If you are an HBO subscriber you can the HBO GO app and watch the entire series for free.
Watch the episodes with the Field Guide turned on - by far the best special feature I’ve ever seen on any disc. It’s not obtrusive and actually enhances your enjoyment and understanding of what you’re watching. For instance, they say something about a place, a map pops up on the screen to show you where it is in relation to where they are. They talk about a gun, a little info window about the gun shows up. A soldier says something in German, they translate it for you. Sometimes they even show actual film footage of the event being portrayed at the time. I showed the miniseries to my ex with the Field Guide on and she said that it helped her understand what was going on immensely and she couldn’t imagine watching it without it.
“Bastogne” and “Breaking Poing” kind of run together in my head as well, but the former is them getting shelled in the forest at Bastogne and focuses on Doc Roe trying to keep everyone alive with little to no supplies (it also sets up, IMHO, the funniest scenein the series). The second is them getting shelled in the forest before the assault at Foy and focuses on Sgt Lipton trying to keep everyone alive with little to no supplies. 
Renal failure at the end. But it was peritonitis brought on by a perforated ulcer.
And yet strangely, the “sequel” aka The Pacific is just OK.
Thanks for pointing this out! I’ve watched the set several times and have looked at the Field Guide, but I didn’t know it was interactive. Awesome!
I need something to explain what was so great about their tactic in taking out those German guns on the first day. The epilogue said the maneuver was used for future training. As many times as I watch, I don’t get what was so special/different about it. Looked to me like they got as close as possible and started shooting. 
I disagree completely. It was different for sure, but the Intensity of the island hopping scenes made me feel very close to the action.
I think the thing about the Pacific is that most people don’t think about it when they think about WWII. Unless you had a relative fight and/or die on an island in the Pacific, That whole Part of the war is very much a mystery for most casual students of WWII. Mainly because the US fought the Japanese primarily by themselves. And it ends with the US dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so many people don’t know about the horrific fighting the Marines went through on those islands.
The other part that was decidedly different from BOB was the inclusion of Personal stories and romances. To me, this was only a slight drawback, as it gave us a different perspective of what those guys went through on a personal level, both at home and abroad.
Back to BOB for a moment, the one episode I don’t like is the “why we fight” episode. Because the concentration camps were not why we (the US) fought. I have never read in any historical literature that the reason why we got in the war was because of what Hitler was doing in the concentration camps. The title is misleading., that’s all. Once the atrocities were found, of course, we had another reason to fight.
As for the episode that impacts me the most, it is Bastogne. That was the camping trip from hell, with those poor guys living in those holes. I think there was another episode that they showed the guys sitting in a church, right after Bastogne… And they show all the faces that were no longer there. It amazes me how those guys just fight through it, and don’t think about anything but getting to the end of the day alive. And here I am, watching that from the comfort of my nice warm bed and house. Those guys gave so much of their lives and youth, and I don’t think we ever properly show our appreciation.
That’s because they tried to shoehorn 2 books that were longer than “Band of Brothers” and a third story about John Basilone into the same 10 episodes.
Had they just stuck with “Helmet for My Pillow” or “With The Old Breed”, they’d have knocked it out of the park, but they tried a little hard to cover the entire war for the 1st and 3rd Marines in the Pacific from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.
It wasn’t a matter of acting or cinematography or even the actual dialogue or characters, it’s simply that they had too much to deal with in 10 episodes.
It wasn’t really “special” as much as it was a perfect, textbook application of basic pin-and-flank assault tactics on a fixed defensive position.
Basically, Winters setup one strongpoint (with the heavy machine guns) in the woods on the NW end of the field, with line of sight along a good portion of the gun trench as well as the field itself, tasked with pinning everyone in place and drawing their fire. He then split the remainder of his men into two squads, one to assault the machine gun nest sitting between guns #1 and #2 that covered the NW end of the trenchline, the other to quickly rush said end as soon as the MG was out.
The two squads regrouped inside the trench to assault the first gun from both sides (still covered by their own MG team in the hedges), then doubled back to take care of the second. At this point, the fixed MG strongpoint moved to the second gun pit to cover the assault on 3rd and 4th.
Because the other German machine gun nests covering the guns from the other side of the open field couldn’t see into the trench, and the action had gone down so decisively fast, *and *they had been getting shot at from multiple directions (first the woods, then one of their own MG pits, then multiple points of the trenchline), they started getting confused as to where to pour their own supporting fire, which in turn facilitated the clean-up of guns #3 and #4.
After which the paras legged it before the Germans could really regroup or mount a counter-attack.
Soooo… yes, they pretty much “just got in as close as possible and started shooting” when it comes right down to it :). But they did so in a clever, coordinated way and fast enough that it let them do a lot of damage despite being outnumbered and out-gunned.
It’s difficult to explain more clearly than that without a map on hand - but it should be easy to Google if you’re really interested, as that particular action has indeed gotten quite a lot of attention since (not least because of BoB). Look up “Assault on Brécourt Manor”.
You explained it quite well. “Pin and flank”.
I’m printing this. Next time I watch, I’ll use it for reference. Thanks!
I like the Pacific because it told John Basilone’s story. I grew up not far from his home town. Big statue of him there. Parade every year.
They used “Why We Fight” as a title because that was the title of a series of propaganda films by Frank Capra. And also it is what those soldiers saw as they looked back as why it was worth it to go through what they did. Up until that point they basically fought for each other. When they saw the camps it became about something bigger
Basically Army doctrine states that an assaulting force needs to have a 3:1 advantage in man power when attacking a dug in force. Winters was able assault the position while being outnumbered. And won. Which is why the way he maneuvered his troops and attacked the position were used as a teaching tool. And why he was awarded the DSC, the second highest award the army gives out. If it weren’t for artificial limits put on the number of Medal of Honors awarded per division he would have been put in for that.