One of the saddest stories I heard from Sledge was about a man named Marion Vermeer who was another marine wounded with Bill Leyden by the same shell. He was a lumberjack from Washington state and when he got hit it took off his ankle and peppered his thigh. He was dragged over by sledge and asked him “do you think I’ll ever be able to be a lumberjack again?” Sledge replied “sure buddy you’ll make it and be in those trees doing what you wanna do” Sledge then explains he felt as if he had been stabbed in the heart bc they carried his stretcher another 20-30 yards and he bled out.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

Ugh 😔

FYI, in case you were wondering, the US established camps for the natives behind the lines where they were provided food, water, medical help and shelter. That orphaned baby was brought back and given to an Okinawan woman to care for.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

I wondered where he was going with the baby. I'm glad they did.

Tracer bullets are real. Sledge said in his book he saw a white hot tracer bullet pass right by his face as he was jumping out of the landing craft on Peleliu beach, causing him to fall down and hit the ground like they showed in the show

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

Oh wow

@collinrosenmarkle62

9 ай бұрын

Tracers are used in machine guns. They're phosphorus tipped bullets the glow hot, usually red or green or white, every time you see one there are 3 or 4 bullets passing between that. It's used to mark targets and increase accuracy.

This episode is so impactful. Sledge is pushed to his breaking point and then finds a piece of his humanity again. Even knowing that scene with the wounded civilian woman is coming up, it still hits so hard.

@michaelstach5744

9 ай бұрын

This is maybe the key point of the whole series. Sledge came so close to losing his soul. We don’t have a tool that will measure this in terms of millimeters or inches but our hearts can feel what is going on. If you remember what Dr Sledge said in episode 2 about men losing their souls in the Great War this is even poignant.

M y father was an Army infantry company commander in New Guinea and the Philippines. Company G, 3rd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 6th Infantry Division. This was March 1945. He was given a 37mm anti-tank gun and its crew to help defend a road leading into the town of Orion in Bataan on Luzon. The gun was loaded with an anti-personnel round of ammunition. The crew was told to shoot anything that came up the road. Period. That night, the crew and an infantry squad protecting the gun crew, heard babbling in the darkness down the road. There were women's voices and children. The darkness was total, and they could see nothing but a few feet in front of them. To shoot or not to shoot, that was the question. The crew argued about whether to open fire as the civilian voices came nearer. Despite their orders, they could not bring themselves to open fire in case the crowd were refugees. Finally, the crew saw the women and children at very close range.........being herded by an attacking Japanese formation. The Japanese opened fire from behind the civilians, killing them and also killing the 37mm gun crew. The U.S. infantry squad opened fire, but the fire was not so accurate in the darkness, and the Japanese infantrymen simply ignored the U.S. soldiers, literally charging right past them a few feet away, and into the town as a "Banzai Charge." There followed a terrible house to house combat in the dark all over the town. Dad's company prevailed in the end, but not before many innocent civilian families were killed in the chaotic melee in the dark. Fighting the Japanese Army was a fight against an intractable foe who fought to the death----just like on Okinawa. By the way, the Okinawa campaign was conducted by both Marine and Army infantry divisions.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

That's gut wrenching. My respect to your father. That must have been devastating to be a part of.

There is a chapter titled “Of Mud and Maggots” in the book “With the Old Breed On Peleliu and Okinawa”, one of the books this series was based on. This episode does a really good job bringing that chapter to life on screen. The book however, much more graphic

The film recreates some scenes of horror very closely - the point where Sledge slides into the maggoty corpse was taken directly from Sledge's book "With the Old Breed". His written description was matched by the film closely, including Sledge pulling out his K-bar knife to scrape the maggots off his clothing.

13:26 It could be the navy using their big guns to provide artillery support but it could be land based arty too. The 1st Marine Division landed with four regiments, one of which was the 11th, a dedicated artillery regiment. They're likely set up a relatively safe distance behind the lines waiting for calls to support the infantry. We see Sledge working as an FO (forward observer) doing this very thing later in the episode.

My grandfather was a Navy Seabee during the Pacific War. Effectively, that means he was a combat engineer. He and the rest of the Seabees went ashore with the Marines with bulldozers and explosives to clear obstacles on landing beaches, then built/repaired airfields, fortifications, etc, once the invasion gained a foothold. It was his second stint in the Navy. He had served as a boy sailor in the 1920s, enlisting under a falsified birth certificate at age 16. He was 36 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He was too old to be conscripted at the time - and because he had a wife and child and possessed skills useful to the war effort at home (industrial/construction), he was under no obligation to serve in uniform - much less in combat. He wasn't a particularly formidable, macho-type of a guy. He never talked very much about his service or the war. Nevertheless, he was a great example of what we in America call "The Greatest Generation". I once asked him why he reenlisted when he didn't need to go. He just said, "I thought I could help, and that's where the guns were. That's enough about that, ok?". We don't produce people like that any longer. FYI: "Seabee" is the commonly used term by which the Navy Construction Battalions (CB, or "Seabee") are known. It was from the Seabee ranks that the first naval special warfare troops - which evolved to Underwater Demolition Teams, later SEALs - were drawn.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

"I thought I could help" was all I needed to hear to know he was one a kind. Respect to your grandfather.

Nice job as always Ramblers. Thank you. Have a good weekend!

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

You too 😊

Swapping the ponchos to keep dry is what we called a "comfort based descision" which can be just as crippling as an emotion based descision. Embrace the suck, just wish that it rains harder so the enemy drowns (unlikely to actually happen). Just know the enemy hates the rain as much as you, if you can befriend the rain, dust, or whatever ails you, then your will becomes stronger than the enemy. This is one of the mental games my NCO's taught me when my mood was sour from a fraction of the rain depicted in the show.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

It must have been hell for you. There's probably a point where irritation leads to distraction. I hear what you're saying. You just have to block it out of your mind.

Machine gun ammunition normally came as what's called 4-1. For every two tracers, there are 4 ball rounds (non-tracer) between them so when you see tracers going out know that between each pair are 4 other rounds. When I was a Weapons Squad Leader, I carried several magazines for my rifle that were all tracer. These could be used to fire at targets the gun crews were having trouble identifying. so they could then place fire on them. Of course, once they had the target I'd need to move because the marking fire isn't one-way; it also signals the enemy where you are located. Some riflemen would load the initial 3-5 rounds in a magazine so they would be at the bottom and last fired. When those appeared, it would indicate you were getting to the end of that mag and about time to reload. About the mortar tube cover, look in the left foreground at 10:30 as that tube has a muzzle cover.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

You'd only see them in the cover of darkness so it's specific use would be at night ? So do they remove them just when they're firing and then cover them back again immediately after?

@ranger-1214

9 ай бұрын

@@RamblersInc Tracers can be seen quite well even in bright daylight. Sometimes enemy rounds are a different color whereas U.S. ammunition tracers have been almost always a bright red/orange. In WWII the Japanese used different compounds that could glow yellow, blue, a shade of red, or the reddish-orange similar to U.S. ammunition. And during the Vietnam war, the NVA and VC used Russian or Chinese ammunition which their chemical compounds were green. On the mortar muzzle cover, it should be on any time the tube is not in use. It is part of the crews procedure, regardless if covered or uncovered, to “clear” the tube prior to firing the first round with a quick visual to check it.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

Wow. I didn't know they ranged in colours. Thanks for the info 👍

@txusmc69

9 ай бұрын

Machine gun tracers are 1 in 5, so every 5th round was a tracer. We too also carried at least one magazine filled with tracers. It was usually the one we carried at night to start with.

Kamikaze attacks off shore during the Battle for Okinawa, cost the U.S. Navy 4,9907 killed 4,824 wounded. 368 ships damaged and 36 ships sunk! Not covered in this episode (thankfully) were the mass suicides of the local population Jumping off of cliffs! Years ago I attended a lecture from a Marine vet who was on Okinawa! He said that the combat and seeing the civilian suicides, stunned even the most hardened combat vets!

@catherinelw9365

9 ай бұрын

Yup, the kamikaze attacks and losses brought us back to 1942 losses. Truman decided enough was enough and chose to drop the bombs.

You may want to watch Hacksaw Ridge, a movie about Army combat a very short distance from where Sledge and Snafu were on Okinawa.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

We'll add it to the list 👍

Great episode and reaction. You really should watch Hacksaw Ridge by Mel Gibson starring Andrew Garfield, which also covers events on Okinawa.

@Nyx_2142

9 ай бұрын

Except it's heavily romanticized in typical bullshit Mel Gibson style, with less than subtle proselytizing too. That movie is an absolutely embarrassing disservice to Desmond Doss. That movie is the exact kind of movie Doss warned and feared Hollywood would make out of his experiences, which is why he refused to agree to any movies when he was alive. He was already experienced and respected by the time Hacksaw Ridge happened and not some doe-eyed rookie, and the fucking cliff wasn't anywhere near that tall in reality. They claimed they had to leave stuff out because it would be "unbelievable" to an audience and yet they filled the movie with misinformation and stacked lies on lies to get the fairytale they wanted. It's fucking pathetic and so are the fanboys that constantly shill the movie.

tracers isn't a hollywood thing, they use them primarily in machine guns, 1 every 5 rounds, to help the machine gunner get an idea of where the rounds are impacting.

I think the point of ceasing fire was to try and take the soldier captive.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

Yep. It's just he was running at them at full pace 😂.

You were talking about reading the map wrong… Capt Sobel might have had a clone in the PTO.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

😳They must have been fuming. All that just to be wounded by one of your own.

Absolutely brutal how can anyone be right in the head after that hell.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

I can't imagine. It's almost not possible to be.

Tracer rounds ARE a real thing. Typically every fifth round in a machine gun ammo belt was a tracer. This was to try to help the machine gunner direct his fire accurately. The BOMB that was dropped was an atom bomb.. The hydrogen bomb was not developed, yet.

A short round means it didn't go far. When you clear a misfire, you put the safety pin back in the Fuze and it renders it safe again.

Great reaction, guys. Okinawa was the last straw for the US. With the huge number of casualties, ships sunk due to kamikaze attacks, it’s clear that the invasion of mainland Japan would be a horrific bloodbath. The native Okinawans, like other islanders, were considered inferior by the Japanese and expendable, hence the use of human shields and suicide bombings. That boy who Sledge did not shoot was an Okinawan conscript. They took all the male teens and older and forced them to fight. Some weren’t even armed - just cannon fodder. Those planes flying overhead at the final shot with the ominous music implied they were carrying the second bomb to Nagasaki. The Japanese Army tried to stage a palace coup when they discovered the Emperor was going to surrender but failed, fortunately. It did cause a delay in surrendering. Sledge and his companions would not return home for another year. They were deployed to China to process the surrender of the Japanese Army. He wrote a memoir of that time, “China Marine”, where he described the beginning of his healing from the war. He befriended a Jesuit priest who introduced Sledge to a Chinese doctor where they frequently ate meals at the doctor’s home. They all ate dinner together for many evenings and Sledge felt he was returning to civilization where they listened to classical music and discussed philosophy and religion. Quite a contrast to his war experience. Sadly, after Sledge returned to the States, he wrote to the doctor but didn’t receive a response. The war in China between the nationalists and communists caused displacement and imprisonment for many Chinese caught in the crossfire and Sledge feared the doctor and his family were imprisoned or even executed because they were anti-Communist. The Jesuit priest, who returned to the US, also tried to find the doctor, but he and his family were never heard from again.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

Some weren't even armed? Disgusting. You made me happy for Sledge for a second. And then the last sentence took that away. 😭

8:52 Nope! We used tracers in the '00s - mayhaps 'cause Royal Life Guards (Denmark)? 24:57 H-bomb not A-Bomb?

"I didn't come here to kill old women" - Eugene Sledge on the old woman in the hut asking him to kill her. I'll watch the reaction tonight. This one always requires kleenex for me.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

That scene 😢

Watching as a marine stationed in Okinawa right now actually lmao, needless to say it’s much nicer in 2023 than in 1945

@Scarlitty

9 ай бұрын

Also yes tracers are real, they help machine gunners know where their bullets are actually landing for accuracy as well as giving other marines an idea of the position they are targeting

Compare and contrast the scene in the hut with the scene in Full Metal Jacket in the burned out factory with Joker and the sniper. (And A Bomb and not H Bomb. Japan did not agree to surrender until after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, so still a bit to go before the war ends.) As for the battle for Okinawa, think Iwo Jima, multiplied.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

Just.....hell. I've not seen Full Metal Jacket. We'll add it to the list 👍

13:15 - It is not properly explained, but the civilians were Okinawans - not Japanese. But US soldiers did not know either. Consider this kind of Balkan racial wars in Pacific. They were thought of some kind of lesser subhuman by the Japan, so that's why they are eager to use them as human shields. Okinawa was invaded multiple times, in the half of 19th century you could have only one knife attached by chain to village well, so no uprising would be possible. That's the period when the unarmed way of fight Karate and martial art mainly using agriculture tools Kobudo was formed, as a self-defense from Japanese invaders.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

Wow. I didn't know there was a fighting style using agricultural tools.

@petrhanak862

9 ай бұрын

@@RamblersInc I think you know for example what a tonfa is.. but originally it was a handle for a milestone. Similar to the medieval rural uprisings in the Europe - you grab what you have around, since you cannot have proper swords and stuff...

8:58 Excuse me!! Tracer rounds are very much a real thing not a "Hollywood thing". Gunners use tracer rounds to get a good visual of where rounds are going down range and to give others an indicator of where you are trying to shoot. Generally a tracer round is put on the belt or magazine in such a manner that the tracers are fired every few rounds generally give or take every 5th or 6th round is a tracer round. Different militaries have different S.O.P. or Standard Operating Procedures so it can vary but tracers for machine guns typically placed in that manner.

@TheAMcDoom

9 ай бұрын

And yes it was used in WW2 and even WW1

I understand the fascination with war but I never understood the young guys who thought they were going to run in and just... kill the enemy. unless youre at like a 50 year technological advantage... the enemy is out to kill you too.

@RamblersInc

7 ай бұрын

Propaganda? I’m assuming the young guys would only really know what it was like when talking to those that fought before them.

No, there was no H-Bomb used during WWII, H-Bomb, which are currently known as thermonuclear weapons, used a fission explosion to generate a fusion reaction(using the Hydrogen in a H-Bomb, hence the name H Bomb). The Nuclear weapons used in WWII were Fission weapons of two variants, using fission of Plutonium and Uranium(there are basically two ways to skin that cat, they were massively over-engineers and very yeild inefficient compared to modern nukes) At the time they were called atomic bombs, the first Hydrogen Bomb, was detonated in 1952

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

Can't believe I said H instead of A. 🤦‍♂️🙃 The H was only used during a test right?

@lazyidiotofthemonth

9 ай бұрын

@@RamblersInc Yes, about 2000 thermonuclear weapons were test by the US, USSR, China, Russia, and UK.

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

You....WHAT ? ! 2000 ? ? Wow, I need to read up on this stuff.

@lazyidiotofthemonth

9 ай бұрын

@@RamblersInc Don't worry someone already made a video kzread.info/dash/bejne/foB3qJmvgMTUorw.html

@catherinelw9365

9 ай бұрын

@@RamblersInc You know why you said "H"? Because at the same time, your buddy was on the verge of saying "Hiroshima", and I think your brain thought of "H". That was my impression, anyway.

Tracers are not Hollywood effects. They're used to guide the shooters direction or redirect fire as needed. Here is a modern example, in combat, of tracer fire: kzread.info/dash/bejne/m3yKuZZ8fpmyl6w.html

@RamblersInc

9 ай бұрын

Is the sole purpose of a tracer to help when there's a fight at night?

@richardespanto8459

9 ай бұрын

@@RamblersInc used for day or night. If you don't see where the bullet is impacting you won't know where to adjust.

The war didn't end with that bomb. It took a second bomb 3 days later before the Japanese would surrender. (Unless I misheard and they were talking about the second bomb to begin with.)

@Nyx_2142

9 ай бұрын

Even with the two bombs, full blockade, starting famine, the extensive firebombing (which was far worse and more deadly than the atomic bombs), and the Soviet declaration of war.. the Japanese military STILL attempted a coup against the emperor when they learned he was going to order a surrender.

Machine gunners will pretty commonly use tracers still. The propaganda on both sides of that conflict were pretty wild. The Japanese also kept fighting to the 2nd A Bomb and parts of the military tried to stage a coup to keep it going even then. Not as much to comment on beyond what's shown/said as is this time around.