By Brendan Connolly
The 10-part HBO miniseries "The Pacific" began airing last weekend, turning a renewed spotlight on the efforts of those enlisted men who fought from island to island in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Lawrence Kirby, 86, of Manchester, knows first-hand what Hollywood is trying to capture.
Kirby landed on Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945, the day the American flag was raised on Mount Suribachi and immortalized by Joe Rosenthal's legendary photograph.
He was assigned to the Fox Company 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines as a platoon sergeant, because by this time he was already considered an experienced soldier, having seen action on the islands of Bougainville and Guam.
Now an author as well as a decorated war veteran, he still has a small sample of volcanic ash and sand from the island, sitting as a somber reminder in a small mason jar.
Kirby was 20-year-old Marine when his job as a reconnaissance scout had him crawling silently through tropical jungles, covered in local flora for camouflage, with only a radio and submachine gun, in the waning pre-dawn hours to find and identify enemy locations and numbers.
He said growing up in Depression-era Brookline gave him the necessary skills to achieve his objectives thousands of miles from home.
"They would look for a little guy," he said chuckling, "with a vindictive streak and slightly on the mean side; somebody who could look after themselves."
Kirby watched the debut episode of the newest collaboration between directors and producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
"It was very factual," he said; the second episode airs tomorrow night at 9.
There are, however, some literary differences.
"They highlight 20 to 35 guys, when a company has 200 guys," he said.
"There was another scene," he continued, "where the soldiers are in the mess hall eating their last meal before deployment to the island and the captain gives a pep talk to the men, getting them riled up for the invasion.
"When we were preparing, and eating our last meal," he said, "no one said a word."
"The Pacific" is primarily adapted from two memoirs of U.S. Marines — "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa" by Eugene Sledge, and "Helmet for My Pillow" by Robert Leckie. The series will follow the stories of the two authors and Marine John Basilone.
For his part, Kirby wrote about own his World War II experiences in a memoir titled "Stories from the Pacific."
The work was published in 1995. In it, he said, he saw the war, "like looking through a telescope backwards."
Kirby said he hasn't always been a big fan of World War II films. He as unhappy, he said, with "Saving Private Ryan," calling it "too Hollywood."
The new "Pacific" series, he said, doesn't seem like that.
Yet Kirby's own recollections of the war are as sharp and real as any film.
Drawing from his own experiences during an interview yesterday, he recalled being out on patrol when he came across a Japanese scout performing the same job.
The two men locked eyes.
"I was scared to death," Kirby related, "and I could tell he was, too."
As the Japanese soldier raised his rifle, Kirby dropped to his knees, and heard the bullets scream over his head. A stark metallic sound cut through the underbrush — a Japanese grenade being primed, Kirby explained — and a soft thud against the jungle floor landed behind him. He knew he had to move.
"I jumped up and ran towards him firing," Kirby continued, "until the explosion threw me forward, and knocked me to the ground."
After the initial concussion, Kirby said he raised his head and saw his adversary propped up, nestled against a tree.
"He was dead," Kirby said.
Kirby walked slowly to the fallen man, removed his helmet and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
"All Japanese soldiers carried around photographs of themselves," Kirby said, removing his wallet from his back pocket.
With that, he displayed the photo he still carries — warped and discolored with age and held together by tape — of the man he killed 65 years ago.
It is just one of his own very real memories of war in the Pacific.
Brendan Connolly can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3447, or gt_reporter@gloucestertimes.com.
