WSJ: WEEKENDS WITH THE WAR CHANNEL: DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
Weekends With the War Channel WSJ
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
The Military Channel, which delivers—24 hours a day—battle analyses, in-depth portraits of commanders, the histories of wars from Gettysburg to Baghdad, not to mention World Wars I and II, has never lacked devoted viewers since its beginnings in January 2005. The audience grows steadily—the network’s last quarter brought record ratings in all key demographics, including, not surprisingly, its target audience of men 25 to 54. This success was in part fueled, a spokesman says, by the addition of the immensely popular series “The World at War.”
That’s undoubtedly true, but there’s another inescapable reason for the pull of this network that makes itself felt day after day and, especially, weekend after weekend. And “inescapable” is exactly the word that comes to mind if you’ve tried, as I’ve done on weekends recently, to walk away after a couple of those films. It’s Saturday, there are things to do. But there on screen, as part of the network’s “Commanders at War” series, is the Battle of Midway (1942). With it, the sharp-etched sketches of the opposing admirals, the U.S. Navy’s Jack Fletcher and Japan’s supremely confident Chuichi Nagumo, who had executed the Pearl Harbor attack. Japan had, after all, won every battle since.
There’s a still richer picture of the planning and the weaponry that would determine the outcome of this crucial battle—the weaknesses and strengths of the Japanese Zero (a superb machine but for its fuel tank from hell) and the Americans’ Torpedo Bombers (deadly strike power but slow moving). The documentary comes larded with miniseminars—none more engaging than the one by the British scientist-historian filmed in the depths of a ship’s hold as he explained, or more precisely bellowed, his astonishment at the horrors that the Japanese navy had brought on itself by its habit of stacking explosive materials of all kinds next to fuel. The combat footage is spectacular; the data on the combatants and their weaponry, no less so.
That Saturday also brought a film, based on the works of historian Hew Strachan, on the beginnings of World War I, from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand on to the first brutal battles—a bitter chronicle, enlivened by period pictures, of the imperatives that had driven each of the nations involved into this blood-drenched enterprise.
Also on the schedule was “The Battle of Stalingrad,” which—however often seen—makes it a certainty that no one is leaving the house. It’s a chapter of “The World at War,” which pops up, as it did that Saturday, at times in addition to its regular Friday, 10-11 p.m. EDT slot.
British producer Jeremy Isaacs’s peerless documentary in 26 parts—each devoted to a single aspect of World War II—first premiered in the U.K. in 1973 and has never been off the air since. Few people exposed to its unforgettable footage, its exhaustive research, its unstinting moral voice, its views of the famous of the war, of the obscure who had had to live through it, would have any difficulty understanding why. Running through all that brilliance, binding it all together, is that narrative voice—Laurence Olivier’s. To listen to it again on the Fall of France episode, on French military miscalculations, on the Vichy government’s collaboration with the German invaders, is to be reminded again of that voice’s matchless capacity to exude contempt.
A few Saturdays ago there appeared—packaged somewhere between the Marines at Fallujah, “Sniper School” and another episode of “The World at War”—”War Dogs of the Pacific.” This documentary, on the hundreds of dogs donated by American citizens, given Marine training and sent off to places like Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Guam along with their handlers, would have been reason enough that day to stay riveted to the Military Channel.
The dogs led the way on every patrol through the jungle, and their bond with their Marines, who returned the feeling, was enduring. An aged veteran of the Pacific campaign still misses the courageous animal to whom he owed, he says, his ability to maintain his sense of sanity in the jungle. “That dog,” he says, “was my psychiatrist.” A dog whose Marine buddy had been wounded would allow medics to treat him—but if the Marine died, it was no easy trick getting the growling animal to let anyone take the body. As far as the dog was concerned, a Marine veteran says, his job was to guard that man in death as in life.
It was the nature of that guarding that ensured that the Marine who had his beloved dog in his foxhole could sleep—no enemy was going to creep up. The Japanese feared the dogs more than any armed American. There is no better proof than the startling footage of the Japanese soldier who starts to obey when ordered out of a cave, hands up, in the mop-up operation on Saipan. He then rushes back in, after getting a look at one of the Marine dogs. If he doesn’t come out, the interpreter tells him, the dog will be sent in. This is enough to bring him out of the cave. That’s not the startling part. That comes when the surrendering soldier is seen bowing to the dog.
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