D-Day 2016: Remembering the Kelley Brothers

On this anniversary of D-Day, I'm running a version of one of my columns at DaTechGuy; here in Shreveport, one family lost three sons in less than two years in World War II.  During that war many families across our nation lost more than one son, but as far as I know, the Kelley family is the only family in Shreveport that lost three sons-- one of them in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.  

Like all of America, Shreveport watched the unfolding events at Pearl Harbor in 1941 with horror.  

In February 1942, William G. Kelley (his friends and family called him “Bob”) felt the call to service and enlisted in the Army Air Corps.  He had graduated from the local high school, attended Louisiana College, and was attending seminary.  He was ordained at the First Baptist Church in Shreveport by Dr. M. E. Dodd.  When he enlisted, Bob was preaching at the Evangeline Mission, a new church in town that he helped build with the assistance of the Queensborough Baptist Church.

William "Bob" Kelley

Bob Kelley went to officers’ school and became a bombardier; he went with the Eighth Air Force to England.  Lt. Kelley had been overseas only six weeks when his plane crashed near Fontainebleau, France and claimed his life on November 10, 1944.  He was twenty-four years old.

The Evangeline Mission, where Bob was a preacher, was renamed for him as Kelley Memorial Baptist Church.

A second Kelley son, Bose, Jr., died in the D-Day invasion.  Al McIntosh, writing for the Rock County Star Herald, wrote on June 8, 1944, after learning that the expected invasion of France had finally taken place:

“This is no time for any premature rejoicing or cockiness because the coming weeks are going to bring grim news.  This struggle is far from over – it has only started – and if anyone thinks that a gain of ten miles means that the next three hundred are going to go as fast or easy he is only an ostrich.”

He was correct:  the grim news was only beginning.

Bose F. Kelley, Jr.

Bose Kelly, Jr. enlisted in May 1942.  Bose graduated from Fair Park High School in Shreveport.  He was married to Betty Miller and working as a mechanic at Central Motor Company, a car dealership.  Bose volunteered for the Army Airborne, went to jump school and became a paratrooper.  Bose was part of the 507 PIR which became attached to the 82^nd Airborne in 1943. The 507 PIR was activated at Fort Benning, Georgia on July 20, 1942 and trained there and in Alliance, Nebraska.  In 1943, the 507^th PIR shipped out to Northern Ireland, then England, and it was in Nottingham where they prepared for the coming Allied invasion of France.  They studied sand tables, drop zones, and were given Hershey’s chocolates and a carton of cigarettes.

Bose was on a C-47, number 13 in his stick, as the plane lumbered through the fog banks toward Drop Zone T, near the west bank of the Merderet River.  Because of the fog and the incoming German flak, the C-47s flew faster and higher than anticipated which caused almost all of the paratroopers to miss the drop zone.  They were scattered over a 15 mile area.  The 507^th was the last regiment to jump and by the time Bose Kelley’s C-47 was over the Cotentin peninsula the entire area was stirred up with flak coming from every direction. There were sixteen men in Bose Kelley’s stick and at least eight of them were killed that night.  The Germans had flooded the valley as a defensive tactic and some paratroopers, weighted down by equipment and unable to swim, drowned.  Bose Kelley was killed by a direct hit from an artillery shell.

Major General Paul F. Smith wrote in his Foreword to Dominique Francois’s history of the 507^th,

“This regiment unquestionably received the worst drop of the six US parachute regiments dropped that night.”

Howard Huebner, who was number 3 in Bose’s stick, survived that drop.  He wrote:

I am a Paratrooper! I was 21 yrs old when we jumped into Normandy. 

We knew the area where we were supposed to land, because we had studied it on sand tables, and then had to draw it on paper by memory, but that all faded as our regiment was the last to jump, and things had changed on the ground. Most of us missed our drop zone by miles.  As we were over our drop zone there was a downed burning plane. Later I found out it was one of ours. The flack was hitting our plane and everything from the ground coming our way looked like the Fourth of July. 

When I hit the ground in Normandy, I looked at my watch.  It was 2:32 AM, June 6, 1944. I cut myself out of my chute, and the first thing I heard was shooting and some Germans hollering in German, "mucksnell toot sweet Americanos". 

We the 507th, was supposed to land fifteen miles inland, but I landed three or four miles from Utah Beach by the little town of Pouppeville. I wound up about 1000 yards from a French farm house that the Germans were using for a barracks, and about 200 feet from a river, an area that the Germans had flooded. If I would have landed in the water, I may not be here today as I can’t swim. A lot of paratroopers drowned because of the flooded area.

Local writer Gary Hines spoke to Bose’s widow, Betty, for an article he wrote for the August 2000 issue of SB Magazine.  She told him, “He was going to win the war and come back home.”  Betty was married at 18 and a widow at 20.  She told Mr. Hines “We were both young enough to feel that he was coming home.  He wasn’t going to be one of the ones who was lost.”

Edgar Rew Kelley

A third Kelley son, Edgar Rew, was drafted into the Army in 1943.  He was sent to Camp McCain in Mississippi where he died five weeks later from an outbreak of spinal meningitis.  He never made it out of basic training.  He was 27 years old; he left behind a wife of five years.

The remaining Kelley brother was Jack.  Jack Richard Kelley was serving in the medical corps in Washington at Fort Lewis.  His father, Bose Kelley, Sr., wrote to U.S. Representative Overton Brooks and pleaded with him to prevent his oldest son from going overseas.   It is reminiscent of the scene in Saving Private Ryan where General Marshall reads the Bixby letter to his officers.  In this case, in a letter dated December 8, 1944, Mr. Kelley received word that his son Jack would remain stateside for the duration of the war.  Jack Kelley died in 1998.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

The bodies of Bose Kelley, Jr. and his brother William (Bob) were buried in separate military funerals in France but were returned to the United States in September 1948.  Bose and his brother now rest side by side in the veterans section of Greenwood Cemetery in Shreveport.  Their brother, Edgar Rew Kelley, is in a civilian cemetery across town, the Jewella Cemetery on Greenwood Road.  Their father, who pleaded for his fourth son to be spared, died just one month after Bose and William’s bodies were buried in Greenwood Cemetery.  It’s as if he was just waiting for them to come home.

For sixty-five years their sister, Ruby, tended the graves of her brothers.  There has never been a time that I visited the graves that there was not a crisp American flag flying over each and flowers.  Ruby died last year and the graves are now tended by Ruby's daughter.  I visited the graves of Bose and William last week and sure enough, there were two new flags and flowers steadfastly in place.

As we observe this 70th anniversary of D-Day, we remember the sacrifices of young men like the Kelleys all across the country. Their name belongs alongside the Sullivan brothers, the Borgstrum brothers, the Niland brothers, and the Wright brothers.  It is their heroism and their sacrifice, along with that of so many others, that we remember and honor.

For further reading:

Veterans Return to Normandy for D-Day Anniversary

D-Day at 70:  Historic Photos From the Invasion of Normandy

D-Day Veteran Remembers Sword Beach

D-Day Veteran:  I Don't Want Them to be Forgotten

The National WWII Museum: Timeline, Maps, Videos and Photos of D-Day

The 507th PIR Unit History

The 507th PIR on D-Day

Today is the 68th anniversary of D-Day.

From History.com:

During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe.

Check out the site for videos and interactive maps.

One of the groups involved in that invasion was the 507 P.I.R. (Parachute Infantry Regiment).  This unit is sometimes called "the forgotten regiment."  The unit was activated in 1942 at Ft. Benning, GA.  A little history about the unit can be found here.  Here's an excerpt of their participation in the D-Day invasion:

The 507th PIR first saw combat during the Normandy invasion - 6 June 1944. The 507th and the 508th PIRs were to be dropped near the west bank of the Merderet River. The objectives of both regiments was to establish defensive positions in those areas and prepare to attack westward sealing off the Cotentin Peninsula. 

In the pre the predawn hours of D-Day the sporadic patterns of the 507th and the 508th PIRs left troopers spread out over a twenty mile area.  Some who overshot the Drop Zone (DZ) dropped into the Merderet River and its adjoining marshes. Many troopers who jumped with heavy equipment were unable to swim free and drowned. Others roamed the countryside until they encountered other units and joined their effort. Even Colonel Millett, the commanding officer of the 507th was unable to muster his troops and was captured three days after the drop in the vicinity of Amfreville. Only the 2nd Battalion under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles J Timmes  was able to function as a team and began digging in around Cauquigny on the west bank of the Merderet River. 

At that point the 507th was joined with the 508th for the rest of the mission.  Read the rest.

For the Normandy invasion the 507th flew from airbases further north in England than other regiments and thus arrived later to the battle than other units, therefore losing the element of surprise.

Sergeant Bob Bearden was a squad leader of a mortar squad in the 507th  PIR.  Here's an excerpt from his book:

Massive anti-aircraft fire and dense cloud banks encountered over the Normandy coast caused the 507^th to have the worst drop of any of the airborne units participating in Normandy. Most sticks completely missed their drop zones and ended up stranded as individuals or in small groups in totally unknown territory. In addition, their drop zone and surrounding low-lying marshes had been flooded by the Germans, who manipulated locks to make the Merderet River overflow its banks, causing many of the heavily overloaded 507 troopers to drown before they got out of their chutes. 

There's much more at the link.

Here is a photo gallery of some of the members of the 507th PIR.  Look at their faces; check out the guy with the pipe!  So many young lives.

Here is the story of Howard Huebner who was in the 507th PIR, assigned to Company C.  An excerpt:

I am a Paratrooper! I was 21 yrs old when we jumped into Normandy. 

We knew the area where we were supposed to land, because we had studied it on sand tables, and then had to draw it on paper by memory, but that all faded as our regiment was the last to jump, and things had changed on the ground. Most of us missed our drop zone by miles.  As we were over our drop zone there was a downed burning plane. Later I found out it was one of ours. The flack was hitting our plane and everything from the ground coming our way looked like the Fourth of July.  

When I hit the ground in Normandy, I looked at my watch.  It was 2:32 AM, June 6, 1944. I cut myself out of my chute, and the first thing I heard was shooting and some Germans hollering in German, "mucksnell toot sweet Americanos".  

We the 507th, was supposed to land fifteen miles inland, but I landed three or four miles from Utah Beach by the little town of Pouppeville. I wound up about 1000 yards from a French farm house that the Germans were using for a barracks, and about 200 feet from a river, an area that the Germans had flooded. If I would have landed in the water, I may not be here today as I can’t swim. A lot of paratroopers drowned because of the flooded area.

Be sure to read the part where he talks about "a soldier I will never forget."

Huebner was in the same drop plane as Pfc. Bose Kelley; in the drop order, Huebner was #3 and Kelley was #13.

Pfc. Bose F. Kelley, Jr. was from Shreveport.  He died on D-day and is buried here in Shreveport at Greenwood cemetery.

Take time today to read through some of these stories and to remember.

Added:  There's an interesting D-Day documentary at SnagFilms about the secrecy behind the D-Day invasion and the subterfuge against the German army.  (Thanks, Harold, for the heads up.)

The Wings of Freedom Tour Stops in Shreveport

Back in November Steve and I had the opportunity to tour the EEA Aluminum Overcast B-17 which stopped over at the downtown Shreveport airport.  There are only about 10 to 12 of these mighty World War 2 era aircraft still flying and today we got to see another one.

Today we went back downtown to see the Collings Aircraft WW2 planes: the B-17 Nine-0-Nine, the B-24 "Witchcraft", and the P-17 Mustang "Betty Jane."

It's truly fascinating to see these planes and realize their role in history.

We started with the B-17:

This plane was commissioned in 1945 and didn't see combat but did serve as part of the Air/Sea 1st Rescue squadron.  In April 1952 the plane was instrumented and subjected to the effects of 3 nuclear explosions.  After a 13 year "cool down" period it was sold as scrap and the restoration began.  For many years the plane was in service fighting forest fires.

The cockpit:

From a window:

Machine gun:

Ball turret:

Then on over to the B-24.  The Collings Foundation says this is the only restored B-24J in the world.  They say it completed 130 combat missions.

It's a big old bird:

What's really cool about going to these tours is talking to the vets that come out to see them.  Steve and this guy started talking until he was interrupted by a phone call:

Steve got to play with a machine gun:

Boys will be boys.

Some guys were working on this one:

A prop:

Inside, it's a tight squeeze; no fat pilots allowed:

The ball turret:

The nose:

From there we went over to the P-17 Mustang, "Betty Jane":

We couldn't get into this one but it's a sweet little plane.

My dad flew P-47s (as a training instructor) in WW2 and I know he would have loved seeing these birds.

I forgot the memory card for my camera today so that's all the pictures I've got.

We bought a book and a couple of t-shirts before leaving and headed to Monjunis for an early dinner and a cold Abita.

We were about the only people in the place and the sound system was playing Frank Sinatra tunes.  Good times.

If you get the chance to see these planes, don't miss it.  The schedule is here.

Seventy Years Ago

Seventy years ago today.

Never forget.

As we remember Pearl Harbor today, skip over and read Jim Lacey's piece at National Review:

In those dark first months after the Pearl Harbor disaster, it was not apparent to many that Japan had already lost the war. For, despite sinking much of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the Japanese had missed a couple of crucial targets. Foremost among these were the huge oil-storage facilities on Oahu. Their loss would have delayed the American counterattack in the Pacific by as much as a year. One can only imagine how much more costly the conquests of Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa would have been had the Japanese had another year to fortify them. 

The costs were certainly high enough as it was.

There are a few survivors still among us and some are still telling their story.  Listen to them.

The Washington Post has a story of remembrance ceremonies.

Take time to remember today.

There are some great memoirs to read about the war in the Pacific:

Touring the Aluminum Overcast

Yesterday, Steve and I went to the Downtown Airport to tour the Aluminum Overcast, a fully restored WWII B-17.

The plane is owned by EAA now and tours the USA and Canada.  If you've got some spare cash you can schedule a flight in the plane.  This particular plane was completed in 1945 so it never saw combat, but it is one of 11 or 12 B-17s that are still flying today.

I've read lots of memoirs from WWII but I was totally unprepared for the experience of seeing this plane. 

This one shows the catwalk over which one must walk to get to the back of the plane.  It's extremely narrow!

Space is tight all over the plane.

The radio station:

Another view:

The ball turret: 

And from the outside, you get a perspective of what those ball turret gunners had to do:

Steve checking out the rear gunner position:

I liked the nose art:

You could also walk underneath the plane and look at the bomb bay:

Another shot:

All in all, it was quite impressive.  One volunteers there giving tours told of a veteran who had come to see the plane earlier in the day.  He was so overcome with emotion he just couldn't go inside it, after all. 

There's a great website here that tells about the plane, its restoration, and the organization that runs it.  There's a schedule of appearances and lots of great videos.  One video takes you on a flight and another has historic footage. 

If you get a chance, get out there today to see it.  Or look to the skies around 10:00; it's taking a flight group up around then.

Seeing it gave both of us a whole new appreciation for those brave fliers who went up in them in the war and gave me a whole new definition for the word courage.

Remembering D-Day

In remembering D-Day today, I want to reprint a portion of my post from last year:

I've written before about Greenwood Cemetery here in Shreveport.  It's not far from my house and Steve and I visit there occasionally because there's a huge veteran's section; plus, I have some family buried there.  One day a few weeks ago we decided it had been a while since we'd gone through there so we pulled in, got out of the car and started walking through the veterans section reading headstones.

The veterans buried there are from the Spanish American war on up to current times.  I've mentioned before, we found several with "Purple Heart" notations on their headstones.  I'm always curious about their stories.  Every one of those people buried there has a story.  I wish I knew them all.

I'm particularly interested in the Kelley (brothers?).  I posted on these two not long ago.  We stopped at these graves first because we noticed that they both had the same last name ("Oh how sad for this family to lose two sons in the same year!") and on closer inspection, Steve gasped and said, "Oh no!  He died on D-day!"

Bose F. Kelley died on D-day, June 6, 1944.  William G. Kelley, (his brother?) died on November 10, 1944.

I've tried to do some online research on them but come up pretty empty.  I found this:

...but I can't swear it's the same guy because the date of death isn't the same as what's on his stone.  I have found record of Bose F. Kelley here.  He was part of the 507 parachute infantry regiment; their mission was to drop near Amfreville and "hold the La Fiere causeway in support of the 505th PIR."  They were to hold a defensive line between Gourbesville and Le-Hameau Renouf.  You can read about the mission here and here.  Here is one soldier's testimony of that day.  Here is the site of the son of one of the members of the 507th with pictures and information about that day.

I wish I knew the Kelley's stories.  They have surviving family here somewhere; somebody goes out there regularly and places flowers.  They are not forgotten.

I'm not trying to be lazy in recycling last year's post, but I think about these two fellows on D-Day.  Like I said, I don't know them, never knew them, don't know their family, but I hope one day to learn who they were and hear their story. 

In all actuality, they were like most boys in WWII: young hometown boys who went off on a war to support their country. 

Here are a few D-Day links for you:

WWII Veterans Mark D-Day Anniversary in Normandy.

Omaha Beach and the 67th Anniversary of D-Day

D-Day Veteran Recounts Battle

D-Day Veterans Remember Fighting, Fear, Courage

Watch this lovely video of one veteran's trip with the Louisiana Honor Air program:


Take time to remember today.  I'm going to place a flag at the graves of the Kelley brothers.

On the Reading Table

A quick update on my reading table reveals my continuing obsession with the Pacific War.  I've just finished The Twilight Warriors by Robert Gant which follows a group of "tail end Charlies."  The "tail end Charlies" are those guys that got into the war later than some others and often fly those tail end missions.  Gant focuses on the battle for Okinawa primarily and I was especially engrossed in the chapter on the sinking of the Yamoto.

I get on these tangents when I just immerse myself in whatever it is that has piqued my interest at the time.  It's probably the OCD in me.  I eventually wear myself out and move on to something else.  for a while I read everything about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson I could get my hands on, including John's diary and his letters with Abigail. 

At any rate, right now it's the Pacific War.  I even went and bought this wonderful atlas of World War II with maps and diagrams of hundreds of battles.  Steve's read a lot about the European theater and I guess my fascination with the Pacific now balances us out.  The stories of these young men, though, continue to amaze me; when you stop and think that many of them enlisted at 17 and 18 and were doing such heroic things, well, it's just amazing.  The memoirs is what has me engrossed right now rather than the overall histories.

I read Cutthroats; it's about a tank driver in the Pacific.  Author Robert Dick was in both Leyte and Okinawa.  It gave a different perspective than the primarily Marine accounts I'd read so far.

After I finished The Twilight Warriors I picked up Sledge's With the Old Breed again.  It's such a classic and now that I've read so much more than the first time I went through Eugene's book, I think I'll appreciate it even more.  After that, well, I guess it's back to Barnes and Noble or Amazon.  I've got a list of Pacific memoirs to get through and I might be ready to scope out new spring/summer reading.

One thing I'm NOT interested in?  Donald Rumsfeld's book.  Can't gin up the interest.

What are YOU reading?

Major Doak Weston

Via CNN:



The story is here.

Remember D-Day

It's the 66th anniversary of D-Day today but you wouldn't know it by looking at the front of my local paper.  Not a single mention.  Online, I looked at the New York Times site, nothing.  Checked Fox - nope.  Have we become complacent?  Is it too soon after Memorial Day to pay tribute once again to those soldiers of WWII who made such sacrifices for our freedom?

I surfed on over to History.com and found what I was looking for.  Here you can find veteran's stories, videos and interactive maps.

I've written before about Greenwood Cemetery here in Shreveport.  It's not far from my house and Steve and I visit there occasionally because there's a huge veteran's section; plus, I have some family buried there.  One day a few weeks ago we decided it had been a while since we'd gone through there so we pulled in, got out of the car and started walking through the veterans section reading headstones.

The veterans buried there are from the Spanish American war on up to current times.  I've mentioned before, we found several with "Purple Heart" notations on their headstones.  I'm always curious about their stories.  Every one of those people buried there has a story.  I wish I knew them all.

I'm particularly interested in the Kelley (brothers?).  I posted on these two not long ago.  We stopped at these graves first because we noticed that they both had the same last name ("Oh how sad for this family to lose two sons in the same year!") and on closer inspection, Steve gasped and said, "Oh no!  He died on D-day!"

Bose F. Kelley died on D-day, June 6, 1944.  William G. Kelley, (his brother?) died on November 10, 1944.

I've tried to do some online research on them but come up pretty empty.  I found this:

...but I can't swear it's the same guy because the date of death isn't the same as what's on his stone.  I have found record of Bose F. Kelley here.  He was part of the 507 parachute infantry regiment; their mission was to drop near Amfreville and "hold the La Fiere causeway in support of the 505th PIR."  They were to hold a defensive line between Gourbesville and Le-Hameau Renouf.  You can read about the mission here and here.  Here is one soldier's testimony of that day.  Here is the site of the son of one of the members of the 507th with pictures and information about that day.

I wish I knew the Kelley's stories.  They have surviving family here somewhere; somebody goes out there regularly and places flowers.  They are not forgotten.  I went to the cemetery this morning and left a flag for them both.  I'd have left one for every other veteran but Steve would give me the evil eye if he knew I was walking around that cemetery alone and unprotected.  

At any rate, today is D-Day and is another wonderful opportunity to pay tribute and remember.  Go here to read some stories of D-Day veterans.  Go to a cemetery and place a flag.  Hang out your own flag at your home.  Watch a rerun of Band of Brothers.  Visit a veteran's home.  But take time to remember.

Never forget.

Also:  Jules Crittenden has a D-Day post.

Added:  Hot Air has a post.

If you have a D-Day post, email me and I'll link it.

Update:  A Tulsa veteran shares his story.

Right in Florida had the same trouble I did finding any media coverage of the D-Day anniversary.  Ice Road Truckers on the History Channel?  C'mon.

The Other McCain has a D-Day post remembering the Bedford Boys.

My Bossier posts and links back.

SWAC Girl posts and links to a veteran's story from Chesterfield County, VA.

Last Thoughts on The Pacific

One more week. School's out in one more week.  I can do this.

I haven't posted much because I've been wrapping up school; finishing grading Caesar papers, and working on my reading stack at home.  I mentioned Monday that Steve and I finished watching The Pacific this weekend.  I know it got mediocre reviews most of the way through (I quit checking after a while) because everyone wanted it to be Band of Brothers redux.

It wasn't.

And the Pacific war wasn't the European war, either.

As soon as the series was over I pulled Bob Leckie's book, Helmet for My Pillow, off the shelf.  I bought it but hadn't read it, right before the series started.  I've cued up With the Old Breed for a re-reading.  I've got a couple of others in line, too.

I thought the series was so well done.  I wasn't there, of course, and don't know how accurate or authentic it all was, and I know they changed a few things from Eugene Sledge's book, but I thought it was awesome.  The awe those young men inspire is incredible.  They were just kids...all of them.  What they sacrificed to defend this country - well, it was a story that needed to be told.

Lots of movies have been made about the European theater - some cheesy and some more realistic.  Lots of stories have been told about Iwo Jima, too.  But the Pacific war as a whole, I don't think, had been told in film.; at least, not quite so well.

HBO is going to rerun the series on Memorial Day weekend.  If you missed it you absolutely should make it a point to watch.  If you did watch it, tell me what you thought.

Even the music was well done!  Listen to the theme - it's haunting.  Emmy nominations to come.

Review of The Pacific

The New Yorker has a review of HBO's The Pacific which begins tonight. Nancy Franklin is fairly critical of the series, calling it choppy and disorienting. She has trouble following the characters and the richness of gory detail is just too much:

There are nighttime battle scenes that last as long as ten minutes in “The Pacific”—an attempt to give viewers some sense of the unrelenting, terrifying reality of it all. This artistic decision echoes the one that Spielberg made in showing us almost half an hour of the Normandy invasion at the beginning of “Saving Private Ryan.” But authenticity in a war movie doesn’t depend exclusively on the accumulation of gory detail; it also requires emotional and psychological realism.

One thing I'll agree with Franklin on, however, is the mistake made by the directors in changing a scene from Sledge's book:

But the filmmakers seem not to have completely trusted the marines’ actual experiences. In a scene on Okinawa, Sledge encounters an old woman in a hut, dying of an infected wound that was probably caused by bomb fragments. At first, he is suspicious of her, and then he realizes that she wants him to shoot her in order to end her pain. Instead, he sits down and holds her, cradling her head, until she dies. In the book, Sledge leaves in search of medical help, while another marine goes into the hut. Sledge hears a shot and asks about it: the marine says that she was “just an old gook who wanted me to put her out of her misery, so I obliged her!”

Franklin says this just makes one assume they've taken other liberties and this may be true.

Overall, Franklin is critical of the series, preferring the History Channel's documentary of Peleliu or "YouTube has some remarkable videos" she says. She prefers The Thin Red Line for its portrayal of the "men's inner lives."

To each his own. I may find fault with The Pacific, too; I'll reserve judgment on that for now. But I'm pretty sure it's going to be better than some YouTube videos.

Tom Hanks on The Pacific

Update: Here's a great guide by the U.S. Naval Institute to The Pacific. Be careful - you can link and surf forever. Massive.



I've been anxiously awaiting the new Tom Hanks/Stephen Spielberg mini-series The Pacific. I hope I'm not disappointed. Consider this from Time's profile of Hanks and the series:

World War II in the European theater was a case of massive armies arrayed against an unambiguous evil. The Pacific war was mainly fought by isolated groups of men and was overlaid by a sense that our foes were fundamentally different from us. In that sense, the war in the Pacific bears a closer relation to the complex war on terrorism the U.S. is waging now, making the new series a trickier prospect but one with potential for more depth and resonance. "Certainly, we wanted to honor U.S. bravery in The Pacific," Hanks says. "But we also wanted to have people say, 'We didn't know our troops did that to Japanese people.' "

I hope he isn't going to draw too close parallels between the War on Terror and the war in the Pacific. It's not the same thing.

Hanks goes on to discuss the difficulty of vets returning to society and he contends that while still very difficult, it was probably easier after WWII, mostly because travel time to get home was slower. That's one of the things in Eugene Sledge's China Marine that touched me; Sledge writes of how difficult it was to resume activities that he had enjoyed prior to the war. Hunting with his father was a definite no-go. The nightmares stuck with him for years. Some habits of survival stayed with him for life.

Back to the politics, Hanks again:

And he is pleased that The Pacific has fulfilled an obligation to our World War II vets. He doesn't see the series as simply eye-opening history. He hopes it offers Americans a chance to ponder the sacrifices of our current soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. "From the outset, we wanted to make people wonder how our troops can re-enter society in the first place," Hanks says. "How could they just pick up their lives and get on with the rest of us? Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?"

This gives me pause. "They were out to kill us because our way of living was different"? Really? I never picked that up in school.

Here's John Nolte in response:

Really, we wanted to annihilate the Japanese because they were different, because we saw them as “yellow, slant-eyed dogs that believed in different gods?” I thought it was due to the fact that “we viewed them” as barbaric imperialists who had attacked us first and wanted to enslave the world.

But there’s no reason to speculate about America’s motivations during WWII because history has proven Hanks wrong. We had every opportunity to annihilate these “different” people. Instead we chose, at great expense, to rebuild Japan and return the sovereignty of that nation over to the “yellow, slant-eyed dogs who believed in different gods.” Or, as most people prefer to call them: our newly liberated allies.

Allahpundit weighs in:

As I understand it, they hit Pearl Harbor not because “our way of living was different” but because they wanted the oil in the south Pacific and needed to neutralize the American fleet before they made their move. I’m also surprised to learn that whereas the Nazis were unambiguous evil, their strategic ally in the far east — whose imperial army utterly terrorized the civilian population of mainland Asia — was merely “different,” much as jihadists are now.

I'll be interested to see in how this plays out in the mini-series. I agree with John Nolte that Hanks probably is a very nice man and his work in bringing America's history to film is impressive. I'd venture to say that most of the students, or boys anyway, at my high school have seen Band of Brothers, but few may have read much on World War II. I think Hanks is contributing something important in making American history accessible to young people. The Pacific will probably do the same thing.

I'll watch The Pacific, all ten hours of it, but I doubt Hanks will convince me that it's the same thing as what we're engaged in now in Iraq and Afghanistan.

My Reading List: March 2010

I just finished reading China Marine by Eugene Sledge (pictured). It arrived in the mail yesterday and at 160 pages it is easy to read in a weekend, or afternoon.

The book picks up where With The Old Breed left off. Eugene is shipped out of the Pacific to duty in China where they were to perform various guard duties and maintain order as China descended into Civil War. The book ends with his assimilation into civilian life in Mobile, Alabama.

It's a beautiful book and had me in tears in a couple of places as he reconnects with his family, his old life, and builds a new life.

Once home in Alabama, Eugene earned a business degree and then floundered around in an unsatisfying career for a bit before his father, a physician, gave him some valuable advice. Noting Eugene's lifelong love of the outdoors and nature, he tells him:

"Fritz, why don't you write Auburn and inquire about entering one of their graduate biological programs? But don't become a medical doctor! The damned government is going to keep messing with it until they bring about socialized medicine and drive both physicians and patients to distraction."

That was about 1950 or so.

A very prescient man.

Steve and I hit the jackpot when we were out shopping today and loaded up on books in anticipation of HBO's The Pacific mini-series next week. Steve has been reading my copy of With the Old Breed and is about to finish that. He'll be on to China Marine next. We picked up Island of the Damned by R. W. Burgin, one of Sledge's buddies in the Pacific. We also got The Pacific by Hugh Ambrose and I picked up Selected Chaff: The Wartime Columns of Al McIntosh.

I'm on to the Al McIntosh book now. I'll catch up with you later!

The Pacific

I guess I'm slow to hear about this upcoming mini-series from HBO - The Pacific. You can be sure I'll be watching this one:

Executive produced by Tom Hanks, Stephen Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman, The Pacific is an epic ten-part miniseries. The Pacific tracks the intertwined real life stories of three U.S. Marines: Robert Leckie, John Basil0ne, and Eugene Sledge across the vast canvas of the Pacific Theater during World War II. The miniseries follows these men and their fellow Marines from their first battle with the Japanese on Guadalcanal, through the rain forests of Cape Gloucester and the strongholds of Peleliu, across the bloody sands of Iwo Jima and through the horror of Okinawa, and finally to their triumphant but uneasy return home after V-J Day.

I'm a long time fan of Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed which is one of the sources for this miniseries. I'm going to have to get busy on the other three: Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie, and Red Blood, Black Sand by Chuck Tatum, and China Marine by Eugene Sledge.

This won't be everyone's cup of tea, so to speak, but I'll be watching.