256: The Thin Red Line with Marty Morgan

00:02:26:19 – 00:03:00:06
Dan LeFebvre
Before we dive into any of the details of the movie, I wanted to point out the special notes that he wrote at the beginning of the novel.

00:03:00:09 – 00:03:17:10
Dan LeFebvre
I’m not going to read the whole thing here, but the basic gist of that special note says that the author made up a lot of things in the story. But of course, the Battle of Guadalcanal really did happen. So if you were to give the movie an overall letter grade for historical accuracy, what would it get?

00:03:17:12 – 00:03:46:18
Marty Morgan
I’d give it a B-plus. I like this movie a lot, and I think this movie depicts things better than any other World War two movie. I think the book that this movie is based on is one of the best World War two memoirs. I mean, it’s a novel. Yes. With some fictionalization going on. But at the same time, it’s the personal experiences of James Jones fighting with the 27th Infantry Regiment on Guadalcanal during World War Two.

00:03:46:20 – 00:04:14:10
Marty Morgan
And I’m not the only person that admires the sub the source material, because a lot of famous people have credited Thin Red Line as being one of the best memoirs of combat from World War Two. And the movie turns into a totally different animal and becomes more of this meditation on transcendentalism in a very, very interesting way. In this way, Terrence Malick makes the movie something entirely different.

00:04:14:12 – 00:04:38:19
Marty Morgan
But at the same time, it remains soundly grounded and a historical fact. It’s all sort of smeared together. What movie is it? Yeah, I mean, there’s a smear that goes on where it’s a little The movie I find is a little disorienting in terms of if you approach it with sort of a fully realized knowledge of the Guadalcanal campaign.

00:04:38:19 – 00:04:58:03
Marty Morgan
It’s going to seem a little confusing and just jointed and smeared together. But that’s not how James Jones was writing for. And I don’t think that’s who Terrence Malick was directing for. He was directing for a more general audience. And if you can step back out of a detailed knowledge, it’s going to come out campaign, the things that this movie has to say.

00:04:58:10 – 00:05:10:02
Marty Morgan
It says them and it remains as accurate to the historical source material as the movies that we admire, like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan.

00:05:10:05 – 00:05:13:20
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, B-plus is better than I was expecting.

00:05:13:23 – 00:05:32:06
Marty Morgan
I’m glad to hear that. But I think this is a good movie. It’s got its strengths and weaknesses. But overwhelmingly, I enjoy it every time I go back and have a look at it. And every time I go back and have a look at it, I learn something new in a way that private Ryan just isn’t doing anymore or Band of Brothers just isn’t doing for me anymore.

00:05:32:08 – 00:06:01:16
Marty Morgan
I believe that’s because this is this is Art house. This is Terrence Malick taking this really compelling World War Two memoir and turning it into a larger meditation on spirituality and the human mind and the human condition. And he does all that, and he does that in a way that he’s very skilled at doing as an artist. But at the same time, he didn’t betray the book in a way that I think we have seen done before.

00:06:01:16 – 00:06:19:17
Marty Morgan
When a director gets their hands on it, when it’s based on a true story and director gets their hands on it, they just part with it entirely. I feel like he still had sort of the spirit of the book in mind throughout. And so he said what he was having to say, but he also let what the book had to say shine through.

00:06:19:19 – 00:06:41:22
Dan LeFebvre
If we dig a little start to dig in some of the details. There are a lot of great actors in the movie. I was watching and prep for this. I was kind of surprised like, Oh, I well, I didn’t know George Clooney was in there and things like that, you know, little things like that. But some of the main characters, like a private wit, played by Jim Caviezel, First Sergeant Welsh, by Sean Penn, Couple five played by Adrien Brody, Sergeant Kirk played by Woody Harrelson.

00:06:41:24 – 00:06:51:19
Dan LeFebvre
John Gaff played by John Cusack, Lieutenant Colonel Tall, played by Nick Nolte. So on are any of the main characters that we see in the movie based on real people?

00:06:51:21 – 00:07:16:26
Marty Morgan
Yes and no, because in many ways, that red line as a novel was a continuation of of James challenges, prior work of book in movie that everyone knows called From Here to Eternity. And he wanted to continue on by telling the story, the further story of the the later experiences of men that are featured in From Here to Eternity.

00:07:16:26 – 00:07:42:08
Marty Morgan
But he kills off one of those characters, and he has to figure out how to deal with that. So he changes the names a little bit. However, it’s worth pointing out that the main cast of characters, they’re not identified as specific individuals. Those main characters are based on individuals that he experienced during his pre war time with the 27th Infantry at Schofield Barracks and the territory of Hawaii.

00:07:42:14 – 00:08:08:05
Marty Morgan
And then during his wartime experiences during the Guadalcanal campaign. So he is doing what I think every novelist does, every novelist to some extent, is writing to their personal experiences. Sure, there are people that are like, you know, another movie my A lot is Dune and I watched it for the one millionth time again on a flight recently.

00:08:08:07 – 00:08:31:28
Marty Morgan
And I thought, you can’t have the personal experience of going to Iraq and space mining. But at the same time, the personal conflicts that are played out within that movie and the character arcs of those individuals, there are tales as old as time that you can base on people that you’ve encountered, even though you’re writing about science fiction in a world that never existed and never will.

00:08:32:01 – 00:08:56:01
Marty Morgan
You can still draw from the human experience. You can mine the human experience for the raw materials that are going to go into your sci fi novel or your fantasy novel or whatever you want. Your writing. And James Jones did that in the way that, for example, Oliver Stone did that for Platoon. Stone has given interviews over the years about Platoon.

00:08:56:03 – 00:09:15:22
Marty Morgan
And in it, he said that like kind of the most detail he’ll ever give is that platoon was ripped from the pages of his experiences in Vietnam. What interests me about that is I want to find out things like specifically, like when did you deal with fragging? When were soldiers killing one another? And tell me, you know what?

00:09:15:22 – 00:09:48:18
Marty Morgan
What part of your experience where were your soldiers raping women and burning down Miller? So I kind of want to know particulars from him. And he’s for reasons that are understandable, not willing to go into those details. But Oliver Stone went through these experiences. He wrote something. He created art about it, and he based the characters of Platoon on people that he actually encountered in Vietnam, the same way that James Jones has based characters and From Here to Eternity and sent Red Line on people he encountered when he was serving in uniform during the Second World War.

00:09:48:20 – 00:10:04:08
Dan LeFebvre
We do see that a lot in a lot of different things. The first one that came to my mind, one of my favorites, I would be like, we’re talking where he’s basing a lot of the things. Obviously, his books are not based on a true story, but he had those experiences in World War One. Right.

00:10:04:09 – 00:10:22:17
Marty Morgan
One of the things that people applauded about the book Thin Red Line when it came out in 1962 was the fact that it was it was a raw account. And in my meditation about all of this, before we we came on to have this conversation, I was thinking about the way that conflict gets presented to you in motion picture.

00:10:22:17 – 00:11:01:29
Marty Morgan
And you and I had talked about this extensively by now, and that is that you typically get with at least World War two movies, one or the other, and you get something that’s sort of a patriotic paradigm, which I would say is well represented with Saving Private Ryan. Or you get something that is sort of lost and dark and cynical lights and red lines and and it makes me it made me aware of the fact that the farther we got from the second World War, that it was only with the passage of decades that we were able to become more honest so that during the war you get movies like the Defense of Wake Island

00:11:01:29 – 00:11:38:04
Marty Morgan
or right after the war, you get the sense of People Jima and those movies are just syrupy and over the top, and they’re almost too corny to straight face because of this, this really hyper inflated sense of patriotic patriots ism. And I think that’s kind of the way that it had to be served up to people during the forties and during the fifties, that if during the wartime era you tried to serve up something that was raw and dark, I think it would be very difficult for some people because it was too close, it’s too real.

00:11:38:04 – 00:12:15:21
Marty Morgan
You might know someone, you might have gone through it yourself. And so as you get farther and farther away from the conflict, it’s only then that the real ness can see bench. But that can be undermined too, when you get this instinct toward nostalgia. I argue very often that Saving Private Ryan is produced entirely in response to this era of nostalgia that we all kind of took a couple of spoonfuls of in the late eighties and throughout the nineties when it became cool and fashionable to look back to the period of the second World War and recognize some optimism in the mission, whereas it had not been cool to do that for a couple of

00:12:15:21 – 00:12:42:23
Marty Morgan
decades. And like one thing I was thinking before this conversation was that with you see this brief window of this sort of honesty about World War Two combat that emerges in the early sixties and it emerges before it’s contaminated by the politics of the Vietnam era, because a big argument that I make about cinema is particularly war movies, is that Vietnam comes along and changes everything.

00:12:42:26 – 00:13:10:21
Marty Morgan
Every war movie necessarily now has to be Platoon. Every more movie has to be cerebral and dark and cynical and disenchanted. Whereas before that time period, I am earlier in my life make the mistake of thinking that war movies were celebratory and patriotic and optimistic before the sixties. But there’s a window where that cynicism and darkness starts, starts to creep in before Vietnam.

00:13:10:24 – 00:13:35:28
Marty Morgan
And it interests me very much because I think that is a generation of men and women who had experienced the Second World War and got me a couple of decades past it. And they’re starting to have real conversations about it. Vietnam comes along and sort of washes it all away with this big rising tide. But there was darkness and cynicism before Vietnam and even before Thin Red Line.

00:13:35:29 – 00:14:00:05
Marty Morgan
They’re a movie that I admire a great deal. Is this movie called The Best Years of Their Lives? That was from 1946. That’s following three veterans who come back home after World War Two. And it is extremely depressing and dark and hopeless in many ways, and in a way that you wouldn’t expect out of 1946. So that was there.

00:14:00:10 – 00:14:35:06
Marty Morgan
And I used to think that the only way that we could remember World War Two through cinema was through this patriotic paradigm, and that once you once you notice it, once you notice that it’s there, you can’t help but notice the cynical narratives that were emerging even very quickly after the war and how they were competing for space against movies like The Sands of White Jima that wanted to sort of celebrate sacrifice and acknowledge the human spirit that overcame all of the great challenges that the wartime experience brought.

00:14:35:08 – 00:15:00:17
Marty Morgan
So it’s kind of interesting to me that Thin Red Line got published at a book. It kind of was the perfect timing, right place, right time, right subject. As a writer, he was already sort of accomplished. And he really gives us this gift that gives us a rare insight into what ground combat theater was like early in the war.

00:15:00:17 – 00:15:22:23
Marty Morgan
It’s quite a bit different later in the war, but we get a we get an insight into the fighting in Guadalcanal that we don’t get from the other competitor. And the big competitor is the famous book that ultimately becomes the famous movie Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Dreyfuss, which is telling a totally different story. It’s gritty. It’s sort of it’s sort of it’s sort of over the top.

00:15:22:23 – 00:15:48:18
Marty Morgan
It’s purposely gritty. It’s sort of purposely patriotic. It’s it has a theme of we’re going to overcome. We’re going to win because it was written during the war. And it it tells a different side of the experience of Guadalcanal then this does. And understanding all of that helps me respect why names and names have been changed in the book to protect the people.

00:15:48:18 – 00:16:18:02
Marty Morgan
Because let’s face it, there I will be I will struggle to name five personal memoirs, the Second World War, that openly discuss execution of prisoners of war, that openly discuss dismembering the enemy war dead, that openly discuss the terrible things that we thought only belonged to the era of Vietnam, that that the greatest generation would never have done these things.

00:16:18:02 – 00:16:38:15
Marty Morgan
And yet here is Thin red Line and it’s talking about those things. And James Jones had to change the names of some of the people that he was describing, the things that they did that were potentially war crimes. That’s why we have to have made up names. That’s why it’s based on a true story. But it’s not telling a true story.

00:16:38:15 – 00:17:06:13
Marty Morgan
It’s a it’s a novelization. Because I think he knew that if he’d just printed it the way that Gaskins printed Guadalcanal Diary, that there would be some backlash, There would be some backlash if he called people out and named them for being involved in and war crimes and named them for the abuse of prisoners and and identified from them as being a part of these things that they didn’t want to be called out for.

00:17:06:16 – 00:17:17:29
Marty Morgan
So if he was going to tell this story, he was going to have to if he was going to tell the real story, the way he experienced it, he was going to have to present it as a novel when it’s sort of a novel, but it’s sort of not really.

00:17:18:01 – 00:17:47:17
Dan LeFebvre
As as you’re mentioning, that the what comes to mind for me is Frederick Marie Remarque with all quiet on the Western Front, similar concept and World War One, but you know, a similar concept where it’s it’s it’s not trying to be it’s trying to tell the experience more than it is trying to tell the specific characters and these specific things, you know, And obviously you have the overarching thing, but it sounds like James Jones doing the very similar concept of, you know, I’m trying to get the experience.

00:17:47:17 – 00:17:55:16
Dan LeFebvre
This is the experience that I had across. And the best way to do that is in a fictional story. So we’re not focused on some of those minor details.

00:17:55:18 – 00:18:16:21
Marty Morgan
I was thinking this last night because I read your questions before I watched it again. And as I watched it again, I remember that one of your question is about particularly timeline and things that are depicted in the movie where the timeline really becomes an impressionist painting. It’s not precise. It’s a little at times confusing unless, you know, the Guadalcanal campaign like the back of your hand.

00:18:16:24 – 00:18:36:21
Marty Morgan
And there was a moment last night in watching it where I thought so the landing sequence at the beginning of the movie, where you’re seeing these U.S. Army soldiers coming ashore on Guadalcanal, a battle that is a campaign that is mostly known for the Marine Corps participation. The Army was there, too. And importantly, Army ground forces were a big part of the campaign later on.

00:18:36:23 – 00:19:07:17
Marty Morgan
But in depicting an army landing, they don’t come out and like put something on screen that says December 30th, 1942. They’re not dropping a date on it. And there was a moment where I thought to myself, I wish that Malick had done something to maybe something through character exposition because he has a moment of character exposition between John Travolta and Nick Nolte, where there where they’re looking at a map and they talk about situational things in the bigger, broader Pacific War, and they talk about grand strategy briefly on a level that I don’t think these men would have been bothering with at that time.

00:19:07:17 – 00:19:27:14
Marty Morgan
But that was a little bit of character exposition to establish the context and establish the importance of what was about to be depicted. And there was a moment where I was like, I don’t know why in that scene they couldn’t sort of maybe identify somewhere and when, and 10 minutes later I was like, No, no, that’s not what James Jones is trying to do.

00:19:27:19 – 00:20:04:10
Marty Morgan
And that’s definitely not. Terrence Malick is right. This is not a this is not a docu drama. This is art. Both the novel and the movie that we’re talking about, this is something entirely different. This isn’t a history lesson. And that’s why if I scolded myself not to have that expectation, I think I have a better viewing experience because then I always tend to think that if you are confused about it and you want to figure out some particulars about the timeline that are confusingly depicted in this movie, you just don’t buy book after movie and read a little bit about the Guadalcanal campaign and then it’ll all get straightened out.

00:20:04:15 – 00:20:11:29
Marty Morgan
The movie’s not here to do that. The movie is here to make you feel something, and I think it accomplishes that beautifully.

00:20:12:01 – 00:20:32:06
Dan LeFebvre
At the very beginning of the movie, we see two soldiers enjoying life with the indigenous people on the island, that one of those private with a Jim Caviezel character and he’s swimming, running along the beach, it seems, you know, enjoying the island life. And then we find out that there is a wall, there’s a patrol boat that comes and seems to pick them up.

00:20:32:06 – 00:20:56:03
Dan LeFebvre
We don’t really see that actually happening. The the boat goes by, they notice it and the next thing they’re on the boat. How realistic would it be for a patrol boat to try to find these two soldiers? It seemed like they were specifically targeting them and they sent a boat out to get these two guys that were on this island that seemed to be otherwise not really of importance to them.

00:20:56:03 – 00:20:59:12
Dan LeFebvre
Would that be something realistically that would happen?

00:20:59:14 – 00:21:44:25
Marty Morgan
Yes, because desertion was a crime that the United States Army struggled with throughout the Second World War. We were usually more familiar with the way that desertion interacted with the European theater of operations, because indeed, the only U.S. Army soldier who was executed for desertion was executed after deserting during the battle of Bulge. And now so because of Eddie Slovak, we’re familiar with desertion and firing squads and with the Europeans theater, we’re not often we’re not often invited to contemplate how desertion affected the war in the Pacific, because if you think about it, it’s a particularly challenging place to desert if you want to, when you consider that so many of these Pacific battles are

00:21:44:25 – 00:22:17:13
Marty Morgan
fought on small islands where you have a limited amount of terrain and real estate, there’s just not really much of an option to desert and escape from your duty. However, during the Solomon Islands campaign, there were opportunities to do that. You know, the question now becomes a matter of whether the way it’s depicted is that the desertion sequence, which is this is the critical moment of the entire movie, the desertion sequence is the setup for the slam dunk that comes later in the movie after they get overrun.

00:22:17:15 – 00:22:46:22
Marty Morgan
The enemy hospital and village settlement area. And then then the wet character returns to the coastal village. That’s the big slam dunk. That is the heart of what this movie is trying to say. But this opening sequence is the setup. And what this opening sequence is designed to make us feel is that there is a world of peace out there and that when people are not molested by the cancerous qualities that war brings, that they can achieve this idyllic experience.

00:22:46:24 – 00:23:38:16
Marty Morgan
And this is nothing more than a statement of 19th century transcendentalism. That’s what transcendentalism imagined. It imagined that humankind was not necessarily not geared toward violence and savagery, that violence and savagery were always the product of some human experience. And so transcendentalism imagined that if people lived more within a realistic experience of human life, living, remotely sustaining themselves, not competing for resources, that they would live a more sacred life, that they would live a more peaceful life, and transcendentalism, therefore imagined that it was outside influences like capitalism and territorial ism, and that these things forced humankind into fighting one another.

00:23:38:16 – 00:23:56:27
Marty Morgan
Because you get these lines of dialog in that opening sequence where West with the Melanesian Village, where he’s questioning where does this thing war come from, Where is it inside of us? That’s what the whole movie’s about, basically. And the interesting thing to me is that I have tried to figure out how it was physically possible for James.

00:23:56:27 – 00:24:24:23
Marty Morgan
Gerald’s to have experienced this before the big landing, where by elements, the 27th Infantry fought this bunker complex called the Gifu and saw it at a place called the Sea Horse and the Galloping Horse, which is the set piece battles that are depicted in this movie. Oh one. What actually probably happened is that I think James Joyce might have been tempted to and then ultimately slipped away for a little while after all of this principal combat.

00:24:24:26 – 00:24:58:22
Marty Morgan
And so we’re seeing things out of sequence. And so that may be all of this meditation, all this transcendental meditation that ultimately brings us this book and therefore this movie is that the sequencing of it was that he goes through all of this intense combat, some of the most intense combat civil war, and then afterward, he’s already thinking about things as a result of his experience in combat, where he sees people break down, he sees people who are who are capable of committing acts of inhumanity, and he sees people still freely, openly and without hesitation commit acts of inhumanity.

00:24:58:22 – 00:25:17:04
Marty Morgan
He sees all of that. He’s attempting to make sense of it, and he deserts briefly. It makes sense for it to have been after all of the big battles that occur in the beginning of 1943 rather than before those big battles. That’s just my theory. He is no longer giving interviews because he continues to no longer be alive.

00:25:17:06 – 00:25:34:29
Marty Morgan
But he was alive and I had a chance to meet him. This would, I think, be a really cool series of questions like what happened. He probably wouldn’t want to talk about it because I think to talk about it, he would have to admit that he deserted. However, desertion to go back to your original question was something that did happen, and it did happen in the Pacific War.

00:25:35:02 – 00:26:00:16
Dan LeFebvre
When I was doing some research before our chat, I had seen something that obviously none of the characters that we as we talked about, are a 1 to 1. But I had seen that Vice Adrien Brody character was more like James Jones. And so this being private Whit, maybe it was some maybe it wasn’t him at all. Maybe it was somebody that he knew that he had met that was kind of describing this to him.

00:26:00:16 – 00:26:07:01
Dan LeFebvre
And so maybe it wasn’t something that he himself had experienced. Do we know if James Jones himself had deserted at all?

00:26:07:03 – 00:26:39:19
Marty Morgan
We don’t know. We’re speculating at this point. Okay. You never get it about that. I managed to find. Okay. And there’s that. We can turn this briefly into the gossip columns, if you’d like, because an interesting detail is just to show you how alive this thing is that got created. That is this movie. When Terrence Malick began making the movie, he cast Adrien Brody as the lead character, not as Whit, but Adrien Brody character was going to be the central character of the entire film, and they shot it as that.

00:26:39:21 – 00:27:03:17
Marty Morgan
And I have noticed Adrien Brody does not speak in this movie. There may be a line maybe too, but Adrien Brody is a meaningless character in this larger narrative and the gossip that I have heard is that Adrien Brody found out about that only after they dimmed the lights and ran the picture at the premiere that he had had been written out of that movie without being made aware of it.

00:27:03:19 – 00:27:23:09
Marty Morgan
And I think that says something important, too, that we have to remember that Terry’s Terrence Malick is notorious for this. Terrence Malick in cinema was notorious for being this sort of tortured artist with a vision, and we make fun of it. This is one of the greatest archetypes of them all. The artist who slaves a way toward his vision.

00:27:23:12 – 00:27:41:20
Marty Morgan
And I’m particularly thankful that he did this movie. I remember when this movie came out and keep in mind, it comes out immediately after Grant and this this whole batch of douche bags that I used to hang out with that were all interested in World War Two and were, you know, cheering from the front row at Private Ryan.

00:27:41:20 – 00:28:01:04
Marty Morgan
And they loved every minute of Private Ryan. They hated this movie, hated with a capital H and to the point that they had these really unfair these these unflattering names from the movie because they disliked it. And I think it’s because they showed up and got their popcorn and sat down expecting a war movie. And this is not a war movie.

00:28:01:06 – 00:28:19:10
Marty Morgan
It’s a movie about the human experience and transcendentalism and nature and the duality of humankind and nature and savagery. And it just happens to be set during a war. I also think it’s an excellent war movie. But if you go into that expecting Private Ryan, you’re going to come out scratching your head.

00:28:19:13 – 00:28:37:24
Dan LeFebvre
If we go back to the movie, when we see the Allied soldiers landing on Guadalcanal, they face absolutely no resistance. And we talked about, you know, like Saving Private Ryan and things like that and how this is a different World War Two movie. That was definitely a very big difference because you see a lot of World War two movies where it’s I mean, a lot of action.

00:28:37:24 – 00:29:00:25
Dan LeFebvre
You expect that in a war movie. But here it’s it’s quiet. I think I timed it and like the looked at the time code and the first explosions that we see in the movie are like 42 minutes into the movie. That’s when they’re firing. Allied artillery is firing on where they think Japanese positions are. But then it’s like another 5 minutes or so before the Japanese defenders fire back as they’re trying to advance on one of the hills.

00:29:00:27 – 00:29:09:08
Dan LeFebvre
Did it really take as long as the movie makes it seem for the Allies to experience any Japanese resistance on Guadalcanal?

00:29:09:10 – 00:29:51:25
Marty Morgan
It did. And the way that the movie is depicting it, as I don’t want to say dishonest, but it’s not accurate the way that the actual initial landings during the Guadalcanal operation unfolded was the the Marines who conducted that landing faced functionally no opposition at all. Now, what is being depicted here in this movie are U.S. Army soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 27th Infantry Regiment, specifically Sea Company, 27th Infantry Regiment, fighting Japanese, hold out positions at the last stage of the Guadalcanal campaign in January of 1943.

00:29:51:27 – 00:30:32:11
Marty Morgan
The landings occurred August 7th, 1942, many, many months before. What’s been depicted here. And so when the Marines landed, elements of the U.S. Army, the U.S., the U.S. First Marine Division, conducted the amphibious assault landings on August 7th, 1942, at Guadalcanal, they faced no opposition. That is not what is being depicted in this movie. That’s where this movie is, I think, liberally using the plot device of tension building, because these sequences, I think, are strong, too narrowly successful at building tension because it feels like a Vietnam movie.

00:30:32:13 – 00:31:07:18
Marty Morgan
You move into the jungle and there’s nobody there. It’s then you start to find some signs. It’s a gentle build up to where to ultimately contact with the enemy. Unlike Private Island, where it’s just, you know, Armageddon from the start. Now, in some ways, that is an image depiction that is slightly accurate because when the Marines landed again, this is an Army fighting in this movie, not Marines, but when the Marines landed many, many months before in August of 1942, they landed initially facing almost no opposition.

00:31:07:21 – 00:31:31:09
Marty Morgan
The Japanese were building an airfield there. And that is something that is mentioned in this character exposition between McNulty and John Travolta, where there’s a description of the Japanese building an airfield. And because of that airfield that suddenly all eyes are focused on Guadalcanal and the entire strategic situation in the Southwest Pacific necessarily had to focus on what was about to happen at Guadalcanal.

00:31:31:11 – 00:31:57:04
Marty Morgan
When the Japanese began building that airfield, we figured it out. We sent the Marines to land there to prevent them from establishing that airfield, which would have put multi-engine bombers within range of U.S. bases that were along the supply routes leading to Australia. So in other words, if the Japanese had succeeded, if they had established this airfield, brought in multi-engine bombers, they could have severed the supply lines leading from the United States to Australia.

00:31:57:07 – 00:32:23:10
Marty Morgan
They could have, in other words, isolated Australia. And as strategic moves are during World War Two, that would have been a masterstroke if they had if they had succeeded, which they did not. But what we’re seeing is this early phase. We’re seeing U.S. Army soldiers that are fighting at the very end of the battle, sort of gathering this marriage to the way that the landings occurred at the beginning of the battle.

00:32:23:12 – 00:32:45:09
Marty Morgan
Now, it’s not entirely dishonest, but it is also not going out of its way to point out that, hey, we’re depicting army here, we’re depicting a landing, but it’s the landing that looks a lot more like the landing that occurred back in August when the Marines left. And when the Marines landed, they encountered the big account. They encountered an opposing force.

00:32:45:11 – 00:33:14:19
Marty Morgan
But it wasn’t Japanese. The Japanese used in their aviation construction regiments. They used Korean laborers, and so were Koreans in Japanese uniform who were serving the Imperial Army. But they were they were not what we call combat arms units. They were not maneuver fighting units. They weren’t armed to fight off an American Marine division. An American and an American Marine division dropped on top of their heads on 1472, 1942.

00:33:14:21 – 00:33:45:04
Marty Morgan
That’s why the opposition is minimal. That was the starting point from which we see this ongoing escalation that is, it’s the opening move of what will ultimately become the largest air, sea and land campaign in the Pacific as the end of 42, beginning of 43. And what I argued in an article that I published just last year about Guadalcanal, I argue the decisive air, sea and land battle of 1942.

00:33:45:07 – 00:34:10:15
Marty Morgan
It can argue it can be argued that maybe Midway was that, but Midway was only an air and and naval battle. This is an air, sea and land battle. And that’s pitting the Japanese empire, attempting to expand this the perimeter that’s protecting the greater East Asian co-prosperity sphere. And it’s us landing to stop it. And for the first time we defeat them in ground combat.

00:34:10:17 – 00:34:42:03
Marty Morgan
And in that defeat meaningfully changes the the the mathematics that the Japanese used to calculate the strategic situation for the rest of the war. And that’s because at the end of the War now campaign, they have failed to cut off Australia and that means Australia is going to remain in the war, Australia is going to continue functioning as an important rear area, as an important training and logistics area that allows us to expand in later campaigns.

00:34:42:05 – 00:35:12:28
Marty Morgan
So Guadalcanal was an extraordinarily quite poignant and an important moment in World War Two understates it quite a bit. But what we’re seeing here is a bit of a nod to that initial landing in August of 42 when the Marines landed. Now, when the Army came ashore and the U.S. Army’s 27th Infantry Regiment conducted an amphibious landing to get ashore to join the fighting on the beachhead on on December 30th, 1942, when the Army landed.

00:35:12:28 – 00:35:39:00
Marty Morgan
So there was the Marines land in August. They establish a beachhead. There are a series of major battles there, particularly three major battles, battles Alligator Creek, sometimes called the Tennessee River. The the Battle of Bloody Ridge, also known as its go with Bloody Ridge and then the Battle of Henderson Field in October. These are three major actions that punctuate the campaign.

00:35:39:02 – 00:36:08:09
Marty Morgan
And then the campaign is also crowded with about a thousand minor actions over its entire length, stretching from the first week of August 42, all the way through February 9th, 1943. Well, what we’re seeing is the point at which the army comes ashore. And when the army came ashore, they weren’t landing on a hostile beachhead. The army is coming ashore within the perimeter that had been established by the Marines back in August.

00:36:08:12 – 00:36:31:29
Marty Morgan
So, yeah, the Army comes ashore and they’re landed by landing craft that like we see depicted in the movie. But there was never a thought that there would be enemy opposition to that landing. So it’s kind of capturing the essence and the spirit of the initial Marine landings from back in August. And it’s that’s plugging U.S. Army soldiers into that role.

00:36:32:02 – 00:36:49:09
Dan LeFebvre
So when the when the Marines landed, did they expect huge resistance? And then I guess a two part aspect of that, too, on the on the Japanese side, were they not expecting the Americans to land because they didn’t have defenses built up.

00:36:49:12 – 00:37:10:15
Marty Morgan
The Japanese did not expect us to conduct this landing. It caught the Japanese by surprise. In fact, the the evidence that I that we have for the surprise element of it is that they had this this labor battalion that was building the runway that was made up, made up mainly of Koreans and Japanese army uniform. And they they were not a fighting force.

00:37:10:16 – 00:37:55:26
Marty Morgan
They did not have a security force there to protect the construction of the airfield. That’s because the last thing they thought we were capable of was launching a major opposing amphibious landing operation that was a division sized operation that would sneak right into their backyard and drop an entire division of U.S. Marines. It was greater than vision ultimately, but they didn’t expect that we could do it or that we would do it, because let’s face it, up until the point when the Marines land on Guadalcanal on August seven, 1942, calendar year 1942 had been nothing but largely bad news because just weeks before New Year’s, there’s the attack on Pearl Harbor, Guam, the Philippines.

00:37:55:28 – 00:38:29:12
Marty Morgan
As we enter the new Year, the camp, the battle in the Philippines is raging and beginning to look bad. The Japanese have also gobbled up other territorial other colonial territories in the Pacific and in Southeast Asia. By the by April, American forces surrender at Bataan, by May, American forces surrender at Corregidor. And Bataan, of course, is the largest surrender of American forces in American military history up to that point.

00:38:29:14 – 00:38:52:12
Marty Morgan
So we’ve had nothing up until May, you know, June 1st, we’d had nothing but bad news for the most part. We had the Battle of the Coral Sea, but it was more of a draw. The first good news comes in the form of the Battle of Midway. But the Battle of Midway is it’s although the strategic ramifications of that battle were realized by many, it wasn’t the type of victory that the people could recognize.

00:38:52:15 – 00:39:18:23
Marty Morgan
It was an important victory, but it still looked like the Japanese were out there and they were still very dangerous. And that’s because they were. We then experience some frustrations in New Guinea, and it’s not until you get to the first week of August when the Marines landed the Solomon Islands on Guadalcanal and this campaign to begin putting up barriers to prevent further Japanese expansion, that’s where this story comes out.

00:39:18:26 – 00:39:47:17
Marty Morgan
And again, this story is not from the military historian’s standpoint, and that’s why events are blurred. Events are merged together. Sometimes events that belong to the Marine Corps are attributed to the Army. So I have to emphasize this point again, that the landings that we see at the beginning of this movie, they’re they’re sort of capturing the spirit.

00:39:47:17 – 00:40:19:17
Marty Morgan
They’re evocative of the initial Marine landings that took place back in August. Now, when U.S. Army soldiers landed on Guadalcanal and they did that over and over again, U.S. Army soldiers landed at the perimeter on Guadalcanal beginning on Tuesday, October 13th, 1942. And then when they came ashore, they they came ashore within the already established perimeter and they came ashore in landing craft when the men of the 27th Cavalry Regiment, 25th Division, when they came ashore and walking out on December 30th, 1942, they came ashore within the existing perimeter on landing craft.

00:40:19:19 – 00:40:34:06
Marty Morgan
So there’s some truth, some historical accuracy to what’s being depicted and also some nautical inaccuracy. You heard it here. You can see a mixture.

00:40:34:08 – 00:40:59:27
Dan LeFebvre
Well, and after they do get on the island, they’re trying to take a ridge that’s defended by this Japanese bunker. And the Americans are pinned down any time they try to move forward. It seems like a lot of men are getting killed. So but then we see Nick Nolte, his character, Lieutenant Colonel Colonel Tall. He radios to Captain Stavros, who’s leading the men of C-4 Charlie Company there.

00:40:59:27 – 00:41:13:28
Dan LeFebvre
And he tells me, you got to push forward down to the last man. And Starz just flat out refuses the order. He says it’s suicide. It’s not going to do it. Did something like that really happen at Guadalcanal?

00:41:14:01 – 00:41:37:14
Marty Morgan
I don’t have a really good record of that happening on Guadalcanal during the campaign, but there are records of this sort of thing happening time and time again. This have happened. It could be that what James John saw was an actual incident and the Army had a an official protocol or an official regulation for refusing an order that could be done.

00:41:37:16 – 00:41:58:23
Marty Morgan
And one of the things I valued about this book from the start is that it provides a depiction of that that I found to be very honest, because if there’s one complaint I’ve had about war movies, World War two movies that over and over again, it’s got a lot of people and a lot of screaming. Everyone’s screaming at each other, and people are pushed to the breaking point and they chew out a commanding officer or an actual an NCO.

00:41:58:23 – 00:42:23:15
Marty Morgan
They’re yelling at members of the leadership. And there’s a lot of this yelling back and forth going on in movies that I think is just sort of a dramatization of things that actually happened. I’m not saying that there’s not a lot of high drama in combat because there definitely was that. However, the way that the refusal to execute the order is depicted in the movie, I feel like that’s a really nice depiction because the regulation required eyewitnesses.

00:42:23:18 – 00:42:48:14
Marty Morgan
And like I in my first book, I wrote about an exact case where there was a a soldier and officer who refused an order from another from a higher ranking officer, and he assembled eyewitnesses. He refused the order. He was therefore on record with those witnesses for refusing that order. And after his refusal in front of the witnesses, he was ordered to do it again.

00:42:48:18 – 00:43:16:29
Marty Morgan
And he then had to do it. But he was on record refusing the order in the aftermath of that incident. It didn’t ruin his career because the man that did this ultimately went on to become a U.S. Army general officer. So it didn’t destroy his career. You could do this without it ruining your career. If the circumstances were such that your your refusal to carry out an order was justified, the Army was not this completely cold and unfeeling octopus entity.

00:43:16:29 – 00:43:46:00
Marty Morgan
It would consider those circumstances. And this is one of the things that I value about the way that this scene is depicted, because fighting against this hill and just for the record of what is being depicted here is what the 27th Infantry moved into, maneuvered into the interior just south of Point crews within range of a hill complex that we called the galloping Horse, and we called it that because when you look at the topographical maps, this hill mass had generally the shape of a galloping horse.

00:43:46:02 – 00:44:22:07
Marty Morgan
And as the army assaulted the Japanese positions, particularly on Hill 53, which was at the southern end of the galloping horse, the combat reached this peak of intensity. And it could be that something like that happened and it could be that something like that happened and it wasn’t officially or firmly documented. And that’s why I can’t appreciate the subsequent in the film and the subsequent events in the film show Nick Nolte, his character, Dan Commander, relieves the captain over this refusal to to carry out the order, and he sends him on.

00:44:22:07 – 00:44:41:19
Marty Morgan
And it’s not going to damage his career. And in fact, the battalion commander gives him an award. He is given a medal for this, although he’s fired and he’s he’s out of the regiment. He goes somewhere else. You could have cases of that happening in the way that it’s depicted. And that’s something I found compelling about this movie and believable about this movie.

00:44:41:21 – 00:45:00:12
Dan LeFebvre
That was one thing I was going to ask why he mentioned it’s going to give him a medal, but he’s like, Oh, well, go ahead and throw in a Purple Heart there, too. And I’m recommending you to go back to I think Starr was a lawyer before, and so he’s recommending him for JAG. And it sounds like something like that.

00:45:00:15 – 00:45:11:06
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, I guess it wouldn’t have necessarily been documented because what was documented would have been everything was great. He he won a medal and everything was great.

00:45:11:08 – 00:45:44:15
Marty Morgan
Right. And if you’re the officer that is given the order that is refused by a junior officer, if you begin the official inquest, the official inquest might ultimately reveal that you were engaged in some dereliction of duty, that you were poor decisions on the battlefield. And of course, the way that the plot is being threshed out in front of us in this movie is that they have advanced up the slopes of this hill and it’s inspired by the action on Hill 53 on January ten, 11, 12, 1943.

00:45:44:18 – 00:46:18:29
Marty Morgan
And they move up, they draw such intense enemy fire that they’d become pinned down. And and if they are to advance the casualties that would be sustained in an advance out of that position would be so great that the captain decides not to carry out the order and the battalion commander is far in the rear and therefore unable to observe and understand those circumstances, even though he’s being told over the Shield telephone that we’re pinned down, we’re drawing enemy fire, a dynamic that’s thrown in here to sort of up the ante.

00:46:18:29 – 00:46:41:28
Marty Morgan
The the certainly the ante for drama is this idea that McNulty’s character, the battalion commander, this is his first war. He went to West Point. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. He’s been an officer in the United States military for decades. And this is his chance to go into combat and to do something that will ensure that he has a legacy.

00:46:42:00 – 00:47:05:03
Marty Morgan
And part of the character arc this on that’s unfolding for him is that his thirst for that legacy is such that he will send men off to their deaths unnecessarily. It’s a little bit trophy in terms of war movie themes, but there it is. And I think it’s kind of well presented here. And we understand what’s pulling and pushing these two characters.

00:47:05:03 – 00:47:16:01
Marty Morgan
One man driven by ambition and career and another man driven by this desire not to sacrifice the lives of his meant needlessly.

00:47:16:04 – 00:47:41:20
Dan LeFebvre
I felt like not only did he did it sound like Tolle was kind of driven by this, you know, wanting to have a legacy, but also I got the impression from the movie that because of earlier when there was no resistance on the beaches, now all of a sudden there’s all this resistance. And this got to the point to that that star is not wanting to send his men forward into what he called suicide.

00:47:41:22 – 00:48:06:08
Dan LeFebvre
It made me feel like, well, maybe there’s this mismatch of expectations that tall is, you know, he can’t see what’s really going on. And we didn’t have that much resistance before. It can’t be that bad. You’re you’re just not wanting to fight. Was there a mismatch in expectations of when they landed on Guadalcanal, not getting a lot of resistance and then all of a sudden, you know, there’s this huge amount of resistance that just they weren’t expecting.

00:48:06:10 – 00:48:33:19
Marty Morgan
They had a few hours to appreciate the sneak attack and to appreciate and enjoy, bask in the moment of this well-played out masterstroke. But the reality is that the day following the Marine landings, the Marines land on August 7th. On August eight, Japanese multi-engine aircraft from Rabaul, which is about 650 miles to the north of Guadalcanal, they fly down and they begin a series of attacks against the fleet that ultimately drives the Navy away.

00:48:33:25 – 00:49:04:23
Marty Morgan
And a significant detail that closely identifies the Guadalcanal campaign is the fact that the United States Navy is present and present with in great numbers, with great power at the outset of the campaign on August 7th, and then Japanese ground based aviation conducts an attack that that takes some strength away from them. But then more importantly, there is a battle in a place called Savo Island, which is, by the way, there are sneak away shots of Savo Island over and over again in this movie.

00:49:04:25 – 00:49:25:15
Marty Morgan
But as a result of the Japanese ground based aviation attacks against the fleet and the Battle of Apple Island, the Navy is compelled ultimately to abandon the fighting force on the island. This is what this is one of the things that makes the actual battle Guadalcanal like even more dramatic than any see or any theatrical presentation of it can ever capture.

00:49:25:17 – 00:49:47:01
Marty Morgan
Because the reality was that we put this division ashore and the Navy is then driven off and has to abandon that division. And there is a period of time during which that vision might just be overrun by the enemy. Because what happens after the initial landings is that with each passing week we are reacting and the Japanese are reacting.

00:49:47:03 – 00:50:16:14
Marty Morgan
The Japanese begin a process of reinforcing and re resupplying what they had on Guadalcanal. So at the outset of the landings, they don’t have a combat fighting force on the island, at least not one of meaningful size enough to oppose a marine division with the passage of time, the Japanese are sending combat units down and they’re doing so for the rest of 1942 from the landings in August all the way through until after they finally sort of give up the initiative on the island, which is something that occurs in November.

00:50:16:16 – 00:50:44:15
Marty Morgan
So during that time period, the Marines at first by themselves, are stranded on the island with no Navy support. The Japanese are dumping reinforcements on the island with each passing night by sending ships down under the cover of darkness so that they were safe from U.S. aircraft. They would land them, and then the Japanese would send ships down and bombard the perimeter where the Marines had landed.

00:50:44:18 – 00:51:05:04
Marty Morgan
This is something that characterizes all of the great memoirs that recall the fighting on Guadalcanal. And there were some great memoirs out there that recall it. And there are everyone who was there during this critical early period when the Navy had to abandon them. They recall what it was like to be shelled by Japanese cruisers because it was apparently a very impressive sight.

00:51:05:06 – 00:51:23:06
Marty Morgan
And I’m getting the caught ahead of the horse here. But I know that that’s a question that you have for me tonight, and that is that later in the movie, almost at the bitter end of the movie, it depicts this major shelling of the airfield where you’re seeing airplanes being blown up and you’re seeing massive explosions of the type that would come from naval gunfire.

00:51:23:09 – 00:51:53:21
Marty Morgan
And that did happen. It just didn’t happen during the time period when these battles occurred. But I have to caution myself, whenever I think about or say that I caution myself to remember this is a novelization of something that actually happened. And as a part of writing the novel and writing the novel, there’s a certain degree of formula to it and you want tension and then you want release, you want buildup, you want action, and then you need peace and you need quiet and you need reflection.

00:51:53:23 – 00:52:12:08
Marty Morgan
And in writing and creating this art, James Jones, he, I think, treated the Guadalcanal campaign like a cafeteria. And he went, Oh, I want a little bit of the ships showing the perimeter and I want a little bit of the amphibious landing. But I really like the stuff that I went through which that these hill battles in January.

00:52:12:08 – 00:52:30:05
Marty Morgan
And I want to I want to take some of that. And he pushes compresses it all together and produces a coherent storyline. And it’s a great story and it’s a great novel and it’s based on a true story, but it is not perfectly guided by that true story from start to finish.

00:52:30:08 – 00:52:52:28
Dan LeFebvre
You touched on something else that we do see in the movie, kind of really throughout the entire movie, and that is them, the Americans having a hard time getting water to the soldiers. And when you were talking about the Navy being forced away, that made me think, well, maybe that’s why they were having issues. Maybe with not just supplying overall, but maybe, you know, supplying water.

00:52:53:01 – 00:53:12:23
Dan LeFebvre
There is a scene in particular, it’s skipping ahead a little bit in a timeline of the movie. But It’s after after they take the ridge, which I do want to get back to. But after they take that, Captain Gast talks to Lieutenant Colonel Tall. And in response about the shortage of water and in response, Tall says, I’ve arranged for water.

00:53:12:23 – 00:53:38:21
Dan LeFebvre
It’ll be here in a few hours, but keep moving. And gaff is like, but, you know, people can die from this. Obviously, if you don’t have water, you can you can die. And I was like, Well, I think they can die anyway, right? It just seems like he doesn’t again, he’s really pushing to get that legacy. But was water an issue in the Battle of Guadalcanal and would have been tied to that, to the Navy being forced to leave?

00:53:38:23 – 00:54:09:16
Marty Morgan
Yes. And a little bit and yes, water was a factor during this battle. And what I like to remind myself about the action that’s being depicted in the movie, once again, it’s inspired by a series of events that actually occurred at the beginning of January where elements, the 27th Infantry Regiment pushed in inland south of Point crews, and they moved into the galloping Horse hill mass area as as a part of a force that’s meant to outflank this central bunker complex, this Death Star that was called the lethal diffuse.

00:54:09:18 – 00:54:29:17
Marty Morgan
And during that part of the battle, there were there were moments where water became an issue. And in fact, there’s this very well known Medal of Honor action in the middle of all of this. So it was from the second Battalion of the 27th Infantry Regiment, the unit that’s being depicted in this. Well, it’s depicting elements of First Battalion.

00:54:29:17 – 00:54:52:25
Marty Morgan
But anyway, the 27th Infantry Regiment, there’s a medal of Honor on the part of a man named Charles Davis. That name’s going to come up later. So remember that Charles Davis was a major at the time and was executive officer of the second Battalion, 27th Regiment. And Davis ultimately does some things that you see being done in the movie by John Cusack.

00:54:52:27 – 00:55:25:27
Marty Morgan
John Cooper character is inspired by Charles Davis and a lot of John Cusack doing in the big assault. Up to the top of the Hill is inspired by what Charles Davis actually did on Hill 53 on January 12th, 1942 43. During that action, January ten, 11 and 12 of 43, as they were pushing into the south from the coastline, there are moving farther and farther away from the the perimeter, the base of operations where they could find supplies.

00:55:26:00 – 00:55:49:18
Marty Morgan
And as your logistics trail lengthened, as you pushed into the interior, that meant that it was more difficult for ammunition to make its way up to the forward most positions where you work. And by that same token, it would be more difficult for water to reach you. And also you’re going from low ground, which is where you find water to high ground, which is where you don’t find water.

00:55:49:21 – 00:56:13:01
Marty Morgan
And it’s tropical island. The interesting detail about all of this that’s so spectacular, it’s almost as if the true story is writing a better novel than than the movie. And that is that over the course of this fight, that would ultimately involve Charles Davis carrying out a series of actions for which he was subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor.

00:56:13:01 – 00:56:36:26
Marty Morgan
There was a point where the men slowed down dramatically because they didn’t have water, and it was really for no other reason than that. Logistics trail was pushing into the interior and going uphill. And that produced challenges, that introduced challenges to getting ammunition and water up to the front line. And because they were running short on water, the men were experiencing heat exhaustion more quickly and they slowed down.

00:56:36:26 – 00:56:56:02
Marty Morgan
And at a peak, at a critical moment in that battle, a big rainstorm came and it blew over them and everyone was able to hold canteens up and get canteens full as a result of this rainstorm. And because of this water, the men now have the one thing that they didn’t have before, and it makes it possible for them to continue fighting.

00:56:56:07 – 00:56:58:22
Marty Morgan
And that really happened. And I think that’s fascinating.

00:56:58:24 – 00:57:28:07
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned Davis or John Cusack’s character, Captain John Gaff, and in the movie, we see him leading seven men to take out that Japanese bunker at the top of the ridge that’s pinning the allies down. They get close, they call in artillery support, and then they along a rock to flank the bunker. But one of the men that manages to get above it and throw a grenade inside, we see the camera cut to inside the bunker where the Japanese soldiers are leaving the mounted guns and charging they’re all killed.

00:57:28:07 – 00:57:49:08
Dan LeFebvre
And there’s another grenade that gets thrown in to kind of silence the bunker. But then afterwards, there’s a few hidden spots where we see Japanese soldiers still hiding, the allies kind of going around to clear them out. But then after that, we see Gaff blowing his whistle, kind of signaling all clear. It sounds like, from what you’re saying that actually happened, or at least a version of it.

00:57:49:10 – 00:57:59:11
Marty Morgan
That’s precisely correct. And in fact, one thing that I pulled out just so that we could talk about it, would I’m going to read you the Charles Davis Medal of Honor citation.

00:57:59:13 – 00:58:00:17
Dan LeFebvre
Okay.

00:58:00:19 – 00:58:28:21
Marty Morgan
And in listening to this, you will understand the extent to which this actual action inspired what we see in the movie. Four distinguished in distinguishing himself conspicuous conspicuously by gallantry and intrepid pity at the risk of his life, and b above and beyond the call of duty, an action with the enemy on Guadalcanal on January 12th, 1943, Major Charles Davis, then Captain Charles Davis, Executive Officer of an infantry battalion.

00:58:28:21 – 00:58:49:26
Marty Morgan
And it just so happened to be second Battalion, 27th Infantry volunteer, to carry instructions to the leading companies of this battalion, which had been caught in the crossfire from Japanese machine guns with complete disregard for his own safety. He made his way to the trapped units, delivered the instructions, supervised to their execution, and remained overnight in this exposed position.

00:58:49:28 – 00:59:09:18
Marty Morgan
On the following day, Major Davis again volunteered to lead an assault on the Japanese position, which was holding up the advance when his rifle jammed at its first shot. He drew his pistol and waving his men on led the assault over the top of the hill, electrified by his action and other body of soldiers followed and seized the hill.

00:59:09:25 – 00:59:25:24
Marty Morgan
The capture his position broke Japanese resistance battalion was then able to proceed and secure the core objective. The courage and leadership displayed by Major Davis inspired the entire battalion and unquestionably led to the success of its attack.

00:59:25:26 – 00:59:33:11
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. And it sounds like it was much, much longer. I mean, happening overnight again, compressing time lines in the movie.

00:59:33:13 – 00:59:58:01
Marty Morgan
But you can tell John Cusack, is Charles Davis there depicting the second Battalion, 27th of the regiment’s assault on Hill, 53 at the bumper bunker complex that’s occupied the high ground there. And there’s even a moment of dialog where Nick Nolte, his character, says they have positioned themselves at this bunker up here that you can see a thousand yards are on all sides except for this one area that we can approach from the get this.

00:59:58:01 – 01:00:25:15
Marty Morgan
And that’s a mistake. And we’re going to attack him before he figures it out. And that was the basis of the Davis Medal of Honor Action. And so this is inspired meaningfully by that actual event. And for the record, James Jones was on the Hill that day. And James Jones, we have seen these actions taking place. And if I could just add an editorial note, you didn’t ask, but I want to say it.

01:00:25:17 – 01:00:53:19
Marty Morgan
I feel like the depiction of of combat that’s shown here is the finest depiction of World War Two combat that has yet been put on film. Wow. Particularly because of the fact that you’re seeing you see a number of things that other movies just don’t do. Movies rarely bother to add. The one thing that was the great determining factor on the World War two battlefield, which was you’re seeing artillery being depicted here.

01:00:53:19 – 01:01:14:14
Marty Morgan
There were even a few shots where if I if I could ever ask Malick, I would ask him. I was like, Were you wanting to throw a bone to the military history enthusiasts when you showed this? There are several shots where you get it. It’s the camera positions over McNulty’s shoulder and you’re looking at the hill that’s over a thousand yards away and you’re seeing explosions off in the distance.

01:01:14:14 – 01:01:33:10
Marty Morgan
And then it’ll cut to John Cusack, who’s was right there by those explosions. And what that does is something that I’m just not aware of another movie doing it. It shows you the depth of a battlefield. It’s showing the way that our artillery and then ultimately mortars. You see an artillery concentration on at the beginning before the big assault up the hill begins.

01:01:33:10 – 01:02:01:05
Marty Morgan
And then when John Cusack and the small group of men assault the bunker, they’re talking on the ABC 611, which is the handheld line of sight radio that was called Handy Talkie during World War Two. You see him, he’s calling in and adjusting the fire, and that’s from 81 millimeter mortars. And you rarely see a movie that acknowledges the way that artillery and mortars were the by far the most destructive weapon of war on the battlefield.

01:02:01:07 – 01:02:23:24
Marty Morgan
And that takes atomic weapons into account, By the way, how artillery killed more people during the Second World War than anything else killed more people than disease. And one big thing about artillery, that gear, if it’s day or night, it doesn’t care if it’s rain or shine. It can run 24 hours a day. It can run in the worst weather conditions imaginable, weather conditions that won’t let the aviation get in the air.

01:02:23:26 – 01:03:01:06
Marty Morgan
But the artillery still works. And artillery is extraordinarily accurate. Mortars are extraordinarily accurate as well. And I value the fact that this movie provides such an informative depiction of the depth of battlefield that is produced by by artillery fire and mortars. I also feel like this scene needs to be commended for the way that it depicted the Japanese fighting style, because even as the creep from the valley floor up the hill begins, when you have these these luscious shots of black grass swaying in the wind, there’s not been a shot fired yet.

01:03:01:06 – 01:03:19:04
Marty Morgan
The artillery bombardment occurred. The question is whether or not the enemy’s even up there. The men begin moving fire forward and then all hell breaks live on. Before that, there’s a shot where just as the Americans are beginning to move up the hill, there’s a shot from inside one of the fighting positions. And you just see a Japanese gunner.

01:03:19:08 – 01:03:40:29
Marty Morgan
You don’t even see the gunner. You just see the muzzle of a Type 92 heavy machine gun. And it just sort of traverses a little bit quietly, creaks a little bit when it does it. And I remember the first I saw it, which was in a theater because that was the A to see really the only way to see movies back then, I, I just felt like at least a shiver up my spine when I saw that because I was like, Oh shit, trouble’s coming.

01:03:41:02 – 01:04:10:07
Marty Morgan
And then you ultimately see the Japanese and this this powerfully and dangerously tactic of the Japanese used in combat. I value this movie for the way that it pays respect to the Japanese as a fighting force, and it pays them the respect that they deserve because they beat the living shit out of us real bad. And we had some of the greatest weapons on the planet and they gave us a hell of a time because they were so good.

01:04:10:09 – 01:04:31:03
Marty Morgan
What has happened in the years since World War Two is that very often people tend to trivialize the Japanese, make fun of them, and they were in every respect, a world class military force that was hell to reckoned with. The scene shows it very effectively because there’s a coherent fighting where the Americans have come up the hill toward the fixed position.

01:04:31:04 – 01:04:56:27
Marty Morgan
The fixed position. You can’t move it. You sit there and fight from it as long as you can, and the second you get out of it, you lose a lot of your advantage. As the Americans meet that position, the Americans attempt to flow around it and outflank it. And as they do so, the Japanese using coherent infantry tactics, they send out a fighting force that issues out of the fixed fighting position comes out of cover and tries to outflank the American flanking force.

01:04:57:00 – 01:05:15:10
Marty Morgan
And you see that over and over again. When John Cusack’s team gets up there, you’re saying over and over again these shots that are just chilling because you’re like kind of getting them as they’re you know, as they’re cowering behind rocks because the the mortar fire is just stop falling. The enemy is firing from the fixed position and you’re seeing the fighting force.

01:05:15:14 – 01:05:31:10
Marty Morgan
You’re seeing five and six infantry men running toward them very, very quickly, having just appeared out of nowhere. And the Americans have to try to stop them. And they do it not just from the left, but then they come around from the right and they come around to the left again, and then they come around from the right again.

01:05:31:10 – 01:05:53:18
Marty Morgan
And I didn’t experience combat in World War Two. I was more 25 years after it ended. But I’ve done a lot of reading and I’ve done a lot of reading about Guadalcanal, and that’s how they did it. Wasn’t this that they stupidly sat there in their fixed position, getting pounded by American mortar fire and artillery fire. They waited quietly for us to come to them when they had the advantage.

01:05:53:21 – 01:06:18:17
Marty Morgan
And then when we got so close that it looked like we were about to take them, they would just wipe the hell out of us over and over again. And it failed about as many times as it worked. So I when I watch that movie, I’m respectful of the fact that the Japanese fought so well and that time was taken to depict the Japanese in an admirable way in this movie.

01:06:18:19 – 01:06:32:13
Marty Morgan
Not that I admire the the overall in geological objectives of the the empire of Japan in World War Two. But I’m saying that they were a very, very skilled and dangerous fighting force. And this movie shows that nicely.

01:06:32:15 – 01:06:56:12
Dan LeFebvre
Right. Which is which is impressive to to know because we don’t see a lot from the Japanese perspective. And those those shots like the one you mentioned, where you don’t even see the person behind the gun, but you see the gun move and then the one that I mentioned where it cuts to inside. And you see from the Japanese perspective in the bunker, those are some of the only shots that I remember in the movie that kind of from the Japanese perspective.

01:06:56:14 – 01:07:07:03
Dan LeFebvre
And so it’s that much more impressive that they took the time to make sure that when they did shoot, from the Japanese perspective, they were doing it in a respectful way.

01:07:07:06 – 01:07:37:23
Marty Morgan
And there’s a reason for that. Japanese money partly paid for this movie. Oh, okay. I’ve never had an opportunity to meet Terrence Malick, and therefore, I, I if I did, I’d love to ask a couple of questions on this. The only references I am able to find about the extent to which Japanese funding supported this project were in actor interviews and a couple of reviews of the Siskel and Ebert Review, which was overwhelmingly positive for this movie.

01:07:37:23 – 01:08:12:09
Marty Morgan
Just for the record, it’s mentioned in the Siskel and Ebert Review. It’s mentioned in a few trade pieces, and I think that’s why when we see him, that’s one thing I just can’t get over and can’t stop admiring about the movie is that the Japanese are depicted as being really good and they’re not just depicted as a bunch of slugs sitting inside a bunker waiting to be killed, and they’re depicted as having agency and fighting back and being fierce like the unseen one, which when Witt gets killed, I remember the first time I saw it on a big screen and it’s he runs out into the middle of this open area and he stops.

01:08:12:11 – 01:08:32:20
Marty Morgan
And then suddenly all these heavily camouflaged Japanese soldiers come out. I was like, Oh my God, that’s exactly what all of the accounts described of them. And they come out and they don’t look sick and weak and stupid and foolish. And sometimes cinema is guilty of depicting them like that, particularly the propagandized depictions of Japanese that came out during the war.

01:08:32:20 – 01:08:42:04
Marty Morgan
And immediately after it. But in this way they’re depicted as muscular and terrifying. I think I value that because that’s exactly what they were.

01:08:42:07 – 01:09:04:15
Dan LeFebvre
One of the impressions that I walked away with was that it seemed to be the first time that many of the Americans were in battle. For example, there was one one of the men who just started to feel sick right when it was time to charge, almost like he didn’t didn’t want to. And another time there’s a guy who who starts tearing up after he shoots a Japanese soldier.

01:09:04:15 – 01:09:18:14
Dan LeFebvre
And I don’t remember the exact line that he says, but he mentioned something his first time he’s killed someone, that kind of thing, where a lot of the fighting in the Battle of Guadalcanal, new recruits.

01:09:18:17 – 01:09:45:05
Marty Morgan
Not all of them, but a heavy proportion of them, or the Marines who conducted the landing back in August. There were fresh recruits in there that are just that had that were only a few months out of Marine Corps recruit training. The Army had a large number of people that had not just the Marine Corps, had some combat experience, offshore leadership, and maybe a little bit of inside leadership.

01:09:45:05 – 01:10:10:22
Marty Morgan
But it wasn’t from World War Two, because keep in mind, this isn’t there are two simultaneous land battles that are our first ground combat actions in the Second World War in Pacific, and that’s New Guinea and Guadalcanal occurred simultaneous to one another. Nobody had had a chance yet to build a lot of ground combat, or at least nobody that was that survived and wasn’t in a prisoner of war camp because we had a lot of people that had a lot of ground combat in the Philippines.

01:10:10:22 – 01:10:37:12
Marty Morgan
And we basically lost all of them. I mean, a few a few people get out, but the number is is meaningless. The overwhelming number, though, they’re either killed or they die as prisoners of war or they’re still in prisoner of war camps. So what you had was also leadership in school leadership and private soldiers and Marines who had not been tested by the experience combat yet.

01:10:37:15 – 01:11:02:06
Marty Morgan
And this is probably why this this movie has the most important thing to say and what it’s depicting. And it’s depicting very well are there are troops that help they get into combat. And it is the it was it’s it’s the world they were born to exist in and others they were not meant for this. I’ve not been in combat, so I can’t speak to it with that authority.

01:11:02:06 – 01:11:21:01
Marty Morgan
But I’ve read a lot about it and I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve been in it. And my father was in combat and told me a lot about it. And I have friends who are officer leaders and the Army and the Marine Corps and they have told me some things about the experience of combat, and that is that there’s a reason that there’s a certain toughness to training.

01:11:21:01 – 01:11:47:07
Marty Morgan
And it’s not just to provide great character drama for motion pictures. There’s a toughness to training. And it’s not just there to weed people out, but it’s there to identify the the extent to which reach their limit. The illustration that’s been used that means the most to me is that it’s like a bottle. And that’s the that bottle is you can tolerate as a human being.

01:11:47:10 – 01:12:16:13
Marty Morgan
And some people, their bottle never fills up and they can handle anything. And some people their bottle fills up really quick. And that’s physical training, endurance training, like going on road marches or petty or things like that that gets you on a base level prepared and that the emotional and mental stresses that basic training expose you to that they are there as a means of assessing who it is that’s going to break quickly and easily.

01:12:16:15 – 01:12:36:16
Marty Morgan
And I think this movie is showing us the way that people break, because this is the first time that the 27th Infantry Regiment was in combat during the Second World War. You could say that they were in combat because the 27th Infantry was on the island of Oahu on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, and there were from the 27th Cavalry who experienced some fighting that day.

01:12:36:18 – 01:12:56:24
Marty Morgan
But that’s different than ground combat in Guam. It’s quite a bit different. And what you’re seeing are the who kill somebody else and they can’t live with themselves. They can’t live with the fact that they’ve taken another life. And then you see some men who kill other people doesn’t even face them, doesn’t they don’t even blink at taking a human life.

01:12:56:27 – 01:13:17:01
Marty Morgan
And that’s not to suggest that they’re these mindless killers, that they are these sociopath automatons that are just there to kill. Because I have heard that there are people that in combat they’ll kill human life. They’ll take human life, doesn’t even faze them. But then they have the the measured ability to pull it back. They’ll kill the enemy.

01:13:17:01 – 01:13:37:22
Marty Morgan
It won’t faze them that they’ll take prisoners and they’ll never abuse the prisoners, that they still have something inside of them that that allows them to swing the pendulum and that there are some people that when they get exposed to combat, it breaks them down. They can’t continue. Some people, they get exposed to combat and they become sociopaths.

01:13:37:24 – 01:14:04:24
Marty Morgan
That’s not something that’s unique to. The United States, nor is it unique to the empire of Japan, nor is it unique to National Socialist Germany or the Red Army. That is a truism, a truism that explains human nature, regardless of war, regardless of time period, that you’re going to have some people that maintain their moral compass, they can be trained killers and they can be quickly and easily do it, and they can still maintain the moral compass.

01:14:04:24 – 01:14:24:26
Marty Morgan
And then you’re going to have some people that they can be effective killers and they lose the compass. And some people I have heard that they lose the moral compass, that after you just leave them on the line and you just batter them down with this this this numbing experience of combat, that some people, after a couple of months of it, they lose their moral compass.

01:14:24:26 – 01:14:46:12
Marty Morgan
Some people never lose it and some people just become cold blooded murderers. And some people do things that they shouldn’t do. Like this movie is depicting the way that some men are removing the gold fillings from Japanese war dead. It’s even depicting at least one case where a man is re is removing gold fillings from a Japanese soldier who’s still alive.

01:14:46:14 – 01:15:14:01
Marty Morgan
But there are discussions in the movie that the movie is presenting, people who are executing Japanese prisoners. These are all things that come up within the greater framework of a discussion of every war, the American war, global war on terror. This war that I guess we finished it. I don’t know if we’re finished yet or not, but we were we withdrew from Afghanistan, and that looks like a turning point.

01:15:14:03 – 01:15:53:23
Marty Morgan
But we have had that conversation relating to our war in Afghanistan. We had that conversation about our war in Iraq. We definitely had our that conversation about our war in Vietnam. And we definitely had that conversation in our war, the Second World War. It’s just that the way that the ad agencies and the Roman Romanticization and and the nostalgia want us to remember World War Two as they want us to remember it as a war where we didn’t have people that that experienced that that rage, that range of emotion, that range of reaction.

01:15:53:25 – 01:16:13:15
Marty Morgan
What we want to imagine, I believe, is the flattery of the greatest generation, a group of people who stoically went off and answered the nation’s call at a critical moment. They went off and did their duty and then came home. And that’s only partly true. There’s some truth to it. But there we also had our sociopaths and our murderers.

01:16:13:17 – 01:16:44:24
Marty Morgan
This movie is asking us to consider that. And that’s another thing that I value about this movie. I was raised by a man who who experienced combat and was traumatized by Vietnam. And one thing he talked about was warrior spirit, that there are people that have it and people that don’t. And he mentioned that one of the one of the the offshoots of having the Citizen Soldier draft army during the year of Vietnam was we had a lot of people in uniform that were sent into combat who were not didn’t have the warrior spirit.

01:16:44:27 – 01:17:11:04
Marty Morgan
And because they didn’t have the warrior, they didn’t do well in the combat environment. My father was still in the Army when I was born and remained in the Army until I was 15 years old and being raised around him. And then a lot of men who were like him, who were in uniform, who were all professional soldiers, who were all the the pre 1965 all volunteer force being around them was around a bunch of guys who were clearly professional soldiers and had warrior spirit.

01:17:11:06 – 01:17:38:19
Marty Morgan
And I think warrior spirit is critically important here because I think what we’re seeing in the North multi character Lieutenant Colonel Tull, is we’re seeing a person who’s got warrior spirit and trained for his entire life and never got to go out and do what he was born to do. And the frustration that’s gnawing at him throughout all of this, throughout all of this to the point that he has this line of dialog that I think is so beautifully crafted and beautifully delivered.

01:17:38:19 – 01:17:52:23
Marty Morgan
But I have to admit that I just I kind of fall for Nick Nolte in this movie because he’s so frickin good in this movie. There are times where he’s just way over the top and I feel like, All right, Broadway, let’s back it off a little cut. There’s a lot more yelling than I think there would normally be.

01:17:52:29 – 01:18:11:05
Marty Morgan
But then he’s just so good. And there’s a moment where he’s talking to Cusack’s character and he says, I have a son. You know what my son does? He’s a Fuller Brush salesman. And I feel like that that line of dialog is so critically important to understanding him, because you can almost hear him saying, My son, I’m ashamed of him.

01:18:11:09 – 01:18:36:19
Marty Morgan
Look at what he is. And he’s fine with that. That’s him saying, I’m a warrior and I wish I wish you were my son. You’re a warrior, too. You get it? Because Cusack’s character goes up the hill and kicks ass and volunteers to do it, just like Charles Davis did. And here is this man who has spent an entire lifetime developing the skills of a professional soldier, and his son sells brushes.

01:18:36:19 – 01:18:58:11
Marty Morgan
And his disappointment is is not just barely detectable, but conspicuous when he delivers this line of dialog because he’s going through this inner struggle of I’m a warrior and I’m here and this is now’s my chance. I have to do this because we only get this opportunity once in a generation. And that is kind of the way that the ball has bounced for most of history.

01:18:58:11 – 01:19:20:12
Marty Morgan
It wasn’t like that first half of the 20th century. There was a little bit more war than I think everybody wanted. But that is something that I in reading personal accounts in the Second World War, I’ve seen time and time again where there were people that were professional soldiers in uniform before Pearl Harbor. And when that time came, they had this quality of like, finally, let’s here it is.

01:19:20:14 – 01:19:38:09
Marty Morgan
And then you also had people like Eddie Slovak, who when he received his draft notice, he went down and tried to get out of it and they told him, tough, you’re going to go in uniform. And they sent him off and. He wrote a letter saying, I’m not up to this. I can’t do it. And I wrote letters over and over again saying that he wasn’t able to handle it.

01:19:38:09 – 01:20:08:06
Marty Morgan
And then Battle of the Bulge begins. He deserts at the first chance he gets, and then we track him down and we put him in front of a firing squad, shoot him. That is a person who was not a warrior. He was not cut out for it. But the reality of the experience in the 20th century is one where we have a full national mobilization with a draft where we put 16 million men and women in uniform and over the course of the war, a lot of the people we put in uniform were not warriors, and some of the people we put in uniform were sociopaths.

01:20:08:06 – 01:20:25:28
Marty Morgan
And some of the people we put in uniform were murderers. And this movie is forcing us to consider all of that. And that’s true. That’s a truth of the Second World War, that in all of the greatest Generation talk, I rarely hear that ever come up. But it comes up in this movie.

01:20:26:01 – 01:20:35:12
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Yeah. And it beautifully illustrates what you’re talking about. You know, it. We’re human and there’s a wide range. Everybody, you know, everybody can handle different amounts.

01:20:35:14 – 01:21:00:22
Marty Morgan
Yeah. There’s a moment that I would point out that when they finally get to the top and they overrun bunker complex, they take the prisoners. John Cusack’s blowing the whistle. They show the big air gunner who’s the guy who’s ripped the arms off of his pretty blouse and he stepped eagle guns and he’s the PR gunner, but he’s run the bar out of ammo and he’s got a he’s got a Winchester model 97 trench gun and kills some of the Japanese the shotgun.

01:21:00:25 – 01:21:25:25
Marty Morgan
And it’s at the very end where he’s holding the shotgun over a Japanese soldier that he’s forced on the ground as a soldier. That was short range and he negligently fires the shotgun, kills the guy. And then there’s another one. And he’s so worked up from having fought his way up to that bunker that he’s beating the living hell out of this Japanese soldier who was disarmed and no threat and attempting to surrender.

01:21:25:27 – 01:21:48:06
Marty Morgan
And one of the other guys grabs him by his gear and drags him off this Japanese soldier and stands up and he’s stumbling around and he’s just worked over. He’s overwrought. And every account I have read about atrocities and I’ve done kind of a lot of work on atrocities in World War Two is that’s how they happen. You fight your way up a hill, the enemy sits there and pounds you and kills some of your friends, and then you capture them.

01:21:48:13 – 01:22:00:22
Marty Morgan
And that’s one happened. And that’s another moment that I think this movie does does very well in explaining the human dimension of conducting an atrocity.

01:22:00:25 – 01:22:27:27
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if we go back to the movie after the they do capture the bunker. There’s a scene after that. It looks kind of like a Japanese camp. The movie doesn’t really explain exactly what it is, but there’s a very cinematic moment where you see two Japanese soldiers charging in one direction, the Americans charging in the other direction, and even though the American soldiers, they don’t really seem to be slowing down, You know, they’re just they’re running they’re running through the camp and shooting the Japanese defenders.

01:22:27:27 – 01:22:45:07
Dan LeFebvre
It makes think that after this moment on the bunker, there just wasn’t that much resistance afterwards. Was that kind of what it was like, this big sequence that we see in the movie?

01:22:45:09 – 01:23:17:01
Marty Morgan
It was because what we had during that time, the the first two weeks of January 1943, was that two U.S. Army regiments, the 35th Infantry and the 27th Infantry. And of course, the movie is centering on the 20 military. They moved into position, maneuvered over terrain and attacked Japanese strong points at the galloping horse, the sea horse, and then finally, this major bunker complex they were attempting to outmaneuver and outflank called the geese, which is there were Japanese troops from Gifu Prefecture in Japan.

01:23:17:03 – 01:23:46:11
Marty Morgan
And that’s why we call that. And that was I don’t want to say the last organized stand Japanese forces on Guadalcanal, but it was functionally the last organized stand because that the Japanese had lost the strategic initiative in the Guadalcanal campaign, meaning that they kept feeding people into this into this meat grinder. And in fact, the Japanese would ultimately call the island Starvation Island, which gives you an indication of how things eventually went for them there.

01:23:46:14 – 01:24:20:28
Marty Morgan
They would have eventually reach a point where they weren’t able to get reinforcements through the island. That happens in November, stretching then into the calendar year 1943. The Japanese experience another major setback when these final positions south of point groves are overrun by the U.S. Army 25th Infantry Division, And that then ultimately leads the Japanese to fight a delaying action, a last delaying action up the coast to the west of the perimeter, at a point where the Marines landed back in August and the Japanese then eventually have to make the decision to abandon Guadalcanal.

01:24:21:00 – 01:24:48:17
Marty Morgan
And they begin a process of evacuating. They don’t get everybody out and that evacuation is declared at an end on February 9th, 1943. And the the attack that occurs at the galloping horse, the Sea Horse Hill 53 and the Gifu strongpoint, that’s the last really organized stand that the Japanese are making on the island. And it’s a defensive bout because that’s all that’s the only battle they have at that point.

01:24:48:22 – 01:24:54:19
Marty Morgan
They are no longer on the offensive. They have people on the island and they’re just fighting to survive.

01:24:54:21 – 01:25:18:01
Dan LeFebvre
The way the movie kind of sets it up was. There was this airfield on the island. We do see some flashbacks of the artillery coming down and destroying this airfield. But We don’t see that at this point in the movie after the bunker at all. When when did that happen or was that something that was near the end of the campaign or was that earlier?

01:25:18:01 – 01:25:25:01
Dan LeFebvre
I would I guess I would have assumed it was earlier if that was kind of the point of capturing Guadalcanal, like the movie seems to imply.

01:25:25:03 – 01:25:51:26
Marty Morgan
It was much earlier in the campaign. And this is the area in which Terrence Malick and even James Jones, to a certain extent, have taken liberties with the actual timeline of the actual Guadalcanal campaign, because there was a period of time in the the August and September and October time period where the Japanese Imperial Navy came down and shelled the perimeter around the mouth of the longer river where the Marines it landed in August.

01:25:51:28 – 01:26:26:21
Marty Morgan
There were times when Japanese aircraft came down and, conducted air raids on the airfield in that perimeter. Then, by the way, that airfield was under construction when we landed, we got it and we completed it. We began using it. Then there was also a time period beginning on a Tuesday, October 13th, 1942, where the Japanese had landed a force much further to the west of the Lunga Point perimeter, and they had moved artillery pieces over land and finally got them into position within range of the perimeter.

01:26:26:21 – 01:26:59:23
Marty Morgan
It was a point where the Marines had landed back in August and they shelled them with ground based artillery. So you had naval artillery, you had ground based artillery. And of course, then you had Japanese airpower. The Japanese also launch to no, I can’t say that they launched a series of major naval battles in support of ground operations in Guadalcanal, including two major operations that lead to aircraft carrier versus aircraft carrier battles, the battle of Eastern Solomons, the battle of Santa Cruz that are all battles that are playing out in the waters off of Guadalcanal.

01:26:59:23 – 01:27:06:12
Marty Morgan
But they’re all about the continuing Japanese struggle to gain of the tactical situation on Guadalcanal.

01:27:06:14 – 01:27:22:02
Dan LeFebvre
Have they actually finished the airfield then? Because we do see some scenes in the movie where there are planes taking off. It kind of starts when we see stars, you know, being sent off and he hops on a plane there. So I assume that the airfield was completed at that point.

01:27:22:05 – 01:27:50:09
Marty Morgan
The was incomplete at the time of the Marine landing on August seven, 1942. We land we take over the airfield construction site area, and then we complete the airfield I think the first flights take off on our completed version of the airfield August 12th. And that’s why toward the end of this movie, you’re seeing the one character who gets the letter from the wife saying that she’s leaving him for an Air Force officer and he’s standing around in the airfield area where you see there’s an actual speed.

01:27:50:09 – 01:28:18:04
Marty Morgan
Douglas Speed. He was the Texas, Texas spy at one point. You see a Grumman F4 Wildcat background. Ultimately, you see it’s a Douglas C-47, but it would be the Marines, Navy version, the R four, D two. You see one take off and fly away. You had a number of different types of aircraft. You even see the aircraft. That’s the we it was the P 37 air Cobra, but they had a specially modified version that flew on the Guadalcanal campaign.

01:28:18:04 – 01:28:42:10
Marty Morgan
You see Army, Marine Corps and Navy aircraft all there. And you’re seeing some of those in the latter stages of this movie. And an important point I should mention right now, because this is the perfect setup, is that we always have to remember, too, that what happens at Guadalcanal is that we land there. We fight this vicious battle from August all the way through February, and then from February 1943 until end of the war.

01:28:42:12 – 01:29:10:21
Marty Morgan
We use Guadalcanal as a major logistics base and training base. So there are Americans on Guadalcanal in 1945, but they’re not fighting for the island at that point. That all of that happened back in late 42, early 43, and that airfield was critically important, not just to the overall strategic situation in the Pacific in terms of the way it related to Australia potentially being cut off.

01:29:10:24 – 01:29:22:24
Marty Morgan
But that airfield which was captured by us, completed by us and then expanded and then we built other airfields around it, we would use that airfield for ongoing combat in the Solomons all the way through to the end of the war.

01:29:22:29 – 01:29:49:03
Dan LeFebvre
Was that a matter of opportunity that the Americans, because the Japanese started the airfield there, Guadalcanal, or would like if they hadn’t, there was the would they, would the Americans then have what needed to create an airfield elsewhere? And it was well, the Japanese have already started here, so let’s say almost two birds with one stone type thing.

01:29:49:06 – 01:30:00:12
Marty Morgan
There’s a different quality to that decision entirely. It was what I would call poetically a great oh shit moment, because we, to put it religious.

01:30:00:14 – 01:30:02:04
Dan LeFebvre
That’s the official term.

01:30:02:06 – 01:30:45:26
Marty Morgan
Look around. That’s Notre Dame, U.S. Army reconnaissance aircraft, B-17, particularly flew over and observed that the Japanese were building an airfield. As the word of this observation works its way back through to the to the commanding heights of the command structure of Army, Navy, Marine Corps operations in the Pacific. When they realized what’s being built and where. There is a quick realization, if the Japanese moved multi-engine bombers to the airfield under construction at the mouth of the Lunga River on the northern shore of Guadalcanal, that those aircraft had the capability, the range capability to threaten the sea lanes between Hawaii and Australia.

01:30:45:28 – 01:31:18:29
Marty Morgan
And so there was a recognition that if we allow them to complete this airfield, we’re going to lose Australia. The decision was made hastily, I would point out, to enter edit the Japanese construction of this airfield because the Japanese moved south through the Solomon Solomon Islands building airfields and this was the farthest south land based airfield that had enough room to accommodate a runway long enough for twin engine medium bombers with great range.

01:31:19:01 – 01:31:38:28
Marty Morgan
So it was their fear, therefore, of all of the airfields in the Solomon Islands, it was the most dangerous because the airplanes based on that would be one day based on it could threaten the the sea lanes that were delivering troops and supplies and food, gasoline, most importantly, to Australia.

01:31:39:00 – 01:31:56:29
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. Yeah, it makes sense. Then why that why they would use that. As you know in the movie mentioning I think I remember the exact line of dialog, but I think they mentioned something about that airfield could basically have air superiority for like a thousand mile surround in the Pacific, you know, just a huge, you know.

01:31:57:01 – 01:32:23:18
Marty Morgan
That’s that moment that I still find. So kind of it’s a little silly almost to me. I don’t that’s maybe that’s too harsh, but it’s the moment. Let’s Mcnoldy, who is an army regimental commander talking to a higher ranking Naval Navy officer. And I get it he’s on a it’s on a transport carrying this Army regiment. But it seems a little silly that this Navy is discussing grand strategy in the Pacific with someone as lowly as a U.S. Army battalion commander.

01:32:23:21 – 01:32:46:09
Marty Morgan
But I see why it is used. It was to situate the context. It’s its setting for the movie. The thing that amuses me about it is I was like, why even bother? Because this is not a war movie. It’s a tone poem. It’s a movie that is contemplating the human experience. First and foremost, depictions of war. Their secondary.

01:32:46:11 – 01:33:19:18
Marty Morgan
And I even think that the the way that the human mind reacts to the experience of combat is secondary. Because the big thing being discussed in this is that this core idea of transcendentalism, which is that these outside perverting influences will take humankind, which is otherwise disposed, primordial. He disposed of being good and recognizing the righteousness of other men that humankind otherwise disposed toward charity.

01:33:19:20 – 01:34:06:06
Marty Morgan
It’s these outside influences that pervert and corrupt the human experience that even outside influences like disease or natural disaster, these things occur and they pull us off of the the better angels, the better angels of our of our spirit and what the movie discusses. And it’s a surprising verdict. It’s delivered in this movie. And the verdict that is clearly delivered by this movie is that no transcendentalism is wrong, that humankind is the source of evil, that it’s not some outside influence because you start the movie with this idyllic experience around these Melanesian tribesmen and then later in the movie, after the big Help, it’s three now, which goes back to the village.

01:34:06:06 – 01:34:28:11
Marty Morgan
And what does he see? He sees children that are covered in this skin disease, and he sees men fighting between themselves. And what is it that he has seen right before, that he’s seen his own brothers in arms, the soldiers that were serving with them, committing atrocities, murdering prisoners of war, stripping the gold fillings out of the dead and the living.

01:34:28:11 – 01:34:57:07
Marty Morgan
He’s seen atrocities being committed and he’s seen the village that started the that established the tone of this movie. He’s seen that village being perverted and corrupted by something else. What? I don’t know about what Malik was trying to say is, is he saying that that’s the inevitable reality of the human experience, that humankind is always corrupted, greed and stressed by natural disasters and and disease and warfare?

01:34:57:13 – 01:35:22:16
Marty Morgan
Or is he saying that the war is what perverted the village? Did the war coming to the island cause all of that? Did it introduce something unnatural that made the men crash clash with one another? Did it introduce a new disease that was sickening the children in the village? And it almost doesn’t matter because it’s more of a meditation on this idea and which is the vehicle by which are considering it.

01:35:22:16 – 01:35:51:09
Marty Morgan
Because from the start, what’s the first line of dialog in the movie? It’s we’re talking about the peace and calm that came over his mother on her deathbed. And then he’s wondering about will I have that when I go to my death? And that’s what we ultimately see later in the movie, that the character, when he steps out in the field with which is he is engaged in this, he runs off by himself to try to distract the enemy so that his his brothers in arms can withdraw safely.

01:35:51:11 – 01:36:11:05
Marty Morgan
And he just doesn’t move quickly enough. The enemy overruns him and catches him. And at this moment, when he’s facing his death, he clearly makes a conscious to die because he raises his rifle. And as he does so, the Japanese are challenging him to surrender. The Japanese are clearly giving him orders to surrender, even though he can’t understand what they’re saying.

01:36:11:07 – 01:36:28:02
Marty Morgan
They haven’t shot him. He’s still standing there armed. He’s looking around that he’s got a sense of calm. It cuts to a camera angle of him with his calm face, which is all you get through the whole movie, is it? The movie is funny to me because it’s the white character over and over again with a tight camera angle on the face, looking calm.

01:36:28:05 – 01:36:55:19
Marty Morgan
It’s just over and over again where I’m like, I get it, Karen. Jesus, I didn’t. He hasn’t played Jesus yet, but he’s brought Jesus here and it’s calling on us to consider what happens to humankind in warfare. And he’s very obviously this godlike figure. And then at the very end, when he’s going to meet his death, he raises his rifle on purpose because calmly meeting his death, that brings us full circle back to the beginning.

01:36:55:22 – 01:37:32:24
Marty Morgan
And I still guess I don’t know what the movie’s trying to say about some aspects of that, because what is it we’re seeing over and over again? We’re seeing that this these savage vestigial instincts and people kind of popping up over and over again, the instinct to beat a prisoner death because you’re so full of rage after having just fought fought him and seeing your comrades die, the rage that you get at the end of the battle when they’re on the enemies there and there’s this giddiness and there’s that moment when they’re cheering prisoners down the hill and they’re laughing at the mocking them.

01:37:32:27 – 01:37:47:07
Marty Morgan
And the one character, the guy that later plays Buster Scruggs, I can’t remember his name right now, but that character is saying, we we’re going to get in trouble. I just don’t want to get in trouble there. The count of these prisoners, if we don’t get them all back to the battalion command post, we’re going to be in trouble.

01:37:47:07 – 01:38:07:21
Marty Morgan
I don’t want to get in trouble. And one guy says, remember, they did to our boys on Bataan. And you’re saying how this human spirit is being pulled at by these these lesser instincts. And then we see what and what’s the point of the the soldier who at the end of the movie is standing at the airfield reading the Dear John letter from his wife and she’s left him.

01:38:07:21 – 01:38:34:15
Marty Morgan
And why is that? She’s left him, she tells him in the conclusion, she says, I just couldn’t handle being alone anymore. These lesser qualities, these animalistic, lesser qualities that are in us, that’s what wins in the end. The witch characters, constant meditation about peace and utopia that doesn’t wind. And there are even other moments in dialog where Total says, Look at the way these vines are growing up on this tree and strangling it.

01:38:34:21 – 01:39:05:18
Marty Morgan
That’s the natural world. It’s savage and it’s cruel. And I think that’s some pretty cool exposition of plot, and it’s done in sort of a coy way. Maybe not so coy now, but it’s it’s this exposition about about transcendentalism. That’s the main thing in this movie, World War Two and Guadalcanal. They’re all secondary and it’s a surprising verdict, in my opinion, this idea that it’s the animal cruel world that’s going to win.

01:39:05:21 – 01:39:28:29
Marty Morgan
It’s funny because it made me go tell Jennifer about this movie called Grizzly Man, and it’s this great movie about this man, this activist animal rights activist Tim Treadwell, that goes up into the Pacific Northwest to live among the Bears and film them. And of course, what happens, he gets killed by bears. And it’s a true story. But he had a lot of footage and it was all compiled into a movie by Werner Herzog, which is a very good movie.

01:39:28:29 – 01:40:01:15
Marty Morgan
And in it, Herzog has a narrative that it is explaining Tim Treadwell and the Grizzly Man in this movie and, it explains the Thin Red Line. It explains James Jones and Terrence Malick. And it’s almost like a prerequisite for watching the thin red lines have to watch. Great read, Grizzly Man. You have to read about transcendentalism. It also reminded me of another book that dates to the 1970s, a book called Orientalism that was written by Saeed Saeed’s last name.

01:40:01:15 – 01:40:35:27
Marty Morgan
But Saeed’s Orientalism is a discussion about how, from the perspective of the Western world, we tend to look at other countries that are religiously and linguistically and ethnically quite different than us. We tend to look at them as being foreign and as exotic, and it’s a it’s a movie that discusses the way that this process of Orientalism has been used over and over again as a means of presenting something foreign and exotic, as something savage.

01:40:36:00 – 01:40:54:22
Marty Morgan
And it made me think that a good, healthy read of Saeed’s Orientalism is also a pretty good requisite for watching that red. And in this way, this movie is far more intellectual than any other war movie I’ve ever watched.

01:40:54:25 – 01:41:05:06
Dan LeFebvre
It’s using the war as a backdrop as opposed to we’ve mentioned it numerous times throughout this movie. But, you know, Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers or any of that, like.

01:41:05:08 – 01:41:35:08
Marty Morgan
Yeah, that’s why I, I, I mourn so much for all these friends that I have that upon watching that movie in 1998, they expressed great disappointment in that movie. I mean, I’m not here to say that I grasp thin red line to this level from the start because I was a dumb ass back then and I had not read all these books, and I certainly wasn’t, as a younger man, as predisposed towards contemplating a lot of the transcendentalism themes in it.

01:41:35:11 – 01:41:58:16
Marty Morgan
But here I am now and I appreciate it, and I think the movie is something that everybody has to watch, even if you’re not into war movies. I think it’s worth watching the thing is that if you give Terrence Malick a chance to Terrence Malick, he will. Terrence Malick every time. And there are moments in. The movie when I was watching it last night, I was like, Oh, Jesus, God, I get it.

01:41:58:16 – 01:42:26:19
Marty Morgan
Terrence. Yes, I know you’re an artist. Yes. He’s beat me mercilessly about the head and shoulders with your art. In other words, you say there are some moments where I it feels almost self-indulgent that the artistic qualities go now they go a little too far. And maybe that’s just because I believe there are some people that would say that’s because you are not intellectually enough to grasp it to that level.

01:42:26:19 – 01:42:45:28
Marty Morgan
If you if you express any boredom like the people that go sit through the mirror and recycle, and if at any point you yawn, they’re like your intellect inferior, you’re not smart enough to appreciate this. It’s maybe like that. But at the same time, I’m watching these things for entertainment, and the movie is very entertaining and it’s very intellectual.

01:42:46:00 – 01:42:52:13
Marty Morgan
And there are some moments where it’s a little bit more intellectual than entertaining.

01:42:52:15 – 01:43:29:01
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned the kind of the end of the movie there with Whit and when he dies. And I wanted to ask you about again, not to compare too much to other movies there, but with the combination of that, when we see Whit Fyfe and Coombs going ahead to find out how far the Japanese are from the Allies, they’re doing so at the command of First Lieutenant Band, who he took over the company from Captain Star us when he left, and the way that he’s portrayed in the movie Lieutenant Band, he seems rather indecisive and that’s why these men are sent out to scout ahead almost.

01:43:29:01 – 01:43:57:08
Dan LeFebvre
It almost seems like an unnecessary thing. And ultimately that leads not only with dying, but Coombs dies as well. And it’s something that as I was watching this, it reminded me of another movie we talked about, and we’ve not just here, but we’ve also talked about another episode as well. And that would be in the Brothers. Not movies are a series, but and and that one we talked about that’s talking about Lieutenant Deacon when he was the way he was portrayed in there.

01:43:57:08 – 01:44:24:25
Dan LeFebvre
And we don’t need to We talked about him in one, but I felt this kind of almost a common theme with the way the band of Brothers portrayed Lieutenant Dyck and the way that Thin Red Line portrays Lieutenant Band as being this indecisive type of leader was replacing the leaders and was this sort of thing something that would have happened at the Battle of Guadalcanal?

01:44:24:25 – 01:44:44:27
Marty Morgan
Yeah, having happened over and over again. And that’s a truism that expresses the experience of army fighting forces not just in the Pacific, but in the European theater of fighting elsewhere in the war. And the problem was that we were for the Guadalcanal campaign, which begins in August, and the army gets there. I mean, some elements of the Army are there in October.

01:44:44:27 – 01:45:07:18
Marty Morgan
The element of the army that we’re following in this movie doesn’t get there until the end of December. And the problem they were experiencing is that they were, for the most part, people who were in uniform before Pearl Harbor. If they’re fighting on Guadalcanal, not everybody, but 90% of the troops, they were in uniform before the war started, before our American intervention in the Second World War, at least.

01:45:07:21 – 01:45:44:04
Marty Morgan
And the problem that that created was that you had you had peacetime army. And another thing that I have learned from people that I have known who are in uniform is that when you are in garrison, which is what the 27th Infantry Regiment was in before the war began, and it went overseas to the Solomon Islands. When you’re in garrison, it requires a totally different set of skills it required to So to survive, to do well or to succeed or fail requires skills that are very, very much different than the skills that are required to succeed or fail.

01:45:44:04 – 01:46:15:06
Marty Morgan
When you’re in combat and you can have an officer leadership that does just fine when you’re in garrison and nobody’s being shot at. And then that leadership is less than ideal, less than effective when you get into combat depicted here. And the reason I think we have seen it depicted a few times as for reasons of truce, first and foremost, the US military experience, difficulty in promoting people to officer leadership who are competent and experienced.

01:46:15:09 – 01:46:51:19
Marty Morgan
Because if you think about it at the beginning of the war, we don’t. A lot of people in combat experience. It had been basically a generation since Americans had been at war. You had senior officer leadership with some World War One experience, all the junior leadership, basically no combat experience. And so you’re going to have some people that just can’t hack it and don’t do well and also, I think we’re seeing it in this movie and we see it in other movies and other film treatments for a reason, and that is that it’s the perfect character device in a film to show one person’s great and dependable and another one’s not so great.

01:46:51:26 – 01:47:22:23
Marty Morgan
It’s in other words, another in order to amplify the strengths of, say, Sean Penn’s character in this movie or Woody Harrelson’s character, you have to have someone who’s not up to it. And that person, the person who’s not quite up to it, amplifies the person who is and their that means that these characters, these characters that are indecisive or ineffective, they’re they’re for for practical purposes, they’re there because they’re useful.

01:47:22:25 – 01:47:39:08
Marty Morgan
We saw that in Band of Brothers. Did we? And we have seen it in this movie as well. And it’s also calling our attention to something that happened a lot during World War Two, and that is that you have a lot of people who got into combat. They were effective leaders, and then something happened and they were no longer capable of fighting.

01:47:39:08 – 01:48:09:01
Marty Morgan
They’re killed in action. They’re wounded in action or they get ill and they’re no longer on the line. Somebody has to take over from where they left off. And what often happens is that when that changeover takes place, you end up with somebody who’s not perfect, like the the big point I love to make about Lieutenant Deacon, Dick Winters and Band of Brothers is that Dick was placed in circumstances where he was sort of set up to fail.

01:48:09:03 – 01:48:29:26
Marty Morgan
I don’t want to say that you’re necessarily in that, but the circumstances by which band becomes a senior leader in this movie, they’re not the most ideal circumstances. And that was just the way the ball bounced. And World War Two, it might just be that you’re perfectly good at a job at a lower level and then it’s time to move up.

01:48:29:26 – 01:48:53:18
Marty Morgan
And when you move up the principle takes effect and you’re elevated to the position of your incompetence and somebody who might make a perfectly effective senior noncommissioned officer, that when you promote him, Bauza will promote him to officer leadership. He’s not so good. He was better as a senior non comm and that happens over and over again in World War Two.

01:48:53:18 – 01:48:55:21
Marty Morgan
It has happened in this movie as well.

01:48:55:24 – 01:49:19:15
Dan LeFebvre
One difference that came to mind was with Dick in Band of Brothers. Winters is still there and he’s still very he’s he’s still there. Whereas Star was here with with band stars. He’s we seem to get on a plane, he’s gone and we assume he’s going back to DC for you know, recommended for JAG as the movie mentions.

01:49:19:17 – 01:49:44:07
Dan LeFebvre
So the men from the men’s perspective, they they can’t go back to the commander that they were used to. I know there were times in keeping our band brothers like we would talk about that movie that that again. But in there the men do go back to winters and complain and in that and in this one it’s more I mean we just have that one scene before there scouting.

01:49:44:07 – 01:49:53:24
Dan LeFebvre
You can tell from the men, like with wit, that this is unnecessary. We need to be doing this and we’re probably going to die when we do it.

01:49:53:27 – 01:49:57:17
Marty Morgan
And which character says, Hey, and I just for the record, I think this is a bad idea.

01:49:57:19 – 01:50:02:21
Dan LeFebvre
It’s an interesting contrast from Star Eros earlier when he flat out refuses.

01:50:02:23 – 01:50:20:23
Marty Morgan
Yes, because wit has no power, has no authority. And in fact, which was the deserter who had been put out of the company and was a stretcher bearer and only was allowed to come back because he requested to come back and they had a bunch of combat casualties. And they need to fill in ranks of people who are lost earlier in the battle.

01:50:20:25 – 01:50:38:26
Marty Morgan
And so that’s the only reason he’s back. And we’re to assume that he has some magical gift. I think we see a little bit of a preview of with him in the scene where he’s in the brig on the transport ship before the landing scene, and he’s talking to Sean Penn’s character and he says, I’m more of a man than you are.

01:50:38:26 – 01:51:14:19
Marty Morgan
I can take anything you dish out, maybe an indication that he is a tough guy that we don’t understand. He’s religious. He’s guided, obviously guided by some religious thought. And so he’s not out there pulling gold fillings out of enemy soldiers, but he’s maybe got a toughness to him. And that’s what the the the story has turned back to, which is why then when Lincoln Band leads the group down the creek bed they get some said they get throttled by enemy artillery fire and they’re being surrounded by the enemy and it’s time for something decisive to be done.

01:51:14:21 – 01:51:23:15
Marty Morgan
Whit is the one that steps up to do it, says Take everybody back. I’m going to go distract him. And that’s going to be your chance to make your escape.

01:51:23:17 – 01:51:43:29
Dan LeFebvre
At the very end of the movie, we see very early George Clooney’s comes in. At the very end is Captain Bosch. He comes into the picture and he basically tells the men that the war is far from over. But it seems like they’re done. Guadalcanal. We see soldiers walking past rows and rows of white crosses from the men who have died before they.

01:51:44:03 – 01:52:06:20
Dan LeFebvre
Then they get on to the ships and, head off of the island, seeing all the graves at the very end. And then, of course, we saw, you know, like the airfield scene that we’ve already talked about, things like that. It gave me the idea that there’s a lot of fighting that we didn’t see in the movie. Can you fill in some historical detail around how the Battle of Guadalcanal ended?

01:52:06:22 – 01:52:31:21
Marty Morgan
Yeah, the battle Guadalcanal ends were in 1943 with the Japanese withdrawal from the island. Upon the Japanese withdrawal, combat operations on the island come to an end. There are some holdouts, but it’s meaningless in scale and size. By the end of this battle, the Japanese have lost, we estimate, up to 35,000 killed in action on Guadalcanal over the course of the campaign.

01:52:31:24 – 01:52:55:04
Marty Morgan
The United States has paid dearly for it. We lose lots of people on land. We lose U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. Navy sailors just offshore. We use we lose a lot of Marines over the course of. The months of the of the campaign. We lose ships, we lose aircraft. Everything that we lose, we lose kind of a lot of.

01:52:55:06 – 01:53:18:06
Marty Morgan
But in the end, we went by the time we get to the end of the campaign, an important detail that’s worth remembering about. Guadalcanal is like all other major campaigns in the Pacific, it involves every branch of the United States Army, I’m sorry, every branch of the United States military. So the Marines land first that ultimately the Army reinforces the island, which is where the characters come from, that we fought them.

01:53:18:06 – 01:53:52:23
Marty Morgan
In this movie, there are Navy personnel on shore. There are Navy personnel being lost offshore through a series of these incredible naval battles like the well, the battle on several island, for example. We also see the significant inclusion of the United States Coast Guard in this battle and, in fact, a U.S. Coast Guardsmen, the name of Douglas Monroe is involved in a withdrawal of elements, the submarine regiment, on September 27, 1942.

01:53:52:23 – 01:54:14:15
Marty Morgan
And in covering the withdrawal of these Marines from the beachhead in an action that’s often referred to as Little Dunkirk, because it was an evacuation of the better part of a battalion of Marines using landing craft to get them out of hostile territory. Coast Guardsmen. Monroe positioned his landing craft to block enemy fire so that it wouldn’t threaten Marines that were landing.

01:54:14:15 – 01:54:39:09
Marty Morgan
And in doing so, he was struck by a bullet that ultimately kills him. He was subsequently posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, and the only time he met LaMotta has been awarded to a Coast Guardsmen. And so it’s worth, I think, remembering that this campaign in overall scale, it spanned every branch of the American military. It was fought on land, at sea and in the air.

01:54:39:09 – 01:54:59:22
Marty Morgan
It was the campaign that was pitting the great strength of the empire of Japan against the strength of the United States military. And in the end, the United States military prevailed. We secured the southern Solomon Islands, and then we began a process of clearing the islands immediately north of Guadalcanal. And that’s a campaign that we’re still fighting when the war ends.

01:54:59:22 – 01:55:01:07
Marty Morgan
By the way.

01:55:01:09 – 01:55:23:29
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned earlier the the airfield and noticing that was almost like an oh, shit moment with all of the different branches of the military coming together and. This was that the original plan or was that a no? It was another moment of they started started the campaign and then we’re going to need more help. We need more help, we need more help, that kind of thing.

01:55:24:01 – 01:55:54:21
Marty Morgan
There was a caution that the enemy wouldn’t just let us have it, that the enemy would get a vote and the enemy would try to take the airfield back after we captured it and it was out of an abundance of caution to that, that we brought a sufficiently large force, an entire Marine division, to conduct the landing. It was a reinforced division, in fact, and that was the thought that we put a bunch ashore in the event that they decided they wanted to get froggy and come down and fight for it, we didn’t expect that they would pour everything into the southern elements the way that they did.

01:55:54:24 – 01:56:24:21
Marty Morgan
We didn’t expect in August when we landed that we were beginning a campaign that wouldn’t that would stretch into the next year that wouldn’t end until February 43. We were not expecting that. We were beginning a campaign that would ultimately involve not just aircraft carriers and air power from all over, but that it would involve battleships, that the the largest weapons of war available to the opposing sides in this campaign or would be directed against one another.

01:56:24:21 – 01:56:46:11
Marty Morgan
And but that’s what happened because this was the great gamble the Japanese understood that they could not fight the one war that they were about to inherit, and the war that they were about to inherit was a protracted war of attrition. And the Japanese knew that they they didn’t stand a chance in the protracted war of attrition, one that went on for years.

01:56:46:14 – 01:57:21:24
Marty Morgan
And because of that, the Japanese recognized that if they were going to win this war, they would have to have a strategic masterstroke that would do something to address the American problem, because the attack on Pearl Harbor, Guam, the Philippines, Midway, the attacks that occurred back in December, they had slowed us down, but they didn’t stop. The Japanese realized that the best way to hold back the flood was to sever that artery that was feeding Australia, carve Australia out of the war.

01:57:21:24 – 01:57:45:27
Marty Morgan
The Japanese had a plan that build the airfield on Guadalcanal first began a bombing campaign to sever the shipping lines between the U.S. West Coast and Australia and then invade Australia. That was the plan. That’s not what ended up happening for them because we fought them back and we fought them to a loss. It wasn’t easily done though.

01:57:46:02 – 01:58:07:20
Marty Morgan
The Japanese were good, they were determined and at this stage of the war they were well supplied. The same will not be the case for campaigns that follow this. But if you consider the Japanese at their peak strength going up against the Americans, not quite at their peak strength, the outcome was that the Americans won.

01:58:07:23 – 01:58:13:11
Dan LeFebvre
Was there anything from history that you wish had been in the thin red line?

01:58:13:14 – 01:58:37:13
Marty Morgan
I do wish that something had been done. I know I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but something had been done to provide a little bit more contextual exposition. I wish we had one little tiny moment of contextual exposition early on between John Travolta and Nick Nolte, where they look at a map, they talk about grand strategy in the Pacific, and that’s it.

01:58:37:14 – 01:58:57:21
Marty Morgan
That’s all we get. And after that, we just sort of dive into a battle that looks like it’s just a storyline that doesn’t look like it’s well-organized, It doesn’t look like it’s telling the type of war story that we’ve seen before. I think we’re kind of used to telling war stories that have a clear beginning, a clear middle and a clear end.

01:58:57:24 – 01:59:29:01
Marty Morgan
This is an arthouse film that is making a broader comment about transcendentalism and the nature of humankind. And so it’s not going to tell that story. I do think that more people would have been less dissatisfied if there had been slightly exposition, if it had been told more like a traditional war movie. But at the same time I almost feel ashamed of myself for criticizing the movie because that’s not what this movie is.

01:59:29:03 – 01:59:51:28
Marty Morgan
I mentioned this earlier. Some Japanese money went into making this movie happen because there was a protracted preproduction time period for this movie. This approached a decade. There was a time period where it looked like this movie wasn’t going to get made and I would compare it to this. A movie that I consider a masterpiece is Full Metal Jacket, and I love that movie.

01:59:52:06 – 02:00:18:01
Marty Morgan
It’s not a Vietnam War movie. It’s something different entirely. And Stanley Kubrick was a genius the way that Terrence Malick is a genius and the way that Steven Spielberg’s genius, he just works in sort of a different palette of colors in Terrence Malick. The only reason that Saving Private Ryan happened the way it did was because there was one man in charge, Steven Spielberg.

02:00:18:09 – 02:00:42:23
Marty Morgan
There was only one reason that band of brothers got off as good as it did, and that is that it was largely the control of the project was distributed over across a very small group of people who were good at what they did. There’s only one reason that movies like 2001 A Space Odyssey or Barry Lyndon or Full Metal Jacket, there’s one reason and one reason Those movies are good.

02:00:42:23 – 02:01:16:14
Marty Morgan
Oh, did I not mention The Shining? The reason those movies are coherent artistic storytelling is because the vision of one person who was gifted beyond a level I’ll ever be able to understand. And Terrence Malick’s like that too. I am so thankful that this movie got made and that it went to somebody like Terrence Malick. I’m thankful that Full Metal Jacket, which is the the movie version of a novelization called The Short Timer’s, I’m glad that that went to Kubrick and that Apocalypse Now went to it, went to and so forth.

02:01:16:14 – 02:01:43:07
Marty Morgan
I’m glad that these artists got it, because that’s not how movies are made today. Movies are made by coalition. They’re designed by committee. You might remember that I mentioned I had been a part of the team that worked on the HBO miniseries Pacific, and I believe that the big failure of that series was based on the way that the storytelling played out, and the storytelling was by committee.

02:01:43:09 – 02:02:05:24
Marty Morgan
When you start to tell big stories influenced by powerful and wealthy studios, and you try to tell them by checking off a list, in other words, you take the direction of something away from the artist and you give it to a committee or a studio executive. They tend to make things that aren’t memorable when it goes to an artist like this movie.

02:02:05:24 – 02:02:33:09
Marty Morgan
Did the movies, by God memorable? That movie’s 25 years old and I still can’t stop running my about that movie and I still like looking at it. I like going back to it not every year, but every few years. And I feel like this is a throwback to the way movies used to get made, that studios used to spend big budget money on films like this that lost money because this movie was budgeted it, fixed $56 million.

02:02:33:09 – 02:02:55:28
Marty Morgan
And I think at the box office it made 36. So the movie lost money and I value the artistry that he brought to the film. I also value some things that he did in terms of like casting. I value the fact, too, that he placed a priority on authenticity in terms of the military authenticity of the film. It’s good, it’s not perfect, but it’s good.

02:02:56:01 – 02:03:25:19
Marty Morgan
I think just because of the way that the money played out, you have one artist in charge of the whole thing, but then you had influences that came outside. You can influence the artist, but it’s still his project. And I think that the reason that the Japanese stuff in this movie is so awesome is because the Japanese, they they had skin in the game, they put money into this movie and that therefore gave them some access to Terrence Malick and they were able to nudge him at the direction of the way that the Japanese were depicted in this movie.

02:03:25:19 – 02:03:46:00
Marty Morgan
As far more honest than I think they’ve been depicted in other movies. And that’s something I value in a big way. If I had to come up with something, I wish he’d done well. I wish he’d done better. You’ve already heard a lot of praise for the movie. Are there are some authenticity problems that they should have known Better Numb.

02:03:46:03 – 02:04:14:13
Marty Morgan
And I almost feel guilty for pointing them out. But when the conversation has had today about fan red line, it is with less passion than the conversation that I’m constantly having about saving Private Ryan. To this day, people love to talk about Saving Private Ryan. That movie Enter entered our cultural zeitgeist in a way that I am only just now beginning to estimate and understand.

02:04:14:15 – 02:04:42:25
Marty Morgan
Yeah, well, to the extent as you might remember, I’ve told you that for a little over 20 years now, I’ve been every year except for during COVID leading tours to Normandy on the D-Day anniversary. And one thing that I have observed is that it is out of the question. I will not go to Normandy and not have to talk extensively about Saving Private Ryan to the point where I’m getting pretty tired of it and I roll my eyes when Private Ryan comes up.

02:04:42:27 – 02:05:15:00
Marty Morgan
And the reason that that movie is constantly being discussed the way that it is is because a lot of people saw that movie and it entered our cultural zeitgeist. That movie created mythologies that are still with us today and won’t go away. Sand Red Line didn’t do that. It didn’t resonate across the broad spectrum the way that Saving Private Ryan did and I’m kind of glad because some stuff got done in Thin Red Line that I’ll watch it too.

02:05:15:01 – 02:05:34:19
Marty Morgan
Like just watching it last night with Jennifer, I was like, I can’t believe they made this frickin movie. I can’t believe this happened. It wouldn’t happen today, like the scene. So there are two bombardment scenes. There’s the first bombardment scene as the menacing company are beginning the process of crawling uphill for the bunker complex before the first shots are fired.

02:05:34:24 – 02:05:56:13
Marty Morgan
This big artillery concentration is called in on top of the hill mass. And when that artillery comes in, that’s the bigger, heavier 105 millimeter artillery that they they even mention it in dialog. And that artillery bombardment scene is so awesome that it takes my breath away to the point that the lesser film would not depict it like that.

02:05:56:15 – 02:06:30:12
Marty Morgan
And I’m going to mention a lesser film right now when talkers I almost hate to say it, the movie is so bad, so unspeakably bad that I believe it holds a position of worse than Pearl Harbor. But when talkers, every single explosion is this massive fireball explosion when they lay the the explosives on the hilltop for the scene of the 100 dives doing the preliminary bombardment before the push up the hill, I don’t know what they used, but it looks right because I’ve seen artillery fire fall and that’s what it looks like.

02:06:30:15 – 02:06:53:17
Marty Morgan
It’s what it sounds like to the scene when they’re down in there, down in this little gully, when the guy is sick before the big attack, before they they start off while the artillery falling, the sound of artillery exploding, the impact of those shells, that is so realistic sounding and and all it does is, I think, develop the tension of that moment.

02:06:53:20 – 02:07:17:01
Marty Morgan
And it does so very effectively then with John Cusack and the guys go up the hill and they use the handy talkie to call in the 81 millimeter mortar fire. Oh my God, that so absolutely authentic looking and feeling and sounding everything about it looks like World War two. And I think the days of making movies like that are over.

02:07:17:03 – 02:07:34:09
Marty Morgan
I don’t think we’re going to see anything like this again. We’re not going to see a movie where somebody like me is going to go, Whoa, that was super accurate. Or when the Japanese soldiers come out of into the clearing at the end and sort out which and they’re all camouflaged and they all look like the biggest bunch of bad asses you’ve ever seen.

02:07:34:12 – 02:07:53:12
Marty Morgan
I don’t think we’re going to see a movie like this ever again. And in this way, I’m I’m performing a lament for the good old days, because that’s what old people do. They talk about the good old days. But at the same time, I believe there’s a low likelihood that we’re going to see an accomplishment on film like this.

02:07:53:14 – 02:08:15:02
Marty Morgan
And I hope the people that 25 years ago were unconvinced by this movie. I hope that they have had the same journey with it that I’ve had and that that they’ve gone back to it over and over again. And with the passage of time, they see the intellectual discussion that’s occurring in this movie and they appreciate it more than they did when they saw it way back in 1998.

02:08:15:04 – 02:08:20:07
Dan LeFebvre
Were there any technical or any major technical support?

02:08:20:10 – 02:08:40:04
Marty Morgan
What I would mention is use of the in one car, and that is during the big hill assault scene when they’re attacking the bunker complex, even the big attack scene, when it’s in the entire company before John Cusack in the small group goes up the hill and you see a large number of men with you, one car B not showing off my name right now.

02:08:40:07 – 02:08:54:09
Marty Morgan
And I brought it as a visual aid just because there’s an important point to be made. And that is that what you see from the troop ship, the very beginning, all the way to the Hill attack scene is you see the muzzle of the M1 car being of several of the car beings that end up in the movie.

02:08:54:11 – 02:09:27:13
Marty Morgan
They have a bayonet lug attached. It’s on the bottom part of the barrel. It’s right there. You see it over and over again. Captain Star was his in one car. He has a bayonet lug on it and it’s wrong on two levels. Level number one is that the bayonet lug barrel band on the M1 Carbine was introduced in October of 1944 and we have three, maybe four photographs that show M1 carbines with bayonet lugs during World War Two, and they’re all at the absolute bitter end of the war.

02:09:27:16 – 02:09:53:11
Marty Morgan
So it’s incorrect to dare to show a U.S. Army soldier armed with an M1 carving with a bayonet lug in 1942. But it’s worse than that. And that is during the Guadalcanal battle. There was absolutely no use whatsoever of the M1 Carpi. Oh, so this firearm, which was finally adopted in 1941, it’s under mass production or when the Guadalcanal battle is fought.

02:09:53:13 – 02:10:19:06
Marty Morgan
But neither the U.S. Army nor the U.S. Marine Corps fighting in the Pacific have been issued the weapon in in any meaningful numbers yet, and there were none on Guadalcanal during the battle. There were in one car beings on the island during that phase after the fighting, and concluded when Guadalcanal was importantly an airfield, a training facility and a logistics base.

02:10:19:08 – 02:10:33:11
Marty Morgan
But during the fighting there are no M1 carbines on Guadalcanal in the hands of either the Army or the Navy. Ah, the Army or the Marine Corps. And the funny thing about Red Line is it’s just frickin garbage everywhere you look.

02:10:33:13 – 02:10:36:15
Dan LeFebvre
It’s kind of the World War Two rifle.

02:10:36:18 – 02:11:05:21
Marty Morgan
And that that’s an interesting detail that it would it’ll get under the skin of people who go way too far and understanding these things. But there were no carbines in there during that battle. And that’s something that’s worth mentioning, considering they’re kind of there are plenty of them in the movie. There would have been none of them arming any of the troops of the 27th Infantry Regiment during the big battle around the galloping horse, the sea horse and the Gifu bunker complex in early January 14th rates.

02:11:05:23 – 02:11:13:15
Dan LeFebvre
What was the major weapon that they used or was it that they used a wide range of them because there were so many different branches of the military involved?

02:11:13:17 – 02:11:45:26
Marty Morgan
Well, we had a small list, a short list, actually. Just about everyone was armed with the M-1 rifle, the eight shot semi-automatic rifle. There’s more leaning against the wall in the background. There were also your officer leadership would have been armed with 1911 pistols. I’m using mine once again. Visual aids. You see it frequently in this movie. Well, depicted two by the way, the in 1928, a one Thompson submachine gun and depicting U.S. Army soldiers in early 43.

02:11:45:28 – 02:12:14:04
Marty Morgan
That’s that’s pretty solid weren’t there M-1 rifles m1911 A-1 pistols in 1920 8a1 Thompson submachine guns. What you don’t see is there still would have been some U.S. Army soldiers fighting with the 1903 bolt action rifle, but the Army was using the M1 rifle at this point of the war. So you would have seen both. And so in the movie you see M-1 rifles, you see 1911 pistols, 1911 kind of has a starting role on the body.

02:12:14:04 – 02:12:37:19
Marty Morgan
In fact, the forces that set piece scene where a soldier steals one and then is ultimately using it to fight off the Japanese and the assault on the bunker. And then the Thompson John Penn’s character has a Thompson submachine gun. A couple of the other characters have the Thompson. You see a bunch of carbines which shouldn’t be there, and you don’t see a bunch of 1903 rifles.

02:12:37:19 – 02:12:51:11
Marty Morgan
And there should have been at least some as a part of it. It’s a movie that overall does authenticity, a service and does it well. But when it came to the depiction of the in one car, be they they got it wrong.

02:12:51:14 – 02:13:24:00
Dan LeFebvre
We we’ve talked about some of the other movies you mentioned those there even with Saving Private Ryan and kind of it’s hard not to compare Thin Red Line to two movies like that. But as a historian, do you think then a movie like Thin Red Line could be done anywhere but Guadalcanal? Like, I mean, Saving Private Ryan is, you know, with D-Day and and we talked about the Pacific and other movies that we’ve talked about going back to the Longest Day, you know, like they’re not around.

02:13:24:02 – 02:13:43:10
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, I guess the Pacific does touch on Guadalcanal, but it’s not its core focus, right. Do you think Thin Red line could be done almost anywhere, I mean, anywhere during World War Two, where it’s not necessarily focus there? Or was it just I know it’s based on the book, but just as a historian, what are your thoughts on that?

02:13:43:13 – 02:14:06:11
Marty Morgan
I could pick it up and drop it in about just about anything. I could pick it up and drop it into the Battle of the Bulge. I could drop it up. I could pick it up and drop it into the Battle of Kasserine Pass on. The same factors are at work, the same matters of transcendentalism apply, I think, and the same push pull between characters is unfolding in all of these battles.

02:14:06:13 – 02:14:45:27
Marty Morgan
So yeah, you could do it. You could do a thin red line set in the western dorsal of the Tunisian Atlas Mountains in 1943. You could do that. I think another thing that I should probably provide an Atlas plate praise for is that in terms of location, this movie did some things that I don’t think we’ll ever see again, and that is that this movie, most of the full ensemble production of the movie and principal photography was done and positioned that at a place on in Queensland, just about an hour north of Cairns.

02:14:45:29 – 02:15:09:09
Marty Morgan
So they’re filming in Australia. But then toward the end of production they did like a second unit line production. After all of the stresses and strains of principal photography, it ended and Malick took a handful of actors to Guadalcanal. And so the that I have in rewatching it is figuring out where the Guadalcanal shots are and where the earlier shots are, and they’re pretty easy to pick out.

02:15:09:11 – 02:15:28:21
Marty Morgan
And I have to just be in love with the fact that this movie that, that that man for all the people in 1998 that pitched in mind about this movie and how it was too much of an art piece man that director, by God, spent money to take actors too long to now. And that is something I don’t think would happen today.

02:15:28:21 – 02:15:51:20
Marty Morgan
That is an investment, that is a commitment on the part of that man to make this movie as realistic as possible. And I respect that. Maybe I’m being too hasty and judging too harshly, saying this is what never happened today. But the only reason that that man got all the money that man got was because of his reputation and because of the films that he had made that everyone admired and loved.

02:15:51:22 – 02:16:31:05
Marty Morgan
And that’s what it takes to pull something like that off. Like you couldn’t pull off Saving Private Ryan unless you’re Steven Spielberg. You couldn’t pull off Schindler’s List unless you’re Steven Spielberg. There aren’t people that would go, here, take this money, do it. Whatever you think is best, do it. Go for it. That I don’t think that happens quite as much anymore these days, which is why we’re endlessly assaulted by stupid action hero movies and comic book movies, and instead we had an artist who wanted to make art and wanted to make a film that wasn’t about war, but he also wanted to pay respect to what happened there.

02:16:31:05 – 02:16:54:11
Marty Morgan
And he paid respect not just to the fighting men that were there, but to the the butterflies and the hurricane, the Melanesian people, Solomon Islanders who were affected by this war because they’re cast members of this movie in a way that I find fascinating. Like there’s a moment where wits Character is at the very beginning of the movie, and it was one of the last things that they filmed in production.

02:16:54:18 – 02:17:15:06
Marty Morgan
And he’s standing talking to a Solomon Islander while she’s holding a baby and he’s saying, Why is it I never see the boys fighting? She says. All he says is he fallen, there’s a baby, want to go to sleep? And she says, yes, he goes swimming and then he wants to sleep. And he has this moment and it’s charming interaction that was completely spontaneous, where Malick went over to him and went, Hey, go talk to her.

02:17:15:10 – 02:17:47:23
Marty Morgan
I’m just going to roll on, Do whatever you want. That’s the kind of filmmaking artistry that I admire about him, and I admire the fact that he recognized that the people of Solomon Islands needed to be characters in this film and that their place in this, this meditation about transcendentalism was critical. And so they’re in it and they’re in it throughout, though, of course, our starring characters are a bunch of white dudes, but they’re a part of this movie and in a way that I think is meaningful and it says something.

02:17:47:23 – 02:17:59:16
Marty Morgan
It contributes to the movie. It’s not a distraction. He didn’t do it to tokenize them. He did it for a useful reason. That makes me respect the movie even more.

02:17:59:19 – 02:18:11:13
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about Thin Red Line. And you mentioned it earlier, and for someone listening this who wants to go on one of your tours, can you an overview of your tours and where they can learn more?

02:18:11:15 – 02:18:31:22
Marty Morgan
Sure. By coincidence, I’m about to lead one across the Pacific. I work for Stephen Ambrose Store Tours. I had the great privilege and benefit in my life of having worked for the late Doctor Stephen Ambrose for the last two years of his life. And I continue to be associated with the family and the companies he created by working for and leading tours for Stephen Ambrose Historical tours.

02:18:31:23 – 02:19:02:08
Marty Morgan
And next month I’m looking forward to leading a tour that begins in Hawaii, and from there travels to Guam, Saipan, Tinian and then ultimately Iwo Jima. On March 25th, I will be on Mount Suribachi. It’ll be my 12th time there and I’m looking forward it. Also with Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours. I lead tours in Normandy In October, I led tours of in Italy, starting in Sicily and continuing all the way north to Rome.

02:19:02:11 – 02:19:19:20
Marty Morgan
We’re even planning maybe for next year, a trip to Tunisia. I haven’t been to Tunisia to lead a tour since the revolution, and that was a long time ago, and I’m looking forward to going back. I also continue to lead tours for National Geographic Expeditions, and I one coming up with them in just a couple of months for the anniversary of D-Day.

02:19:19:23 – 02:19:45:24
Marty Morgan
And that’s a tour that starts in London and in Paris and involves a full tour of the Normandy during the anniversary time period. And that’s part of what I get to do for a living now that I, I value quite a bit my age. I can’t get enough of thinking and learning about the Second World War, and there is no better way to do it than going and visiting the battlefields where it’s fought.

02:19:45:27 – 02:19:52:27
Dan LeFebvre
Do you typically follow the like the allied path through? I know like with D-Day, it’s it’s an obvious one.

02:19:53:00 – 02:20:20:10
Marty Morgan
We don’t often get to do things in perfect chronological order. And so everything is kind of at the convenience of modern transportation. So that’s like the specific that I’m about to lead. We we have to everything out of sequence. And it’s a little bothersome because we we fly to Guam and in the Commonwealth in the in the Mariana Islands, we fought three major island battles and they were in order on Saipan, then Tinian, then Guam.

02:20:20:15 – 02:20:39:11
Marty Morgan
We go to Guam first. So we go to the third one last and then we spend a little time during there and then we break off and go to the first one Saipan to around there. Then we go to the second one and then we go back to Japan. Then we go back to Guam and continue touring. So everything’s of out of the chronological order, but that is what it is.

02:20:39:11 – 02:21:00:03
Marty Morgan
That’s the only way we can do it. And and so that puts the, the burden on me to make timeline makes sense to everyone. We typically follow allied fighting forces so that in Normandy, for example, I have a specialization in, the 82nd Airborne Division. And so when we go to Normandy, I go to the invasion beaches like Omaha Beach and Utah Beach, where I talk about other units.

02:21:00:03 – 02:21:23:16
Marty Morgan
But I like to focus on the 82nd Airborne Division. I do more things within that subject matter area than some of the other guides do. This specific tour next month starts on on Oahu and. I specialize, as you know, and December 7th, 1941. And I continue to be very interested in that subject. And I do things on that island that none of the other guides do.

02:21:23:21 – 02:21:47:04
Marty Morgan
I visit sites that nobody else goes to. And it’s just because in my study, that’s where my interest has led me and the people that are on my bus for the tour. They’re my victims, so they’re going to learn about it. That’s the way that works. We don’t often get to talk about the opposing side. We do things like in Italy and in and Northern Europe.

02:21:47:04 – 02:22:09:21
Marty Morgan
We visit German cemeteries. In Italy, we visited Italian cemeteries and can only get away with so much of that. I had a little bit of a mutiny during my Italy tour because I took took the bus to a couple of German cemeteries and there were some people that were very unhappy about that. I think that that’s an extremely important part of understanding the big picture.

02:22:09:23 – 02:22:29:25
Marty Morgan
It’s not because I sympathize with the politics of National Socialist Third Reich, it’s because they were there, too. They experienced the battle, and I knew a lot of German veterans and I can’t help but channel my understanding of what happened during the battle through them. And so I include them. Sometimes people do want to hear it, but I include it.

02:22:29:28 – 02:22:30:27
Marty Morgan
Yeah.

02:22:30:29 – 02:22:48:07
Dan LeFebvre
Well, it’s comforting in a way that even the tours today with with bond and transportation are forced to go out of order in a timeline, just like a movie. And it makes you perfect to help put all that back together and explain what actually happened.

02:22:48:09 – 02:23:08:27
Marty Morgan
And what was in the world of the tour company. It feels like making a movie with it. And I would just point something out that as much as I love to be cynical and disenchanted and pessimistic for the we’re already beginning to make plans for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, which is, as you know, more than a year away.

02:23:09:00 – 02:23:41:07
Marty Morgan
We’re already planning. Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours already has 17 busses of people who want to go to Normandy for the anniversary. It’s more than the company has ever dealt with before 17 busses and we only have 14 guides. And so we’re we’re we’re trying to respond to some big challenges there. And the optimistic thing behind that and the reason I’m bringing it up is that it shows you that there’s more interest and more demand than I thought in some of my less optimistic days.

02:23:41:07 – 02:23:53:22
Marty Morgan
I thought that with the passage of time, people were going to care less and less about World War Two and that with each passing year, the audience that I was writing my in front of was going to get smaller and smaller. And that’s not what’s happening.

02:23:53:24 – 02:24:03:24
Dan LeFebvre
Do you find a lot of younger people are interested and renewed interest or we’ll talk about movies that came out 20 years ago.

02:24:03:27 – 02:24:28:14
Marty Morgan
Right? And there’s still people that are wanting to travel and see sites associated with Band of Brothers. And that’s a movie. It’s 20 more than 20 years old now. And that blows my mind. First and foremost, what I’m seeing more than anything is that it’s a sons and daughters kind of thing. There was an entire generation of people who became interested in traveling over there because they watched and enjoyed Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan.

02:24:28:16 – 02:24:51:11
Marty Morgan
An entire generation of young people who got interested in December 7th history because of Pearl Harbor. And I really hope that that continues. As much as I love to take shots at the movie Pearl Harbor, Jennifer got interested in the subject because of that. And that’s a weird that’s a positive. Yeah. I mean, she’s more than just passive interest.

02:24:51:11 – 02:25:11:24
Marty Morgan
She’s a she’s a history degree, so she’s already an historian. But but what I what I thought was happening just in my moments of being cranky and old, I was like, All right, people don’t care anymore. With each passing year, there will be fewer and fewer people interested. And it’s beginning to look to me like the opposite is true.

02:25:11:26 – 02:25:14:29
Dan LeFebvre
That’s good. I mean, yeah, that’s that’s a good thing.

02:25:15:01 – 02:25:17:15
Marty Morgan
It is. What a great note to end everything on.

02:25:17:18 – 02:25:20:17
Dan LeFebvre
Exactly. Thank you again so much for your time, Marnie.

02:25:20:20 – 02:25:28:25
Marty Morgan
It’s my pleasure.