HBO's The Pacific

[burn_baby_burn]

I was curious as to what became of Lena Mae Basilone after her husbands death. Found a link to her obituary on another site.

http://www.akinoluna.com/BlogPhotos/...naobituary.jpg

[Fugly]

I came across this story from one of the machine gunners that Basilone was leading. He talks about when Basilone was killed on page 2.

http://www.americanveteranscenter.or...s-of-iwo-jima/

[worth]

Wow, fantastic link Fugly.

I haven't seen last night's episode yet, so I don't know how closely they followed this bit here:

My personal experience there happened on the morning of February 19, 1945. We landed in the first wave, and immediately we started climbing these sand terraces you might have seen in the pictures. And when I looked back at the beach, I could see one solitary Marine standing up. This was Marine Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone, the Medal of Honor recipient at Guadalcanal. He could see that the invasion had sort of ground to a halt, so he was motivating everybody by cuss words and kicks to the seats of the pants to get them underway. Well, my position was about three or four terraces up. I was a machine gunner, and when Basilone came to my position, he pointed out a target, and by looking down his arm I could see a giant Japanese pillbox, and he indicated I should start firing on it.

When I pulled the trigger, the gun wouldn’t fire; it had been fouled by the black sands of Iwo Jima. So at that point my assistant gunner had to take a toothbrush out of my pack to clean the breach and blow the sand out of it. He stuck the belt back in, and I could see the tracers hitting close to the pillbox. And Basilone didn’t like that, so he indicated I should move obliquely to my right to fire at it, which we did. But then they closed the steel doors, which left the bullets merely bouncing off of it. Basilone then found a demolition man, who handled the explosives. As I was firing at the pillbox, he walked up the line of fire, and about ten feet from it, he tossed the composition of C2—about ten pounds of it—and it blew the doors off. Basilone indicated that I should commence firing into the aperture.

At this time, he found a flamethrower man, and the flamethrower man walked up the line of fire and when he was almost there, Basilone whacked me on the helmet to tell me to quit firing. He inched the last few feet, and shot three bursts of napalm into the Japanese pillbox. You know, that turned it into a giant inferno right there—it looked like the beginning of hell. Basilone then reached down and unhooked the machine gun from the pin hook, and he grabbed it and put his arm through the belt, and he screamed at me to get the belt. So I got the belt, and he ran up the front of this pillbox, looking over the back where they had entered, and out the back of it came seven or eight Japanese defenders on fire—napalm all over them. And Basilone mowed them down, shooting his machine gun from the hip, and they all fell dead. Later on, I figured that it was probably a mercy killing, because those men were already dead.
At that point, he handed me back my machine gun, and gave us the signal to follow him. And 18 or 19 of us followed Basilone from the beach across the lowlands through an area of scrub brush until we hit the Number One airstrip. We had hoped to catch the airstrip that day, but we were out there by 10:00 that morning. And now we were receiving fire from Mt. Suribachi, from the mortars on the other side of the airstrip, and worst of all we were receiving fire from the United States Navy. We were too far advanced, and they were putting the rolling barrage over us. I thought we should have gotten out of there, really. But Basilone stopped that, and said, “You’re staying here come hell or high water! I’m going back to get more Marines, and we’re going to fight our way across this island!”

And he left us there, and he went back to the beach. Now, I couldn’t tell you in real time how long he was gone. Because when you’re in combat, there’s no recognition of time. And pretty soon, we looked over where we had come from, and Basilone was leading a group of Marines across the same way we had come from toward the airstrip. And all of a sudden, you could hear the shrill sound of incoming mortar rounds. And you could see the mortar hit right amidst Basilone and the C Company Marines. Nobody moved. America, at that moment, lost its number one hero, Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone on the shores of Iwo Jima.

[burn_baby_burn]

Originally Posted by Fugly

I came across this story from one of the machine gunners that Basilone was leading. He talks about when Basilone was killed on page 2.

http://www.americanveteranscenter.or...s-of-iwo-jima/

Page 2 is basically what we saw last night. The exception being that they had Basilone die from bullets instead of a mortar round.

[burn_baby_burn]

Originally Posted by worth

Wow, fantastic link Fugly.

I haven't seen last night's episode yet, so I don't know how closely they followed this bit here:

It sounds like they used that Marine's account to write the script. Word for word it is basically the same as the episode.

[Hemi-Cuda]

ya the battle at the end of the episode was well done, i just wish they had spent more time on it. it would have been better to have Basilone's relationship stretched over a few episodes, instead of shoehorning everything into one. it just felt forced that way

[Sliver]

Yet another terrible episode in a mediocre series. John's relationship with Lena had no chemistry whatsoever, like all the relationships in this series. The battle was fine at the end, but overall another blah episode.

[3 Justin 3]

It wasn't that good, I agree with the rest. If they wanted to do the Basilone love story, they should have spread it out. Like Sliver said, it seemed REALLY forced, and short.

That and I never felt for Basilone, he just seemed like any other guy for me.

He may have been their leader but I could care less, if it was Winters on the other hand, I would have probably shed a tear.

[return to the red]

Jesus there is no satisfying you people. You want more story line with relationships there isn't enough battles, you want more battle scenes there isn't enough relationship story lines. Face it, the pacific is nothing like BOB and if you keep expecting it to compare then maybe you should stop watching because after episodes one and two you could clearly tell they had decided to take the Pacific in a different direction then BOB.

Personally I'm enjoying it but refuse it to compare to BOB.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by return to the red

Jesus there is no satisfying you people. You want more story line with relationships there isn't enough battles, you want more battle scenes there isn't enough relationship story lines. Face it, the pacific is nothing like BOB and if you keep expecting it to compare then maybe you should stop watching because after episodes one and two you could clearly tell they had decided to take the Pacific in a different direction then BOB.

Personally I'm enjoying it but refuse it to compare to BOB.

Yeah, but you don't seem to get that people aren't complaining because it's a different story or a different style. They're complaining because it's a poorly constructed series.

[return to the red]

Originally Posted by nik-

Yeah, but you don't seem to get that people aren't complaining because it's a different story or a different style. They're complaining because it's a poorly constructed series.

compared to? Like it or not the Pacific was almost doomed to fail because BOB was THAT good but to really enjoy this series you almost have to forget that BOB ever existed.

The one thing I will agree with though is that I wish the episodes were a little longer because just as things seem to get rolling it's over.

[Komskies]

It's a good series that suffers from poor time-line management IMO.

[kermitology]

I seem to have no issues not comparing it to BoB. I think it's a really well done series. Far more emotionally tolling than BoB was.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by kermitology

I seem to have no issues not comparing it to BoB. I think it's a really well done series. Far more emotionally tolling than BoB was.

Oh don't worry, if you like it you can compare it to BoB all you want. It's only if you don't like that the comparison isn't valid.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by return to the red

compared to? Like it or not the Pacific was almost doomed to fail because BOB was THAT good but to really enjoy this series you almost have to forget that BOB ever existed.

The one thing I will agree with though is that I wish the episodes were a little longer because just as things seem to get rolling it's over.

The timing is definitely a major problem. By the time you have the review of the previous episode, Tom Hanks done talking, the interviews and the three minute Opening Credits done you have like 45 minutes of show left for what is supposed to be an epic tale.

They're trying to cram too much crap into too short a window and it makes the show suffer greatly. I only cared about two characters in this show and that was Leckey and Sledge. The one I'm apparently supposed to have the greatest attachment to, the Medal of Honor winner, is randomly spattered throughout the series until some rushed love story and then he's dead. What?

They spent 150 million dollars on this series, at that point you might as well spent a percentage more and either add another episode or add more time to the individual episodes so it doesn't feel like this rushed, jarring show.

I'm disappointed in The Pacific not because of the story itself, but because of the production of the show. It's really too bad, because I love WW2 stories, I never get tired of them. The fact that the same people have done this format before and got it right makes the problems with The Pacific that much more frustrating.

Granted, there are two episodes left, and hopefully they're good.

[return to the red]

Originally Posted by nik-

The timing is definitely a major problem. By the time you have the review of the previous episode, Tom Hanks done talking, the interviews and the three minute Opening Credits done you have like 45 minutes of show left for what is supposed to be an epic tale.

They're trying to cram too much crap into too short a window and it makes the show suffer greatly. I only cared about two characters in this show and that was Leckey and Sledge. The one I'm apparently supposed to have the greatest attachment to, the Medal of Honor winner, is randomly spattered throughout the series until some rushed love story and then he's dead. What?

They spent 150 million dollars on this series, at that point you might as well spent a percentage more and either add another episode or add more time to the individual episodes so it doesn't feel like this rushed, jarring show.

I'm disappointed in The Pacific not because of the story itself, but because of the production of the show. It's really too bad, because I love WW2 stories, I never get tired of them. The fact that the same people have done this format before and got it right makes the problems with The Pacific that much more frustrating.

Granted, there are two episodes left, and hopefully they're good.

45 minutes is being generous.

I have a feeling though that the biggest let down that people should be expecting is how this series will end. I'm hoping for a great ending but the way it has been going I just can't see it being anything more then a "meh" moment.

[Sainters7]

It's funny, because I am one of the biggest complainers about when they romanticize up war movies(see my posts in this thread after the episode 3 Melbourne love-fest for confirmation), but for some reason I really enjoyed the last episode. I was never a fan of John Basilone's, but he really grew on me the last episode. I knew it was gonna be a tragic bloodbath with his unit at the end, but I honestly did not see Basilone himself getting gunned down, that was surprising. I thought they were building him up to be the next Winters, and to take the torch from Sledgehammer(who took it from Leckey) to be the new main character down the stretch. Guess not.

After a bit of a stumble early on, I feel this series has really picked up, especially since episode 5, I can't wait to see what happens in these last two episodes. My only real complaint is they need to be longer. With the extremely long intro and lengthy "last week on The Pacific" clips, the episodes themselves are only about 40min long, that's ridiculously short for such an epic series. I can't remember anymore, but wasn't the average BoB episode about an hour?(if not even slightly longer)

[Komskies]

Originally Posted by Sainters7

It's funny, because I am one of the biggest complainers about when they romanticize up war movies(see my posts in this thread after the episode 3 Melbourne love-fest for confirmation), but for some reason I really enjoyed the last episode. I was never a fan of John Basilone's, but he really grew on me the last episode. I knew it was gonna be a tragic bloodbath with his unit at the end, but I honestly did not see Basilone himself getting gunned down, that was surprising. I thought they were building him up to be the next Winters, and to take the torch from Sledgehammer(who took it from Leckey) to be the new main character down the stretch. Guess not.

After a bit of a stumble early on, I feel this series has really picked up, especially since episode 5, I can't wait to see what happens in these last two episodes. My only real complaint is they need to be longer. With the extremely long intro and lengthy "last week on The Pacific" clips, the episodes themselves are only about 40min long, that's ridiculously short for such an epic series. I can't remember anymore, but wasn't the average BoB episode about an hour?(if not even slightly longer)

I have all 10 BoB recorded on my PVR. Episodes range from 60-75 mins.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Sainters7

It's funny, because I am one of the biggest complainers about when they romanticize up war movies(see my posts in this thread after the episode 3 Melbourne love-fest for confirmation), but for some reason I really enjoyed the last episode. I was never a fan of John Basilone's, but he really grew on me the last episode. I knew it was gonna be a tragic bloodbath with his unit at the end, but I honestly did not see Basilone himself getting gunned down, that was surprising. I thought they were building him up to be the next Winters, and to take the torch from Sledgehammer(who took it from Leckey) to be the new main character down the stretch. Guess not.

After a bit of a stumble early on, I feel this series has really picked up, especially since episode 5, I can't wait to see what happens in these last two episodes. My only real complaint is they need to be longer. With the extremely long intro and lengthy "last week on The Pacific" clips, the episodes themselves are only about 40min long, that's ridiculously short for such an epic series. I can't remember anymore, but wasn't the average BoB episode about an hour?(if not even slightly longer)

Curahee, the opener, was 1.5 hours I believe, and then each remaining episode was 1 hour.

[Hemi-Cuda]

another major complaint i have with The Pacific is that the viewers have no way to gauge how much time has passed in a single episode. sometimes it's days, sometimes weeks or months. aside from the Curahee opener in BoB, all of the episodes in that series seemed to range around a few days. it was much easier to follow as a series when you weren't jumping around erratically