Edward James "Babe" Heffron (16 May 1923 – 1 December 2013) was a private with E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, in the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army during World War II. Heffron was portrayed in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers by Robin Laing. Heffron wrote Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends: Two WWII Paratroopers from the Original Band of Brothers Tell Their Story with fellow veteran William "Wild Bill" Guarnere and journalist Robyn Post in 2007. Early life Edward James Heffron was born in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1923, the third of five children to Joseph (a prison guard) and Anne. The family was Irish Catholic and attended Mass every Sunday and Heffron and his siblings attended Sacred Heart Catholic School. He attended South Philadelphia High School, but had to drop out to earn money during the Great Depression. He went to work at New York Shipbuilding in Camden, New Jersey, sandblasting cruisers in preparation for converting them to light aircraft carriers. Because of his job he had a 2B exemption from military service, but he did not use it, since he wanted to go with his friend, Anthony Cianfrani, into the airborne. As a teenager, he had developed an intermittent medical condition where his hands and fingers would curl under and lock up, causing severe pain (possibly, the onset of Dupuytren's contracture), but this was never mentioned to anyone as he wanted to continue playing football in school. Either the exemption or the medical condition would have allowed him to remain stateside, but he refused to stay home when his brothers (Joseph, James, and John), friends, and neighbors were all doing their duty. Heffron enlisted on 7 November 1942 in his hometown. Military service As a replacement member of E Company, Heffron fought and proved himself in several major battles, including Operation Overlord in France, Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands, and the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne, Belgium. During the Battle of the Bulge he served as a machine gunner and was awarded the Bronze Star. He helped liberate the Kaufering concentration camp in Landsberg, Germany, and in the seizure of Hitler's Eagle's Nest (Kehlsteinhaus). While at jump school Heffron made a pact with his two best friends, John T. "Johnny" Julian and J. D. Henderson, that if anything happened to one of them, the others would gather up that