George Luz, the quick-witted radio operator of Easy Company whose impersonations and unshakeable nerve carried him from the beaches of Normandy to Hitler’s mountain retreat, died not as a quiet Rhode Island handyman as television audiences were told, but in a freak industrial accident that crushed him beneath a 7,200-pound laundry dryer, leaving a stunned community to mourn a man 1,600 people would line up to honor.
Luz was 77 years old when he reported for what should have been a routine repair job on the morning of October 15, 1998. He kissed his wife Delvina goodbye, promised to meet her for coffee that afternoon, and drove to a state facilities laundry to service a commercial dryer. The machine slipped from its supports and fell on him, killing him instantly.
It was a 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 end for a man who had survived some of the deadliest combat of the Second World War.
The circumstances of Luz’s death, and much of the life he built afterward, were omitted or misrepresented in “Band of Brothers,” the acclaimed HBO miniseries that introduced his story to millions. The series closed by describing him as a handyman in Providence, Rhode Island. According to his son, George Luz Jr.
, that error may have originated when a screenwriter misunderstood Luz’s widow during a telephone conversation and took her remark that her husband was “handy around the house” as a job description.
In truth, Luz returned from Europe and threw himself into a working life as varied and industrious as the one he had left behind. He briefly worked at a used furniture store, then as a painter, and built houses before returning to the textile trade he had entered before the war. He completed an apprenticeship as a lace weaver and took a job in a lace mill, work he was still performing at the time of the 1950 census.
He later became a machine mechanic for the state of Rhode Island and spent 12 years with Little Rhody Machine Shop, performing preventive maintenance on pumps and motors. After a dozen years as a maintenance worker at Eleanor Slater Hospital, he retired in 1986 at age 65, only to return to work a month or two later. By the late 1990s he was still laboring three days a week as a mechanic on large industrial dryers.
Luz was born on June 17, 1921, in Fall River, Massachusetts, to Jose and Maria Luz, Portuguese immigrants from the island of Sao Miguel in the Azores who arrived in America around the turn of the century. Neither parent spoke English. The son of a mill worker, George was one of 10 children, six girls and four boys, and the family eventually settled in West Warwick, Rhode Island, drawn partly by work and partly by a substantial Portuguese community.
He could not speak English when he started first grade, but learned quickly. During the Great Depression he shined shoes and hauled ice up flights of stairs into neighbors’ iceboxes to help his parents make ends meet. Like many young people of his era, he quit school in his junior year.
By the time he registered for the draft on February 16, 1942, he was working as a threader at Windsor Lace Mill in Coventry, Rhode Island, a town once known as the lace capital of America.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Luz answered the call that drew so many young men of his generation. He enlisted in the Army on August 25, 1942, in Providence, Rhode Island, and volunteered for the paratroopers, who were regarded as the best of the best. He was also candid about the financial appeal.
“I was 21 years old and I was making about $16 a week and when they said it’s $50 a month extra, man, I just jumped at it,” Luz recalled in a rare video interview. His father, he said, wept and did not want him to go.
Assigned to Camp Toccoa, Georgia, Luz became part of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, training under the strict command of Captain Herbert Sobel. He served as a radio man and rose to the rank of Technician 4th Grade. About three months before D-Day, while Easy Company was stationed in Aldbourne, England, Luz was selected to train with Britain’s 6th Airborne Division on the Salisbury Plain, making several jumps, including one from a Whitley bomber that required him to drop through a hole in the fuselage floor.
The maneuver was feared by paratroopers because a mistimed exit could smash a man’s face against the edge of the hole, producing broken noses, busted lips, or gashed chins. Veterans called it the “Whitley kiss.” Luz made it through unscathed, though his son said he nearly collided with another bomber that appeared to be out of position.
Luz became renowned within Easy Company for his humor and his gift for mimicry. Buck Compton recalled that Luz “could mimic people and keep a whole crowd laughing.” David Kenyon Webster wrote simply, “Everybody liked Luz.”
Dick Winters described him as possessing “a wonderful sense of humor” and “a fierce loyalty to Company E that was second to none,” calling him tough as nails.
His most famous prank, dramatized in the miniseries, was real. Concealed behind bushes, Luz imitated the voice of Major Oliver Horton and tricked Sobel into cutting a Wiltshire farmer’s barbed wire fence, allowing the farmer’s cows to escape. Sobel was reprimanded by Colonel Strayer, who pointed out that Horton was on leave in London and could not have issued the order.
Luz was never caught.
During the D-Day drops, fate intervened. Luz, burdened with a radio and batteries, worried he could not reach the door of the C-47 in time. He told Lieutenant Welsh he would never make it, and Welsh ordered him to switch places with Private Roy Cobb.
Moments later, flak penetrated the fuselage and struck Cobb in the leg, leaving him groaning and unable to stand. Had Luz not spoken up, he would have been the one writhing on the floor of the aircraft.
Luz kicked his leg bag out the door and jumped into the night at about 1:30 a. m. The prop blast tore away his equipment, but he landed safely, initially alone, and did not find his company until 7:45 that morning.
He fought with Easy Company in Normandy, the Netherlands, and Bastogne.
He did not escape the war unscathed. Not long after jumping into the Netherlands in September 1944, his ankle was crushed between objects when his foot was run over by a horse-drawn carriage. He was hospitalized until November 1944 and received his only Purple Heart for the injury.
In January 1945, Luz narrowly escaped death again. Two close friends, Skip Muck and Alex Penkala, had dug a foxhole and invited him to share it. Luz refused and dug his own slit trench.
German artillery rained down, and one shell scored a direct hit on their position. When daylight came and Luz was asked to wake the two men, he looked into the hole and saw nothing but dirt. He jumped in and dug with his hands, pulling out their sleeping bags.
Both were dead.
“I’ll always thank God for my thick head,” Luz wrote in a letter his son later read publicly. Shifty Powers recalled approaching the foxhole and seeing Luz’s hands covered in dirt and blood. Luz shook his head.
There was barely anything left of the two men, aged 22 and 20.
Later that month Luz helped provide machine gun cover fire for the February 15, 1945 patrol across the Moder River near Haguenau, France, to gather German prisoners for intelligence. In April 1945 he entered Germany with Easy Company and was present when the unit came upon the Kaufering IV concentration camp, part of a network of Dachau subcamps, where the men witnessed firsthand evidence of Nazi atrocities.
The following month, while Easy Company explored Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest above Berchtesgaden, Luz was injured in a motorcycle accident on the very day the war in Europe ended. Having never ridden a motorcycle, he commandeered one from a German soldier, figured out how to operate it in 15 to 20 minutes, and set off down the road. About five miles from Berchtesgaden, he turned his head to look at a group of German girls who called out to him, took his eyes off the road, and crashed into a bridge abutment.
His hospital record described friction burns to his chest and knee and various bruises. He was discharged from the hospital in June 1945 and honorably discharged from the Army in November 1945.
“It was the best 3 years of my life,” Luz said of his time with the men of Easy Company.
After the war he fell in love with Delvina Rogers, the younger sister of a neighborhood friend. Six years his junior and one of 12 children, she had worked in a factory making flight jackets for pilots during the war and later worked as a seamstress. They married in 1948 and had three children: two sons, Steve and George Jr.
, and a daughter, Lana. Steve followed his father into military service, joining the Air Force.
Luz became a well-known figure in his Rhode Island community. He served as a volunteer fireman, belonged to various associations including a Portuguese club, and attended Mass every Sunday with his family at St. Anthony’s Church in West Warwick, a Roman Catholic parish built by Portuguese Americans shortly after the First World War.
In the 1970s, he returned to school to earn his GED, making up for the education he had sacrificed to support his family during the Depression.
He remained close to his Easy Company comrades, attending yearly reunions and traveling with his wife. His son said the veterans were like uncles, always part of the family’s life. His children remembered him as reserved in their youth, never a “huggy kissy father,” but he softened with time.
By the arrival of his grandchildren, it was not unusual to see him crawling down the hallway on his hands and knees in pursuit of them.
His daughter Lana recalled a Christmas when her aunt, a mother of six, could not afford presents. Luz, who had his own family and was by no means wealthy, bought gifts for all his nieces and nephews. “There’s no way these kids aren’t going to have toys for Christmas,” he said.
Lana remembered that her parents always seemed able to stretch a dollar in a million ways. “Growing up, we always had everything we needed,” she said.
Richard Winters said George Luz raised a wonderful family and lived long enough to enjoy his grandchildren. He had seven grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
When he died, the line at his funeral stretched out the door of the funeral parlor and around the block. Bill Guarnere drove from Philadelphia to be there. “Everybody who knew my dad loved him,” his son said.
“Our dad would do anything for anybody. He was sincere, kind, and caring. A behind-the-scenes man who shunned attention.
He did things solely because they were the right things. And when he did someone a favor, he expected nothing in return.”
His daughter Lana revealed that Luz was buried with medals his family never knew he had. “Dad was buried with his medals on his chest,” she said. “A Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, and others.
We had no idea that he had medals. He had never told us about them.” He was laid to rest at the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island.
“It’s a beautiful spot with a lot of flowers around,” Lana said. “They make it beautiful there.”
In one of his last letters to Richard Winters, George Luz wrote, “It’s been a wonderful life.”
“Band of Brothers” premiered three years after his death. His son George Luz Jr. continues to attend reunions and has dedicated much of his life to preserving the legacy of his father and the men of Easy Company, giving talks and helping lead historical tours.
“As long as we continue to talk about them, they’ll never be forgotten,” he said.