guess that's not true then.

[@CSM_Gray]

Real life- good thing was there was no armor in the town just small arms. BoB- what do you see Lip? Armor and infantry lot of infantry!

[@dr.awkward9075]

Legend says Dyke is still sitting behind that hay bale.

[@charlessaint7926]

During the Siege of Bastogne, Shifty was looking from his position at a clump of trees about a mile away. He noticed there was one additional tree that wasn't there the day before. He called on Lipton who passed it up, and an artillery liason officer came to see for himself and coordinated an artillery barrage on that one position. They obliterated what turned out to be a concealed 88mm flak gun position. All because Shifty noticed a new tree from nearly a mile away!

[@yeildo1492]

How fortunate we are to have men and women like Mr Powers in our armed forces. Does anybody know who the other Gent is?

[@dgpatter]

‘One Lung’ McClung.

[@keelanmurphy9941]

Staff Sergeant Earl "One-Lung" McClung, he only has a small part in the miniseries. He's the lead scout on the patrol across the river in Haguenau where Private Jackson gets killed.

[@user-zg2mb8yc4k]

One day Shifty looked out at the forest and noticed one tree that had not been there the day before. He told his sergeant. The tree was attacked and turned out to be a German listening post. One tree. Shifty noticed it.

[@JoelBelisario-po7fs]

Honrar é preciso.

[@Mallybird]

Is the sound not working for anyone else? I can hear the intro music but nothing after.

[@dgpatter]

It’s you (your setup).

[@gordonloree5341]

Dam

[@Empericalmonkey]

Shifty: His biggest mistake was he was breathing...

[@harding10B]

So there were no Tiger tanks and 88s in Foy well that’s disappointing it makes Speirs run a little less spectacular.

[@DATo_DATonian]

Tanks and 88s weren't the problem ... the infantry was.

[@johnsometimeswrong8742]

There were only about 1600 tigers of all variants made...apparently it was quite rare to run into one.

[@iHatePolitics]

All the men of Easy Company are together again. Stand easy, fellas.

[@imjinrat2325]

Who is the other guy?

[@vinniemoran7362]

I think that's McClung with Shifty. McClung: "I think some of their slave labor was putting horse manure in their ammunition", lolol!

[@highlonesome-coloradobluegrass]

Is Shifty still alive?

[@froot6086]

no he died in 2009

[@user-ur7bf1in4h]

No😢

[@TellySavalas-or5hf]

Is he still alive in 2023?!

[@ValorArtStudios]

Sadly, Shifty passed in 2009. This film was taken in 2004.

[@StephenOConnell-tz5zw]

oh wow definitely NOT the first time either gentleman has shared these stories on film lol

[@fazole]

These stories relate just how badly trained the Germans were at the end of the war. A trained sniper would have never exposed himself like that.