A company of veterans, reservists, and recruits from various American backgrounds are called up to spend three years of their lives fighting major battles for the freedom of a nation halfway around the world.

Now That Should Be A Movie.

Now That Should Be A Band of Brothers-like miniseries.

Short Pitch

It is called Give Me Tomorrow

It is a war drama

In the vein of Band of Brothers

It is like The Pacific meets Fury

It follows tough-as-nails sergeant Rocco Zullo

And empathic but imposing Captain George Westover

As they lead the mashup of veterans, reservists, and new recruits that is George Company through some of the toughest fighting of the Korean War

Problems arise when they are caught between audacious orders from their commanders and a determined enemy.

Now together their training, ingenuity, and camaraderie will combine to create the force that liberates South Korea and becomes one of the most decorated units of the Korean War.

The idea came to me while listening to the audiobook version of Patrick K. O’Donnell’s book on George Company and I realized it was similar to Stephen Ambrose’s book that inspired the miniseries Band of Brothers.

My unique approach would be a series that follows the members of a company in the Korean War, then follows them when they return to the States while following their replacements still fighting in Korea, and then ends with a twist at a veteran’s reunion.

A set piece would be when General Douglas MacArthur drives up to the company’s position while they are engaged in a firefight. He gets out of his jeep and walks toward the front, bullets flying around him. One of the company’s lieutenants pulls him to safety. The general asks, “What the hell are you doing, lieutenant?” “I am just trying to keep you from getting killed,” the lieutenant replies. The General responds, “There isn’t a bullet made that can kill me.” Later during the ceremony celebrating the liberation of Seoul, to which the Marines are not invited, MacArthur’s jeep passes the same lieutenant. The generals see him and says, “How’s it going, lieutenant?”

Target audiences would be men (30-80), Korean War veterans and their families, military veterans and their families, military service members and their families, Korean Americans, military buffs, history nerds, historical reenactors, gamers, and fans of Band of Brothers, Generation Kill, The Pacific, Masters of the Air and other military orientated miniseries.

Audiences would want to see it for its themes of brotherhood, camaraderie, devotion, bravery, sacrifice, and the heroic action of liberating a country oppressed by Communism.

Today’s book I would like to pitch as a miniseries is Give Me Tomorrow: The Korean War’s Greatest Untold Story–The Epic Stand of the Marines of George Company by Patrick K. O’Donnell, from Da Capo Press.

1.7 million Americans – including two of my uncles – saw service in Korea between 1950 and 1953 in what is known as the Forgotten War. 33,686 of them would pay the ultimate sacrifice while another 103,284 would be wounded. Over 7,000 are still missing. Sadly, the valor and sacrifice of these men and the horror they experienced have not been remembered by the American public like other events in American history. I believe this could be corrected with a movie or miniseries that follows the experience of a select group of men as they serve throughout the conflict, like Easy Company during World War II in Band of Brothers. One candidate for such a miniseries is Company G, Third Battalion, First Marines, First Marine Division, which was called up in response to communist North Korea’s invasion of the Republic of South Korea in June 1950. Together this band of brothers would serve with honor and survive the white hell of Korea, fighting in nearly every major engagement of the Korean War. 149 of them would remain forever young.

Episode 1: Minutemen of 1950

In the summer of 1950, the communist North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) has UN forces, including units of the United States Marine Corps, hemmed in at the Pusan Perimeter. For the first time in their 175-year history, the Marines face extinction. General Douglas MacArthur comes up with a daring plan to land behind the NKPA at Inchon. That is if he can have the First Marine Division.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff response by calling up the First Marines to train at Camp Pendleton, California. Because the budget for the military, especially the Marines, had been cut following World War II, weapons have to be pulled out of storage and leathernecks sleep in dilapidated Quonset huts.

It was is chaotic summer as both hardened veterans of World War II, reservists, and guard units, considered little more than paid Boy Scouts by the regulars, spit-and-polish Marines from garrison duty in Washington, D.C, and recruits with little or no training are assembled by Captain George Westover, a Mustang officer who had survived the hell of Iwo Jima. Many of them have left civilian jobs, classes, expectant wives, and families at the last minute. In a business suit or factory overalls one day, military uniform the next. A popular song, “Goodbye Maria (I’m off to Korea),” sums up the mood of these Minutemen of 1950.

They are a cross-section of America. Well-educated and privileged Robert H. Hallawell is placed in a machine gun squad with a lanky Tennessean named Bruce Farr. Southern boys, like Sergeant Gerald Tillman, the “ultimate Confederate Warrior” who plays “Dixie” on his harmonica, and PFC James Harrison, an orphan from Georgia who also plays “Dixie” on a harmonica and always carries a small Confederate flag on his knapsack. Sergeant William Binaxas, known as the “Greek God” for his prowess with women, or less affectionately, “That G-d d—n Greek.” Corporal Bob Harbula, who had been an usher for dignitaries at screenings of The Sands of Iwo Jima, a John Wayne war flick meant to convince budget-cutting politicians of the necessity of keeping the Marine Corps. It worked and convinced Harbula that he needed a war. Twin brothers Fred and Ellsworth Hems, who despite serving in two different machine squads in different platoons are nearly inseparable. Tom Powers, who carries whiskey that his grandmother smuggles to him in the hollowed-out loaf of bread that she sends him in monthly care packages. A grunt called “Red” Nash due to his fiery hair. Mert GoodEagle, a Pawnee Indian. Jack Daniels, a sharecropper from Florida who is not too friendly. Corporal Albert Barnes, a Southern boy called “Old Blue” because he is always talking about his plow mule of the same name. Clark G. Henry, an Irish immigrant. First Lieutenant Richard C. Carey, a high school athlete and a 1948 graduate of officers training school. General Lemual Shephard said Carey’s class was the worst he ever taught.. [More on that after the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir].

Split into three platoons, these men are whipped into shape by the tough-as-nails First Sergeant Rocco Zullo, a veteran of the battles of Guadalcanal and Peleliu. A lumberjack and the son of a lumberjack, Zullo, in the words of O’Donnell, “fit men into positions like a master stone cutter building a medieval cathedral, but….he wasn’t building a house of worship – he was building George Company” (Give Me Tomorrow, p. 6). Men with disabilities are culled from the ranks as the grunts dodge rattlesnakes in the hills around Pendelton.  The grunts soon come to love and respect Zullo and Westover. The captain rules the company, which waits until he says go, a veteran recalls years later. Their regiment will be led by the legendary leatherneck Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller.

By the last week of August, they are on their way to Japan. All grunts are required to sign up for National Life Insurance, which has been docked from their pay. When two grunts refuse, Zullo picks each one up with a hand and carries them to Westover’s office. “Tell the captain what you have decided to do,” he says as he drops them to the office floor. They sign up for the insurance.

The ship transporting George Company to Japan was fittingly named USNS General Simon B. Buckner after a general killed on Okinawa who shared the same name as his Confederate general father. On the voyage the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old reservists surrounded the combat-experienced NCOs and officers, seeking to learn from them all they can. Zullo continues to train the men until they can assemble their weapons in the dark.

During the voyage, Second Lieutenant James Beeler, a graduate of the U. S. Naal Academy, tells First Platoon Leader Richard “Dick” Carey that he believes he is going to die. Carey tells the All-American football player that a good Marine like him is bound to make it, but Beeler is gnawed at by his premonition. Another second lieutenant, Spencer Jernigan, who is appalled by profanity, seems to be in a constant state of depression over having survived a terrible car accident.

The ship docks in Kobe Japan, a former Japanese Naval Base. Zullo has the men climb the surrounding mountains with full packs and gear. Private Ralph Whitney is picked on by other Marines as he falls to the back of the pack during these climbs. He becomes the company photographer. No liberty is granted but some men find a hole in the fence and take “rice paddy liberty.” Half the company has a hangover the next morning.

On September 8th the men load a Landing Ship, Tank (LST), and wait in its bowels. The artillery observer team takes “rice paddy liberty.” Some got involved in a fight with Army MPS in a brothel. The MPs chase them back to the LST, where they are greeted by their lieutenant, Dalton Hischler, a Texan. After listening to the MPs’ accusations of the Marines having brawled with them, the lieutenant sticks a tablespoon into a five-gallon container of ice cream he is eating as he stands next to the gangplank. “Couldn’t be these guys. They’ve been sitting here eating ice cream with me for the last hour.” The ship departs a few hours later to take part in one of the most audacious amphibious landings in history: Inchon.

Episode 2: MacArthur’s Gamble

The LST is part of an armada of more than a hundred ships. The captains and crews of the ships were the same Japanese who had been trying to kill the Americans just five years earlier.  Messages between them and the Americans have to be translated with the help of Binaxas who knows a little Japanese. Sailing is rough from the start. Then a typhoon hits. The rising and falling waves cause even veterans to become seasick.

On September 15 the LST sits just outside Inchon Harbor. The officers look at new maps that have been given to them last minute while the grunts crowd on deck to watch the bombardment. Joe Sagan, who had been an extra in Sands of Iwo Jima, watches as his team leader, a veteran of bloody battles of the Pacific, has a mental meltdown. As his screaming leader was restrained below deck, Sagen is informed that he was “the BAR-man now.” Moments later the new team leader and the Marines of George Company load up in Amtracs and head toward the beachhead.

“Hey, they’re shooting at us,” a reservist says as small arms fire ricochets off the metal armor of the Amtracs. Even as George Company nears the seawall at Inchon, the explosions of mortars showering them with water, it is clear that many of the reservists and recruits are still not fully trained. They gravitate around Zullo and other veteran NCOs and officers, who give them last-minute instructions on how to use their weapons.

Upon reaching the seawall, they steady ladders and climb up. Crawling over the wall, they begin cutting the barbed wire. All the time they are under fire. Corporal “Old Blue” Barnes becomes the first casualty when he is hit in the jugular and instantly bleeds out. It is a wake-up call for the rest of the company.

The company then has to cross a road. All the men hug the ground except for PFC Ralph Murphy, “a wise guy from Brooklyn,” who keeps advancing across the open ground despite orders from his sergeant with whom he is at odds. A sniper shoots him between the eyes. A machine gun company belonging to Second Platoon locates the North Korean sniper’s nest in a smokestack jutting out of the city’s skyline and takes him out.

Some members of the company find breaks in the seawall and have a dry landing. Because there had been no dry runs for the amphibious landing, it was not as well-coordinated as the Pacific landings a few years earlier. Overcast skies, rain, fog, and smoke add to the confusion. George takes their first objective, Radio Hill, but not before several men are severely wounded by friendly fire from the naval bombardment. Then the company dug in for the night, circling their position like pioneers with a wagon train. Besides another case of friendly fire, the night passed without incident.

The next day, D-Day+1, the company expands the beachhead. They encounter machinegun fire and heavy small-arms fire. Tillman leads a platoon, throwing grenades and then charging into the NKPA position with fixed bayonets. The communists, including their officers, surrender. Dick Carey’s adrenaline is so high that when the officer makes a slight move, he shoots him. Fortunately, the round hits the officer in his pistol belt buckle and Carey does not have to live with the guilt of killing a prisoner.

As the men of George advance, they outmaneuver, outflank, double-envelope, and out-fight the communists, moving from hill to hill. The North Koreans do not play by the rules. When Corpsman Stanley Martin rushes to Marines wounded by a grenade, a communist throws a second grenade. Martin pulls a wounded Marine into his chest and lets his own body receive the blast. Another corpsman rushes up and begins working on Martin’s wounded buttocks even as he continues administrating aid to the other Marine.

By the end of D+1 the beachhead is secure.

The liberation of South Korea is on.

Episode Three: Like Flies on Manure  

To speed up the Marine’s advance, the men of George Company rode on top of M26 Pershing tanks. The NKPA opposed them with T-34/85s. Whenever machine gun and small arms fire was encountered, the leathernecks would dismount, attack the enemy position, and remount the tanks.  

 Marine Corsairs strafe the enemy tanks with five-hundred-pound general-purpose bombs and napalm. The men of George watch as the burning NKPA tankers climb out of flaming vehicles, their skin “burnt and bubbling like potato chips.” At least one Corsair never comes out of his dive and crashes right into the tanks. The pilot, Captain William F. Simpson, will receive a posthumous Silver Star.

As the column nears the village of Mahang-ri, the grunts see a stovepipe that appears to be moving. The Marines alert the tank commander before scurrying off the vehicle as its turret turns toward a T-34 hidden behind a thatched-roof house. There is a brief Mexican standoff as the two tanks face each other at a range of thirty yards. The Pershing fires first and the T-34 and the house it is using as cover burst into flames. Carey credits the enemy tank not firing first to God’s protection. Then in a moment of comic relief, another T-34 takes off, only it is disguised as a haystack, so the grunts see a pile of hay running off across a field at twenty-five miles per hour. NKPA soldiers also flee before the Marines. One soldier who escapes their fire stops and tips his hat to the Americans.

The Pershings must stop for refueling and while the Marines are filling their tanks with fifty-five-gallon drums of fuel the North Koreans attack. Several vehicles are damaged, blocking the road. But the advance of the Americans and the Allies cannot be stopped.

Sergeant Zullo is everywhere during the running battle. “He was absolutely fearless,” recalls Tom Powers. Another veteran would say, “He was like flies on shit.” During a firefight at a farmhouse, he orders a grenade thrown. A young Marine obeys and lobs a grenade right between Zullo’s feet. Zullo kicks it into the farmhouse, killing the North Koreans inside. “I think the First Sergeant is mad at me,” says the young Marine. His comrades tell him he should go apologize to Zullo. When the young man, two grenades held by the pins on his back harness, approaches the first sergeant, Zullo looks at him with sarcastic horror. “He’s trying to kill me,” he kids the Marine before getting everything squared away.

Then in a scene tailormade for the screen, General Douglas MacArthur comes driving up the road. He gets out of his jeep and walks toward the front, bullets flying around. When Lieutenant Carey pulls him to safety, the general asks, “What the hell are you doing, Lieutenant?” “I am just trying to keep you from getting killed,” Carey replies. To which the general responds, “There isn’t a bullet made that can kill me.”

Episode Four: Twenty-Years in Twenty Seconds

George’s next objective is the Seoul suburb of Yongdungpo, a key hub consisting of rows of houses, a network of locks and dikes, and the flat open ground of rice paddies. The NKPA know that if the suburb is captured, Seoul will fall. On September 21, the Marines march in a column instead of a skirmish line due to the nature of the ground. Soon they are under sniper fire. Their return fire quickly silences the snipers.

As they enter the city proper, South Korean civilians begin alerting them to the locations of the enemy. A South Korean father approaches the company. He is carrying the bloodied and broken body of his daughter. A company corpsman saves the girl but has to amputate her arm. One of the leathernecks buries the little limb in a shallow grave.

The war continues. First Squad, First Platoon encounters two NKPA soldiers with their weapons at parade rest. The Greek Binaxas comes up to translate with his Japanese, the language of the Korean Peninsula’s decades-long occupiers. As soon as he approaches, one of the communists raises his rifle, and fires from the hip, shooting him in the stomach. The NKPA troops escape while Binaxas crumbles, dead. “He aged twenty years in twenty seconds,” recalls PFC Richard Hock.

George Company’s next objective is to capture a water gate that controls passage from a canal to the Kalchon River. They have to expose themselves to enemy fire by charging across the top of a dike. The communists were dug in a perfect defensive position, and the men of the Third Platoon have to crawl on their knees for over an hour while under fire. Lieutenant Jarrnigan exposes himself to the enemy as he places his machine gun into position and then looks through his field glasses. A bullet takes off half his face. The men of the platoon believe the chronically depressed lieutenant had a death wish and raised his head on purpose.

Another Marine jumps up and racks the North Koreans with his BAR. Then he goes down. Fred Helms fires his machine gun in the direction of incoming fire. A round hits his weapon and explodes the cartridges inside. Another bullet strikes his hand. Third Platoon is facing obliteration.

Westover sends First and Second platoons to outflank the North Koreans. Air strikes are called in and napalm engulfs the communists in flames. First and Second blast their way to the relief of Third and secure the water gate.

Then First Platoon has to secure a highway paralleling the Han River. After moving through several dikes that provide cover, they have to cross a five-hundred-yard field in the open. Facing them are several warehouses filled with dug-in NKPA soldiers. Lieutenant Carey orders two squads forward and leaves one at the rear to provide covering fire. Sergeant Tillman orders bayonets fixed and then repeats the famous Marine line from Belleau Wood, “Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?”

The men sprint across the field. Tillman changes the direction of his men to draw the enemy fire off Carey’s squad. Men begin to fall but Tillman cooly leads his squad onward, reaching the warehouses and clearing them of the enemy. He receives the Silver Star for his actions that day.

First Platoon dig in along the highway where they are joined by Third and Second. They made IEDs with C-2 packed with nails and denotated them with blasting caps when they tossed them at the North Koreans just a few yards away. While digging out a foxhole one grunt finds a maggot-infested corpse. After that, he couldn’t eat the chicken and rice in his C-rations. Other Marines finds vats of unprocessed “green beer,” which they devour, using their helmets as beer steins. Others turn away when a dead North Korean is found in one of the vats. Those who keep on drinking have bowel problems for a week as they wait for DUKWs to take them across the Han River to Seoul.

Episode Five: Just Nerves

Despite heavy mortar fire, the DUKWs cross the Han River, and George Company secures a beachhead from which they can assault Seoul. To declare the South Korean Capitol liberated by a set date, MacArthur decided that instead of surrounding the capital city, the Marines would take the city block by block. At 0200, September 25, George spearheads the advance of the First Marines’ attack on Seoul.

They immediately begin taking heavy fire. Their first obstacle is a railroad embankment from which North Koreans fire upon them with a machine gun. First Platoon attempts a flanking movement but is caught out in the open. Despite being grazed and hit by debris, Gerald “Peepsight” Pendas takes out the North Korean gun crew, an action for which he receives the Bronze Star.

George Company’s next objective is to advance along Ma Po Boulevard, one of the main thoroughfares in Seoul. As one of the few roads in the city wide enough for tanks, the North Koreans have prepared roadblocks, bunkers, barbed wire and sandbank barricades, and other positions from which they are prepared to fight to the death.

Surrounded by burned-out houses and churches, there is no room for the Americans to maneuver as they fight alongside M26 Tanks. Narrow streets become kill zones, gauntlets of fire “so thick you could see the bullets,” recalls one veteran. Even medics, shellshocked by the deaths of friends, crack up.

Many casualties are caused by North Korean snipers, some of them females. The coat of Lieutenant Carey is soaked in the blood of other men. As he explains to a sergeant, Gene Lilly, that blood is not his, a sniper’s bullet hits the sergeant right in the heart. The Mormon veteran of World War II throws his hands straight up as he gasps his last words, “Mother of God!” His body is left alongside the road for grave registration. Someone notices his body moving. A corpsman uses a tank as cover as he runs to Lilly. He checks his body, then shakes his head. “Just nerves.”

The company then makes its way to a several-story high elementary school surrounded by a rock retaining wall. A bend in the roadway fifty yards away reveals an enemy roadblock. First Platoon is caught in a torrent of arms and antitank fire as they cross a small bridge. Men are cut in half by the 85 mm rounds. The platoon is trapped in a 30-minute firefight before Westover orders them to pull back to the safety of the retaining wall. But they cannot leave the advance fire team behind.

First, the Marines blow holes in a nearby wall with rockets and TNT. But the men are cut down by small arms fire as they emerge. Then they try creating a layer of covering smoke using mortars, but the wind blows it away. When the mortars run out, the grunts use grenades, furiously throwing one after another. Finally, the Marines can extract their comrades.

Then a South Korean civilian informs Westover that communists are hiding in a drainage ditch. The captain gives the job to Zullo, who orders grunts to seal off both ends of the ditch. He wants to take the North Korean prisoners, but then someone gets trigger-happy and fires. “Now they’re not going to come out,” Zullo says. “Kill them all.”

The men move methodically through the raw sewage firing BARs and .30 caliber machine guns. The carnage only ends Zullo throws two grenades into the darkness and empties a thirty-round clip from his carbine. Some men like Hems feel bad about killing men at close range. Others like Powers try not to think about it and tell the ones like Hems who are, “To shut the [expletive] up!”

Despite being under orders to have the city secured by the symbolic date of September 25^th, three months to the date of the North Korean invasion of the south, Marine commander Oliver P. Smith tells his regimental commanders to coordinate their attacks and advance slowly. Knowing that he is sending his men into a meat grinder, Colonel Puller delays his attack long enough for a fifteen-minute artillery bombardment.

But before George Company started to advance, they faced a morning counterattack from hundreds of North Korean soldiers and a column of T-34 Tanks and self-propelled guns. They heard the engines and treads rolling through the dark streets. Forward operating units watched the bullets of both sides sparking as they hit the street surface around them as they dashed back to the main lines. One veteran said it looked like the Fourth of July.

A communist tank bears down on the grunts, but a bazooka team takes it out. The T-34 tank backs up and hits a mine. Three more tanks appear, followed by a battalion of NKPA infantry pushing antitank guns. Georga Company opens up with everything they have. One machine gun burns out as it fires itself.

During the confusion of the counterattack, a patrol from Second Platon is cut off. Their leader, Corporal Chuck Collins, orders his men to filter back to company lines. With Allied rounds landing around him, he gets his hands on some civilian women’s clothing and reports back to his officers in drag.

The counterattack subsides with the rising of the sun. George Company’s forward observer team has helped to call in one of the largest artillery barrages of the war so far. The weary Marines are greeted that morning with the tune of “Dixie” played on Jimmy Harrison’s silver harmonica.

Episode Six: Do You Miss The Cheese?

The Marines advance through the rubble of Seoul and into the outskirts. In the urban Holocaust that is the liberated capital, they find a prison where the North Korean secret police have committed atrocities. The bodies of prisoners, their hands bound behind their backs with wire and bullet holes in their heads, lay on the ground. Others find a hospital for civilians. It looks like the Confederate hospital scene from Gone With The Wind. Others see South Korean security service officers take a man around a corner, claiming he was a spy. A moment later a shot rings out. Tom Powers is so upset with the security service’s treatment of the civilians that he “butt-strokes” an officer with his rifle.

A ceremony declaring Seoul liberated and turning leadership over to South Korean President Syngman Rhee is held. The Marines who had liberated the city were not invited. MacArthur’s motorcade passes by George Company. The general looks over and recognizes Lieutenant Carey. “How’s it going, lieutenant,” he asks. During the ceremony, the general’s words are punctured by artillery shots and small arms fire.

Private Richard Hock, in need of a haircut, finds a barbershop. The elderly barber speaks perfect English, asking him where he is from. “Minnesota,” Hock replies. “I graduated from the University of Wisconsin,” replies the elderly Korean man. He then asks the Marine, “Do you miss the cheese?” Other Marines are up to more nefarious deeds, like blowing an abandoned bank safe. All they find are burnt North Korean dollars. Others find barrels of swords. Soon each Marine has one sticking out of their pack.

Orders come down for George to return to Inchon. On their way they are treated to showers in trailers and finally got to change out of their dirty and bloody uniforms into new ones, throwing the old ones into one big pile. They also have a shouting match with soldiers from the First Cavalry Division they encounter on a pontoon bridge. It only ends when someone throws a grenade emptied of its powder, the “doggies” jump into the river, and the “Jarheads” march on across the bridge.

By now ow George Company is under strength due to KIAs and WIAs. Third Platoon which had started with forty-two now has less than fifteen men. Furthermore, Captain Westover is being replaced by Carl Sitter. The new captain is a dumpy, pear-shaped guy whose frumpy appearance does not inspire confidence. What they soon come to learn is that Sitter is a veteran of the Marshall Islands Campaign and has a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. When fighting broke out in Korea he had gone to Chesty Puller to ask for a combat position. Chesty had offered him a demotion to lieutenant and he had served as a headquarters officer until the slot in George Company opened.

The company is then ordered to Pusan where they are to board ships bound for Wonsan, North Korea. General MacArthur is crossing the 38^th Parallel into North Korea with orders from President Harry S. Truman to destroy the NKPA. However, he is to avoid venturing too close to the Yalu River and bringing on a possible confrontation with Red China. The men of George Company are heading into enemy territory under the command of a new captain with whom they are unfamiliar and uncertain.

To Be Continued…