The Pacific - DISCUSSION THREAD

[mithrilG60]

Originally Posted by OLS

I heard "they said" Ep 1 was a drag with all the hometown stuff before the men got to fighting, but who knows. I am fine with it if the character development goes on to mean something later on. But as marked as these men were forever by it, I do loves da fightin', and want to see it now.

This series is likely to be quite different since it's primarily based on the memoirs of 2 men instead of the combined recollections compiled by a 3rd party so the point of view is likely to be much narrower and intense in a personal sense than BoB was. As much as I loved BoB, Stephen Ambrose was known more for being a populist story telling historian than a classical historian and that certainly came across in the series.

All in all I've been looking foward to this series since mid last year when it was announced and thought the first episode was very well done. It's going to be quite interesting since the PTO doesn't get nearly the same amount of press up here in Canada as the ETO since we were really only significantly involved in the initial portion of that war and had little to do with the remainder after Hong Kong fell other than as PoW's.

Besides, my parents-in-law live in Vanuatu (called the New Hebrides at the time) which as all the military historian's here know was the proverbial line in the sand drawn by the Navy and Marines as well as the primary staging point for the Battle of the Coral Sea and a major base afterwards. The airstrip built for the B-25's is still in active use as Port Vila's international airport, Bauerfield, named after Lt. Col. Harold W Bauer who won the Medal of Honor at Guadalcanal. Been through that airport several times so the history's interesting on a personal level as well.