Being frightened of what you do in war

[sapper]

Hi Folks I am not upset.....certainly not... If I offended anyone? then PLEASE accept my sincere apologies. Its probably my Dorset way of speaking ..... HI Jack! Pleased to meet you mate. Hi Ron hope you are well you old battle axe!!

Let me explain. having been in Normandy, where the 12 SS murdered our captured men in cold blood, And being aware of their terrible crimes against innocent people where ever they were. I have little pity for any of them.

We lost damn near the equivalent of our Divisions strength in the war in Europe. We knew all about the terrible crimes of burning women and children alive in the church at Orador.....And all the almost unbelievable crimes of the concentration camps.
Why then should anyone feel guilty about shooting this evil spawn of the devil?

It seems to me, having seen the horrifying carnage inside the Falaise Pocket, that in some ways, they paid the price. But lets face it, for if the Germans had to pay the full price in the numbers they killed? there would hardly be a soul left in the Fatherland!
Again If I upset anyone...Though I do not know why? let me say Sorry for what ever reason.
Sapper
Mind you! anyone that saw the inside of Falaise would be put off war for their rest of their natural life....YUK.

[SouthWestPacificVet]

Hello Sapper,

Brian it is good to meet you, the pleasure is mine. My daughter just took a photo of an old snap shot of me and set it up on the computer as my avatar, I'm the fellow on the far left in the coveralls and cap, who looks like he hadn't eaten in a week, most likely I hadn't.

[The Aviator]

Jack, please add that as an attachment and not an avatar so it is bigger old mate.

[SouthWestPacificVet]

That's me on the far left, the boat crew is on the charthouse.

[Christos]

When the distingushed author and respected journalist William Manchester returned to the Pacific , he was looking to exorcise the 'dream demons' that woke him up, strange dreams of the Sergeant he use to be as a US Marine....one of the people he interviewed was an ex-Kamikaze pilot who had miraculously been spared a mission....on meeting this old enemy, Manchester tried to 'break the ice' and joking with him, congratulated this proud Japanese on surviving his kamikaze mission.....

The reaction he got was a very brittle smile....the rest of the interview was spent exchanging pleasantries about every other topic than the subject that Manchester had met him to talk about.....

60-70-80 years on....veterans of this war will probably never reconcile the differences that split them as a human society into two opposing camps, one of which, to our eternal thanks to the Almighty, won the fight as they should have. The Western powers had a certain RIGHTEOUSNESS that Axis forces just could not match...no matter how much black propaganda to the contrary....the RIGHT side won.....

But, wounds sometimes linger, and we become, like Sir Lancelot, with a wound that just wont heal.....

In the search for the truth of world war II, historians have come up with all sorts of unpalatable facts that make the Axis cause such a losing wicket....I can't help thinking, though, that, maybe, the time has come for us all to think of ourselves, not as Axis or Allied, Japanese or American, or any other label you may wish to attach....


Maybe, just maybe...we should all see ourselves (as War progeny generations), maybe we should finnally group ourselves all into to one catagory.......


SURVIVORS.

And thats the best thing about a war, yes?...Surviving it...no matter WHO's side your on.....

[The Aviator]

Well written Christos. But I can't go along with that mate.
No way will I ever parallel our society with the Japs and Germans of WW2.
They were the badies. They can never be watered down with modernist liberal thinking.
To do so will weaken our resolve.
They did unspeakable things and can't ever be forgiven.

We must never break our convenant with the war dead. To do so would be like saying that because some time has passed, what they did is now de valued.

[Christos]

Agreed....shame to us all.....which is why I have such an interest in it.....anything , any event like WWII is bound to be controversial......we are dealing with one of the most basic and misunderstood human emotions of all....ANGER...on a nation wide scale....but you and I both know that not all that make up the nation are of one mind on any issue...the descision to go to war is, nowadays, soething we look at before we do it....rarely will a Western power go to war on a knee-jerk reaction anymore....

All we have to do now, is make sure that we dclare war for the RIGHT reasons.....I think people will always look to WWII as 'The Great Crusade', the one conflict we can point to that had positive results for humans as a whole....

It was the Greeks that said,

"To save something, you must ultimately destroy it..."

and thats what we had to do to European society, destroy it in order to save it......

[The Aviator]

Originally Posted by SouthWestPacificVet

That's me on the far left, the boat crew is on the charthouse.

Jack, I think we'd all like you to write a caption about the circumstances involved with that photo.
What is it all about?

[SouthWestPacificVet]

Hello,

The photo was taken in New Guinea late in '43 or early '44, we did recon of various Jap held islands, going ashore in rubber boats, we would travel by submarine or PT boat in the dark of night, a few times by PBY. The Navy always treated us well, a clean bunk, food, coffee, smokes, dry clothing and socks when they could spare some, and if you needed to mail a letter a Navy guy would take care of it for you. Looking at the faded snap shot now, the fellas all look like kids, with old faces.

[Christos]

One of my relatives was the commander of a native unit called the PNGI...Papua New Guinea Infantry.....Jim used to say that these people were,
"The best jungle soldiers I've ever seen..hands down.."

Most of the Japanese they encountered were "starving", he said, and he remembers how these people used to come in with various trophies, in the traditional manner, to prove that they had actually met and defeated Japanese patrols....paid by the ear, apparently... A couple of storys from him...

"I'll never forget a patrol we ran...It was 'deep' jungle and the further we went into it, the more it blocked out the sun...finally, we got to this clearing, probably the only clearing in this region for many square kilometres...and then we saw him...
A priest, working for the International Red Cross, was sitting in the middle of the clearing...He sat under a massive Tea urn on wheels, he had a good supply of biscuits, and he was handing them out to the soldiers we went by...
Now this Tea urn must have weighed a fair bit, and he had dragged it, over many, many miles of Jungle track, before he reached the point of no return, and just sat down to wait...then we came along....We were the first white people he had seen in THREE WEEKS..."

"I had to go over to this American unit, for what they called, 'liason', to check what other units were in the area so that our patrols would not run into each other....We got to their base-camp...The Yanks used to land on a beach, march about 500 tards into the jungle. There, they would establish their perimeter, he said, and most of the time, it stayed that way for a good long time....So, we arrive at this unit, and the first thing we notice, are all these 'anti-personel' devices that had been set on the wire to stop or warn of a Japanese infiltration at nightime....Jim observed that the 'devices' as he called them, were hanging, "BOLD AS BRASS AND IN DAYLIGHT, clearly visable on the wire. He said the standard procedure was to remove these devices during the day, and reset them at night again, to prevent Jap recon from noticing a 'gap' during daylight hours that they could exploit at night...
Jim wandered in, and after finishing the business he came for, he said to the American officer,
"Look, mate...far be it from us to tell you how to run your unit, but, why in CHRISTS name don't you move those 'mines' out on the wire?"....

The officer simply looked at him, like he was from another planet...
"Well", he said.."If we take them down, we will just have to put them back out again....."


Jim said they just "shook their heads", and said to him..."Ok, pal...I can see you've got it all worked out!."