Dave's WW2 Cents Military History Blog

Here are my reviews of the HBO series, the Pacific, parts 1:

Part 1: starts out with very effective documentary footage of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor and US President F.D. Roosevelt’s radio address shortly after. Tom Hanks narrates the intro and talks about the Japanese empire of Summer 1942, stating “they (the Japanese) were at Australia’s doorstep” and mentions about the Japanese building an airfield on Guadalcanal which could threaten Australia and allied shipping lanes. The 1st American Marine Division shipped out from New Zealand for the first American offensive of the war.

Following this are interviews of American vets of the war, stating that the main thing on Guadalcanal was “to stay alive”. Then the HBO credits and music follow, the same pattern for other parts of the series.

Dec 1941 in the US, showing a snow covered church and Robert Leckie walking inside what appears to be a catholic church, crossing himself and saying a prayer, likely praying for the well being of the nation recently plunged into a war. On the way out he runs into the neighbor girl Vera and has a small talk and mentions that he might write to her, she comes across as a very sweet and attractive girl and its obvious why he would be attracted to her.

Next it shows Chesty Puller briefing the Non Commissioned Officers (NCOs) of what appears to be the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Marine Brigade (let me know if this is the right unit) with a map of the world behind him showing the areas that have been recently conquered by both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. One thing I notice about the map is that there are some inaccuracies such as showing that Iceland is under the Nazi sphere of occupation when this is not true, also there appear to be some eastern African nations that I don’t believe were conquered by the Nazis, I will have to look at the map again and try to figure it out. I’m kind of surprised that the people making the map did not consult or figure this out, this is something that really jumps out as being wrong. Anyways, Chesty Puller gives an impassioned speech about Japan wanting to take over half the world and wanting to keep it. The men he is talking to will be the backbone of the Marine unit, really directing and being involved in the fighting and he does his best to impress upon them the seriousness of the situation, stating that “we will meet the enemy and kill them all”.

Next scenes show each of the three major Marine characters portrayed in this series:
Over Christmas it shows the Basilone family with two of his Marine buddies visiting. It is obvious from the setting that there is warmth and love in the family. Next shows Robert Leckie leaving for the Marines and shaking hands goodbye with his father.

Then Eugene Sledge is shown, he comes from an upper class southern family and is the son of a physician who will not allow him to enlist because of a heart murmur. Eugene is heart-broken that he is not able to enlist and wishes his good friend Sid Phillips luck as Sid is going to enlist in the Marines with Eugene wishing he could go with him.

Cut to August 7, 1942 on Guadalcanal. After an uneventful landing and several weeks on the island (it is not actually clear that several weeks have past but I know from the chronology of the recorded battle that this happened), Leckies unit of the 1st Marine division dig in at the Tenaru River, also known as “Alligator Creek”. At night there is a fierce Japanese attack by 917 men of the Japanese Ichiki regiment that is fought off in nighttime fighting. The next morning a wounded Japanese soldier who is being attended to by 2 Marines grabs them and explodes a hand grenade showing the Japanese Bushido code that the allies will see during the Pacific campaign, the Japanese soldiers show a propensity of preferring death to surrender.

Overall it was a good first part, however because of the focus on 3 characters it will take many episodes before you get a real feel of the personalities of each main character and how they will change during the course of the series (the war). The acting, dialogue and and settings seem to be authentic for the period.
It’s still too early to tell how good this series will be but the start is promising. Supposedly the heart of the series will focus on the battle for Peleliu and there will be three entire episodes devoted to that battle so expect to have more of a feel for the series by that point and during those episodes.

Another review of The Pacific is on the Chicago Tribune’s online blog:
Click here for article

Since I have only seen trailers and previews I’ll have to take the reviewers word for it, sounding good so far.

I finished Band of Brothers books again and I stopped taking notes about half way through because I enjoyed it so much. One of the things that interested me the most was finding out what happened to the actual soldiers after the war. Very sad to see what happened to Sobel, looks like he had some real demons, I don’t wish that anyone except some of the top Nazis who started that whole mess.

Also, about Lt Speirs his wife found out that her husband was really alive and he returned to her. She chose he old hubby over Speirs and they also kept all the plunder, wow, that was cold-blooded, those were his spoils of war.

Band of Brothers was a very accessible and readable book, a good thing.

My latest: during my spare time I’ve been reading Anthony Read’s book about Hitler’s top henchmen called the Devil’s Disciples and will write some about that when I’m done. Also, I’m looking forward to the first episode of The Pacific coming up on Sunday on HBO, it should look great in HD.

You can read it : here

This is a post about one of my favorite WW2 books is Enemy at the Gates by William Craig. Although it is flawed (will get into later), it is still one the great books about World War Two.
At the beginning of the book you get a description of the victorious german Sixth Army as it rolled through the Russian countryside crushing all resistance standing in its path. Then during the struggled you get first-hand accounts of the soldiers on both sides of the conflict and what they endured. The great thing about this book is in addition to getting a description of the large-unit operations within this battle you also get an idea of what life was like for the soldiers on the ground that were doing the fighting.

The reason that this book is flawed centers on point: while Vasily Zaytsev was a skilled sniper and great hero of the war against the Nazis, I’m not certain that the so-called duel between Zaytsev and the German major really happened. It sounds too much like wild west showdown meets Soviet propaganda: the blue-blood Prussian aristocrat superman German sniper duels the simple Shepard proletariat Zaytsev. There is some skepticism among military historians if this duel happened, I could be wrong, maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. Anyways, the movie only covered one man so how could it be the story of the Battle of Stalingrad, I was highly disappointed in this movie. Even if the duel happened the movie portrays it like a Wild West duel which is laughable and rather stupid.

Another reason I dislike the movie because now when you buy the book you have the actors faces on the book, just associating the movie with the book like that is in poor taste but I guess it was all done for profit.

Ok here is my rant: I just read two reviews of The Pacific and I am getting the impression that people think that The Pacific is BOB pt 2. If you have a critique of the series, that is your opinion, I just don’t know if it is right to compare a series that has the focus on 3 main characters, each having a unique experience.

There were around 150 characters in Easy Company, not all covered in the series but the series was about the Company. The Pacific, in contrast, is about these 3 guys and their experiences so it will probably seem a bit more disjointed if it jumps from one character to the next.

Check it out, nice review of the Pacific: HERE

I have just watched all the Band of Brothers episodes again and I’m rereading the book too.  Some observations so far:

* In the series (unlike the book) it does not say anything about Nixon not liking jocks (Compton) but when there is a briefing he pronounces a town with French pronunciation and then says the anglicized pronunciation while looking at Lt. Compton (is he trying to say that since he’s a jock he would not understand the town’s name).

*Sobel should get a lot of credit for the hard training that made Easy Company into an elite unite but I would not want to  follow that man into battle either.  In addition to making the unit more effective the hard training likely gave the unit an edge since they hated Sobel so much it likely made them meaner, that’s the whole idea of the military, it was talked about in either Leckie’s or Sledge’s book (I don’t rember which one), they want to keep so mad that you have that aggressive edge.

*Lt Speirs was a wild man, running outside the trenches in the attack at Brecourt Manor, that takes some guts.

*1800 of the 5300 enlisted men and 148 out of the 500 officers made it through the 506th PIR training, that’s a pretty high washout rate and a suggestion of how tough the training was.

*I think it’s difficult in a 10 part series to capture the difficulty of the training, to really do this it would have to probably be a 15 part series.

Will keep you updated, I’m only on page 106.

The HBO mini-series The Pacific is coming next month and I am awaiting it’s premiere with great anticipation. The short clip “Making The Pacific” is on demand on HBO now, showing some great behind the scenes clips on what went into the production.

The series is primarily based on the wartime experiences of 3 marines: John Basilone, Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie. Mrs Sledge and Leckie both wrote books about their experiences fighting in the war, With the Old Breed At Peleliu and Okinawa (Sledge) and Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific (Leckie). Since John Basilone did not survive the war there is no self written manuscript about his experiences, however since he was a great hero of the war, winning the Medal of Honor, there are plenty of published accounts of his deeds which can be used to get material for the series.

It looks like the series will focus on 4 battles:
1. Guadalcanal (Leckie, Basilone)
2. Peleliu (Sledge, Leckie)
3. Iwo Jima (Basilone)
4. Okinawa (Sledge)

3 of the 10 episodes will be about fighting on Peleliu, with both E Sledge and R Leckie.  Fighting on Peleliu was especially nasty and brutal with a rugged rocky terrain making things worse.  This battle was generally under-reported and under-appreciated during the time and there has been a great deal of debate if the US military should have bypassed this island.  Nevertheless, the story is compelling and I can never give enough thanks to the brave men who fought on this island against the Japanese.

The best fan site for the series online is here: The Pacific Fansite

First posting on my blog. Let me mention my goals of this blog: essentially I want to write about topics related to World War 2 military history. This is from the perspective of an average fan of the subject, I don’t have an formal training in education in the subject matter, except an undergraduate course in military history.
I am a US Army veteran but I should mention that WW2 was well before my time so I welcome all comments from everyone, especially any from WW2 vets if I’m lucky enough to get feedback from those of you who served our country during this war.