As the series continues two things have become clear. The first is that each episode has been formatted for future telecasts on commercial TV, as each episode dedicates less than forty-five minutes towards advancing the storyline. In fact after watching the opening credits, a few worthwhile minutes of commentary from actual Marine Veterans, and then rehashing scenes from the previous episode, the second installment of this series was over about the time it started to get interesting. Following the end credits we were then given a few scenes from the next installment, all within the hour. This short time slot allotted to actually advance the story in the last two episodes is why I am reviewing episodes two and three at the same time.

 

The second item that has already been made all too clear is that the writers of these episodes are definitely going for a record in the use of the F-word per minute allotted on the screen. As I mentioned in my review of the first episode I do not believe that the men of this era used this ‘universal adjective’ so profusely. So far in “The Pacific” it has been used to such abundance that other more common profanity, which would seem more natural, has been totally forsaken so that this F-word can be constantly thrown about.

 

One man, who is far more educated and wiser than I, commented on my first review that, “Most movies of historical perspective though insert many of today's values and even cultural norms, more to help people connect than anything else… I've always heard it referred to as ‘presentism’.”

 

My friend has hit the nail on the head with this ‘presentism’ and as such the series’ writers are apparently using this ploy to vigorously connect with today’s youth. I am sorry to say, that to be bombarded by this F-word more frequently than in this series one would only have to visit a modern day high school cafeteria at lunchtime.

 

A few years ago when I first started writing another friend, who also has a better education and is wiser than I, told me that using profanity degraded the message and showed a lack of intelligence. It is a shame that the writers of this series were not given the same advice, or for that matter the writers of most of what we now call entertainment. For without this constant vulgarity in our movies, humor and literature I doubt that our younger generations would be so openly boisterous with their profanity.

 

By deliberately cutting the episodes for commercial use, yet insisting on the all too frequent use of the F-word, the writers and producers of this series have created a problem for those future non-cable viewers. For when the series is shown on commercial TV it will almost be necessary to “bleep” out entire exchanges.

 

“Am I late?”

 

“Yeah the Old Man just left.”

 

“Ah… bleep you, you bleeping bleeper.”

 

“Yeah bleep you too.” 

 

Regardless, in our Liberal Hollywood society, both the writers and the producers will probably win Emmys.

 

 

The Pacific: Part Two

 

At the beginning of Part Two the Marine Veterans talked about how they were starving on Guadalcanal, suffering from disease and of the constant bombardment and air strikes by the Japanese because our Navy had to withdraw. One Veteran stated that their time on ‘The Canal’ became about “survival” and another added that they simply “prayed and held on.”

 

The episode did a good job of showing how they had to scrounge for food and other supplies, which included a reference to having to eat rations from WW I. This reminded me of how in 1969, while going through the Infantry Training Regiment, we were eating C-Rations from WW II and Korea.

 

The story picked up pace while touching on the miseries of diarrhea, malaria, and fatigue, then adding a lighter moment of the Marines raiding an Army supply dump. This sequence was concluded with a Marine vomiting his Army ‘liberated’ canned peaches as a result of what happens to your starving system when real food is reintroduced.

 

There was a startling Japanese naval bombardment with Marines shouting the F-word in defiance and the all too unnecessary graphic scenes of the effects of a direct hit on a bunker. Honestly, Hitchcock was right when he said that the audiences’ imaginations are much more powerful than actually showing the violence or its carnage.

 

I was surprised that during this naval bombardment that they did not show at least one Marine hunkered down in his bunker praying like Satan himself was clutching his soul. Even as it was stated by the Marine Veteran in the beginning of this episode that they “prayed and held on,” somehow the writers of this series failed to take his cue and lost a prime opportunity to show how men in such extreme circumstances always turn to God. Instead what we were shown and heard were men looking desperate but saying nothing while in the background others defiantly shouted, “Bleep you!” and “You bleepers!”

 

When I know for a fact, and from personal experience, that most of us would cry out to the Lord for salvation, do these Hollywood filmmakers continue to deny that simple fact?  

 

Most of the scenes with Chesty Puller, convincingly played by William Sadler, are memorable with the exception of the one with the “bigger boat” cliché. This cliché goes back to Spielberg’s 1975 classic, “Jaws” when Chief Brody sees the shark up close for the first time and utters the now famous line, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

 

While this “bigger boat” bit worked as a tension reliever in “Jaws”, it has since been used way too many times and very often comes off as ridiculous considering the circumstances.

 

A good example of this cliché’s overuse was in the 2004 remake of “The Alamo” when upon seeing the Mexican Army arrive, Billy Bob Thornton’s Davy Crockett stammers, “We’re gonna need more men.” Anyone who hardly knows anything at all about the Alamo at least knows that the Texans were vastly outnumbered. Likewise Crockett and Company knew long before the first Mexican soldier crossed the Rio Grande that the Alamo needed more men.

 

Here in Part Two, after already telling the audience in at least two different scenes that the Marines were stretched dangerously thin across their line for an impending Japanese attack, for some unknown reason, the writers felt they needed to once again emphasize the seriousness of this manpower shortage. Or perhaps in homage to co-producer Spielberg they just could not resist using this “Jaws” cliché.

 

So just seconds before that attack begins a Marine outpost calls Puller on the landline to whisper, “I’ve got the whole ‘bleeping’ Japanese army headed your way.” After telling the outpost what to do after the Japanese pass by them, Puller hangs up the phone, stares off into space and mumbles, “We don’t have enough men.” Like the Marine command wasn’t already fully aware of their situation. Sadly, the way this was played out was almost laughable.

 

Finally the episode got around to displaying the heroics of Basilone and his Marines. It was a stirring account of not just Basilone’s bravery but of the courage and sacrifice of every Marine on that line.

 

One of the problems with the retelling of World War Two is that the people watching already know who won. It remains difficult to convey the idea that these were very uncertain times and that an American victory was in no way guaranteed.

 

It is also true that at the time these events were taking place the people involved had no idea of just how historically important they and their efforts would become. This last was well displayed as the Marines were taken off of Guadalcanal and as a sailor served them coffee explained to the unknowing Marines that back home, “…everybody knows about Guadalcanal and the First Marine Division.”

 

Like Basilone, who was surely surprised that he was to receive the Medal of Honor, these Marines were also surprised that anyone even knew what they had been doing.

 

But then real heroes rarely realize that they are heroes, until somebody else points it out.

 

 

The Pacific: Part Three

 

Some of the postproduction talk about this series has been the lack of showing more Naval battles, after all the Pacific Theater was mainly a Naval operation. The reasoning given for this lack of Naval warfare in the series was the high cost of bringing such scenes to life, so corners had to be cut.

 

One of the other things that I think is missing in this series is a title for each episode, you know, like the Star Wars Trilogies. But then I guess the 200 million dollar budget for “The Pacific” only went so far and besides not sinking ships you have to cut corners somewhere.

 

Anyway, The Pacific’s Episode One could have been titled, “Going To War” while Episode Two could have simply been named, “Guadalcanal.”

 

With the Marines going to Australia for R&R in Episode Three the title for that could have rightly been, “Aussie Girls Are Easy”, which may, or may not have shared that title with one of those tedious Elvis movies of the 60’s.

 

But if this production needed to save money by cutting corners they could have cut out this entire third episode.

 

Except for showing Marines getting drunk, picking up girls and getting thrown into the brig, I fail to see how this was historically informative or how it advanced the story line. Well, unless there is some historical significance to a Marine named Leckie getting lucky with an Aussie Lassie on the first date?

 

Still there was nothing new in this episode that we have not seen before. We all know that servicemen like to drink and raise a little hell in between battles, or as Tom Hanks would have us believe, in between fulfilling our racist agendas.

 

We all know that boys will be boys, and girls will be girls, even when they were our parents or grandparents. We also all know that women can’t resist a man in uniform, why even Hanoi Jane Fonda went gaga over guys in NVA khaki!

 

Except for Basilone’s MOH ceremony this episode was, well, boring and predictable.

 

Basilone is shown to have a drinking problem and ends up standing not so tall, and hung over, before his CO, Lt. Col. Chesty Puller. While Puller is explaining to Basilone that as someone with a MOH his drunken conduct is unacceptable, Basilone throws up in a wastepaper basket that Puller has quickly placed upon his desk. Basilone apologizes and states that he understands and then leaves the room with Chesty holding the fouled basket.

 

Say what? Even with an MOH on your resume you don’t leave your CO holding a wastebasket that you just filled with your breakfast. Those little shining thingies on that man’s collar means he’s a Lt. Colonel not a bellhop. You Sergeant had better take that basket with you and bring it back with a spit shine, if you’ll pardon the pun.

 

Meanwhile Leckie meets a girl, they have some… ah… exchanges, and then she dumps him. Her reasoning is that she does not want her mother to be hurt if Leckie doesn’t make it back.

 

Wow… This excuse ranks so much higher on the females’ go away and never call me again scale than “not tonight I’m washing my hair.”

 

Of course Leckie then does what any other red blooded American male would do after getting dumped by his sex crazed girlfriend, he gets drunk and pulls a gun on his Company Commanding Officer. Wham, bam, a nightstick finds his skull and Leckie is on his way to the brig and a transfer out of that company.

 

I just can’t shake the feeling that this entire episode was setting us up to once again show how Veterans can’t handle what they have been through and end up getting into trouble. While we Marines all know how the Basilone story ends, we will have to wait and see what troubles and misconduct this Hollywood production ultimately plays out for our heroes. As it now stands Hollywood has always discounted the millions of Veterans who have been through war, dealt with it, and then came home to lead productive lives. But then where is the drama, Liberal dogma, or the Academy Awards, in that copious but boring format?

 

Even though the Marines are now in Australia we are shown another American atrocity. Since this is the second American atrocity, with the first one being committed in Episode One, I figure that we will probably average one American atrocity in every other episode. After all, there’s no sense beating us over the head, they do want us to continue watching.

 

The set up is that the drunken, hung over Marines are surprised one morning with orders to gather up all of their gear, they’re going on a train ride. While traveling a hundred miles outside the city, so they can walk back, some of the Marines on the train are seen shooting a rifle out of a train window. As the train rolls along, a cow is pointed out as a target. Well, as we all know what great marksmen Marines are, another shot rings out, and off in the distant, peaceful meadow the cow drops dead.

 

In the midst of other Marines offering the shooter various forms of congratulations for his outstanding marksmanship such as, “Hey… nice shootin’ Tex!” Leckie, who is sitting a few rows away, stands up to berate the evil, stupid Marines. The shooter wants to know what the big deal is, as after all he explains, that cow was going to be killed for beef anyway! Leckie, who ridiculously had been the only one in an entire company of Marines with the good sense, morality and courage to stop the first atrocity in Episode One, now explains that the Marine had not shot a beef cow, but had just shot a dairy cow.

 

There is so much wrong with this scene that it is hard to know where to begin. Instead of seeing a disciplined Marine Corps unit we are given some distorted view of what looks like a bunch of drunken frat boys out for a train ride who just happen to have some guns and ammo and decide to play Buffalo Bill decimating the buffalo herds from a moving train.

 

While the writers of this series may have grown up in an urbanized America of the late 20^th Century, these men that were reaching maturity in the early ‘40s and were from a predominately rural America. At this time of our Nation’s history the idea that even a ‘city boy’ didn’t know the difference between a dairy cow and beef cattle is a little hard to drink down, or chew.

 

But the absurdity that jumps out the most in this scene is just where are all of the Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs)?

 

Contrary to what the Liberals would lead us to believe, all branches of the military take guns and the sound of gunfire very seriously. The first shot would have had the Officers and NCOs crawling all over these gun happy nimrods. All the Marines involved would have been disciplined in some manner and the shooter would have probably been made to pay damages to the farmer.

 

The military also knows more about guns and what they can do than the Liberal movie makers in Hollywood can even hope to know. The military is well aware that it is not good to mix weapons, live ammo and liquor, or in general, to let their people roam around with government issued guns and ammo. That is why the military does not allow servicemen to carry loaded weapons when on base and in non-hostile foreign countries. That is also why it was possible for an Islamic terrorist masquerading as an Army Major to kill 13 unarmed Army personnel at Ft. Hood.

 

So why would the Marine Corps even allow these Marines to have any ammo? According to the map that was shown at the beginning of this episode, they are in the southern part of Australia, which places them a couple of thousand miles away from the nearest Japanese solder. I seriously doubt that the Corps allowed these Marines to carry live ammo while they were in Australia or even that the Marines wanted to lug it around.

 

In my time in the service, including duty in two foreign nations, we Marines were only allowed to have live ammo on three occasions, while on live firing ranges, in Vietnam, and as a Sergeant of the Guard at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, more commonly referred to as Gitmo.

 

When firing on a range the ammunition is carefully supervised and all rounds are accounted for. Marines are not allowed to leave the range with live rounds, especially in Boot Camp, which sort of takes the realism out of the murder/suicide scene in “Full Metal Jacket.” Another thing to think about in that Liberal anti-war scene from “Jacket”, illustrating the effects of what Liberals believe to be the barbaric treatment of Marine recruits, is that even if Pvt. Pyle had been able to sneak a couple of rounds off of the firing range, it is hard to imagine that he could have snuck a full magazine of rounds off of that range. Remember this guy wasn’t even smart enough to hide a jelly donut and get away with it but we are supposed to believe that he could get a magazine and all of this ammo past the Range Instructors and his DI’s who are specifically watching for such thievery.

 

Yet the really big flaw in "Jacket" is that Pyle and his platoon of Marines were ready to graduate from Boot Camp the next day, thus he would not have still been issued a rifle to even load those hard to smuggle rounds into.

 

At Gitmo even the Marines who were standing guard in the fence line towers were not allowed to have a loaded weapon. The ammo was sealed in an ammo box at each guard post and was to be opened only if attacked. On every instance as the Marines were relieved and a new guard was posted it was up to the Sergeant of the Guard to inspect that ammo box to make sure that the seal had not been broken. If the seal had been broken that Marine who was coming off guard with the now unsealed ammo box was not going anywhere until all the rounds were accounted for.

 

One more thing to point out is that the shot that the Marine took to kill the cow would have been one very lucky shot. He is in a standing firing position, which is the most difficult position for accuracy, while moving away from his target on a bouncing, swaying railroad train. If he indeed had made this shot it would have been the luckiest one of his life and as the Marine Officers and NCOs jumped down his throat for his stupidity, that lucky shot would have cost him and his buddies a lot more than just being chastised by the eternally more righteous than thou, Leckie.

 

Finally there are questions that we have to ask the makers of “The Pacific” about this cow scene. Such as, with almost four full years of war to depict in just ten short episodes and the production cutting corners to save money, why would they spend a single dime to film this senseless killing of a cow?

 

So was there some historical significance to this cow’s untimely death?

 

Strangely the answers may be in the Vietnam War and of how liberal Hollywood wants us all to think of our Veterans.

 

Back in 1971 a Vietnam Veteran sat before the U.S. Senate Committee On Foreign Relations and said of his fellow Vietnam Veterans:

 

“They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

 

The speaker was the discharged Navy Lieutenant John Kerry, a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and now the Massachusetts Democratic Senator. But the traitorous Kerry is better known to the rest of us Veterans as Hanoi John.

 

He and his fellow VVAW comrades lied under oath yet not one of the anti-war Democratic Senators who took this testimony even so much as questioned the authenticity of their statements, or for that matter their credentials. This testimony has been entered into the history of the Vietnam War, even given a place of honor as sworn testimony. Hollywood quickly and effectively has taken up this false image of the Vietnam Veterans, as there are very few films about that war, which do not include the very actions and behavior described by Hanoi John.

 

In all my years of studying WW II, I have never come across any reference of US servicemen killing a dairy cows in Australia. Unlike Ambrose, the author of “Band Of Brothers” who grew up in the post WW II era, the writers of “The Pacific” grew up in the post Vietnam War era. And unlike Ambrose who chose to document history, it looks more and more with each episode of “The Pacific” that its writers have chosen just to mimic the false depiction, which is so popular in Liberal Hollywood of uncontrolled, blood lusting Veterans who run around yelling "bleep" all the "bleeping" time,  how terribly unjust.

 

 

God Bless America

 

Semper Fidelis

 

 "Copyright 2010.  Michael E. Tank   All rights reserved. No part of this document may be copied, faxed, electronically transmitted, or in any other manner duplicated without express written permission of the author.”