The Pacific

[Michael Emrys]

So the old breed are the ones ho actually had to fight with Springfields then?

Not necessarily. They had Garands at Cape Gloucester.

Michael

[gunnergoz]

I really found episode 8, mostly about John Basilone, to be extremely moving. I finally did get his authorized biography, along with a copy of Leckie's book, and am looking forward to seeing how they compare to the script. So far the story line has followed Sledge's account pretty closely.

This series is clearly not BoB but I find it credible and respectful of the themes and the times. I'd be curious to hear what Marine veterans of these battles might have to say, but I think that overall, this series has best captured WW2 in the Pacific as I read of it and understood it. Yes, some of the dialogue and words may ring a bit anachronistic, but the general sense of the times seems to be well captured. Perhaps it is only Spielberg and Hanks giving us what we expect to see, and not that we are seeing what actually was...but who but those who were there can ever experience it as it truly was?

I recall being on another (European) game publisher's forums some time ago, and being bitterly attacked by revisionists who denied that the Japanese followed anything like the Bushido ethic, claiming that they, the Japanese, were cruelly denied opportunities to surrender by racist American soldiers and Marines. These revisionists insisted that American war memoirs of the Pacific were self-serving fabrications, where the Japanese were made into monsters and the Americans into saints. I was flabbergasted because no source would satisfy these revisionists, who were steadfast in their view that the whole Pacific war had been embellished by Americans to cover up our own savagery. And don't even begin to mention the A-bomb to these people...

So I will be very curious to see what impact this series has in Europe and what feedback results.

[JonS]

Sledge explicitly includes any veterans of Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester in that definition.

Michael

http://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-History-Marine-Division/dp/0892010525

First published 1949

[Stalins Organ]

Wasn't the battle of Cape Glucester quite late in the scheme of things - late 1943-early 1944?

[JonS]

They landed Dec 1943

[Michael Emrys]

Wasn't the battle of Cape Glucester quite late in the scheme of things - late 1943-early 1944?

Considering that Tarawa was invaded on 20 November, 1943, that doesn't seem so late to me. Prior to that, most of the island fighting in the Pacific was either on New Guinea or in the Solomons. Cape Gloucester was sort of the culmination of those two campaigns, since it completed the isolation of Rabaul.

There was still plenty of fighting left for the next two years.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

As for the buddy telling him not to stoop to pulling teeth, I may be wrong but I think it was a medic buddy and not "Snafu."

That is correct. In the book is is the corpsman (as they are called in the Navy/Marines) "Doc" Caswell who stops him and makes up the excuse about the germs.

Michael