I just finished watching Band of brothers

Both good in their own way...the sex scenes are unneccesary I'll agree....There is more of a family aspect to BOB than Pacific...between the guys themselves...Then again I'm only on episode 4. The fighting scenes are as good as BOB...and so far the old Banzai charges have given me a feel of being there...well the fear of it anyway. 2 different programs...Don't actually think we can compare like for like.

 

I agree I "enjoyed" BoB better than the Pacific. As to which is better, thats a little more difficult to state. The Pacific War ground battles had a greater savagry than most European battles fought by America. Not sure we as a people (American's) are as comfortable with no quarter fighting of the Island campaign.

 

The Pacific seemed unorganized. It took me several episodes to realize there were several differnet stories going on and the that the main characters were not in the same unit. They should've stuck with one story instead of three. It had the potential to be much better, but fell short. The Band of Brothers set the bar too high.

 

I've always had mixed thoughts about The Pacific. It was an excellent piece of film-making (far ahead of any feature films put out by Hollywood), but it paled in comparison to Band of Brothers. A lot of this had to do with the plot: as you said, it was unorganized. The flow between episodes wasn't that good, especially since each one focused a different character. Band of Brothers was easy to follow. The Pacific could have been better if they made each episode longer (each one tried to cram in elements from each of the characters, and that doesn't work given the episode's length), or simply tried to remove the overlapping stories seeing as how these individuals never crossed eachother's paths. The one exception to this *may* have been Leckie and Sledge -- I think they were at the same camp (Pavuvu?) at the same time in 1943, but I doubt that they actually met.

 

I knew I wasn't the only one to think so! But you did explain the point much better than I did though.

 

You give me more credit than is actually due! Actually, I just thought of that now. I couldn't pin down why it wasn't as good as Band of Brothers (never put much thought into it -- I just watched it when it came out, haven't touched it since), but your message pretty much summarizes all the issues with it.

 

Lets be fair, the subjects of BoB had the luxury of hitting all the highlights of the ETO, D-Day, Bocage fighting in Normandy, Market Garden, Bastone, Entering the Reich, Death Camps and Eagles Nest.

Sadly no Marine unit can make that claim about the Pacific War.. To show the evolution of the Pacific Island ground war you had to move from unit to unit as they did.

 

Good point. Some Marine units saw a lot of combat, though, and would have made good case studies. Ones that come to mind are the USMC Amphibious Recon Battalion, the 1st Marine Regiment and the 2nd Marine Division.

I understand what they were trying to do since they had three excellent resources available to them (Leckie/Sledge's books, Basilone's biography), but still.

 

An expanded story on Manila John would be interesting. That would take up an entire mini-series in itself.

 

Best bit....Sledge kills Bob and Dave with his short targetted mortar....instead of Tojo and f...face.....Epic....

 

I think that I missed that part. Must have been when I was popping pop corn.

 

You need to watch it again...Mortar training...2 yank dummies get killed instead of two Japanese dummies....some would say all yanks..no...I would not ...no I'll refrain...

 

Ok, I remember it now. Obviously I had already popped the popcorn, and just forgot that part since the general storyline of The Pacific was too mixed up to remember what went where and why.

 

I am lucky enough to participate twice a year at the Stephen Ambrose Band of Brothers tours. The first time was during their tour in 2004. I met a lot of the Easy company veterans and unfortunately a lot of them have passed away in recent years.

This picture was taken in Bastogne in 2006. You can see me with Wild Bill Guarnere. I will post more pictures later this week.

 

Great photo!

 

Great photo Noorbeek, thanks for sharing!

 

Thanks for sharing Noorbeek. I toured the battlefields around Bastogne last August and it was a great experience. I can only imagine what it would be like to be accompanied by veterans who actually fought there.

 

peleliu invasion scene.....Superb. Never really gave much thought to the island hopping campaign apart from Main battles...But this series at least..is educational to a few of us Brits... You yanks obviously know a lot more of it, and the series may be light to you...but as a foreigner to it...Its eye opening.