TH36 said:

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Not to go off topic but, what's the hate for The Pacific I've seen throughout this thread? Did any of you that don't like it read Sledges book or Leckies book? I read Sledges and thought the show lined up with what he wrote about fantastically.

This show was good in a lot of ways and great in a few but for me was still well below BoB or The Pacific. But with that being said, it's still up there in the all time great category for me simply because it was about a bunch of badasses that helped kick the Nazi's ass.

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schmendeler said:

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I remember when i thought love stories were only for girls.

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EclipseAg said:

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agracer said:

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EclipseAg said:

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TXAG 05 said:

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Southlake said:

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Hmmm. Interesting. The war against Japan was a war of eradication. We looked at the Japanese as sub humans who slaughtered the Chinese people.

Imagine if we knew earlier that the Germans were slaughtering not only Jews but also society's "unmentionables" Actually active genocide at its worst.

Yet, to this day we still hold the Germans in higher regard than the Japs.

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There is also all the atrocities the Soviets committed as they made their way to Berlin. All those rapes and murders just get swept under the rug.

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The book "The German War" says official estimates are that 20 percent of German women were raped by the advancing Soviet soldiers.

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the other 79% weren't reported.....

If you were a girl over the age of 10 living in the Russian sector of Berlin in 1945, or anywhere in Germany occupied by the Soviets, you had either been raped, likely more than once, or were going to be.

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Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that was an insignificant number. Just reporting what the book says, and the author -- who used diaries, official documents and other reports -- made it clear that the incidents of mass rape in cities like Berlin and others were horrific.

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OldArmy71 said:

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weren't most occupation troops guys who actually didn't do a lot of fighting or had seen a lot of combat. The theory being that they had no animosity towards the Germans b/c they hadn't seen all there friends killed while the combat vets had a little more hate inside them?

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There was a points system that the US Army developed that was used to decide when troops could return home after the war. Points were given for months in the service, months overseas, decorations, battle stars, dependent children, etc.

But they decided to demobilize the men by unit rather than by individuals.

My father was in an engineer combat battalion which arrived in England in early Nov. 1944 and wound up serving in the combat zone for two months.

He did not have enough points to go home. His unit was disbanded and individuals with enough points were assigned to units returning home, while he was assigned to the Army of Occupation.

He was assigned to an Engineer unit in Third Army, then commanded by George Patton, and remained in Germany for another year and a half.

I imagine his story is typical. As the war ended, many of the occupying troops were combat veterans, but as the months and years wore on, they were replaced by soldiers who had not been in the fighting.

I do not believe that was the plan, of course; it was just the natural course of things.

In fact, there was a strict NO FRATERNIZATION policy in Germany and Austria just after the war that even forbade GIs from speaking with children. Eisenhower relaxed that part of the policy in June 1945 and gradually eliminated more and more of the original edicts.


Just as a side note: I had a German instructor at A&M for three semesters who was a child in Germany during the war and had vivid and fond memories of the GIs giving him food and candy.

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I would love a naval battle show at some point - the major Pacific battles like Pearl, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Phillipines and Leyte for example, but also maybe encompassing the Atlantic convoy crossings and sub hunting or battles of the North Sea maybe. Lots of ground.

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AgLA06 said:

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Other than the Majors, Crosby, and Rosie when he gets there no one lasts more than 2-3 episodes to keep track of. That's the issue with following a unit that gets decimated and has to halt operations because there's no one left to fly.

It's not a weakness of the series, but of the story of the unit themselves. It's probably why the red tails are involved at all.

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TH36 said:

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easttexasaggie04 said:

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This show inspired me to watch Band of Brothers for the first time.

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Must've been a comfy rock you were living under!!

Be prepared to watch it at least once every year from now on.

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Garrelli 5000 said:

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I've said it somewhere on Texags before but this is a good time to repeat.

I really wish my grandfather was around and of sound mind to pick his brain.

He was an air force skip bomber in WWII. Fly low to the ocean, drop bombs, they skip into the side of ships.

Something went wrong one run and a bomb bounced off a swell in the ocean back up into the bomb bay doors as the doors were closing. The bomb got stuck in the partially open doors. the crew couldn't get the doors to open again, nor get the bomb to dislodge.

Their only option was to bail. They couldn't land because the shock could dislodge the bomb, results of that are obvious.

They bailed over Siberia and all met back at the crash site. I remember him saying there was a crater with a prop sticking straight up out of the middle of the crater.

Soon after the Russian military showed up. Russia may have been allies but they didn't trust us in any shape, form, or fashion, They accused my grandfather and crew of intentionally crashing the plane because it was a spy plane. The skip bombing could only be a stupid lie, nobody survived when the bombs bounced back into the plane....

They were placed in a military camp/prison in Siberia. They weren't fully treated as enemy combatants, but they also weren't treated like allies to be trusted with any freedom. The only story I remember of that portion of his tale was they could periodically bath, but they first had to clean the showers from the russian military's use. The russians would use sticks/switches of some sorts to swat their bodies to help clean. He'd have to go clean all of that debris and would be rewarded with a chance to bath.

He was at first considered MIA. Eventually when the war ended he was put on a train and shipped across Siberia towards Europe, eventually being returned to the US services.

It wasn't until the some point in the 1980's that he and other servicemen who ended up in Russian military prisons were finally classified as POW's.

Bits and pieces of the story may be off. He passed away in 2011. The last 12 years or so of his life that became the only story he told as is alzheimer's progressed. Errors may be my memory or his.

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Garrelli 5000 said:

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Exactly the type of details I never asked. My dad is gone but my 2 aunts and possibly a couple of cousins may have some info. I know the family has articles stored away with details. Just gotta find the stuff.

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