re: If you had to fight in WW2- Europe or Pacific

Europe


I hate the ocean

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u'd get the Aleutians baw

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That’s my luck lol

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The idea that a guy who was an infantryman at the Hurtgen Forest was somehow better off than a guy in the Pacific makes no sense. The fronts were both terrible it was just a matter of what unit you were in and what your job was.

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I think every Grunt that gets to see combat whether it is present day deployments to Vietnam to Korea/WW II can attest that combat fricking sucks. However, seeing what the Marines had to endure in the Pacific theater gives a completely new meaning to the word terrible.

My post above relates to combat as the actual act of fighting in the moment — the shooting, toil of maneuvering, worries about death, tactical decisions, etc.

Many of you are referring to combat environment and the act of living day-to-day and the stresses of the unknown and the demeanor of the enemy.

Vietnam was a horrible jungle environment, hot, wet, bugs, disease ridden, stressful with no front per se and always in harm’s way.

But the frigidity of Korea, the Russian Front, the Ardennes, etc. where surviving the elements alone was paramount, were just as horrendous.

And I would think a nice, warm summer’s day in picturesque Gettysburg would be just as nasty to the combatants.

Europe any day.

My father was a Marine in the Pacific Theater. The only information I was ever able to get out of him involving the war was that he once saw a shark while at New Caledonia. Pretty much the only subject he would refuse to talk about.

More reasons why I would choose Europe.

1. You had underground resistance movements in Europe. No one in the history of Hollywood was ever cast in a role as a member of the Guadalcanal Resistance.

2. No typhoons you had to ride out stuck on a giant boat with nothing but 500 miles of water around you in Europe.

3. To the best of my knowledge no one fighting in Europe was ever eaten by a shark.

4. I was an average swimmer in my youth when the only thing strapped to me were my swim trunks. I'm not really interested in anything that results in me being surrounded by water that is over my head.