Band of Brothers stars take part in D-Day jump
Actors from HBO TV series Band of Brothers have taken part in parachute jumps to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Alex Sabga-Brady, who played Cpl Frank Mellet, and Christian Black who played Technical Sergeant Walter Hendrix, wanted to raise money for veterans.
Their final jump will be out of a plane again this weekend above the Cotentin Peninsula in France, after one above Normandy.
Mr Sabga-Brady and Mr Black said the idea came from "a few conversations" with cast members and they then trained at Camp Toccoa in the US.
The popular TV series focused on soldiers from Easy Company, of the 101st Airborne in the US army.
In the months ahead of D-Day, they trained in Aldbourne in Wiltshire.
Although in the show the actors can be seen jumping out of aircraft, it was only in recent months that they were trained to parachute for this project over 20 years later.
Mr Sabga-Brady and Mr Black said the group felt that it would be amazing to do what they "didn’t do" in the series and to "static line jump" like Easy Company did, while they raised money for veterans.
To prepare for these jumps, they headed to the United States for training with paratroopers.
A documentary, titled The Jump: Currahee to Normandy, is being made which follows them through this.
'We are still brothers'
However, to train for the TV series previously, they went through a bootcamp.
Both Mr Sabga-Brady and Mr Black described it as being "pretty tough" as they had to endure "11 days of sleep deprivation".
It included hand-to-hand combat, assault courses, and firing a range of weapons.
Mr Sabga-Brady said the training took actors and "turns them into a unit of soldiers".
He said: "We went from being a group of guys that didn’t know each other into a believable unit of airborne paratroopers.
"We still consider ourselves brothers today. I mean, one of them even is godfather to my daughter."
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