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Remember the reaction to Spielberg's "Saving Pvt. Ryan"? I would hope that this time he actually asks about such things as how to handle an M-1, or a carbine, or not to assign a bolt action to a southpaw, You could sit there all day and find things to knock. And perhaps, this time, he will try and cast no one over 19 years old. I would be interested in knowing how many boys lied about their ages to join the Marines? Remember what Elenore R. said about Marines? "Baby-faced killers!" If I were to cast the movie, I'd clean out the Sophomore and Junior classes of a local High School. Also, have a long sit down with the writers, and inform them what an 'effen everything is. They would use the "F" word as noun, pronoun, adjective, adverb, and extra syllable with every word, along with bulkhead, deck, pogiebait, '782 gear, piece, rifle, rear-rank field music...

Marines are different. Little things, like firing two rounds near a spiderhole and dropping an empty Garand clip on the coral so it rings, so that when the jap comes out of the hole, thinking your rifle is empty, you can shred him with six rounds... Taking a jap POW "back to the beach", two miles away, and returning 10 minutes later, alone... When the Navy doesn't steam out oil drums before filling them with drinking water and floating them ashore... Clean out a cave by first shooting a basic issue of ammo into the mouth to suppress fires until you can get a Zippo in close, to burn out the entrance so you can seal the cave with satchel or pole charges, And then repeat it on the next cave twenty feet away...

It's those little things that spoil it for me. Perhaps if they were to actually bear down on how bad it can get, and Iwo is about as bad at it ever was, maybe it would either shut the lefties up, or make them squeal so bad that the rest will realize how bad they are.

Read "The Bloody Battle for Suribachi" Navy Press by Richard Wheeler. Wheeler was a rifleman in the platoon that carried the first flag up. He was hit before the patrol. His book is simple, straight forward and dramatic.

I worked NYPD in the early 70s. One of my supervisors was a 45 year old Sgt. who was on Iwo as a 18 year old rifleman. He knew my uncle, also USMC in WW2 and took me under his wing. His buddy was a Guadalcanal veteran. I loved these guys, both now gone.