Among some excellent personal e-mail comments after the last episode’s review I also received three outstanding comments from two Marine Officers that I know and while I do not know the other blog commenter I believe that he may also be a Marine Veteran. These three comments can be read following my review of Part Four .  In the first comment “Jonascord” explains that this series is predominately based on two books by Leckie and Sledge and that the writers and producers of this series have almost faithfully followed those books.

I understand this and it has never been my intent to question the integrity of Leckie or Sledge. I do not doubt that there where atrocities committed by a few members of our Armed Forces in this war.

However I do take exception for the scenes using a Japanese soldier as target practice and the Australian cow shooting incident. My experience tells me that with the strict weapons safety practiced in the Corps that this would not have happened. I also find it difficult to believe that Leckie is the only Marine in his entire outfit that has the moral integrity and courage to speak out, or to take action against any wrongdoing.

My point that this series concentrates too much on the negative was driven home by both of the other comments made by Lt. John Dietz and Col. T. Charbonneau. Both, in their own words, agree with me that this series has highlighted the negative, or bad conduct of a few rather than to focus on the many who served honorably, bravely and without committing acts against our nature.

John points out something that I admit has also crossed my mind when he asks, “If it is based purely upon the impressions of Leckie, it should be called "Leckie" and not "Pacific."

In doing so that would at least lead the uneducated viewers of this war to understand that this is just one person’s account of his own experiences. As it is the series leads these viewers who know little about this part of the war and the military to falsely believe that Leckie’s bad experiences and observations of a few Marines’ intolerable conduct was acceptable across the board, or was SOP, Standard Operating Procedure.

Col. Charbonneau clearly drives my point home better than I when he states, “All life and wars have good and bad in them-including the Japs-but the major point should be the majority of group/organization and everything so far discussed doesn't… Should I discuss the worst people I've served with? Or, should I provide a clear example of reality and the very small part the bad played in making the whole? Those who served as officers and NCOs are being sold short; as are the Pvts--very few of whom were as evil as those highlighted.”

To help put this series’ negativity into perspective there were 464 Medals Of Honor    awarded to US Servicemen in WWII, 266 of them posthumously. Yet in the first five episodes, or half way though the series, which has now taken us into 1944, while there have been close to double digits in the number of atrocities or bad conduct highlighted in this series, only John Basilone’s individual act of bravery in 1942 has been singled out.

So even though this series is based on these books, the problem with highlighting the bad conduct of the few is that people who do not know better will come to believe that these types of atrocities were an everyday occurrence. Or as Hanoi John Kerry once falsely stated in his testimony   about the conduct of the Vietnam Veterans, “…not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command....”

The Pacific: Part Five – “Peleliu”

Much like Episode Four the program description tells us little of what to expect in Episode Five by using just three words, “Basilone’s celebrity grows.” And like E-4 that only pertains to the first four or five minutes of the episode.

The episode begins as Basilone is shown getting off of a plane with actress/pin-up girl Virginia Grey. Later the couple is seen passing through a hotel when on their way to their room they are stopped by some busboys, one of which tells Basilone that he is going into the Corps in a few days. Basilone tells him that boot camp is easy, leading us Veterans to wonder if the Staff Sergeant had ever been a recruiter?

Of course we are then shown the gratuitous sex scene between Basilone and Grey. I guess this was added just in case any of us were naive enough to believe that this attractive young couple was just going to a hotel room to discuss the next day’s war bond selling strategy.

This very hyper sex scene seemed more like a PT exercise than lovemaking but then I would imagine that the Sergeant didn’t get much of a chance for PT when selling war bonds and a good Marine always makes the most of every opportunity to get in some good old hard PT. This would also give a new meaning to the old running cadence of “PT… Feels Good… Real Good… PT.”

Basilone exits the episode after having breakfast with his brother who is now also a Marine. The MOH elder making sure that his brother understands that once overseas he has “nothing to prove.”

The viewers are then taken back to Pavuvu where Sledge and his outfit are arriving and Leckie is returning to his unit. Sledge meets his hometown friend who is getting ready to rotate home and in a scene that was probably written for the movie Sledge has a conversation about God with Leckie.

It should be remembered that at the very beginning of this series we first see Leckie in a church lighting candles the night before he leaves for the Marines. Here, through his wartime experiences and a failed love affair, Leckie has come full circle in his beliefs and now expresses nothing but distain for God and all things religious while talking to the devout Sledge.

I found this episode to be more believable, definitely more positive as a whole and as good as the second episode concerning Basilone’s heroics. While the “bleeping” was still used to an unrealistic and annoying level, there were many quick scenes that better represented the real Marine Corps.

We were actually shown examples of good officers and NCOs who took care of their men; more comradery among the Marines themselves and a grizzled, shaved headed Gunnery Sergeant that steals every scene he is in, even if he is just in the background. But then that’s what outstanding Gunnies, and First Sergeants, do; they command attention, and not always by their words or actions but merely by their presence.

This Marine Gunny played to a T by Australian actor, Gary Sweet, comes complete with a fouled campaign cover and an even fouler vocabulary, and looks like he just stepped out of some Banana Republic jungle after fighting revolutionary terrorists with Chesty back in the 1920’s. When alone the Gunny seems to always be talking to himself in a harmless yet somehow deranged manner. Of course all of us enlisted Marines have known since we met our first Gunnery Sergeant Drill Instructors that such mental derangements were mandatory requirements just to make the rank of Gunnery Sergeant. Staff Sergeants can get crazy but that pales to the ranting convulsions of any good Gunny or Top.

Likewise most junior enlisted, and some junior Officers, have learned that hard lesson of swiftly crossing to the other side of the street when a Gunny approaches. If there are two Gunnies together coming at you, you will most definitely want to run to the other side of that street. This is basically the same lesson that Bluto finally learned when he saw Popeye heading his way while holding a can of spinach. While the encounter most probably would end up harmless, why take the chance? 

One scene has the Gunny conducting a live fire on a makeshift range. When he commands, “Cease Fire!” the Gunny eyes an officer down range who has inadvertently pointed his .45 down the firing line at the Gunny and the other Marines. Quickly the Gunny flies towards the Officer, cussing all the way. When he reaches the Officer he snatches the pistol away, ejects the clip and chambered round to the ground, then slams the pistol into the man’s midsection. All while profanely informing the shocked culprit that if he ever points a pistol at him again he will shove that pistol right up his… well, you know, that one place where the sun never shines and where Gunnies always want to shove things.  

The embarrassed Officer then looks at his Captain for help. The Captain who is standing nearby and has witnessed the assault only smiles and says, “Don’t look at me Lieutenant, the Gunny’s right.”

May God love all Second Lieutenants as they just may be the most abused Marines in history, well at least next to those of us who were put on Mess Duty.

Likewise my son tells a similar story of when he was assigned as an instructor on the range at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Only this time the errant Officer was a Major who after the “Cease Fire!” accidentally fired a round from his .45 into the ground. This time two Gunnery Sergeants rushed over to verbally abused this Major and as my son tells it everybody even remotely close to this unhappy threesome prudently got out of the area as quickly as possible. This firing range scene in Episode Five and my son’s story reinforces my disbelief that Marines in Australia were allowed to carry live ammo and to shoot dairy cows from trains.

Meanwhile Gunnies and First Sergeants, along with Senior Grade Officers, believe that this is their Corps, the rest of us are just visiting and we better not foul it up while we are here! But when you have sacrificed as much time, blood, sweat and energy to attain their respective ranks as they have, they are probably right.

There is the introduction of a character unflatteringly nicknamed “Snafu.” He is a weird looking little bird that seems to delight in the misfortune of others as he mocks Sledge and two of his mates who have been put on a work detail. Snafu is the type of Marine that would most probably get his butt kicked at least twice a week until he wised up.

The episode then moves on to the invasion of Peleliu with a striking view of the Marines assaulting the beachhead. What we are finally seeing in this series is one of what the Japanese called “Storm Landings.” Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Retired) has written an excellent account of seven "Storm Landings” from WWII, here is a brief description of that book:

“The Pacific War changed abruptly in November 1943 when Adm. Chester W. Nimitz unleashed his Central Pacific drive, spearheaded by U.S. Marines. The sudden American proclivity for bold amphibious assaults into the teeth of prepared defenses astonished Japanese commanders, who called them "storm landings" because they differed sharply from earlier campaigns. This is the story of seven now-epic long-range assaults executed against murderous enemy fire at Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa - and a potential eighth, Kyushu. The author describes each clash as demonstrating a growing U.S. ability to concentrate an overwhelming naval force against a distant strategic objective and literally kick down the front door. The battles were violent, thoroughly decisive, and always bloody, with the landing force never relinquishing the offensive. The cost of storming these seven fortified islands was great: 74,805 combat casualties for the Marines and their Navy comrades. Losses among participating Army and offshore Navy units spiked the total to 100,000 dead and wounded. Award-winning historian Joseph Alexander relates this extraordinary story with an easy narrative style bolstered by years of research in original battle accounts, new Japanese translations, and fresh interviews with survivors. Richly illustrated and abounding with human-interest anecdotes about colorful "web-footed amphibians," Storm Landings vividly portrays the sheer drama of these three-dimensional battles whose magnitude and ferocity may never again be seen in this world.”

There is a lot of realistic action in the final half of this episode as the Marines and their Corpsmen advance on the Japanese airfield. But then just when you think that this series may have turned a corner and is now going to concentrate on what these brave men achieved, they have to show us another atrocity.

While getting ready to eat some C-Rats during a rest period Snafu remembers something that he meant to do; cut out the gold teeth from a dead Japanese soldier.

Yes, I know, its in Sledge’s book, or was it Leckie’s? As I have not read either but have been told both, and I really do not care who wrote about it. Here Sledge is the witness. Yet as the fighting was still raging elsewhere on this island at the very same time that Snafu was conducting this crude dental surgery I can’t help but wonder why it was so vital to show this atrocity instead of the heroics of our other Marines and Corpsmen?

Starting with Basilone’s brother and continuing throughout this episode various untested Marines asked Veterans THE eternal question about combat, “What is it like?”

The answers, if even given, were always similar to, “You have to be there to understand.”  

Despite the historic, panoramic scenes in living color, the surround sound digital sound effects, the graphic, bloody, and horrifying special effects showing men being blown apart, and some fine acting: try as the moviemakers might, none of us will ever truly be able to know what it was like to storm that beach or any other. Even as a Vietnam combat Veteran I cannot completely imagine what these men must have felt or gone through, for us.

And for that blessing we should all thank God, and these Veterans.

God Bless America

Semper Fi

"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.”