There are some things that you can’t train for.

I have been watching the HBO series ‘Pacific’ again.

Each episode begins with the elderly gentlemen who lived the through the horror recounting some personal details about the following episode.

On the 15th of September 1944 the battle began for Peleliu in the Central Pacific. General Macarthur concluded that it was a strategically important island, because of it’s airstrip, for an aerial assault on the Philippines to the West.

Major General William Rupertus, (USMC commander of 1st Marine Division) predicted the island would be secured within four days. However, because of Japan’s well-crafted fortifications and stiff resistance,the battle lasted more than two months. In the United States, this was a controversial battle because of the island’s questionable strategic value and the high casualty rate, which exceeded that of all other amphibious operations during the Pacific War. The National Museum of the Marine Corps called it “the bitterest battle of the war for the Marines” (Wikipedia).

One of those Marines from the 1st was clearly still shaken by those two months on this island paradise that was a theater of horror when he was there. They had spent months on the island of Pavuvu being trained and retrained to ready them for the coming assault. What they didn’t know at the time was that the Japanese had drastically altered their previous tactics after suffering a succession of defeats in island battles. The American Generals, in contrast, had decided upon the same successful strategies which had been working up until now.

“There are some things that you just can’t train for.”

Fortified positions buried in the limestone caves and interconnected in a honeycomb of tunnels gave the Japanese a formidable fortress. This was a completely different terrain and battle ground for the Marines who had been fighting through jungle and mud up to this point, but the tactics soon changed and adapted to systematically cave by cave, hand to hand at times flush out and push out the entrenched enemy.

It took 73 days to push to the North of the island and take the final stronghold. It wasn’t until 1947 that the final Japanese Lieutenant was convinced to surrender with his 34 men. It cost 2336 American lives and 10695 Japanese to secure the freedom of this little lump of rock in the equatorial Pacific ocean.

All of this was 66 years before the gentlemen were interviewed about their experiences there. Less than 600 people now occupy the island but the 13000 men who never left it alive had a horror to live and experience in their short time on the hills and beaches of Peleliu.

In our movie age it would be easy to forget the realities and horrors of previous generations and what they lived through; we have them only as analogous examples in the general safety of our day to day lives. But we owe it to our forebears who gave us life, at no little sacrifice, to make the most of what we have.

We can make every excuse under the sun for not really living, but they just don’t wash in the light of what every generation before ours struggled with.

Yes life can be tough at times, but what do you have?

I have more than my grandfather could have dreamt possible and yet I still struggle; I had to put into practice much of what I have written this last year just to be calm enough to stay at work today.

Some days the training and learning and information that we possess seems wholly inadequate, but if you stop and reassess, usually you have the required information to proceed; even if you need to adapt it to suit the new battlefield.