The Pacific- a brutal reality

I have been watching The Pacific on HBO. The episodes have been recorded onto my DirecTV hard disc so I can pick the right time to view them later each week. There are 10 installments of the series and I completed #9 yesterday afternoon. The shows portray such brutality that I have to be careful when I watch them so I don't carry the visions of carnage with me to my daily responsibilities. Actually, I have been unable to successfully dodge the terrible images in my mind . The plight of the 1st Marine Division soldier's experiences during the horrid Pacific Theater of Operations of WWII in such battles as Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, Okinawa and Iwo Jima are breathtaking. One of the real-life characters from the movie is the now 85 year old Sidney Phillips from Mobile, Alabama.

Sid came back home to South Alabama after the war. He had decided while at Cape Gloucester to become a physician and settled in Mobile to practice medicine. Eventually, many years later, he became a friend and doctor to my wife's family. Brenda grew up with Sid's son, Sidney, teaching her at Greystone Christian School and later we became personal friends and fellow church congregants with his youngest son and daughter-in-law, Charles and Sue Phillips. When one meets Dr. Phillips, there is an air of "old southern gentleman" that surrounds him. To realize that for years he and his sons ran an antiques business makes that so much more understandable. Dr. Phillip's place is filled with history and the furnishings that followed lives to just short of their eternal destinations. This all seems so mild when seeing the horrible experiences that Sid lived on Tenaru, Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. Sid and his older sister, Catherine, were also featured on Ken Burn's, The War, in 2007.

My father, Tom Harvill, also served in WWII. He is just a day shy of being 2 years younger than Sid Phillips. He was a latecomer to the war, not by desire, but by age. Although stationed stateside as a Navy Corpsman, he witnessed the carnage that was brought back home. Corpsmen were the medical caregivers that fought right alongside the Marines portrayed in The Pacific. My dad saw victims of the battles and helped with surgeries in military hospitals. In fact, my dad served in the Korean War as well. I am so proud of him and that my lineage includes veterans from almost every war since the Revolution. When I visited my dad last month in North Carolina, he gave me something I have seen around my childhood home since I can remember: his Navy Corpsman's field box. It contains all the battlefield surgical supplies that one could carry to battle. When I see the Corpsmen helping the Marines in the movie, I think of the medicine box my dad gave me. I love you, Pop!

I would recommend The Pacific to those who are not faint of heart. The battle scenes are recreated with, even as the veterans testify, brutal realism. The language is as crude as you would imagine a group of terrified, just-out-of-high-school boys would be. The adult scenes in the movie are unnecessary, in my opinion, as they didn't help propel the heart of the story (with the categorical exception of Basilone). I realize that this is HBO. All in all, this movie is brilliant. I hope it helps our contemporaries understand the blood shed, the anguish and the bravery that pushed our troops ahead, against all odds, to take the enemy's ground, inch by inch, into victory.

To all the armed forces, past and present, I humbly thank you.

Sid Phillips and Tom Hanks at The Pacific premier

My mom & dad, Tom & Betty Harvill, 1952