Max Power said:

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Belton Ag said:

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I also read With the Old Breed, but I read it several years before the Pacific came out.

Two things that really stood out to me from the book were depicted in the series: the incident where the GI pulls the teeth out of the Japanese soldier while he was still alive, and the sound of the pebbles being dropped into the soldier's open skull.

Putting those scenes onto film couldn't even capture what I felt after reading the book. Just horrifying.

Of all the reading and studying I've done of WW2, I've concluded the two worst places to be would have been along the Eastern Front/Stalingrad and Peleliu/Okinawa. For both sides and civilians. I don't know if there were two worst places to be in all of military history.

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One of the things that I never considered until after I read With the Old Breed was how white-washed Band of Brothers might be. Band of Brothers paints everything with very broad strokes in terms of how great everyone in the company was. I don't recall any mentioning of specific guys basically losing their minds and doing horrific things. I remember the discussion about their Lt from Yale that couldn't make a decision about anything and would leave the front and go back to talk it over with other officers. With the Old Breed said everything good and bad about the soldiers out there, it didn't hold back. In retrospect it made me wonder what was left out of Band of Brothers because I thought The Pacific did a much better job of illustrating the hell of war and the toll it took on the soldiers.

Regarding your last point it's a good question regarding the worst battles to be a part of in military history. Peleliu would certainly be in the conversation. Bastogne was probably pretty rough thanks to the cold. I'd imagine a lot of Vietnam would have been incredibly awful to be involved in.

Lots have heard about all the sailors that were eaten by sharks after the USS Indianapolis was sunk, that would have been bad but I heard about something recently that might have been worse. I saw or read something recently about Ramree Island in Burma during WWII. There was a battalion of Japanese soldiers that were pushed back into some mangroves and they started marching as there was no other way out and evidently a large number of them were eaten by crocodiles.

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aTmAg said:

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Are you talking about Lt Norman Dike? If so, then that was in the show. BTW, I saw a youtube channel dedicated to the real history and it claimed that BoB did Norman Dike wrong. That he was actually a lot better than the show portrayed.

Regarding most traumatic battles of history, the ancient battle of Cannae has to be up there. Soldiers committed suicide by burying their heads the ground to avoid misery.

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LMCane said:

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IJones23 said:

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I really like The Pacific. I know people try and compare it to BoB and say it's not as good, but it's a different animal. There's some outstanding acting in The Pacific.

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John Basilone statue in Raritan New Jersey

imagine this guy won the Medal of Honor-

was dating a hottie

and VOLUNTEERED to go back AGAIN to fight the Japanese when he could have stayed in the USA selling War Bonds

now we literally can't even recruit enough 18 year olds to serve in the Navy or Air Force during peacetime.

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Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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Ditto on the WWII Museum in NO. I saw it way back in 2001 when it was only one building. It was fantastic even then. Gotta get back over there to check it out again.

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Max Power said:

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Damn, that is sad. Both the book and the miniseries made it a point to say that regardless of how they felt about Sobel during training he's responsible for them becoming the unit that they became.

While we're on the subject of WWII I can't recommend enough that if you're anywhere near New Orleans you go check out the WWII museum there, it's incredible. It's basically made of two buildings, each about three stories tall. I could have spent a whole day there easily but we had my 7 year old with us. Several soldiers from both BoB and The Pacific are featured there.

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aTmAg said:

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Max Power said:

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aTmAg said:

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Are you talking about Lt Norman Dike? If so, then that was in the show. BTW, I saw a youtube channel dedicated to the real history and it claimed that BoB did Norman Dike wrong. That he was actually a lot better than the show portrayed.

Regarding most traumatic battles of history, the ancient battle of Cannae has to be up there. Soldiers committed suicide by burying their heads the ground to avoid misery.

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Yea Dike was the guy, that's a shame if they portrayed him poorly if reality was different. I found it odd they had their commanding officer continuously leaving the front in Bastogne with the conditions they were in. I can't remember if they said in the show but I believe in the book they said that Sobel ended up committing suicide at some point after the war was over. I'm due for a rewatch of the series and a reread of the book.

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I have never read the book, but I get the impression that the show followed the book, but the book was wrong. Another one they got wrong was Blythe. He not only survived the war, he went on to fight in Korea with distinction.

Sobel's story is even more sad than what you wrote:

Quote:

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After his service in World War II, Sobel returned to Chicago, where he worked as a credit manager for a telephone equipment company. He married Rose, a former military nurse from South Dakota whose was disapproved of by Sobel's Jewish family. They raised three sons, who attended church weekly with Rose, before divorcing.

In 1970, Sobel shot himself in the head with a small-caliber pistol in an attempted suicide. The bullet entered his left temple, severing his optic nerves and rendering him blind. Soon afterward, he began living at a Veterans Administration assisted-living facility in Waukegan, Illinois, where he died on September 30, 1987; the death certificate listed malnutrition as the cause of death. No memorial service was held.

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Nobody deserves that. The dude did more than 90% of Americans.


In the Show Blythe is shown recuperating at the hospital after being shot in the neck....they sort of insinuate he died when Malarkey picked up his laundry but he's the injured guy who only got one purple heart compared to the guy who got 3...one for a boil on his butt.

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Ghost of Andrew Eaton said:

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IJones23 said:

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I really like The Pacific. I know people try and compare it to BoB and say it's not as good, but it's a different animal. There's some outstanding acting in The Pacific.

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If we reverse the order, The Pacific would have been raved about by everyone and then probably eclipsed by BoB. Both are really good but unfortunately, The Pacific is measured against BoB.

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Max Power said:

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Belton Ag said:

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I also read With the Old Breed, but I read it several years before the Pacific came out.

Two things that really stood out to me from the book were depicted in the series: the incident where the GI pulls the teeth out of the Japanese soldier while he was still alive, and the sound of the pebbles being dropped into the soldier's open skull.

Putting those scenes onto film couldn't even capture what I felt after reading the book. Just horrifying.

Of all the reading and studying I've done of WW2, I've concluded the two worst places to be would have been along the Eastern Front/Stalingrad and Peleliu/Okinawa. For both sides and civilians. I don't know if there were two worst places to be in all of military history.

---

One of the things that I never considered until after I read With the Old Breed was how white-washed Band of Brothers might be. Band of Brothers paints everything with very broad strokes in terms of how great everyone in the company was. I don't recall any mentioning of specific guys basically losing their minds and doing horrific things. I remember the discussion about their Lt from Yale that couldn't make a decision about anything and would leave the front and go back to talk it over with other officers. With the Old Breed said everything good and bad about the soldiers out there, it didn't hold back. In retrospect it made me wonder what was left out of Band of Brothers because I thought The Pacific did a much better job of illustrating the hell of war and the toll it took on the soldiers.

Regarding your last point it's a good question regarding the worst battles to be a part of in military history. Peleliu would certainly be in the conversation. Bastogne was probably pretty rough thanks to the cold. I'd imagine a lot of Vietnam would have been incredibly awful to be involved in.

Lots have heard about all the sailors that were eaten by sharks after the USS Indianapolis was sunk, that would have been bad but I heard about something recently that might have been worse. I saw or read something recently about Ramree Island in Burma during WWII. There was a battalion of Japanese soldiers that were pushed back into some mangroves and they started marching as there was no other way out and evidently a large number of them were eaten by crocodiles.

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Quote:

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during the Nazi offensive called the Battle of the Bulge

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$240 Worth of Pudding said:

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Quote:

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during the Nazi offensive called the Battle of the Bulge

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This cracked me up. I appreciate the educational phrasing of it for the younger crowd or those who may not know much history but it's pretty funny to read for guys my age.

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$240 Worth of Pudding said:

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aTmAg said:

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Because of this thread, I'm re-watching The Pacific, and frankly I have no idea how anybody could consider it superior to BoB.

Episodes 3 and 4 are just flat out bad and boring. I'm not sure if it's in the books, but spending a whole episode on their leave in Australia with all the love interest crap was a terrible decision. It's like The Fly from Breaking Bad, except it was one out of 10 episodes, rather than one of 62 and it was clearly damn expensive to shoot. Episode 4 was them basically hanging out in the rain, Leckie pissing himself, and then spending half the episode in a mental hospital. Why did they spend so much valuable time on all of that?

I was thinking about what makes BoB so great, and I think the name nails it. The brotherhood is what makes it great. And that is the true moral of the story. That and the justness of the cause. As a viewer, I cared about each of the main characters. When one died, I cared. The final scene is probably the most nostalgic scene of any show ever. It's like I knew these guys personally and was very interested in how they turned out.

In the Pacific, I don't really care about anybody. If Leckie died, I wouldn't care. Same for Slege. I wish Snafu would die, as he is annoying as hell. As much as I respect Basilone, I don't give a rats ass about his bond drive in America. I didn't care about any of that type of stuff in Eastwood's Flag of our Fathers either. I appreciate how the only home front scenes in BoB was their boot camp. The Pacific also doesn't really portray the big picture any. The moral of this series is merely "war is hell".

I'm only through episode 5 so far this time, and I know that a lot of good battle scenes are coming up, but now I remember that the first half of this series was not great at all.

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I'm not sure I could disagree any kore vehemently. I know it sounds insulting and that's certainly not my intent but it feels like you completely missed the point of those scenes and the overall theme of the series. It was never supposed to be BoB.

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aTmAg said:

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I was thinking about what makes BoB so great, and I think the name nails it. The brotherhood is what makes it great. And that is the true moral of the story. That and the justness of the cause.

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EclipseAg said:

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aTmAg said:

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I was thinking about what makes BoB so great, and I think the name nails it. The brotherhood is what makes it great. And that is the true moral of the story. That and the justness of the cause.

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Also, Damian Lewis and Ron Livingston absolutely own their characters. They are so compelling you are drawn in and feel like a part of Easy Company.

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aTmAg said:

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EclipseAg said:

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aTmAg said:

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I was thinking about what makes BoB so great, and I think the name nails it. The brotherhood is what makes it great. And that is the true moral of the story. That and the justness of the cause.

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Also, Damian Lewis and Ron Livingston absolutely own their characters. They are so compelling you are drawn in and feel like a part of Easy Company.

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Yeah they are both damn good. But the whole cast is good. I can't think of any weak link.

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Belton Ag said:

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GoAgs92 said:

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This is so much better than the thin red line…man that that movie stunk

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I get why people say this, but I never hated this movie like so many did. I usually fast forward through the soliloquies and internal monologues.

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aTmAg said:

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EclipseAg said:

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aTmAg said:

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I was thinking about what makes BoB so great, and I think the name nails it. The brotherhood is what makes it great. And that is the true moral of the story. That and the justness of the cause.

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Also, Damian Lewis and Ron Livingston absolutely own their characters. They are so compelling you are drawn in and feel like a part of Easy Company.

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Yeah they are both damn good. But the whole cast is good. I can't think of any weak link.

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