[Ron Goldstein]

Originally Posted by SouthWestPacificVet

Hello Sapper,

I'm not certain if you are understanding my reply, I did my bit in helping the Jap die for the his emperor, after my brother was killed I kept score for a while. As far as generations go, I was born in 1917.

All the best
Jack

Jack

I know that Brian will reply and tell you that he was not "having a go at you in person" but I also know where he is coming from and so, until he gets around to replying, would like to add my own thoughts on the subject of "Guilt".

Brian

I read your emotive response on this thread and felt obliged to offer my own thoughts on the subject of “feeling guilt on killing an enemy”.

I had what some might have considered a relatively “easy” war.

Between 1942 and 1945, although I lived at times in horrendous circumstances, I was a wireless-op and was therefore never called upon to fire at the enemy.

This all changed for me in late 1944, when my Ack Ack unit was disbanded and I was willy-nilly trained to be a loader/ op in tanks. Even then, as the Squadron Sgt.Major’s wireless op, I found my role was mainly that of being the signals man for someone who was the odd job man on the battlefield and we were too busy in that role to even think of actually firing at anyone.

Except for one fateful day, which I have described elsewhere, http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/30/a2017630.shtml
when I actually pointed a machine gun directly at the enemy and fired simply non-stop for about ten seconds.

The fire that had been directed at us stopped almost immediately.

I have no way of knowing how or why it stopped but sheer logic indicates that I had wounded or killed whoever was shooting at us.

Did I feel guilt ? Did I hell !

Why should I ?

Even without going into Sapper’s deeper reasoning of the need to rid the world of the Nazi regime, the matter was simple to the extreme.

I was being attacked, I defended myself, end of story.

Ron