Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "Why These 2 American Soldiers Couldn’t Relate to Each Other After WW2: The Forgotten Divide" video.

  1. This is actually a good comparison. The Western Front in WWII saw some brutal combat to be sure. But there was still some of the old "gentleman's war" left there. When Allied and German troops surrendered to each other, they could (mostly) expect (mostly) decent treatment by the other side. And because of this, there were very few of those utterly brutal battles of annihilation like there were on the Eastern Front and in the Pacific. The German/Soviet and Japanese/American conflicts were inherently different than the war in Western Europe. In both of the latter conflicts, it was a "no quarter" situation. You fought until annihilation, because the consequences of surrender were very literally worse than death on the battlefield.
    60
  2.  @redaug4212  This is because the Army didn't actually do "most of the ground fighting in the Pacific". It's because the Army didn't do much actual fighting in the Pacific - they did things like relieve the Marines on Guadalcanal after major resistance was essentially over, and invade places like Papua New Guinea where there wasn't all that much resistance to begin with. The the bulk of the heavy fighting in the Pacific, at places like Peleliu, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, etc was done by United States Marines.
    58
  3. There's another HUGE difference between the European and Pacific Theaters. If you were fighting in Europe, when you were relieved, you'd get to go to London or Paris, with all the creature comforts and grateful local women and all that fun stuff. If you were fighting in the Pacific, and you weren't the First Marine Division after Guadalcanal (who got to go to Australia to be hailed as heroes and participate in what Bob Leckie called "The Great Debauch" - on a side note, the VERY Australian song Waltzing Matilda is still the official song of the 1st MarDiv), you'd get your R&R on Pavuvu, which was an uninhabited island until the US military went there, and generally hated by everyone.
    13
  4.  @Front-Toward-Enemy  Again, this is largely nonsense. Yes, the Army was at these places. However, they did not pull their own weight compared to the Marines. On Okinawa, for instance, the Army's 77th division ran into the Japanese buzzsaw and had to be relieved by the First Marine Division, who took the fight to the enemy and won. Then again, compare and contrast Army fights in places like the Philippines to Marine Corps fights in places like Tarawa. I don't think you can reasonably say that those were battles of similar intensity. Yes, the Army can field more men than the Corps can. In WWII, the Marine Corps topped out at six divisions, with 6th MarDiv only active for one battle (Okinawa). The Army had dozens. It is undeniably true that a vastly larger force can be more places at once than a smaller one. It is also undeniably true that wherever the fighting was toughest in the Pacific, you would find United States Marines. Often alone, as on Tarawa and Iwo Jima. Yeah, some of this has to do with MacArthur's....um...less desirable qualities (the man was a turd who was promoted vastly beyond his ability, as well as being a coward). But part of it also has to do with what the Marine Corps is. There's a reason that America's enemies fear US Marines and spread wild rumors about us - in Iraq, they believed that to join the Corps, we had to kill our parents, in WWII, the Japanese believed we were recruited from insane asylums, etc. Every enemy has a different wild rumor. The Army may be a professional force of well trained soldiers, but the Marine Corps is a warrior cult with training at least as good as the Army's but with a killer ethos that is unmatched. There's a reason you rarely see a pickup truck covered in Army bumper stickers.
    13
  5.  @redaug4212  You're specifically mentioning Guadalcanal and Peleliu as fights where the Army "carried a significant load of the fighting". This is outright false. On Guadalcanal, the brunt of the fighting was carried out by the 1st Marine Division. Then the 2nd Marine Division came in. By the time the Army got there, major resistance was essentially over, and the Army cleaned up after the Marines. On Peleliu, the Army saw more fighting than on Guadalcanal, but one cannot honestly make the case that they fought like the Marines did. Okinawa, the Army saw much more fighting than they ever did on Guadalcanal or Peleliu, but again, that battle was won by Marines. The Army got the first real combat there, but then the Corps had to come in and beat the Japanese where the Army could not. Where was the Army's Tarawa? The Japanese commander there said that a million men in a hundred years couldn't take his atoll from him. It took 10,000 Marines three days. Where was the Army's Iwo Jima? Japanese commander on Iwo, General Kuribayashi, had organized a brilliant defense in depth with heavy fortifications and a network of tunnels, had artillery and machine guns registered on every potential landing zone, and was still destroyed by the Marines. Yes, it is true that the Army had more troops in the Pacific than the Corps did. This is the very nature of the two branches. But there's a reason that Army lore focuses on Normandy and Bastogne, with hardly a mention of the Pacific. The fact is that the Army fought relatively easy campaigns in the Pacific behind Douglass MacArthur (who famously said in Korea that the safest place to be was behind a battalion of Marines), while the Marines fought absolutely brutal campaigns and performed feats of arms that we are still in awe of today. Yes, I'm a Marine. I fought in Fallujah with The Old Breed. I'm immensely proud of that. I can't claim that I'm unbiased. But the facts speak for themselves. It was the Marine Corps that ripped the empire from the Japanese grasp.
    12
  6.  @redaug4212  Okay, several issues here. On Guadalcanal, you're claiming that the Army did what the Corps did, because both defended Henderson Field at various times. I say that this is a false comparison. At the Tenaru, the Corps was working with zero naval support against a strong Japanese army. By the time the Army fought for Henderson Field, we had naval superiority and a broken Japanese army. There's a reason my Old Breed blaze says GUADALCANAL down that red one. If your main point is that the Pacific Theater was not deadlier than the European Theater, well, I have a couple things to say about that. First is "for who". If you were a pilot or aircrew at all, yeah, the European theater was WAY worse - shot down German pilots would climb into another plane and fight again, shot down Japanese pilots were almost always killed. If you were fighting on the ground, and this includes the Army, the fight was objectively worse in the Pacific. In Europe, if Allied and German forces surrendered to each other, they could, for the most part, expect halfway decent treatment. Hence, you saw surrenders on both sides when a position became untenable. In the Pacific, it was a "no quarter" fight. As I routinely tell my Army friend, you surround 100,000 Germans, they surrender. You surround a single Jap, he's gonna try and take as many of you with him as possible. I salute the accomplishments of the US Army in Europe. I'll even admit they didn't show their ass in the Pacific. But claiming that the Army approached what the Corps did in the Pacific? That's just false.
    5
  7. Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie were not soldiers. They were both US Marines. If you don't know the difference, ask a Marine. We'll all be happy to tell you.
    4
  8.  @jefclark  Not talking shit on the bomber crews. Those were hard men doing hard shit, and I'm glad I wasn't one of them. Those men have this Marine's unequivocal respect.
    3
  9. @binladen-xp4ob Cute story. It's not, you know, even remotely true, but it's cute that you believe that. Not sure WHY you believe that, even the Army doesn't make that rather ludicrous claim, but hey, you just keep smoking that copium.
    1