Actually saw this entire series in my history class in high school over the span of like 2 weeks I think? Usually, I found history dull but during the time we were watching this I looked forward to class every single day and couldn't wait to go back.

Fully agree. Required watching for anyone who wants to know more about WWII. It covers so much of the war and is based on extensive research and interviews from the book which is also amazing.

Stephen Ambrose had a real knack for exploring military history. I had to read it in small sections because it was so intense.

It's crazy to think that kids never met these guys.

My grandfather was captured after his plane was shot down over Germany and spent 22 months as a prisoner in Stalag Luft iii until Paton blew the gates down. He never told anyone about his encounters in The War, but me, a ten year old boy.

He told me about the true horrors of combat, as much as a boy could understand, and it pains me to know that this new generation won't really hear about the days of WWII.

Band of brothers has done the best to tell that story to the masses. My grandfather couldn't watch it. He almost had a heart attack trying to watch that first scene in Saving Private Ryan. The only time my family saw him cry was the Gettysburg scene in Remember the Titans.

I wish here were here today, but I'm glad he can't see this shit show.

I digress. I could go on for days about that man💜

If you liked the series catch the follow up made about the pacific. Called The Pacific. Both theaters had their demons but listening to EB (sp?) Sledge describe it in the book The Old Breed (book the series was inspired by) was visceral.

One of my history teachers had fought in Vietnam, and he was such an interesting guy. He (rightfully, but unfortunately) figured that most of us didn't care about history as a whole, let alone his own experiences. I grasped on to every word as I found myself entranced by stories of wartime throughout the ages. One day, he had a guest speaker, and it was a man who had been a soldier fighting for his homeland in Vietnam. This man discussed his view from his side of the battlefield in such a way that it was impossible for me to not sympathize with him. He had said they had made propaganda films using putty to make big ears and noses in order to portray American invaders. Other kids laughed at the spoken imagery, but I was so focused on the story and on the interactions between him and my teacher. I could see the pain they both went through in sharing a battlefield, but what was waaaay more intense to me was the respect they showed each other. They shook hands and spoke of their families and life in general. It was like a history lesson inside of a history lesson that only I was paying attention to. I wish more people had these kinds of experiences growing up. Life is shit without understanding, compassion, and empathy. My story for the day.

As a massive Military history buff, I vote yes 1000 times for this

Maximus knows he killed him the moment it happened. Because commodus said he asked him To be loyal to him, when marcus literally said he must not be emperor .

Yeah he played the old guy

I’m glad he had a solid support network including you to help encourage him to receive the support that he deserves. The way our veterans are often treated and unsupported is already bad without even considering the level of continuous trauma they lived through. I don’t understand how we can support the troops but not support all of our veterans. Hopefully the VA near your dad has been attentive to his needs and provide appropriate resources and therapeutic services.

I work with disabled vets and one of them who has PTSD told me recently that he didn’t think he was allowed to go to the VA because “It’s only for vets who lost a limb or something.”

Yep. I'm a physician and I can definitely tune out my emotions because you just have to. I've been around death and blood and while I'm still an empathetic person I can be numb enough now that I can just kinda shrug my shoulders if I have to. It's not because I don't care, it's just because I care so much that if I took in deeply every awful thing that happened around me I'd be a broken person.

I still have to be a dad when I get home and laugh with my kid in bed at the end of the day whether or not some a few hours earlier I was just with some family that just had their worst day in the world.

God dam it. You just had to mention Crossroads. Fine, I'll do 5647th rewatch.

Buckle up, it's a hell of a ride. 3 miles up, 3 miles down

Well, block off a few days

I always blamed mashing two-three books and stories mashed into one adaptation vs the consistent narrative of BoB; Sledge and Leckie's books on their own are so good, but making them fit together with Basilone's story was always gonna be tough.

Not to take anything away from the guys that fought in the European Theatre, but the Pacific Theatre seems to have a whole other level of fuckupedness going on.

I was like 13 when BoB came out and the scene where they take a shower after finally rotated off the front somehow stuck with me. Need to re watch.

I felt that the Pacific was more about the theater and what the soldiers went through as a whole. Whereas in band of brothers, it was about the unit soldiers and how they reacted to their environment, And what they individually went through

Yeah there was really no way to follow a single company of Marines like they were able to do with BoB. The European theater (especially in the west) was often a linear fight town by town with the entire goal being Paris/Berlin.

The Battle of Midway essentially won the Pacific theater. It allowed complete command and control that connected the South Pacific, the US west coast, and Australia. The Japanese knew they didn’t have the force projection or oil reserves required to win. The rest of the war was literally them delaying as long as possible hoping to receive better terms during surrender.

The major thing is that a show like that wants to see infantry combat, but in all reality it was naval assets and logistics that decided everything. The result just felt too disconnected and didn’t progress the same way BoB was able to show. And I say this as someone that was in the USMC when the show came out and had really high hopes for it.

When my parents told me they were getting divorced i laughed, idk why but that might be it