HBO Miniseries: The Pacific
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jcollins28
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tomson75;3308142 said:
No you don't give it a day or two and you can watch it here.
tvshack.net
CliffnDallas
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Thanks for the heads up.
Yeagermeister
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I'm looking forward to it. I'll be surprised if it is as good as Band of Brothers but it set the bar VERY high. I have the Band DVD set but I still watch it every time it's on tv.
CliffnDallas
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Yeagermeister;3308270 said:
I just finished part 10 "Points." (again) If The Pacific can rise to that level it will be a landmark series like BOB. But I fear the PC crowd may have their hand in it.
CliffnDallas
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Just as I thought. Not impressed.
Yeagermeister
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CliffnMesquite;3308501 said:
It has big shoes to fill so I'll give it more time.
Bob Sacamano
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CliffnMesquite;3308501 said:
Stop comparing it to BOB.
peplaw06
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BOB wasn't the best thing ever after one episode either. I'm definitely gonna reserve judgment until it gets into the middle of the series. One thing's for sure, there was more action in the first episode of this, than there was in BOB.
***Spoiler***
Thought the scene where they were making landfall was pretty hilarious. I was all revved up for bullets to start flying, and nothing. "Where y'all been?" :laugh2:
***Spoiler***
Thought the scene where they were making landfall was pretty hilarious. I was all revved up for bullets to start flying, and nothing. "Where y'all been?" :laugh2:
CliffnDallas
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Yeagermeister;3308546 said:
I will...But, I can already see certain trends developing.
theogt
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I loved it. Thought it was great and was geniunely upset when the credits rolled as I was really getting into it. Very excited for this series.
From this episode and the previews for future episodes, they're definitely taking the battle scenes up a notch from BOB.
From this episode and the previews for future episodes, they're definitely taking the battle scenes up a notch from BOB.
Yeagermeister
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The only thing I didn't like was Tom Hanks narrating the opening. BOB was pretty much all little know actors. The only one I really knew was Ron Livingston and only because he was in Office Space.
DallasCowpoke
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Video link of R.V. Burgin discussing Peleliu
'The Pacific,' book spotlight Lancaster veteran's battle story
[SIZE=-1]11:42 AM CDT on Sunday, March 14, 2010
[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1]By MICHAEL GRANBERRY / The Dallas Morning News
mgranberry@***BANNED-URL*** [/SIZE] LANCASTER – World War II took R.V. Burgin from the cotton fields of Jewett, Texas, to some of the most horrific fighting of the Pacific Theater, none worse than on the "hellish little coral island" of Peleliu.
There, Burgin and his fellow Marines battled their way into history books, including his own just-released autobiography. But at the moment, an even brighter spotlight awaits.
Now 87 and living in Lancaster, Burgin is a significant part of the Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks miniseries The Pacific, which begins tonight on HBO.
"There's no way that I can express my feelings," says the retired postal worker, who remains as reed-thin as he was during his Marine Corps days, with a mind and wit as sharp as a bayonet.
"I am very, very happy" about the miniseries, he says, "because you could stop 100 people on the street and ask them about Peleliu, and I bet there wouldn't be one or two who'd even heard of Peleliu, much less known there was a battle fought there."
Over the course of 10 episodes, The Pacific may be able to educate new generations of Americans about the horrors of World War II in the same way that its 2001 predecessor, Band of Brothers, chronicled the European front.
Playing Burgin is Martin McCann, who at 26 bears an eerie resemblance to the kid from Jewett. Burgin himself is interviewed in documentary footage that airs before each episode.
"R.V. is the sweetest guy you will ever meet," says McCann, who as a native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, had to master a rural Texas accent. "What he did all those years ago for his country is just incredible. He's a very strong, very generous, very humble man.
"I was kind of nervous meeting him initially, because those are very big shoes to fill," he says. "I thought, 'I don't feel worthy to play this guy, to depict what he's been through, what he's experienced.' But then I met him. ... He has a huge heart, he's just lovely, and has a wicked sense of humor as well."
Burgin tells his life story in Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific (New American Library Caliber, $24.95), co-written by Bill Marvel. Released this month, Islands of the Damned has sold more than 34,000 copies.
Marvel, a retired Dallas Morning News writer, says he was "completely bowled over" by Burgin, whose memory "is crystal clear."
"A lot of guys who come out of the war don't want to talk about the experience," Marvel said. "But he has all his memories of what happened and is more than willing to talk about them."
Some of the worst involve Peleliu, to which The Pacific devotes three harrowing episodes. Burgin, the producers say, appears in episodes 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10.
Battle experience
In September 1944, then-Cpl. Burgin, the leader of an eight-man 60 mm mortar squad, was lucky enough to have one battle under his belt. Otherwise, he says, he might not have made it through Peleliu, which he says was so bad that it bordered on the inconceivable.
His first, New Britain, was a "jungle war. ... You couldn't see three feet in front of you. You felt you were out there all by yourself."
On Peleliu, the heat soared to between 100 and 120 degrees. Coral was so thick "there was no place to dig a foxhole. The stench of dead bodies and the blowflies were absolutely unbelievable. Three different times, we fought for 72 hours without a wink of sleep."
The horror began with a beach landing, which claimed 1,000 men in Burgin's 5th Marine Regiment, one of three infantry regiments in the 1st Marine Division.
Burgin is not alone in branding Peleliu strategically unnecessary. Although Adm. "Bull" Halsey wanted to cancel the invasion, he was overruled.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur believed that seizing Peleliu would protect his flank when he invaded the Philippines, which occurred during the battle of Peleliu. He hoped to neutralize the airstrip, even though U.S. Navy raids had already destroyed all but a few of the Japanese aircraft. Among its 6,500 casualties at Peleliu, the U.S. suffered 1,250 deaths. The Japanese lost all but 30 members of an 11,000-man force.
Burgin's third landing was in Okinawa, which "was different again from Peleliu. Okinawa was valleys and peaks and ridges. You'd take one, then the next one. The artillery fire at Okinawa was a lot worse than the other two."
He was wounded during the 1945 battle and later received the Bronze Star.
"I never had any doubt that we were going to win," he says, "because we were Marines. We just knew we wasn't gonna lose it – period." During his time at war, "I had a mindset that I was not going to get killed, that I was coming home."
The motivator for that was Florence, the woman he met in Australia and married in 1947, after surviving not only Peleliu and Okinawa, but also a postwar bout of malaria. R.V. and Florence would become the parents of four daughters, now in their 50s and 60s. They have four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Road to Hollywood
Their romance has even become fodder for The Pacific, which Burgin loves for its authenticity.
"In March 2004, I got a call from Hugh Ambrose," he says, referring to the son of the late historian Stephen Ambrose, who wrote the book on which Band of Brothers was based. "He told me what HBO was planning to do. And I said, 'Hugh, please do me and the rest of the Marines a favor and leave the damn fiction out of it. Go do your homework, on Guadalcanal, New Britain, Peleliu and Okinawa.' He said, 'That's the reason we're talking to people like you.' "
Burgin alone killed "about 35" Japanese, "and with mortars, I wouldn't even take a guess. More than dozens. ... I would say hundreds more." But he has no regrets.
"Heck, no, it didn't bother me," he says of killing the enemy. "It was me or them. That's one thing I've never had, not one second of regret. Not one second."
He says of the Japanese, "My God, yes, they were a tough opponent." And yet he calls their soldiers "a sadistic bunch of people."
"I've seen Marines tied to a tree and used for bayonet practice, naked as a jaybird," Burgin says. "All that did was make me want to kill one more than I did the day before."
Post-traumatic stress has never been an issue, he says. "I never let myself do that. I've always just said, 'This is war. People get killed in war, people get wounded, mutilated and maimed for life.' "
The war claimed scores of his close friends, as well as his younger brother. J.D. Burgin died in France fighting the *****. He was 18. "I was just a little speck in World War II," Burgin says, "but I take a lot of pride in doing it."
The experience has also taken him to Hollywood, where he attended a premiere of the series with Hanks, Spielberg, McCann and other celebrities.
Hanks was direct in his praise.
The Marine who lived through hell says the actor told him, "It's an honor to meet you, sir. Thank you for serving our country. And thank for your participation in the miniseries."
EXCERPT
The Battle of Peleliu
Peleliu was just north of the equator. We didn't think about just how hot and dry it would get until we got there. We had no idea how sharp that coral was, how it could shred your clothes and boondockers and tear your skin. How even a minor wound would fester and seem to take weeks to heal. With all the other things we were to face the first couple of days, the most aggravating was thirst. Most of us had come ashore with two full canteens. By the time K Company dug in that first night, lost somewhere in the scrub and out of touch with the rest of our units, we could shake our canteens and hear the last few drops slosh around. The daytime temperature had been well over a hundred degrees. We'd been gulping water like we had an endless supply.
I didn't know where the information was coming from, but we were hearing that it had been a bad day for the whole First Division. We had lost more than a thousand men wounded or killed. It's probably a good thing we didn't know just how bad the situation was or that the First Regiment was fighting for their lives, barely clinging to the Point. We knew our battalion commander was out of action, either wounded or killed, and that his executive officer was dead. We didn't know who was running things.
Just before midnight we found out.
From Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific, by R.V. Burgin, with Bill Marvel
Meet the Marine
R.V. Burgin will sign his book at 2 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble, 305 W. FM1382, in Cedar Hill.
Semper Fi
'The Pacific,' book spotlight Lancaster veteran's battle story
[SIZE=-1]11:42 AM CDT on Sunday, March 14, 2010
[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1]By MICHAEL GRANBERRY / The Dallas Morning News
mgranberry@***BANNED-URL*** [/SIZE] LANCASTER – World War II took R.V. Burgin from the cotton fields of Jewett, Texas, to some of the most horrific fighting of the Pacific Theater, none worse than on the "hellish little coral island" of Peleliu.
There, Burgin and his fellow Marines battled their way into history books, including his own just-released autobiography. But at the moment, an even brighter spotlight awaits.
Now 87 and living in Lancaster, Burgin is a significant part of the Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks miniseries The Pacific, which begins tonight on HBO.
"There's no way that I can express my feelings," says the retired postal worker, who remains as reed-thin as he was during his Marine Corps days, with a mind and wit as sharp as a bayonet.
"I am very, very happy" about the miniseries, he says, "because you could stop 100 people on the street and ask them about Peleliu, and I bet there wouldn't be one or two who'd even heard of Peleliu, much less known there was a battle fought there."
Over the course of 10 episodes, The Pacific may be able to educate new generations of Americans about the horrors of World War II in the same way that its 2001 predecessor, Band of Brothers, chronicled the European front.
Playing Burgin is Martin McCann, who at 26 bears an eerie resemblance to the kid from Jewett. Burgin himself is interviewed in documentary footage that airs before each episode.
"R.V. is the sweetest guy you will ever meet," says McCann, who as a native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, had to master a rural Texas accent. "What he did all those years ago for his country is just incredible. He's a very strong, very generous, very humble man.
"I was kind of nervous meeting him initially, because those are very big shoes to fill," he says. "I thought, 'I don't feel worthy to play this guy, to depict what he's been through, what he's experienced.' But then I met him. ... He has a huge heart, he's just lovely, and has a wicked sense of humor as well."
Burgin tells his life story in Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific (New American Library Caliber, $24.95), co-written by Bill Marvel. Released this month, Islands of the Damned has sold more than 34,000 copies.
Marvel, a retired Dallas Morning News writer, says he was "completely bowled over" by Burgin, whose memory "is crystal clear."
"A lot of guys who come out of the war don't want to talk about the experience," Marvel said. "But he has all his memories of what happened and is more than willing to talk about them."
Some of the worst involve Peleliu, to which The Pacific devotes three harrowing episodes. Burgin, the producers say, appears in episodes 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10.
Battle experience
In September 1944, then-Cpl. Burgin, the leader of an eight-man 60 mm mortar squad, was lucky enough to have one battle under his belt. Otherwise, he says, he might not have made it through Peleliu, which he says was so bad that it bordered on the inconceivable.
His first, New Britain, was a "jungle war. ... You couldn't see three feet in front of you. You felt you were out there all by yourself."
On Peleliu, the heat soared to between 100 and 120 degrees. Coral was so thick "there was no place to dig a foxhole. The stench of dead bodies and the blowflies were absolutely unbelievable. Three different times, we fought for 72 hours without a wink of sleep."
The horror began with a beach landing, which claimed 1,000 men in Burgin's 5th Marine Regiment, one of three infantry regiments in the 1st Marine Division.
Burgin is not alone in branding Peleliu strategically unnecessary. Although Adm. "Bull" Halsey wanted to cancel the invasion, he was overruled.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur believed that seizing Peleliu would protect his flank when he invaded the Philippines, which occurred during the battle of Peleliu. He hoped to neutralize the airstrip, even though U.S. Navy raids had already destroyed all but a few of the Japanese aircraft. Among its 6,500 casualties at Peleliu, the U.S. suffered 1,250 deaths. The Japanese lost all but 30 members of an 11,000-man force.
Burgin's third landing was in Okinawa, which "was different again from Peleliu. Okinawa was valleys and peaks and ridges. You'd take one, then the next one. The artillery fire at Okinawa was a lot worse than the other two."
He was wounded during the 1945 battle and later received the Bronze Star.
"I never had any doubt that we were going to win," he says, "because we were Marines. We just knew we wasn't gonna lose it – period." During his time at war, "I had a mindset that I was not going to get killed, that I was coming home."
The motivator for that was Florence, the woman he met in Australia and married in 1947, after surviving not only Peleliu and Okinawa, but also a postwar bout of malaria. R.V. and Florence would become the parents of four daughters, now in their 50s and 60s. They have four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Road to Hollywood
Their romance has even become fodder for The Pacific, which Burgin loves for its authenticity.
"In March 2004, I got a call from Hugh Ambrose," he says, referring to the son of the late historian Stephen Ambrose, who wrote the book on which Band of Brothers was based. "He told me what HBO was planning to do. And I said, 'Hugh, please do me and the rest of the Marines a favor and leave the damn fiction out of it. Go do your homework, on Guadalcanal, New Britain, Peleliu and Okinawa.' He said, 'That's the reason we're talking to people like you.' "
Burgin alone killed "about 35" Japanese, "and with mortars, I wouldn't even take a guess. More than dozens. ... I would say hundreds more." But he has no regrets.
"Heck, no, it didn't bother me," he says of killing the enemy. "It was me or them. That's one thing I've never had, not one second of regret. Not one second."
He says of the Japanese, "My God, yes, they were a tough opponent." And yet he calls their soldiers "a sadistic bunch of people."
"I've seen Marines tied to a tree and used for bayonet practice, naked as a jaybird," Burgin says. "All that did was make me want to kill one more than I did the day before."
Post-traumatic stress has never been an issue, he says. "I never let myself do that. I've always just said, 'This is war. People get killed in war, people get wounded, mutilated and maimed for life.' "
The war claimed scores of his close friends, as well as his younger brother. J.D. Burgin died in France fighting the *****. He was 18. "I was just a little speck in World War II," Burgin says, "but I take a lot of pride in doing it."
The experience has also taken him to Hollywood, where he attended a premiere of the series with Hanks, Spielberg, McCann and other celebrities.
Hanks was direct in his praise.
The Marine who lived through hell says the actor told him, "It's an honor to meet you, sir. Thank you for serving our country. And thank for your participation in the miniseries."
EXCERPT
The Battle of Peleliu
Peleliu was just north of the equator. We didn't think about just how hot and dry it would get until we got there. We had no idea how sharp that coral was, how it could shred your clothes and boondockers and tear your skin. How even a minor wound would fester and seem to take weeks to heal. With all the other things we were to face the first couple of days, the most aggravating was thirst. Most of us had come ashore with two full canteens. By the time K Company dug in that first night, lost somewhere in the scrub and out of touch with the rest of our units, we could shake our canteens and hear the last few drops slosh around. The daytime temperature had been well over a hundred degrees. We'd been gulping water like we had an endless supply.
I didn't know where the information was coming from, but we were hearing that it had been a bad day for the whole First Division. We had lost more than a thousand men wounded or killed. It's probably a good thing we didn't know just how bad the situation was or that the First Regiment was fighting for their lives, barely clinging to the Point. We knew our battalion commander was out of action, either wounded or killed, and that his executive officer was dead. We didn't know who was running things.
Just before midnight we found out.
From Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific, by R.V. Burgin, with Bill Marvel
Meet the Marine
R.V. Burgin will sign his book at 2 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble, 305 W. FM1382, in Cedar Hill.
Semper Fi
CanadianCowboysFan
Lightning Rod
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I thought it was pretty good. The touching scene was the dad trying to avoid thinking about his son going off to war by complaining about his car. I could see myself having to do that with my son and wondered how could I ever send him off to war not knowing if will ever see him again.
Then the same soldier later saying that he has seen humans do things to each other that are sobering to the soul was the best line of the entire night.
I like how Hanks and Spielberg are trying to humanize the Japanese by showing they had families too.
Then the same soldier later saying that he has seen humans do things to each other that are sobering to the soul was the best line of the entire night.
I like how Hanks and Spielberg are trying to humanize the Japanese by showing they had families too.
arglebargle
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Nice post Cowpoke. Thanks for that.
MacArthur, ugh. Another black mark on his lengthy list. The one big WWII general that can make Montgomery look good.
Hope the series goes well.
MacArthur, ugh. Another black mark on his lengthy list. The one big WWII general that can make Montgomery look good.
Hope the series goes well.
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If you have HBO on demand...check out the extras on it where they talk about each character. Pretty cool stuff.