Joseph D. Liebgott was born in 1915 in Michigan. His parents, Joseph Sr. and Mary, were immigrants from Austria. Joseph Sr. was Catholic, and raised Joe in that faith. Mary may have been born Jewish and later converted for marriage.Joe grew up in Oakland, California. He finished 2 years of high school and worked a variety of jobs, mostly helping his father in their barbershop. He listed his occupation as cook in his enlistment records.He enlisted in the Army on September 9, 1942, in San Francisco, and subsequently volunteered for the Airborne, finding his way to Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Camp Toccoa, Georgia.One of the older men of the group, he was infamous for his penchant for killing Nazi prisoners. Despite this, he is remembered as a good friend and a good soldier by his wartime buddies, producing the portrait drawn by Stephen Ambrose in the book and leading to the character as portrayed in the HBO miniseries. Most emphatically, he is remembered as telling everyone he was Jewish.After the series aired, his children made contact with Bill Guarnere and the rest of Easy Company, attending a reunion in Phoenix in 2002. There they revealed that their father had raised them Catholic. Moreover, they reported that, unlike the memory of their father given in the book and series, Liebgott had never hacked a cab in San Francisco, and did not go back there after the war.Instead they said their father had gone missing after the war, and remained missing for three years, never even telling his parents where he went or that he had even come back. His family believes Joe suffered, like many veterans, from PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome), and decided to bum it for a while, dropping out of society.Whatever happened to him, after three years missing, he turned up in California's Great Valley, got married, and raised a large family. He worked as a barber until his death. He never told his children about being in the war. They only found out after the book and series made him known. Digging through his things in the attic, they discovered the 506th regimental scrapbook, and his jumpwings. Show less «