Recon By Fire

Posted By Blackfive

Great post about tactics and the media by Slab at Op-For.  Start there and follow his links to another great blog - Captain's Journal. 

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Comments

[Casey]

I'm just so sure that there were a lot of innocent locals hiding in those bull rushes. maybe even the baby Moses himself. What about endangered species? I, for one, am going to be the first to second-guess the USMC at every turn (NOT!).
I would (being honest now) find a blanket for that reporter. If you are prior service, you catch my meaning.

[Gmo]

I enjoyed the video but I'm not sure what this salami hiding sensationalist is trying to point out. Me thinks he would rather that we send in Civilian Affair, gift giving, photo ops to clear a danger area. Listen up troops, good charlies come out, bad charlies hide. You damned better shoot the hiding places.

[Kirk]

There was a great scene in "Band of Brothers" where this soldier was talking to this captured German. The captured German had actually grown up in Oregon. The American soldier had as well, and so they talked a bit about the common places in Oregon they had known.

After the American soldier walked away he heard gunshots. The Captured German soldier had been executed along with a handful of other captured German soldiers.

The Greatest Generation now they knew how to fight a war. We could learn a lot from them.

[Blackfive]

Kirk - Pull your head out of your ass. Later on in the series you discover that that event didn't happen. That's the story that made the men fear Lt. Speirs. He let them keep believing it in order to keep them together.

That doesn't mean that those kind of things did not happen. Just don't base your historical brilliant opinion off of a HBO series (a great one, but do some homework, son) and slander paratroopers.

[Kirk]

I am not slandering him.

I think what he did was great.

Especially killing the "Oregon German". His knowledge of America and the English language was great.

There was a scene from "the Longest Day" where these Germans put their hands up to surrender but the Americans shot them regardless.

That is how you become feared as a military. It is how you WIN a war. Remember our "Greatest Generation" was the last to really win a war.

[Slab]

Kirk, you need to take your drivel somewhere else. We did not win WWII because of willingness to engage in illegal and immoral acts. If you really want to get down to it, we won in the ETO because of our industrial superiority and because Hitler bled the Wehrmacht dry in his campaign against Russia. It had nothing to do with unsubstantiated stories of murdering unarmed prisoners. Like B5 said, pull your head out of your ass.

[Kirk]

The "Oregon German" should have been shot as his knowledge about America and the English language made him a dangerous threat to us.

And our victory in WWII was because our people had come out of the Great Depression and were ready to do what it took to win. I hate the term "immoral" when you talk about warfare because in warfare the morality of civilian life doesn't apply. You have to be ruthless. More ruthless than your enemy. If you aren't then the other guy (in that case the Krauts and the Japs) will win.

You fight with everything you got. You take the guts out of the enemy and use it to grease your tanks. There is no substitute in war for victory and no excuse in holding back out of some misguided understanding of "morality". What is really "immoral" is to lengthen the war due to the morally vain restricting a soldiers ability to conduct the war as it needs to be conducted.

Morality is for civilian life. And when they came home most of them did live moral lives. But when they were fighting, the word "morality" didn't even come into their vocabulary. For that is the nature of war. War is Hell. You can not refine it.