Heavy Artillery

One thing I have to wonder about is where all the medics kept coming from.  It seems someone is always shouting for one and one always appears even though they themselves seem to often get killed or wounded when treating someone.  How many medics were in a unit?

At the other end of medical emergencies, you've got demands for paperwork in the middle of a dozen different things going on. I guess this is when Winters discovered the true joy of leadership. I can imagine how dry the reports might be compared to what actually happened.

At the same time, it occurs to me how easy it would be easy to spin what had actually happened, since I assume the men in a platoon don't ever see them. Plus, with the constant rotation of men thanks to losses and injuries, presumably the officer-in-charge remained the same and would have a lot of leeway in what got told.

Given that I am now five episodes in though, the main thing I noticed is that I still don't recognize most of the characters from one episode to the next. Sometimes I recognize faces, sometimes names, sometimes both. But given the way much of it is shot, plus the darkened faces, it makes it difficult to keep track.

It certainly makes me understand though why so many war stories focus on the officers. Besides the fact that they're privy to so much more information, it's easier to keep track of a few people in these kinds of changing situations, even if, as in Moose's case, they end up coming and going quickly.

I noticed when I looked at the credits that Michael Fassbender was apparently in this episode and I never realized it.

It was very odd hearing Nixon list off where all the commanders were with various ordinary things happening, given what they were in charge of at the time. I thought of it before, how odd it is for so many people to be going back and forth across countries in the middle of campaigns. Especially when I think of war today, with US troops in Afghanistan, half the world away from home, all of Europe could crowd into a third of the United States.

But given these distances, it is certainly easier to understand how someone could be in Paris one day, soldiers could be looking at movies, and the next thing you know they're back in battle.

I was glad that the soldiers took it upon themselves to strip the departing soldiers of ammo and equipment, even before Jimmy Fallon showed up with supplies. One of the things that bugs the hell out of me when I watch TV is when people drop or throw away weapons. You'd think they would carry all the weapons they could. So if your gun is out of ammo? Now it's a club.