Fubar

This disc only covers a few months - from September through December in 1944 - but it has a lot in it, just as the other discs, and a lot of its powerful.

I didn't take any notes but I remember a bunch of sights, such as the skies filled with men parachuting in Belgium. That campaign, "Operation Market Garden," initiated by Britain's Gen. Montgomery, was a disaster. Another was a raid on Peleliu, a small island in the Pacific, which also turned brutal, thanks to the Japanese digging in, in these incredibly-built, fortified caves. "There's nothing left to bomb," says one naval officer but then when the Marines land, they get the same surprise as what happened to the soldiers at Iwo Jima (except, thankfully, with fewer losses. However, the assignment was expected to take four days and it took four months!)

A couple of the guys from Mobile, Ala., that have been featured in this series, were among the Marines on that island. One of them wrote a diary, where he writes of his frustration over matters. His most vivid descriptions, I thought, were those of seeing dead bodies in their different stages of death and decay - gruesome stuff. It's a wonder more of these men didn't wind up mental cases the rest of their lives, the horrors they saw described here.

The gist of some of this episode seemed to be how the infantry suffered everywhere, that the men in control of decisions were fairly safe-and-sound but the guys on the ground - the average men - did all the fighting and dying, and all the suffering and witnessing of the almost unspeakable brutality.

Other memorable scenes and words included the bravery of the Japanese-American fighting unit; the horror of a man being introduced to the shock of war by seeing two dead Germans who looked to be 12-year-old boys with brains sticking out of their head and - maybe the most amazing battle site of the entire war - the ultra-thick and dark Hurtgen Forest in Germany - another place that produced a high death-rate total, a disaster on both sides when the fighting stopped.

The stories just keep getting more incredible as the tales of this war continue.

On episode 4 of the DVD of this series, we come to end of the chapters and, after perhaps five seconds of blank screen, a whole new series of nine chapters and 55 minutes begin. I assume that is what is under this heading here at IMDb. Perhaps they broke it up into two parts on television but both parts are on one disc, and labeled only as one episode on the back on the DVD.

Anyway, after the D-Day coverage, they went back to what was happening in the Pacific, and we learn about the Miarianas Islands and other advances against Japan. Those islands included Guam, Tinian and Saipan. At the latter, the biggest aircraft carrier battle ever was fought. There is some super action footage in here.

The battle for Saipan went on for four weeks and cost the U.S. about 25,000 men in casualties, either killed, wounded or reported missing. To date, it was the costliest battle in the Pacific. The Japanese lost even more. An interesting observation made here by several soldiers: the Japanese fighters, with the possible exception of U.S. Marines, were the toughest fighters in the war, ones that would never surrender but fight to the death no matter what.

All in all, another excellent episode.