The Pacific: Part 9

[skribetm]

That is why there are no glorious living, but only glorious dead.
Heroes turn traitor, warriors age and grow soft -
but a victim is changeless, sacrifice is eternal.

(Helmet for My Pillow, pages 303-305)

[Gh0stFT]

Part X, wonder how you can come home and life normal after going through such an
long horror. Everyone is for sure not the same guy again.

A very good series, never seen any movie who describes the horror of war that close,
its horrible what this guys went through. At some parts of the movie i almost git sick :/
The movie is very intense, it starts like an adventure but changes to an uncomfort
feeling to want to leave this place asap but you cant, like an nightmare where u get
stuck.

actually now i think the some longer "love-parts" are important, to let the viewer calm
down, see this young guys in a "different-normal" light before going back to the nightmare.

R
Gh0stFT

[68Wooley]

Very good series overall, and a very moving conclusion.

I feel blessed to have lived with and known members of that generation and it is such a shame they are now rapidly passing from us. However, they have earned their place in history whilst I suspect my generation will be remembered for nothing much at all.

[SKJohn]

Very powerful filmaking.  Im still taking it all in.  Great series!

Just this evening I ordered the book set "with the old breed/helmet for my pillow" by E. B. Sledge and Robert Leckie respectively from military book club.  Looking forward to the reading.

I ordered the same set back when the series first started.  Can't believe that I never read these before.  Of the two, I liked Leckie's writing style better.  The Military Book Club also offers a companion book to the series called "The Pacific."  In this book it tells the stories of the other two men whose stories are not told in the HBO series.  One is a soldier who was in the Phillipines when the war started, and ended up fighting with Fertig and the guerillas, and the other is about a naval aviator bomber pilot who starts off flying SBD's, then Helldivers, and finally F6F Hellcats.  Also a very good and informative book.

[gyrene81]

Part 10 was very moving. Sometimes it feels like they don't make folks like that anymore.

It's very rare now.

[Plawranc]

I personally was rather peeved at the fact Iwo Jima was 20 minutes long. I think that the Battles shouldve been given two episodes each.

Guadalcanal, Pelelieu (cbf spelling it properly), Iwo Jima, Okinawa with the first and last episodes introducing and concluding the characters.

That is what I think should have been done. But obviously side stories of mental hospitals and heroes at home looking for love and sex take precedence to maintain interest in the female market.

But the bits that do stay on topic are done absolutely superbly.

[Stoney]

Well, Manila John was killed early on the first day, so if they're only covering him, Iwo was doomed to short coverage in this series.

[Hoarach]

Neither have I.
But I have seen all 9 episodes.....

 

How?

Its called illegal downloading.... all 10 are available to download through torrents and are of DVD quality.  Dont ask me how but I have seen them.   

[guncrasher]

Rather disappointed at the series.  Can't belive. I kept HBO for five months for it.


Semp

[Golfer]

If you're disappointed in the series I suggest you read the books.  It puts a whole new light on what little they were able to portray with the short time they had to work with.

[Stoney]

If you're disappointed in the series I suggest you read the books.  It puts a whole new light on what little they were able to portray with the short time they had to work with.

I agree wholeheartedly Golfer.  And, for those of you that thought they could have done with more Pelileu/Iwo/Oki, and less of Melbourne and the lovey-dovey stuff, you've got to understand that the experience these guys went through was a comprehensive one.  If you've ever been thrust into a situation where you don't know when or if you're coming back, life tends to get very condensed.  You play harder, you live quicker, and you love much faster.  Those things, whether they quench your desire for more action or not, are just as important for this type of tale as the shooting, in my opinion.  Besides, who doesn't like all the boobs?  Especially the chick from Law & Order.  How many times have you been watching L&O and said to yourself "man, I'd love to see her naked..."  Well, now you have.  

[kilo2]

I haven't seen any of this series, did Okinawa get snubbed?

My great grandfather was drafted late in the war and fought during that one battle and has always said he has not seen any movies or series about it.

[68Hawk]

I cried when Sledge hugged his mom.  I know what that's like.

Sledge's and Leckie's books are both excellent, and are two of the best memoirs ever written.  Leckie is amazing for his prose and the way his eye interprets the world around him.  Sledge is amazing for his raw, yet eloquent descriptions of some of the worst battles humankind has ever seen.  The companion book to the series is also quite good, but I'm finding it a little dry for what I expected.  It really is a companion book, and doesn't stand as tall on it's own.  Still, I highly recommend it.  I especially appreciate the inclusion of the pilot and the POWs.  It brings a larger dimension to the capturing of the pacific war than the series was able to do with it's necessitated focus on the Marine Infantry. 

[Yeager]

Well, Manila John was killed early on the first day, so if they're only covering him, Iwo was doomed to short coverage in this series.

As brutal as Iwo was, the fifteen minutes they spent on it pretty well summed it up.  Hell on Earth.

[Soulyss]

I cried when Sledge hugged his mom.  I know what that's like.

Sledge's and Leckie's books are both excellent, and are two of the best memoirs ever written.  Leckie is amazing for his prose and the way his eye interprets the world around him.  Sledge is amazing for his raw, yet eloquent descriptions of some of the worst battles humankind has ever seen.  The companion book to the series is also quite good, but I'm finding it a little dry for what I expected.  It really is a companion book, and doesn't stand as tall on it's own.  Still, I highly recommend it.  I especially appreciate the inclusion of the pilot and the POWs.  It brings a larger dimension to the capturing of the pacific war than the series was able to do with it's necessitated focus on the Marine Infantry. 

I was really impressed by the prose and writing exhibited by Leckie, just finished his book a couple weeks ago. I think I posted another passage earlier in this thread but this one was one of my favorites as well.

I got up and made for the airfield. About twenty yards away was a burning tank.  Some of the enemy dead were inside.  The snipers hung in their nests like dolls stuffed in a Christmas stocking.  I turned to go, and as I did, nearly stepped on someone's hand.  "Excuse me," I began to say, but then I saw that it was an unattached, hand, or rather a detached one. It there alone - open, palm upwards, clean, capable, solitary.  I could not tear my eyes from it.  The hand is the artisan of the soul. It is the second member of the human trinity of head and hand and heart.  A man has no faculty more human than his hand, none more beautiful nor expressive nor productive.  To see this hand lying alone, as though contemptuously cast aside, no longer a part of a man, no longer his help, to see war in all it's wantonness; it was to see the especially brutal savagery of our own technique of rending, and it was to see men at their eternal worst, turning upon one another, tearing on another, clawing at their own innards with the maniacal fury of the pride - possessed.

The hand saddened me and I offered it a respectful inclination of the head while recovering my balance and making a careful circle around it.