After Guadalcanal, the Marines are sent to Australia for some well-deserved R & R before getting back in the fight.
Tropes:
- A Man Is Always Eager-All Women Are Lustful: While people expect the Marines to be horny, it's shown that the Australian girls are pretty eager to get down to it too.
- Breather Episode: After the non-stop battles of the first two episodes, this lets us take a break and really get to know some of the Marines involved.
- Covert Pervert: We see the Marines pull a party trick that's this; challenge a pretty girl to drink a glass of beer off the top of your head. While she's doing that, her cleavage is right in your face.
- Heartbroken Badass: Stella sends Leckie away prematurely because she's worried that if he gets any closer to her family and then dies it'll affect her parents too badly. He doesn't take this well.
- Idealized Sex: Averted for the most part. Things look fairly grabby and hesitant, and Leckie even finishes too quickly and has to "wait a moment to reload." But the question of protection is never brought up. It's especially confusing when Stella breaks up with Leckie. The way she phrases it, you would suspect that she's gotten pregnant and is using the bit about her parents as an excuse.
- An Immigrant's Tale: The family Leckie befriends are Greeks who escaped a conflict in the Middle East and moved to Australia instead.
- Interservice Rivalry: A country-to-country variation. Some Australian servicemen instigate a fight with the Marines, apparently out of anger that they can't be out there with them.
- Like a Son to Me: The Karamanlis parents are very fond of Leckie, and mention that they tried to have a son when they first arrived in Australia, but were too old by then. They managed to have Stella, though.
- Put on a Bus: In-universe, John Basilone is awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in Guadalcanal and promptly sent back to America to sell war bonds. It's explained that this is the best thing he can be doing. A Medal of Honor winner pulls more war bonds, and he'll do more for the Corps putting ammo in their guns than he will shooting alongside them.
- Racial Remnant: A variant. The Karamanlises note that a lot of the Greek boys from Melbourne have died in the war.
- Reckless Gun Usage: After Stella breaks up with him, Leckie gets sodding drunk and ends up pulling a gun on a superior officer. Both he and the gun's owner - Juergens - get sent to lock-up for it, and he gets reassigned to intelligence.
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Squick: We see Leckie getting a big blister popped and it is ugly. - Training from Hell: To get everyone back into shape, trainers dump the Marines 100 miles from base with a sack of rice and one canteen, then give them three days to march back.
