What value can be placed on veteran's stories ?

Harry

I value and tend to agree with your summary and hope you won't mind if I just take one sentence for comment.

I should not be too worried about Gooseman's stance.

I am less worried about Gooseman's stance than being just plain, old-fashioned annoyed !

I took the trouble to go his site to read more about him (no..... I won't link it here) and found that his attitude towards veterans is just as firmly established in his Author's Bio.

My permanent concern, based strictly on the fact that at my age tempus fugit bloody sharply, is that in future years there will be none of us left of that era to refute unfounded statements.

Having said that, I hope and trust that there are sufficient forum members who will continue to see that truth will always be maintained whilst the forum survives and for this I thank you all in advance.

Lest we forget !

Ron

 

Veterans accounts of what they went through?
There is nothing more valuable then hearing from the Veterans who contribute to this forum. We have Tom, Ron, Hoolig,Tonym, Doctor D, Joe Brown and others contribute the facts and nothing but the facts. Historians learn from the men and women that left friends and family behind, but nothing adds more to the forum than those of the ultimate generation 'that did the right thing'.
That being said, we have seen one of our more prolific contributors, " Sapper ", leave the forum due to a couple of insults tossed his way.
And, that for me, is a shame.


I have two words to reply to the above comment:

Well said !

Lesley

 

Lesley,
Thank you for your thoughts.
Hope one day to see Sapper back on the forum.
Cheers from Canada

Randy

 

I have to agree with Von P as above they were not all saints. My own Grandfather for example was racist, homophobic and a pain in the arse at times. He was human and I would have him back tomorrow even at the cost of my right arm. He was a product of his times and when the chips were down he stepped forward and said my country needs me and I will do my bit. He laughed when you said he was brave and would only state he was young and very possibly stupid. He did not consider himself a hero but life meant he had to do heroic things. I'm babbling but I hope you get the gist of it.

 

In preparing to write the memories of Old Hickory, I talked to him first. Later I began to research the accounts of other soldiers from his troop, hoping to fill in some gaps. I found four separate accounts of a lieutenant from the troop who was brought before a court martial. The accounts of what happened and the outcome were vastly different between the men, too. And they weren't minor differences, either. One had him getting caught awol and getting a slap on the wrist, while another said he deserted and killed a French civilian, then was executed after that murder conviction.

I found all manner of discrepencies in the memories of the fight at Tournai by men of the troop. The commanding officer was badly wounded and several other well-liked men were killed. Old Hickory had thought from that day until recently that the engagement with the Germans that he had witnessed was the only fight at that crossroads that day and that his C/O was wounded in that same engagement.

After reading accounts from other veterans and the troop's AAR, I learned that there two fights at that crossroads, one right after dark that Old Hickory himslef was involved in and another at @11:30 that night with the 3rd platoon of his troop, where three men were actually killed and the C/O was wounded. Old Hickory never knew about the second fight, as he was several miles away on a roadblock.

So, I have several differing accounts of other incidences that men who were there and witnessed the actions themselves. Which do I go with? Old Hickory's, of course. After, it is his story I am telling.

 

Also I have seen 000's of interviews and I can only recall one in which someone said I personally killed civilians in an anti-partisan action. Does this mean we should accept the veteran versions which don't mention it. I have never known a veteran German who took part in a massacre, some heard of them, some knew someone else who did it but they never did. I am not having a go at any veteran but memories fade, become selective or just down right wrong. As an example I'll quote on old lady I knew it's not a veterans tale but it'll show my point. An old girl in our village billeted Aussie troops in WWI. When she was in her 90's when she was telling me about it. She swore blind that they all had a wallaby in their packs and thats when they first arrived in this country. She said it was true and genuinely believed it. I think it's unlikely but not impossible that one did but all of them, should I have called her a liar?

 

Woapysittank

You're obviously not looking at the right documents!!

John

 

"Grünwald and I on the orders of the Kreisleiter Bollow". That's not a military rank at all, it's a NSDAP rank! And confusion worse confounded, that rank title had already been discontinued before the War, so what have we here?

 

I'll have respect for Military Veterans as a whole, I like what most did & will shake their hands, but I'll look them in the eye as a fellow human being while doing it. No need to drop to my knees and embarrass them with simpering unqualified praise, no need to discard the fact that all people can have their flaws, or abandon my own critical faculties.
~A

One of the vets of the 57 Squadron Association at the Dining In night last year regaled us for 30+ mins (far longer than the 5 mins he had been allocated , so long in fact that the sorbet course was served almost liquid ) of all the highly illegal stuff he had got up to during his service. I seem to recall that one of the current officers commented on how that during peace time he would have been locked up for the stuff he'd done

 

"Grünwald and I on the orders of the Kreisleiter Bollow". That's not a military rank at all, it's a NSDAP rank! And confusion worse confounded, that rank title had already been discontinued before the War, so what have we here?

Za Rodinu

I only relate what was given in evidence in his War Crimes trail in 1946. In his testimony he confirms his rank and his duties. As you say he was NSV but he described in great details in his evidence what duties they were required to undertake in the event of air raids.

John

 

Woapysittank

You're obviously not looking at the right documents!!

John


Hi John,

I didn't mean written documents but an actual bloke sitting in front of the camera (or me) and saying I shot someone in cold blood. I'm not saying I want to hear it even but if you rely purely on the verbal evidence of veterans you could be led to believe it never happened.

 

Actually now I think of it I think I have seen some American vets talking fairly candidly about experiences in the Pacific. Just ignore me !!

 

Quote:
Veterans are usually the worst of sources when it comes to unbiased reconstruction of things. They are much overrated as a source. I am saying that after many years study and incorporating the thoughts of many fellow researchers.

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I wonder ..... does this also include the wartime memoirs of those WW2 'Veterans' Sir Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Bernard Montgomery, Dwight D. Eisenhower etc? These WW2 'veterans' were really 'unbiased' and 'over-rated' .... weren't they???

---------------------------

Why would an objective researcher of any subject completely disregard accounts of events by people who were there? Surely such accounts would be an invaluable source of information which can be used to out into a wider context?

I also say this " ... afer many years study and incorporating the thoughts of many fellow researchers". I would also like to say that I would be proud to be able to incorporate the thoughts and considered opinion of WW2 veteran Ron Goldstein, who initiated the thread of this debate.

 

Za Rodinu

I only relate what was given in evidence in his War Crimes trail in 1946. In his testimony he confirms his rank and his duties. As you say he was NSV but he described in great details in his evidence what duties they were required to undertake in the event of air raids.

John

John, by no means am I putting in doubt what you put up, please, quite the opposite! I have no reason to doubt the document you show. I was interested in the contents of the document itself, that other detail is a piece of the puzzle making it more tantalising.

 

What value can be placed on veteran's stories ?
Been thinking about this
Obviously answer is yes a lot. If they don't know allot about the war which I have encountered or the just make up stories which I have encountered or they are bullet proof on what they say which I have encountered. They are all quite valuable because you have to ask the question why things that they say are said and that may be because of what happened to to them in the war or the physiological effect of the war. The propaganda must have an effect? and just the stress of living in a time of war. A lot more things as well I guess.

I hope peeps get what i am trying to say

I guess what I am trying to say is there is value in to why people tell the story not just in the meat of the story.

 

Yes to your main points, Von P.

The WWII generation were not supermen (or women). They put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. If they sometimes achieved greatness, it was often because they had no choice; greatness was thrust upon them. The depression and the war were sink or swim. From everything I have read and heard from veterans and others, the vast majority of British, Australian, and American young men in 1939 wanted nothing more than to live the normal lives of quiet desperation that are the lot of every generation; most were not on fire to fight Fascism. They were, as Paul Fussell aptly said, "reluctant crusaders."

Yet despite this, some of them rose to remarkable heights of achievement during the war and as a generation they did a very good job indeed. That was not true of everyone, of course. As honest veterans admit, every outfit had its quota of deadheads, shirkers, and just plain bastards. The problem was made worse by poor personnel selection and screening on enlistment, especially early in the war. I have done a lot of digging in British and Australian court-martial and disciplinary records, and those will certainly remind you of the human fallibility of the wartime generation. I've read about soldiers who tried to kill their own officers, robbed civilians at gunpoint, made "indecent suggestions" to fellow soldiers, deserted, disobeyed orders, fell asleep on patrol, fabricated reports, stole from their mates and their unit funds, and so on.

Besides the ratbags who should never have been in the army to begin with, you also have to take the normal, progressive strain of war into account. Men who began the war with a great deal of enthusiasm were slowly ground down by physical and mental exhaustion until their motivation was largely gone and they simply could take no more.

I have written about much of this, but it does not to my mind detract from the credit due to the many fine soldiers who kept the Allied armies going until the victory was won. On the contrary, the failings of some make the accomplishments of the rest and of the Allied armies as a whole shine even brighter. Everything is easy if you're Superman, but the ordinary, less than heroic man who feels fear but does the job anyway is the real victor in any war.

For me, one of the best tests of veteran honesty is humility. The finest soldiers never boast. On the contrary (I am thinking of an old commando I knew), they are much more likely to tell you about how wonderful their mates were or what grand officers they had. A surprisingly large number of veterans will even tell stories against themselves, and you cannot get more honest than that. I remember a British major telling of his mental breakdown in Normandy, an Australian admitting that the military police had to come and get him for the last campaign against the Japanese, another Australian admitting that he had fallen asleep while leading a patrol during the siege of Tobruk. I have more respect for men like that than for those who never admit that they were afraid.

I have just finished re-reading John Masters' superb Road Past Mandalay. Masters was a fine officer who presented a mask of resolute confidence to his colleagues and subordinates, but in his memoir he was unsparingly critical of himself, highly aware of and remorseful for his (probably few) mistakes, and full of praise for others. I would trust such a man's recollections absolutely. Fortunately for history, many other veterans have been equally honest.

 

He laughed when you said he was brave and would only state he was young and very possibly stupid. He did not consider himself a hero but life meant he had to do heroic things. I'm babbling but I hope you get the gist of it.

Indeed - when I asked my dad why he gave up a reserved occupation in a shipyard to join the army in 1940, at the age of 17, he replied along the same lines - 'if you can't be stupid at 17, when can you be stupid?' He too was scathing about notions of heroism and declared that empty vessels made the loudest noise.

For my own part, sometimes I think we forget that we are looking at such people and the things they did from a distance and through many lenses. I don't believe in a monolithic 'truth' - such a thing doesn't exist. There are truths though and each person has to strive to tell his or her own as they see fit. That may involve more than a judicious use of imagination at times. I give you William Maxwell, in So Long, See you tomorrow" Maxwell's semi-autobiographical book about the suicide of a friend's father and the friend's subsequent disappearance from Maxwell's life:

"I don't know where he is. It isn't at all likely that we will run into each other somewhere or that we would recognise each other if we did. He could even be dead. Except through the intervention of chance, the possibilities of my making some connection with him seem to lie not in the present, but in the past - in my trying to reconstruct the testimony that he was never called upon to give. The unsupported word of a witness who was not present except in imagination would not be acceptable in a court of law, but, as has been demonstrated over and over, the sworn testimony of the witness who was present is not trustworthy either. If the following mixture of truth and fiction strikes the reader as unconvincing, he has my permission to disregard it. I would be content to stick to the facts if there were any."

 

A report of any kind will be biased towards the person making it for example
What effect did the ‘’Stand Fast Order’’ order given to each prisoner by the senior commanding officer in each of the camp in Italy have on what information these prisoners subsequently gave to MI 9 in the Escape and Evasion reports,
Those prisoner could be said who had escaped into Switzerland had effectively ‘’disobeyed and order’’.

 

In these later years I find many US veterans not willing or able to rely on their memories to complete a book. Many of these read like a regimental or divisional history. Disappointing but understandable.

In one veterans memoir the author, in recounting his second wound, had cited a hill by number which lay south of the near by town. This hill appeared on the map of the official history. But he also provided a clear description of a railroad track that paralleled his unit's line of advance. By checking detailed maps I found this hill north of the town. Reading the text of the official history I confirmed his unit had attacked north of the town.

So here's a case of memory, as recorded, being contaminated by sloppy post war research. It could happen to anybody. Most history (and science) is advanced by independent research where inherent blind spots are covered by a second point of view.