The Marines struggle through Okinawa, the final and most punishing leg of the war.
Tropes:
- Accidental Murder: The Marines call in artillery that hits a home with women and a baby in it. They were shooting at them, so they don't feel too bad, but they do feel bad. Luckily, the baby survives.
- Blood Knight: Sledge temporarily enters this category during this episode, proclaiming he hopes the Japanese never surrender so the Americans could Kill Em All. He gets better, but it's a far cry from the innocent boy who started the series just wanting to do his duty for his country.
- Kick the Dog: Sledge and Snafu antagonize some Japanese prisoners on the trail and nearly shoot one of them. Their CO talks them down and gets their captor to take them off the trail.
- Sledge later finishes off a soldier after cease fire has been called on the line.
- On the other side of things, some Japanese civilians running for the American line get shot down by their own soldiers. And then we have the terrible instance of the Suicide Attack...
- Mercy Kill: The lady who survives the artillery (with fatal wounds) silently asks for one. In an unusual example, Sledge refuses, but holds her in her last moments. While this was probably bad for her, he probably wasn't in a position to grant her one.
- Metaphorically True: Snafu gets a replacement to switch ponchos with him by saying that the new one the replacement has has been treated with all sorts of chemicals. They have, but they're chemicals that makes the ponchos more water-resistant.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Sledge feels this way upon coming across the crying baby and its dead mother. Snafu gently tells him that lots of soldiers fired mortars in that area, but Sledge is clearly feeling guilty at the thought that he might have been the one who orphaned that child.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Well, not awesome, but at episode's end, they hear that the brass dropped a kind of bomb that vaporized a whole city. This means the end of the war has essentially happened for them offscreen.
- Pet the Dog: After bombing a place that had some hostile women in it, one of the soldiers takes the baby that survived and presumably takes it to safety.
- Suicide Attack: A Japanese woman approaches the soldiers with her baby only to reveal that she has bombs strapped around her midsection.
- Later on, Peck gets stressed out enough that he just starts firing wildly at the Japanese lines, presumably in an attempt at this. In a tragic subversion, he survives, but the guy who pulls him off the line is shot instead.
- Tank Goodness: We see a few from both sides in play.
- The Last Straw: Played with. Sledge gets a note that his dog died. It isn't the last straw, but it does add some insult to injury.
- Unfriendly Fire: Some US artillery lands close enough to hit some of the Marines.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: After an episode of angrily killing Japs, Sledge refuses to shoot an unarmed young man he comes across, who may or may not be a soldier. The moment he lowers his gun, another Marine from another position shoots him instead, seemingly unconcerned about whether he was a threat.
- War Is Hell: The whole series drives this point home, but between the mother forced to blow up in a Suicide Attack while holding her own baby, the kids being caught in the crossfire, the baby crying hysterically next to the body of its dead mother, and the depiction of otherwise decent young Marines being pushed to their breaking points, this is arguably the most brutal depiction. And that's ignoring the offhand reference to the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima.
