The Pacific

Looking at the paper this morning I find that The Pacific is toping the DVD sales chart. The Pacific? Never heard of it. Oh, look, it's not on the DVD rental chart. That's weird, why would it be a top seller, but not even show up on the rental chart? Oh, I know, probably one of those big nature things that grandparents buy for their grandkids. Actually, no.

The Pacific is a mini-series from HBO along the same lines as Band of Brothers. I pull up the web site and they have a maps section. Well, I like maps, let's have a look. Interesting. It takes you through the battles one step at a time with a little bit of text and a very simplified map of the situation. They give out the information is nice, small byte size chunks. If you were in hurry, and they let you, you could click through it really fast and see and read everything.

Ah! But here's the trick. They don't let you click through it really fast. There is delay with each new piece of information which allows you to absorb the information they are providing. Very clever.

I went through parts 1 and 2 of the Battle of Guadacanal. All the fighting took place on a very small portion of the island. The simplified map gives you no real clue of the conditions there. For that I have my memory of The Thin Red Line.