Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Watching Pacific with my son

My old man fought in the slogs of those Pacific islands in WWII and he died well before my son was born.

He's always asking me about him so I thought he was old enough to watch the series Pacific. So for the past few days we've been watching 2 episodes of the show each night with me pausing the show to talk about key scenes and what we just saw. The significance of a battle or the mindset of a soldier afterwards.

Its been a good experience for us. He is understanding just how big a sacrifice Americans made in WWII and that war just isn't a video game type experience.

We'll watch Band of Brothers next, but the connection won't be as strong. I think because of Pacific, he'll have a better understanding of what is really happening on the screen - I know at his age I had a much different concept of war - because my context wasn't from my old mans perspective but from Vietnam era movie's like Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket as well as growing up with a steady stream of Westerns and Dirty Harry type movies.

I'm thinking "Saving Private Ryan" might be the best depiction of warfare ever put to film.

JMHO,
Birdwatcher

I know the opening scene left my jaw on the floor for Private Ryan

But what I like about Pacific, and I'm sure some extent to Band of Brothers is it shows the grit - I think moreso than S.P.R. - and how war changes a man.

I finally watched Pacific through all the episodes.
I joined the Marines in 1963, only 20 years had passed and I still ran into some of the guys that fought those battles.
I use to enjoy a good war movie, but Pacific put a whole new light on what it was really like. After many an episode I sat there in the dark, all by my self, and just wondered if I would have had the balls those guys had.
Those were men from the "Greatest Generation"

yea I think about that alot - and not just the men at war.

Can you imagine Americans sacrificing the ability to buy cars, appliances, sugar , meat, vegetables, and being asked to buy war bonds? - The entire country willing (for the most part) to give up the basics of their daily lives for a war effort? The victory gardens, the rubber drives, the USO.....

I think about , if the people back then had a 24/7 news channel with real time video footage of the battles, if they had talking heads on TV promoting or demoting our participation, - all the information available at their fingertips - would they have been as "all in" with just radio and newspaper?

On the flipside , can you imagine a unified America with virtually 100% employment, much of it geared toward the war effort

do circumstances define the man, or does man define the circumstances?

My mom was a young girl living in England in 1939. She clearly recalls that, at one point, in a bid for self sufficiency they somehow were able to purchase ten day-old "laying hens". Nine of 'em turned out to be roosters She says she cried every time they ate one.

Birdwatcher