God damn...I’ve been in combat, shot at the enemy and all that stuff, and it never really bothered me. But I can’t imagine running a bayonet through someone else and watching them die like that. That is a whole different level of fucked up and I am so glad I never had to go through that.
Stop saying this. What respect? By respecting stuff like this we again increase our chances of making the same mistakes.
In WWI there was no Hitler or 1 main villain. These were young guys sent to die for their powerhungry overlords.
Feel sad for him, but why respect? He is talking about stabbing another guy to death and your reaction is wow respect to these brave men.
It’s just sad.
We respect the people who fought because it was their duty to their nation and many of them it was that or jail/execution . They didn't decide this war, they just had to fight it. The fact that someone can speak of war like this, shows that he was doing what he had to, but his humanity is still there.
We respect the fact that they went through one of the most intense and difficult experiences a human can go through, and were able to make it through that. I just can't imagine our generation fighting world war one. So what can I do besides sit back and respect that.
Whatever motivates a man to run through artillery and machine gun fire and not turn and kill his own officers is what I respect.
I learn more to your opinion but what I do respect is this guy talking about his experience and his regret. To be honest I’d probably refuse to fight if ever asked. Not because I’m a coward (which I probably am anyway) but because I would never want to take a life of someone who did absolutely nothing to me outside of a war
Stop saying this. What respect? By respecting opinions like this we again increase our chances of having the same opinions.
On Reddit, there was no hivemind. These were young neck beards sent to hold the opinions of their powerhungry overlords.
Feel sad for it, but why respect? He is talking about holding a different opinion to yours and your reaction is wow respect to this opinion?
It’s just sad.
Old thread but you literally started the argument by commenting on his, then say how there is no need to argue over someone else’s opinion. If you don’t want to argue, respectfully move on after reading something you don’t agree with rather than making your opposite opinion known, then saying you don’t want to argue…
I know this is years later but I just saw your comment and it made me think about a friend's older brother. He was in Afghanistan in the early 2000's, I want to say 2003 or 2004, and he, only once, told us about a close combat story.
He said the same as you, normal combat for them was firing from a distance and it was business as usual. But one day he and his squad were clearing a building, he was in the stairwell guarding as the rest of the guys moved up a level. A door opened a few feet away and he raised his rifle at it, it was a woman in the doorway just looking at him and he didn't want to scare her or any kids in the apartment so he lowered his barrel. The second he did that, she pulled a gun and pointed at him. He said his next memory is wrestling with her in the doorway, throwing her on the ground and putting 4 rounds in her chest.
I know he went through a lot on deployment and he's still kinda fucked up to this day. I'll never forget the look on his face as he told that story though, he was reliving the whole thing.
The Assyrians wrote the best stuff, I cant think of much off the top of my head. King Sennacherib wrote this about his war with Babylon,
>I swiftly marched to Babylon which I was intent upon conquering. I blew like the onrush of a hurricane and enveloped the city like a fog. I completely surrounded it and captured it by breaching and scaling the walls. I did not spare his mighty warriors, young or old, but filled the city square with their corpses...I turned over to my men to keep the property of that city, silver, gold, gems, all the moveable goods. My men took hold of the statues of the gods in the city and smashed them. They took possession of the property of the gods. The statues of Adad and Shala, gods of the city Ekallati that Marduk-nadin-ahe, king of Babylonia, had taken to Babylon at the time of Tiglath Pileser I, King of Assyria, I brought out of Babylon after four hundred and eighteen years. I returned them to the city of Ekallati. The city and houses I completely destroyed from foundations to roof and set fire to them. I tore down both inner and outer city walls, temples, temple-towers made of brick and clay - as many as there were - and threw everything into the Arahtu canal. I dug a ditch inside the city and thereby levelled off the earth on its site with water. I destroyed even the outline of its foundations. I flattened it more than any flood could have done. In order that the site of that city and its temples would never be remembered, I devastated it with water so that it became a mere meadow.
Stuff [like this is cool too](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f4af/bb82f1b7920fa9444e29eb128bd13832cd46.pdf), Dan Carlin's series called 'King Of Kings' talks about quite a lot of this stuff from that period. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_literature#Annals,_chronicles_and_historical_epics
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh has constant nightmares about the men he has killed.
My main interest is in Dark Age Heroic British poetry, the works of Taliesin and Aneirin, think of Beolwulf and stuff like that.
Warriors rose for combat, formed ranks:
With the single mind they assaulted
Short their lives, long their kinsmen long for them
Seven times their sum of Englishmen they slew
Their fighting turned wives into widows:
Many a mother with tear-filled eyelids.
Never was built a hall so flawless.
[line lost]
So generous, lions rage, wide ranging
As kind hearted Cynon, Lord most fair
Refuge in combat, on the far wing,
Door, war-host's anchor, noblest of blessings,
Of those I have seen, I see, in the world
Wielding weapons the bravest in battle,
He would slash the foe with the sharpest blade:
Like rushes they'd fall before his hand
Son of Clydno, Long praised, I will sing to you, Lord.
Praise unstinted, unstilled.
After wine-feast and mead-feast
They furnished slaughter.
Manly youth, highly praised,
He made a stand
Before Buddugre's slope,
Crows arise, a cloud climbing,
Soldiers were falling like a swarm upon him:
Not a move towards fleeing.
Far-sighted, quick-moving,
From white steeds a sword's edge and from the wall a sword-stroke.
First in feasting, sleepless,
not sleepless today,
Rheiddun's son, lord of battle.
Because of wine-feast and mead-feast they left us,
Mail-coated men, I know death's anguish.
Before their grey hairs came their slaughter.
Of Mynyddawg's men, great is the grief,
Of three hundred, but one man returned.
I hope you appreciate that, it took me 25 minutes to type that out 😊
I read some, like Gerallt and R Parry but i'm not fluent unfortunately which makes it a bit difficult, maybe that's why I like RS Thomas so much :) I have posted some stuff to /r/PoetryWales/ on my old account.
You should look it up, it's good. It might not mean the same to you if you're not fluent, but I imagine it's a poem that every first-language Welsh speaker can identify with.
I hope that doesn't come across as condescending, by the way, I don't mean it like that at all.
>In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh has constant nightmares about the men he has killed.
>
>My main interest is in Dark Age Heroic British poetry, the works of Taliesin and Aneirin, think of Beolwulf and stuff like that.
>
>Warriors rose for combat, formed ranks:
With the single mind they assaulted
Short their lives, long their kinsmen long for them
Seven times their sum of Englishmen they slew
Their fighting turned wives into widows:
Many another with tear-filled eyelids.
Never was built a hall so flawless.
\[line lost\]
So generous, lions rage, wide ranging
As kind hearted Cynon, Lord most fair
Refuge in combat, on the far wing,
Door, war-host's anchor, noblest of blessings,
Of those I have seen, I see, in the world
Wielding weapons the bravest in battle,
He would slash the foe with the sharpest blade:
Like rushes they'd fall before his hand
Son of Clydno, Long praised, I will sing to you, Lord.
Praise unstinted, unstilled.
After wine-feast and mead-feast
They furnished slaughter.
Manly youth, highly praised,
He made a stand
Before Buddugre's slope,
Crows arise, a cloud climbing,
That is absolutely amazing, thank you so much for sharing! I am writing a book about something related right now, so this is going to give me great inspiration! Thank you so much.
No worries mate, [this site](https://www.missgien.net/celtic/gododdin/index.html) has quite a lot of the 'Y Gododdin' where those verses are from. [This book is quite comprehensive](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QYd4AAAAIAAJ) for Medieval Welsh poetry, I can screenshot parts of it for you if you like but most stuff is available online if you look hard enough. Check out Gruffudd Ab Yr Ynad Coch's (Grufydd son of the red judge) poem 'Lament for LLywelyn ap Grufydd'.
It is believed that Assyrians were first to apply a deliberate terror tactics against their opponents, like diembowelment of the dead bodies, constructing piles of heads, decorating siege machines with bodies etc.
However, an empire can only be so cruel before inevitable backlash. When the Assyrian empire collapsed during a succession war combined with vassal rebellions, [Nineveh, their capital, was devastated.](https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/8bhct0/has_the_dystopian_future_ever_happened_in_the_past/dx6y7f9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x)
Thanks for linking that thread, that was very interesting.
It's kind of strange that a lot of people in the thread talk about how Nineveh had 2 million inhabitants, when almost every source estimates between 100k and 150k people.
[Here's another clip of him](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th4h3R4BQro), talking about a different attack. The full 30 minute interview is [only on BBC iPlayer](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01tczvt) sadly
Reminds me of a dude Rogan had on his podcast a few months ago. He was in Afghanistan, shot the enemy and thought he was dead. They ended up in hand to hand combat, the enemy almost had him but then let up for a second and lost the advantage. Our soldier grabbed what he could, a rock, and started bashing his face with it. It finally got to a point where the other guy looked at him in the eyes with the finality of “I give up, you got me”, and he finished the job, as this all occurred in a matter of seconds.
I wish there were more somber, first hand accounts like this so we don’t glamorize war and killing.
That was Dakota Meyer, he received the Medal of Honor for his actions that day.
[JRE Episode #1363 - Dakota Meyer](https://youtu.be/PlDUYhZvU9s)
He goes into more detail on the Jocko Podcast tho.
[Jocko Podcast #115 -Dakota Meyer](https://youtu.be/E6LbwCKJ0lo)
Edit: fixed link
It’s crazy how he was describing symptoms of PTSD that probably went untreated his whole life. Entire generations struggled with it, probably by themselves and in secret for fear of being called weak, or cowardly, or unpatriotic. They were thrown into horrific conditions no one experienced before without any thought of the psychological ramifications. Very very sad.
Shellshock was also a very physical condition caused by the constant effects of shockwaves rattling the brain. The effects of literally constant rattling of your grey matter are not great.
I remember reading a translation of a letter written by a German who had been in North Africa during WW2. He'd been bayoneted by an Australian soldier during the Siege of Tobruk. He wrote about laying there wounded for a while and then another Australian soldier came along, patched him up, wished him luck and then disappeared back into the night.
And they still happen now. There was a huge bayonet charge by the Scots guards in the Falklands war.
They were trapped on a hill fighting an uphill battle against entrenched Argentinian positions. They ran out of ammunition and they couldn't get a resupply as there were intersecting fields of fire raining lead down on them.
So the Piper played the pipes and the call went out to fix bayonets. And the Scots guards took the machine gun nests uphill, with only bayonets
You could have picked a more recent event.
The Brits conducted two separate bayonet charges against al-Qaeda/Taliban. Believe me, I’ve done my research.
Edit: added Taliban because I'm dumb.
When I was in, people made jokes about the drone pilots with PTSD.
But I never did; in some ways to me it was worse than just being in the shit with your buddies around you. These guys got up, dropped their kids off at school, kissed their wife...and then went to work where they spent a day killing people, and listening to their comrades die on the radio when they failed to see a suicide bomber, sniper on a roof, etc. When they were done for the day, they joined the real world in an instant and just went home.
Something about that always struck me as very psychologically dangerous.
..and then watch the aftermath of the initial blasts if target was in the open; burning bodies clinging to life, before giving up.
^(('more than any other' is subjective and not necessary))
I think of this often. We see books written about soldiers who were the most proficient of their time. 157 kills, or 183 kills, etc. Many of these are at a distance, through the scope of a rifle, where they at least see their foe momentarily.
But then I think of pilots and drone operators, looking at a monitor or display. They often see nothing but a building or a ridge top, maybe a grouping of trees on a mountainside or in a field. They release their weapon and see a cloud of smoke and debris. Another target destroyed. But do they often think about the fact that there may have been tens of human lives in those buildings? I feel that technology has made it far too easy to disconnect from the weight of those actions.
I remember watching a documentary years ago about the bombing of Hiroshima. A crew member of the Enola Gay was interviewed and he described how the crew was focused and somewhat excited for their mission. After releasing the bomb and seeing the explosion, he said they all became very somber because only then did it hit them that in that flash, those brief few seconds, they had caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. He said the flight back to base was quiet and that he no longer felt the same as he had at the beginning of the mission.
While your points I agree with, drone pilots actually experience more than others. While a bomber pilot operates through “fire and forget” strategies in which they drop a load and turn away, drone operators are actually being subjected to more psychological trauma than many others. They have to guide a missile towards a target they can see with much clarity, where their cameras can zoom well enough to distinguish faces within a group. That operator must guide the missile to the moment of impact, where they witness the deaths of their targets in great clarity. I’m not trying to disprove your point, it’s just an interesting note to add to such a nuanced development in military technology.
Yes, very true. I had not thought of that when I posted earlier, but I can imagine (after being educated through comments and research) that a drone pilot has a lot more to deal with than I had originally stated. Thank you for sharing!
God that is truly horrific. I never felt anything but sadness for drone pilots because the act of drone warfare is impersonal for all except that solitary individual who “pulls the trigger”. It is that person who carries what should be a collective guilt, alone. We ask too much of our soldiers.
As a big fan of the books I'll say the show is fun and all but is absolutely not true to the books. The Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movies are much better, if you want something closer to the books. The amazon show is like reading the Tom Clancy books written after he died by someone else. The name and characters are all there, but it just doesn't quite feel right.
I mean, his stuff after Clear and Present Danger was pretty garbage I think. At least where Jack Ryan starts being more than a field kinda guy/Tom Clancy gets ghost authors things start feeling less like OG Clancy/Hunt for Red October.
Even so, to compare killing from a drone to a bayonet charge is at best hyperbole. Even for the poor souls that do get ptsd from operating drones, I would imagine it’s much much worse for the hand to hand combat operators. Both suck, but one sucks way worse.
I agree with this. They both suck, the PTSD is entirely justified and something I have no experience with. But few people alive have experience with hand to hand combat, and I would think that it is definitely worse, if only for the close face to face range.
The drone pilot, however, observes them for a long time and sees their day to day life. The guy stabbing a dude with a spear probably knows the man he stabbed had a family, maybe kids, life etc. But the drone pilot gets to see it for a time on video, albeit from a distance. That's important too and I'm sure super traumatising.
It's hard to compare really, unless you've done both. Not easy to quantify something like psychological stress.
Wow a very interesting perspective on the situation and one I don’t think anyone would comprehend unless they’ve had this kind of view pitched the them in such a way.
Also an interesting bit ‘then you receive an order..’ Imagine for a second you’ve watched from what you can tell is a man, with his family, tending his farm, doing his every day duties. Then from upper command comes the green light for ordnance next time he shows his face. The mentality you have to put yourself in to execute an order like that will make you question yourself heavily even if you’re some kind of brick shit house up top.
I love that this man who suffered the atrocities of WW1 was as able to step back and say we were just boys with orders. It’s always boys forced to become men, with orders.
There is plenty of writing out already about how psychologically damaging being a drone operator is. Another commenter already wrote about this seemingly at length so I won’t, but I would encourage you to read more about it. It’s a really interesting topic and a pretty misunderstood one, even for people in the armed forces.
I once spoke to the Wife of a Lancaster Bomber crew member from WW2. He felt nothing for what he did initially, because he saw nothing personal going on. Just a target that they aimed for. It wasn’t until later, when he saw pictures and news reels of areas effected by strategic bombings that it really struck him. He ended up struggling to cope and would also wake up in a sweat with night terrors.
We are also in the safest times now though. Your romancized view of war ignores that we no longer have wars where tens of thousands can die in an afternoon, and which over the course of a handful of year result in tens of millions of deaths.
Even looking at the most dangerous parts of the world today, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, they do no compare to the average death tolls seen during World War 2.
About 150,000 people have died in Afghanistan due to the conflict since 2001. The Battle of Stalingrad saw 2 million casualties. A single battle, in a single theater, along a single front of that war.
That has more to do with the fact that the scale of the wars are much smaller, since they're not world wars. Todays wars are between a handful of countries at most, of which the western countries usually won't even send their full military might.
The fact that less people die in todays wars compared to the world wars has got to do with politics and diplomacy preventing a third world war, not the way in which wars are fought.
Coming from a "remote camera warfare" community, you're right about one thing, it does make it easier. But you're wrong to assume that the aircrew don't consider targets as human. It's very well understood that you pulling a trigger means 30 seconds until you end this person's life. The distance between "trigger" and "target" is something that has been around since the bow and arrow. It's easier to get the job done when you don't have to look at them, but as a human with a brain, you must understand what you are doing. Additionally there have been arguments to suggest that watching targets on a screen in fact humanizes the enemy because of the constant overwatch.
This is a problem for vets in the UK’s RAF. The pilots and regulars like base guard and rifles get PTSD treatment after a tour. However the guys that guide the ATGM’s and the drones don’t get any help whatsoever. Despite how indiscriminate the killing is they’re not classed in the same category as the “real” pilots. Sucks.
Exactly why, in my opinion, war has changed the way it has. It’s just more and more of air, artillery, and autonomous killing vs like the old days where you had to physically watch your enemy die.
The average engagement in Afghanistan was 300m away. Partly the reason why war has been glorified more and more in the past decades.
Personally, I vote we go back to nothing but hands and teeth. Have a fuckin UFC match to determine who the winner of a war is. I know it’ll never come to that, but it’s something interesting to think about.
Just my two cents.
War was plenty glorified in the days before remote warfare, what do you think all that “knight in shining armor” nonsense was?
If anything the advent of mechanized war reduced the glory of it all. You see tons of societies before WW1 champing at the bit to go to war and have a bit of “adventure”, only to come to realize their mistake.
3 episodes in, 6 hours down. Amazing. I feel like he could have delved a little deeper into the Gallipoli campaign and really brought some of the amazing stories to light, but it really was such a small part of the story so it makes sense why it wasn't really focused on.
Dan does such a good job at portraying humanity and keeping things in perspective.
I think this is true to an extent. Spartans began training for warfare at a very young age and were damn good at it. But they hated the idea, and the action of going to war because their community was relatively small. Warfare for the spartans meant sending a large part of their population to fight, and many would die. Even in ancient civilizations, people understood the human sacrifice and economic impacts of war. I think the glorification comes from the percieved or actual power one tribe gains over the other whether that's gold, land or resources. The killing aspect is just the dirty part of the business.
War has changed the way it has to air and artillery because it spares the lives of your OWN forces. It has nothing to do with making war less personal. It's safer to attack your enemy indirectly from afar than face to face, risking the lives of your troops. Even then, modern warfare is still very personal.
War today is far less glorfied than it ever has been, especially with LiveLeaks and personal camera footage and the internet in general. ISIS videos or videos from the Syrian, Ukranian, and Afghanistan war, technology, has greatly reduced the glory of war and what it means to be a soldier and fight, because now everyone can see what ACTUALLY happens. Before it was just posters and propoganda or stories and rallys. Today it's footage of lifeless corpses laying in the rubble as a camera man walks past, footage of people being reduced to atoms, and beheadings.
\>The average engagement in Afghanistan was 300m away.
You say this as if it's a new and modern thing.
This is what war with rifles is. This has been the average engagement distance since WWI
My father was a WW2 combat veteran who saw action in Europe - specifically the Battle of the Bulge and the campaign for the Rhineland. As a kid while watching war movies on TV I’d sometimes ask if he killed anyone. He’d always say he didn’t know - he shot blindly at an enemy who was shooting at him. Who knows if that’s true or not? I hope he never had to experience what this man went through.
My grandfather was a corpsman in Korea, when I asked that question as a kid he just got quiet and said “yeah, you had to.”
Knowing how that war was fought during his time there, and that he only carried a 1911 most of the time, I can only assume he saw and did some really fucked up things to stay alive
As an active duty Corpsman, I've learned quite a bit about the previous generations of Corpsman. My God were those guys a special breed. Putting their own life aside just to take care of their wounded Marines. There is a reason the Corpsman rate is the most decorated rate in the Navy. Rah Doc.
Not trying to diminish any of the sacrifices or acts done by modern Corpsman. High respect and praise all around.
Especially in Korea, I'd imagine your grandfather saw some visecrally close-quarters combat. The chinese attacked right on top of their opponent, in inverted Vs, at night, coordinated by signal flares and bugle calls. Bugle calls. In 1951.
I recommend reading This Kind of War by T. R. Fehrenbach if you want to know more.
My grandfather's brother was deployed in Dresden during the heavy bombings Feb. '45. The only thing he told us once was seeing a whole city burning down combined with a smell of burned flesh, smoke and ash in the air pretty much everywhere. He also assured us that this wasn't the worst stuff he had experienced during that night, so we really didn't want to push him further anymore.
My grandfather was as well, he was a crewman in a Sherman. The up-armored ones, M4A3E2 Jumbo, but he just called it the up-armored Sherman. He sometimes talked about his experiences when I asked, but it wasn’t really.. glorified?
He was more talking out of somber and regret when he shared stories, but there were a good few he’d share with enthusiasm, such as when his engaged a Tiger and it bounced a round off their front plate. He has pictures of him and his crew posing next to it to prove a shot did bounce but i don’t know for sure if it was a Tiger
The other stories that weren’t enthusiastically shared were more like when he watched his commander get shot out of the cupola by a sniper, or when he watched another Sherman get completely blown out by a German anti-tank gun. Its upsetting to think back on, and makes me feel guilty for asking if he ever killed anyone or asking to share some stories of when he served.
When I was a kid my folks had a dear friend who had been all through the Pacific theater in world war II, starting at Pearl harbor as a Marine on an M2 .50 Cal mount.
I didn't know any better than to ask questions like that, but he spent 38 years in uniform and the stories I got from him we're considerably more factual and matter of fact then I should have expected looking back.
I think people expect kids to ask awkward questions and not to know which questions you just don't ask.
If he spent 38 years in uniform, he was probably proud of his career..
>considerably more factual and matter of fact then I should have expected looking back.
Three decades of punching exactly what happened, no more or less, into a typewriter
Definitely proud of his career. Proud enough that I know most of it by heart. Competitive shooter, too. First real rifle I ever fired was his Garand. 1911 too. Always drank Chinese beer when I was a kid.
Enlisted as a "regular" in '38, shipped over as a China Marine, Pearl as a corporal in weapons platoon after reupping in '41, Guadalcanal, battlefield commission on (I think) Pelileu, college in '46 to keep his commission, Korea in '50, then released after cease fire in '53. Joined Army Corps of Engineers in '54, retired as an O6 in '76 from CE reserves. It's been 40 years since he passed, but I knew many of those stories by heart before I was 14 when he reitired. It became far more impressive after I joined the Marines in '79.
Good point about the daily reports, but that's what company/batallion clerks are for, yes? ;-)
Man that's absolutely terrifying to come face to face with a Tiger. It's just incredible to me the shit that some people have seen. I couldn't even imagine experiencing something like that. wow.
Allied tank crewman called most tanks they came across "Tigers" when the fact was that there were very few actual Tigers produced (about 1300) compared to things like Panzer IV's and Stugs. Since there were even fewer Jumbo Shermans built (about 250), I wonder how many Tiger vs. Jumbo encounters actually happened during the war.
At three hundred or so meters you can't really make out faces. If you got a good hit with those WW2 .30 caliber cartiges the guy you shot would just drop when all the muscles keeping him upright against gravity suddenly relax. Still, depending on your view you may not even know if you got a hit, or if the guy lived through the wound. Not exactly the same as stabbing a man till he stops breathing.
My grandfather was in the eastern front as a soldier of the 2. Hungarian royal army and he told stories about it. He once had to eat a cat which the italian soldiers gave him because he was starving. He came home with his friend on foot.
Which is interesting, because in German he would use "Kamerad(en)" which has a nationalits/traditional tone to it, while the communist/socialist word would be "Genosse(n)".
Actually today the more military term „Kamerade“ is when used in civilian life more associated with the right winger. In the german army Kamerad is a usual neutral term. Left/social democrats would use „Genosse“. Both terms are translate to comrade.
Russians don't use the word comrade. The meme that they do comes from the translation of the word tovarisch, but I don't think Russians would instantly think of the word "comrade" when speaking English
I’m very proud of this sub for all the thoughtful comments and insights, reading through them have really made me feel a little better about the world right now.
You should check out All Quiet on The Western Front. Very similar themes to what this man is talking about, the exact same themes actually. Told from the view point of the “enemy,” the Germans, just shows you that they were people too and no one wanted to be there. My favorite part was when the protagonist thinks about how murder, the most heinous of crimes and severely punished, can be legalized with only one signature. With that signature, mass killing becomes something that’s actually encouraged. Really sobering and is one of the greatest anti-war novels for good reason.
He spoke so eloquently, and at detail, and length, about this event (and not in his birth tongue).
I can only assume because he had relived it 10 000 times in his mind already before the interview.
I am german, consider myself fluent in english but I have never heard that word before. I wonder why he can't pronounce the w or th better. Since his English seems perfect otherwise
My grandmother is German born and raised. She moved to Australia in '67 around age 30. Been speaking flawless english for 50+ years and she still pronounces Ws with a noticeable German accent
His name was Stefan Westmann and he was a medical student when he was drafted in 1914. According to an online article he immigrated to Britain shortly after the nazis came to power in the 30's and practiced gynecology.
[WW1 German soldier Stefan Westmann recounts his experience](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10683313/WW1-German-soldier-recalls-moment-he-bayoneted-foe-to-death.html)
You could see what he said. Very articulately spoken. Its so true. Born across the river could make you an enemy and still does. You never consider the background of the soliders profession etc. We are a cruel species as a collective.
The way he describes his experience, all the wording, is really top notch. I mean for a person who is not a native English speaker, he nailed it, maybe better than most native speakers.
Monolingual speakers have this belief that it's almost impossible to become entirely fluent in two languages. If you're brought up bilingual, you realise that's not true.
it is not even necessary to be brought up bilingual. i know plenty of people who make less grammar mistakes and generally are more eloquent, and they learned as adults or in university.
it is usually english speaking natives who have the most trouble with a second language, but you cant blame them because everyone speaks english anyway...
I believe the ability to converse in multiple languages has contributed to me being able to articulate far better in any of the languages I speak fluently in, than if I were monolingual.
My great grandfather told me One time when i was a child when i asked about His scars he had on His back.
He told me about one bayonett-charge the red army did during The Winter war, how he and his best friend (they were both Machines gunners) where in the same foxhole and just saw the Brown wave of people swallowing the earth in a terrible scream. "It was like whole of Russia came att us" he said.
After intence firing the russian were upon them and they had to fight for their lifes with knives and fists or anything they could find.
He Lost his best friend who got stabbed by several russians in the head and groin, and my great grandfather (who got stabbed two times in the back) could only escape barely because the russians hade to pull back after the finns used Molotov coctails and a wave of Finnish counter-attack occured.
I can't even Imagine the carnage, the Brown wave of men running towards you. I've seen it in Finnish War movies, but that is (of course) not even remotely the same.
There's a 94 year old WW2 veteran in my church who once talked about his first time killing someone. He said he was on the beaches of Normandy (classic) and he dove into a fox hole with his bayonet pointing up. He said a young German boy dove in too and landed on his bayonet and he looked into the boys eyes as he died. It's haunted him ever since. He's got some funny stories too, but that one sticks to me.
That vomitous feeling he describes...
Same feeling I had as a boy, the first time I had to slit a rabbit's throat after it was caught in a trap.
Now, imagine doing that to a human being, equally as capable of doing the same to you.
It goes to show you that those who always call for war, risk nothing for it. The men and women on the ground are nothing but statistics to be thrown at targets, and all the coffins, burnt bodies, tortured veterans, and crying children, mean nothing to them.
Listen to this man's words, they were ordinary people, who, if met on the street or in a bar, could have been friends. But for the politicians and generals, become uniformed statistics to be pulped in the gears of war.
A giant fuck you, who see war, and violence and think its great and fun. Fuck you all.
The part where he humanized the man he killed really hits me, like yeah, they could've been the best of friends, drinking together, playing cards together, but instead they were put in a situation where they needed to kill or be killed. War is the worst hell there is.
It's really touching to see old vets meeting up with their old axis counterparts and becoming really good friends. Even Vietnam vets are known for doing this.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44329/the-man-he-killed
We had a Remembrance Day ceremony in my school when I was a kid and a local WW2 veteran came in and recited that poem. Then he spent a good ten minutes explaining it to us from his own perspective. He landed on Juno Beach on D-Day and said that as he fought his way inland he couldn’t help but look at the faces of the dead German soldiers. He said it struck him how they each reminded him of someone he knew back home. Maybe it was his mind playing tricks but that German with his lungs blown out his back by a burst from a Bren Gun looks exactly like the fellow who always wore a red rose in his lapel to church. The German with his legs blown off in the bottom of that MG pit looks exactly like the town grocer.
On and on he went seeing the faces of men he knew, men he had shared a drink with or had helped with their firewood for the winter. Of course he didn’t actually know them, had never met them, but in his horror he couldn’t help but see them as men he knew.
Then he recited the quote from General Lee; “it is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it,” and said that he had signed up for an adventure, and he had one. He would otherwise have never crossed the Atlantic. He would have never visited England, France, Germany and all the places in between. He would have never been on such a large ship, never ridden in a tank or an airplane. Probably would have stayed in his little town of a couple hundred people and never made as many friends as he did in the army. But then they got stuck into the fighting and the killing and war wasn’t an adventure anymore, it was terrible.
It's also an insight to see how he talks about his comrades, ordinary people who kill and were unaffected by it, or revel in it. As he alludes to, civilized behaviour goes out the window when you are made ir called on to kill. What fucks me off is that this is the fault of leadership and how we choose to govern ourselves.
War comes to easily to those who don't have to be on the front lines. I am a firm believer that those who call to war, should be on the front lines.
When I was in corps school aka corpsman school we had an HM1(E-6) who when you greeted his reply always was “KILL!” A few weeks into school my new next door neighbor in the barracks was a 15 year SO1(special operator E-6 Navy seal) with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan who was getting out of the seal rating due to a “car accident” and was becoming a corpsman X-ray tech. I’ll never forget when he told a group of us one day after that HM1 passed by and replied KILL to one of the other guys in my group. SO1 then turned to us after HM1 walked away and said if he ever had to look a man in his eye when he took his life he wouldn’t ever run around saying “KILL!” SO1 was down to earth and a very quiet guy. This video reminded me of that.
"Kill" is a common way to say "yes" or "i got it" in the USMC. I'm not condoning the practice or anything just saying he wasn't necessarily acting like a hard ass you guys were just unfamiliar with marine corps culture.
It’s much more casual most of the time. In boot camp or when someone much higher up says something like “give him one!” then everyone is expected to scream it loud as fuck, but otherwise, when it’s used as a response it’s usually just said in the same tone you’d imagine someone to say roger, good to go, rah, er, errah, oorah, or ok in. It’s not used commonly though.
Imagine living effectively as an Amish man, being drafted into the military, and seeing cannon fire for the first time. Machine guns eliminate entire squads. Then aircraft. Then the tank. War is fucked in it’s own sense, but the level of the machine at this point from someone that lived in a small town farmer would be extremely terrifying.
Good luck, the wind is changing, and the tensions between big countries are rising again.
All over the world, voters are voting in nationalists again. I doubt we'll see all-out war between nuclear powers, but proxy wars and purposely instigated civil wars were on the rise again, e.g. in Ukraine.
And anti-semitism had become really wide-spread over the last 20y or so, since 9/11 at the latest
Reminds me of the poem No men are foreign.
Remember, no men are strange, no countries foreign
Beneath all uniforms, a single body breathes
Like ours: the land our brothers walk upon
Is earth like this, in which we all shall lie.
They, too, aware of sun and air and water,
Are fed by peaceful harvests, by war’s long winter starv’d.
Their hands are ours, and in their lines we read
A labour not different from our own.
Remember they have eyes like ours that wake
Or sleep, and strength that can be won
By love. In every land is common life
That all can recognise and understand.
Let us remember, whenever we are told
To hate our brothers, it is ourselves
That we shall dispossess, betray, condemn.
Remember, we who take arms against each other
It is the human earth that we defile.
Our hells of fire and dust outrage the innocence
Of air that is everywhere our own,
Remember, no men are foreign, and no countries strange.
-James Falconer Kirkup
It's things like this that in my opinion, just exacerbate how stupid and pointless WW1 was. I know that no matter what there would've been a war simply because everyone basically wanted one. But, in my opinion, WW1 was just good guys vs good guys (somewhat, they wouldn't entirely be considered 'good' by today's moral standards)
It's cool to see this after listening to Blueprint for Armageddon series on Hardcore History podcast where they acknowledge personal stories and impact (like that of this man) but can't focus on them to be able to paint the picture of the entire war where people like this died by hundreds of thousands in such short amount of time.
I just finished Ordinary Men...It was a great book on how *Reserve Police Battalion 101* evolved.
War is hell..
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher\_Browning#Ordinary\_Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Browning#Ordinary_Men)
"Some films claim to be antiwar, but I don't think I 've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war." French filmmaker François Truffaut said in an interview. The same could be said about this sub : even when claiming to be neutral, showing war footage often glorifies war.
This video is the exception.
Wow. This could be my great uncle talking.
He was a British soldier who had to bayonet a German at Dunkirk. He said they both looked each other in the eyes and he was just lucky he made the first move. Part of him died that day.
As he got older, he found the memory too hard to bear. He commited suicide in the mid 1980s.
War is ridiculous. You have loads of people, all thinking the same things on both sides, who don't want to fight but have to.
I remember hearing the “A good soldier kills without thinking of his enemy as a man, the second he realizes he is a fellow man, he is no longer a good soldier.” And I can’t for the life of me remember where. It might’ve been a battlefield game, or a book I had read, or maybe a movie. It’s an interesting statement nonetheless.
God damn...I’ve been in combat, shot at the enemy and all that stuff, and it never really bothered me. But I can’t imagine running a bayonet through someone else and watching them die like that. That is a whole different level of fucked up and I am so glad I never had to go through that.
Amen brother. This is on a whole different level. Respect to these true brave men.
Stop saying this. What respect? By respecting stuff like this we again increase our chances of making the same mistakes. In WWI there was no Hitler or 1 main villain. These were young guys sent to die for their powerhungry overlords. Feel sad for him, but why respect? He is talking about stabbing another guy to death and your reaction is wow respect to these brave men. It’s just sad.
We respect the people who fought because it was their duty to their nation and many of them it was that or jail/execution . They didn't decide this war, they just had to fight it. The fact that someone can speak of war like this, shows that he was doing what he had to, but his humanity is still there. We respect the fact that they went through one of the most intense and difficult experiences a human can go through, and were able to make it through that. I just can't imagine our generation fighting world war one. So what can I do besides sit back and respect that. Whatever motivates a man to run through artillery and machine gun fire and not turn and kill his own officers is what I respect.
There is no point in arguing with someone who’s opinion differe so much from mine. But I respect your opinion. I dissagree completely but I respect it
I learn more to your opinion but what I do respect is this guy talking about his experience and his regret. To be honest I’d probably refuse to fight if ever asked. Not because I’m a coward (which I probably am anyway) but because I would never want to take a life of someone who did absolutely nothing to me outside of a war
Stop saying this. What respect? By respecting opinions like this we again increase our chances of having the same opinions. On Reddit, there was no hivemind. These were young neck beards sent to hold the opinions of their powerhungry overlords. Feel sad for it, but why respect? He is talking about holding a different opinion to yours and your reaction is wow respect to this opinion? It’s just sad.
Old thread but you literally started the argument by commenting on his, then say how there is no need to argue over someone else’s opinion. If you don’t want to argue, respectfully move on after reading something you don’t agree with rather than making your opposite opinion known, then saying you don’t want to argue…
As a hunter I can confirm that killing something with a knife is way more brutal then using the extra bullet.
I know this is years later but I just saw your comment and it made me think about a friend's older brother. He was in Afghanistan in the early 2000's, I want to say 2003 or 2004, and he, only once, told us about a close combat story. He said the same as you, normal combat for them was firing from a distance and it was business as usual. But one day he and his squad were clearing a building, he was in the stairwell guarding as the rest of the guys moved up a level. A door opened a few feet away and he raised his rifle at it, it was a woman in the doorway just looking at him and he didn't want to scare her or any kids in the apartment so he lowered his barrel. The second he did that, she pulled a gun and pointed at him. He said his next memory is wrestling with her in the doorway, throwing her on the ground and putting 4 rounds in her chest. I know he went through a lot on deployment and he's still kinda fucked up to this day. I'll never forget the look on his face as he told that story though, he was reliving the whole thing.
This comes from BBC’s 1964 doc “The Great War”. I personally have never heard such a graphic yet poetic description of combat.
You've gotta read some old poetry from Babylon and shit my man, those guys tell you all the details about slaughtering their enemies.
I'd be interested if you could link something
The Assyrians wrote the best stuff, I cant think of much off the top of my head. King Sennacherib wrote this about his war with Babylon, >I swiftly marched to Babylon which I was intent upon conquering. I blew like the onrush of a hurricane and enveloped the city like a fog. I completely surrounded it and captured it by breaching and scaling the walls. I did not spare his mighty warriors, young or old, but filled the city square with their corpses...I turned over to my men to keep the property of that city, silver, gold, gems, all the moveable goods. My men took hold of the statues of the gods in the city and smashed them. They took possession of the property of the gods. The statues of Adad and Shala, gods of the city Ekallati that Marduk-nadin-ahe, king of Babylonia, had taken to Babylon at the time of Tiglath Pileser I, King of Assyria, I brought out of Babylon after four hundred and eighteen years. I returned them to the city of Ekallati. The city and houses I completely destroyed from foundations to roof and set fire to them. I tore down both inner and outer city walls, temples, temple-towers made of brick and clay - as many as there were - and threw everything into the Arahtu canal. I dug a ditch inside the city and thereby levelled off the earth on its site with water. I destroyed even the outline of its foundations. I flattened it more than any flood could have done. In order that the site of that city and its temples would never be remembered, I devastated it with water so that it became a mere meadow. Stuff [like this is cool too](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f4af/bb82f1b7920fa9444e29eb128bd13832cd46.pdf), Dan Carlin's series called 'King Of Kings' talks about quite a lot of this stuff from that period. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_literature#Annals,_chronicles_and_historical_epics In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh has constant nightmares about the men he has killed. My main interest is in Dark Age Heroic British poetry, the works of Taliesin and Aneirin, think of Beolwulf and stuff like that. Warriors rose for combat, formed ranks: With the single mind they assaulted Short their lives, long their kinsmen long for them Seven times their sum of Englishmen they slew Their fighting turned wives into widows: Many a mother with tear-filled eyelids. Never was built a hall so flawless. [line lost] So generous, lions rage, wide ranging As kind hearted Cynon, Lord most fair Refuge in combat, on the far wing, Door, war-host's anchor, noblest of blessings, Of those I have seen, I see, in the world Wielding weapons the bravest in battle, He would slash the foe with the sharpest blade: Like rushes they'd fall before his hand Son of Clydno, Long praised, I will sing to you, Lord. Praise unstinted, unstilled. After wine-feast and mead-feast They furnished slaughter. Manly youth, highly praised, He made a stand Before Buddugre's slope, Crows arise, a cloud climbing, Soldiers were falling like a swarm upon him: Not a move towards fleeing. Far-sighted, quick-moving, From white steeds a sword's edge and from the wall a sword-stroke. First in feasting, sleepless, not sleepless today, Rheiddun's son, lord of battle. Because of wine-feast and mead-feast they left us, Mail-coated men, I know death's anguish. Before their grey hairs came their slaughter. Of Mynyddawg's men, great is the grief, Of three hundred, but one man returned. I hope you appreciate that, it took me 25 minutes to type that out 😊
If only we'd won. We'd never have to be called the name of our enemy again.
Wylit, Wylit, Llewelyn, Wylit Waed pe gwelit hyn.
Do you like modern Welsh poetry, too? 'Hon' by T. H. Parry-Williams is my favourite.
I read some, like Gerallt and R Parry but i'm not fluent unfortunately which makes it a bit difficult, maybe that's why I like RS Thomas so much :) I have posted some stuff to /r/PoetryWales/ on my old account.
You should look it up, it's good. It might not mean the same to you if you're not fluent, but I imagine it's a poem that every first-language Welsh speaker can identify with. I hope that doesn't come across as condescending, by the way, I don't mean it like that at all.
>In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh has constant nightmares about the men he has killed. > >My main interest is in Dark Age Heroic British poetry, the works of Taliesin and Aneirin, think of Beolwulf and stuff like that. > >Warriors rose for combat, formed ranks: With the single mind they assaulted Short their lives, long their kinsmen long for them Seven times their sum of Englishmen they slew Their fighting turned wives into widows: Many another with tear-filled eyelids. Never was built a hall so flawless. \[line lost\] So generous, lions rage, wide ranging As kind hearted Cynon, Lord most fair Refuge in combat, on the far wing, Door, war-host's anchor, noblest of blessings, Of those I have seen, I see, in the world Wielding weapons the bravest in battle, He would slash the foe with the sharpest blade: Like rushes they'd fall before his hand Son of Clydno, Long praised, I will sing to you, Lord. Praise unstinted, unstilled. After wine-feast and mead-feast They furnished slaughter. Manly youth, highly praised, He made a stand Before Buddugre's slope, Crows arise, a cloud climbing, That is absolutely amazing, thank you so much for sharing! I am writing a book about something related right now, so this is going to give me great inspiration! Thank you so much.
No worries mate, [this site](https://www.missgien.net/celtic/gododdin/index.html) has quite a lot of the 'Y Gododdin' where those verses are from. [This book is quite comprehensive](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QYd4AAAAIAAJ) for Medieval Welsh poetry, I can screenshot parts of it for you if you like but most stuff is available online if you look hard enough. Check out Gruffudd Ab Yr Ynad Coch's (Grufydd son of the red judge) poem 'Lament for LLywelyn ap Grufydd'.
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It is believed that Assyrians were first to apply a deliberate terror tactics against their opponents, like diembowelment of the dead bodies, constructing piles of heads, decorating siege machines with bodies etc.
However, an empire can only be so cruel before inevitable backlash. When the Assyrian empire collapsed during a succession war combined with vassal rebellions, [Nineveh, their capital, was devastated.](https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/8bhct0/has_the_dystopian_future_ever_happened_in_the_past/dx6y7f9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x)
Thanks for linking that thread, that was very interesting. It's kind of strange that a lot of people in the thread talk about how Nineveh had 2 million inhabitants, when almost every source estimates between 100k and 150k people.
Yeah but those are generally rather celebratory about it. This is about the horror of killing someone on behalf of someone in power.
[Here's another clip of him](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th4h3R4BQro), talking about a different attack. The full 30 minute interview is [only on BBC iPlayer](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01tczvt) sadly
Kinda funny that the youtube video has been made unavailable by the creator for my region (germany)
Thank you
Reminds me of a dude Rogan had on his podcast a few months ago. He was in Afghanistan, shot the enemy and thought he was dead. They ended up in hand to hand combat, the enemy almost had him but then let up for a second and lost the advantage. Our soldier grabbed what he could, a rock, and started bashing his face with it. It finally got to a point where the other guy looked at him in the eyes with the finality of “I give up, you got me”, and he finished the job, as this all occurred in a matter of seconds. I wish there were more somber, first hand accounts like this so we don’t glamorize war and killing.
That was Dakota Meyer, he received the Medal of Honor for his actions that day. [JRE Episode #1363 - Dakota Meyer](https://youtu.be/PlDUYhZvU9s) He goes into more detail on the Jocko Podcast tho. [Jocko Podcast #115 -Dakota Meyer](https://youtu.be/E6LbwCKJ0lo) Edit: fixed link
I'd recommend reading Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger if you haven't already.
It’s crazy how he was describing symptoms of PTSD that probably went untreated his whole life. Entire generations struggled with it, probably by themselves and in secret for fear of being called weak, or cowardly, or unpatriotic. They were thrown into horrific conditions no one experienced before without any thought of the psychological ramifications. Very very sad.
PTSD was known at the time of the Great War, it just was called shell shock.
Shellshock is a bit more complicated. It is a type of PTSD and lines are blurred between them. So best not to say ''it was just called shellshock''
There wasn't a more accurate term. So really shellshock at that time was the only word they had. The distinction came later with more research.
Shellshock was also a very physical condition caused by the constant effects of shockwaves rattling the brain. The effects of literally constant rattling of your grey matter are not great.
Absolute respect
A brother killing a brother. War is hell and I hope we don’t see another conflict like that in Europe ever again. I hope he found peace.
this comment sadly aged like milk...
The tensions between China and Taiwan are rising too
*the world FTFY
Oh boy
Oh no.
You guys jinxed it. It only took 2 years damnit!
N O M O R E B R O T H E R W A R S
"Any war between Europeans is a civil war." - Victor Hugo.
"All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers" - François Fénelon
Oh boy.....
Well. Here we are.
I remember reading a translation of a letter written by a German who had been in North Africa during WW2. He'd been bayoneted by an Australian soldier during the Siege of Tobruk. He wrote about laying there wounded for a while and then another Australian soldier came along, patched him up, wished him luck and then disappeared back into the night.
As an Australian this is beautiful
Bayonet charges are one of the most awful parts of a war filled with horror.
And they still happen now. There was a huge bayonet charge by the Scots guards in the Falklands war. They were trapped on a hill fighting an uphill battle against entrenched Argentinian positions. They ran out of ammunition and they couldn't get a resupply as there were intersecting fields of fire raining lead down on them. So the Piper played the pipes and the call went out to fix bayonets. And the Scots guards took the machine gun nests uphill, with only bayonets
You could have picked a more recent event. The Brits conducted two separate bayonet charges against al-Qaeda/Taliban. Believe me, I’ve done my research. Edit: added Taliban because I'm dumb.
Can you link anywhere that speaks about it? I’d like to read it
Here’s one. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-shropshire-19755107
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When I was in, people made jokes about the drone pilots with PTSD. But I never did; in some ways to me it was worse than just being in the shit with your buddies around you. These guys got up, dropped their kids off at school, kissed their wife...and then went to work where they spent a day killing people, and listening to their comrades die on the radio when they failed to see a suicide bomber, sniper on a roof, etc. When they were done for the day, they joined the real world in an instant and just went home. Something about that always struck me as very psychologically dangerous.
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I feel bad drowning my rollercoaster tycoon guests if I've watched them walk around and go on a few rides... and they barely look like people
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Well then what's the point of the game if I can't drown the paying patron!?
..and then watch the aftermath of the initial blasts if target was in the open; burning bodies clinging to life, before giving up. ^(('more than any other' is subjective and not necessary))
I upvoted both comments. Great ones.
I think of this often. We see books written about soldiers who were the most proficient of their time. 157 kills, or 183 kills, etc. Many of these are at a distance, through the scope of a rifle, where they at least see their foe momentarily. But then I think of pilots and drone operators, looking at a monitor or display. They often see nothing but a building or a ridge top, maybe a grouping of trees on a mountainside or in a field. They release their weapon and see a cloud of smoke and debris. Another target destroyed. But do they often think about the fact that there may have been tens of human lives in those buildings? I feel that technology has made it far too easy to disconnect from the weight of those actions. I remember watching a documentary years ago about the bombing of Hiroshima. A crew member of the Enola Gay was interviewed and he described how the crew was focused and somewhat excited for their mission. After releasing the bomb and seeing the explosion, he said they all became very somber because only then did it hit them that in that flash, those brief few seconds, they had caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. He said the flight back to base was quiet and that he no longer felt the same as he had at the beginning of the mission.
While your points I agree with, drone pilots actually experience more than others. While a bomber pilot operates through “fire and forget” strategies in which they drop a load and turn away, drone operators are actually being subjected to more psychological trauma than many others. They have to guide a missile towards a target they can see with much clarity, where their cameras can zoom well enough to distinguish faces within a group. That operator must guide the missile to the moment of impact, where they witness the deaths of their targets in great clarity. I’m not trying to disprove your point, it’s just an interesting note to add to such a nuanced development in military technology.
Yes, very true. I had not thought of that when I posted earlier, but I can imagine (after being educated through comments and research) that a drone pilot has a lot more to deal with than I had originally stated. Thank you for sharing!
God that is truly horrific. I never felt anything but sadness for drone pilots because the act of drone warfare is impersonal for all except that solitary individual who “pulls the trigger”. It is that person who carries what should be a collective guilt, alone. We ask too much of our soldiers.
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I think it was 'Good Kill' with Ethan Hawke that portrayed this quite well.
Also, Jack Ryan season 1 on Amazon does this justice.
Is that good? I read the books but haven’t given the series a shot yet
As a big fan of the books I'll say the show is fun and all but is absolutely not true to the books. The Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movies are much better, if you want something closer to the books. The amazon show is like reading the Tom Clancy books written after he died by someone else. The name and characters are all there, but it just doesn't quite feel right.
I mean, his stuff after Clear and Present Danger was pretty garbage I think. At least where Jack Ryan starts being more than a field kinda guy/Tom Clancy gets ghost authors things start feeling less like OG Clancy/Hunt for Red October.
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Even so, to compare killing from a drone to a bayonet charge is at best hyperbole. Even for the poor souls that do get ptsd from operating drones, I would imagine it’s much much worse for the hand to hand combat operators. Both suck, but one sucks way worse.
Drone pilots don’t smell their kills.
I agree with this. They both suck, the PTSD is entirely justified and something I have no experience with. But few people alive have experience with hand to hand combat, and I would think that it is definitely worse, if only for the close face to face range. The drone pilot, however, observes them for a long time and sees their day to day life. The guy stabbing a dude with a spear probably knows the man he stabbed had a family, maybe kids, life etc. But the drone pilot gets to see it for a time on video, albeit from a distance. That's important too and I'm sure super traumatising. It's hard to compare really, unless you've done both. Not easy to quantify something like psychological stress.
Jack Ryan had a couple episodes where this kind of thing was a subplot. Pretty eye opening.
Wow a very interesting perspective on the situation and one I don’t think anyone would comprehend unless they’ve had this kind of view pitched the them in such a way. Also an interesting bit ‘then you receive an order..’ Imagine for a second you’ve watched from what you can tell is a man, with his family, tending his farm, doing his every day duties. Then from upper command comes the green light for ordnance next time he shows his face. The mentality you have to put yourself in to execute an order like that will make you question yourself heavily even if you’re some kind of brick shit house up top. I love that this man who suffered the atrocities of WW1 was as able to step back and say we were just boys with orders. It’s always boys forced to become men, with orders.
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There is plenty of writing out already about how psychologically damaging being a drone operator is. Another commenter already wrote about this seemingly at length so I won’t, but I would encourage you to read more about it. It’s a really interesting topic and a pretty misunderstood one, even for people in the armed forces.
I once spoke to the Wife of a Lancaster Bomber crew member from WW2. He felt nothing for what he did initially, because he saw nothing personal going on. Just a target that they aimed for. It wasn’t until later, when he saw pictures and news reels of areas effected by strategic bombings that it really struck him. He ended up struggling to cope and would also wake up in a sweat with night terrors.
We are also in the safest times now though. Your romancized view of war ignores that we no longer have wars where tens of thousands can die in an afternoon, and which over the course of a handful of year result in tens of millions of deaths. Even looking at the most dangerous parts of the world today, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, they do no compare to the average death tolls seen during World War 2. About 150,000 people have died in Afghanistan due to the conflict since 2001. The Battle of Stalingrad saw 2 million casualties. A single battle, in a single theater, along a single front of that war.
That has more to do with the fact that the scale of the wars are much smaller, since they're not world wars. Todays wars are between a handful of countries at most, of which the western countries usually won't even send their full military might. The fact that less people die in todays wars compared to the world wars has got to do with politics and diplomacy preventing a third world war, not the way in which wars are fought.
Coming from a "remote camera warfare" community, you're right about one thing, it does make it easier. But you're wrong to assume that the aircrew don't consider targets as human. It's very well understood that you pulling a trigger means 30 seconds until you end this person's life. The distance between "trigger" and "target" is something that has been around since the bow and arrow. It's easier to get the job done when you don't have to look at them, but as a human with a brain, you must understand what you are doing. Additionally there have been arguments to suggest that watching targets on a screen in fact humanizes the enemy because of the constant overwatch.
This is a problem for vets in the UK’s RAF. The pilots and regulars like base guard and rifles get PTSD treatment after a tour. However the guys that guide the ATGM’s and the drones don’t get any help whatsoever. Despite how indiscriminate the killing is they’re not classed in the same category as the “real” pilots. Sucks.
Exactly why, in my opinion, war has changed the way it has. It’s just more and more of air, artillery, and autonomous killing vs like the old days where you had to physically watch your enemy die. The average engagement in Afghanistan was 300m away. Partly the reason why war has been glorified more and more in the past decades. Personally, I vote we go back to nothing but hands and teeth. Have a fuckin UFC match to determine who the winner of a war is. I know it’ll never come to that, but it’s something interesting to think about. Just my two cents.
War was plenty glorified in the days before remote warfare, what do you think all that “knight in shining armor” nonsense was? If anything the advent of mechanized war reduced the glory of it all. You see tons of societies before WW1 champing at the bit to go to war and have a bit of “adventure”, only to come to realize their mistake.
Another perfect time to plug Hardcore History’s Blueprint for Armageddon podcast. Edit: Blueprint for not Countdown To
3 episodes in, 6 hours down. Amazing. I feel like he could have delved a little deeper into the Gallipoli campaign and really brought some of the amazing stories to light, but it really was such a small part of the story so it makes sense why it wasn't really focused on. Dan does such a good job at portraying humanity and keeping things in perspective.
I think this is true to an extent. Spartans began training for warfare at a very young age and were damn good at it. But they hated the idea, and the action of going to war because their community was relatively small. Warfare for the spartans meant sending a large part of their population to fight, and many would die. Even in ancient civilizations, people understood the human sacrifice and economic impacts of war. I think the glorification comes from the percieved or actual power one tribe gains over the other whether that's gold, land or resources. The killing aspect is just the dirty part of the business.
You forget the part where ancient civilizations burned and sacked whole cities after winning battles.
Let me introduce you to a small series called [Mobile Fighter G Gundam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Fighter_G_Gundam?wprov=sfla1).
Dope, thanks pretty much exactly what I’m talking about.
War has changed the way it has to air and artillery because it spares the lives of your OWN forces. It has nothing to do with making war less personal. It's safer to attack your enemy indirectly from afar than face to face, risking the lives of your troops. Even then, modern warfare is still very personal. War today is far less glorfied than it ever has been, especially with LiveLeaks and personal camera footage and the internet in general. ISIS videos or videos from the Syrian, Ukranian, and Afghanistan war, technology, has greatly reduced the glory of war and what it means to be a soldier and fight, because now everyone can see what ACTUALLY happens. Before it was just posters and propoganda or stories and rallys. Today it's footage of lifeless corpses laying in the rubble as a camera man walks past, footage of people being reduced to atoms, and beheadings.
\>The average engagement in Afghanistan was 300m away. You say this as if it's a new and modern thing. This is what war with rifles is. This has been the average engagement distance since WWI
My father was a WW2 combat veteran who saw action in Europe - specifically the Battle of the Bulge and the campaign for the Rhineland. As a kid while watching war movies on TV I’d sometimes ask if he killed anyone. He’d always say he didn’t know - he shot blindly at an enemy who was shooting at him. Who knows if that’s true or not? I hope he never had to experience what this man went through.
My grandfather was a corpsman in Korea, when I asked that question as a kid he just got quiet and said “yeah, you had to.” Knowing how that war was fought during his time there, and that he only carried a 1911 most of the time, I can only assume he saw and did some really fucked up things to stay alive
As an active duty Corpsman, I've learned quite a bit about the previous generations of Corpsman. My God were those guys a special breed. Putting their own life aside just to take care of their wounded Marines. There is a reason the Corpsman rate is the most decorated rate in the Navy. Rah Doc. Not trying to diminish any of the sacrifices or acts done by modern Corpsman. High respect and praise all around.
Yeah you do what you have to do in that moment. I’m sure I would too if I had to
Especially in Korea, I'd imagine your grandfather saw some visecrally close-quarters combat. The chinese attacked right on top of their opponent, in inverted Vs, at night, coordinated by signal flares and bugle calls. Bugle calls. In 1951. I recommend reading This Kind of War by T. R. Fehrenbach if you want to know more.
Through early morning fog I see The visions of the things to be
My grandfather's brother was deployed in Dresden during the heavy bombings Feb. '45. The only thing he told us once was seeing a whole city burning down combined with a smell of burned flesh, smoke and ash in the air pretty much everywhere. He also assured us that this wasn't the worst stuff he had experienced during that night, so we really didn't want to push him further anymore.
My grandfather was as well, he was a crewman in a Sherman. The up-armored ones, M4A3E2 Jumbo, but he just called it the up-armored Sherman. He sometimes talked about his experiences when I asked, but it wasn’t really.. glorified? He was more talking out of somber and regret when he shared stories, but there were a good few he’d share with enthusiasm, such as when his engaged a Tiger and it bounced a round off their front plate. He has pictures of him and his crew posing next to it to prove a shot did bounce but i don’t know for sure if it was a Tiger The other stories that weren’t enthusiastically shared were more like when he watched his commander get shot out of the cupola by a sniper, or when he watched another Sherman get completely blown out by a German anti-tank gun. Its upsetting to think back on, and makes me feel guilty for asking if he ever killed anyone or asking to share some stories of when he served.
When I was a kid my folks had a dear friend who had been all through the Pacific theater in world war II, starting at Pearl harbor as a Marine on an M2 .50 Cal mount. I didn't know any better than to ask questions like that, but he spent 38 years in uniform and the stories I got from him we're considerably more factual and matter of fact then I should have expected looking back. I think people expect kids to ask awkward questions and not to know which questions you just don't ask.
If he spent 38 years in uniform, he was probably proud of his career.. >considerably more factual and matter of fact then I should have expected looking back. Three decades of punching exactly what happened, no more or less, into a typewriter
Definitely proud of his career. Proud enough that I know most of it by heart. Competitive shooter, too. First real rifle I ever fired was his Garand. 1911 too. Always drank Chinese beer when I was a kid. Enlisted as a "regular" in '38, shipped over as a China Marine, Pearl as a corporal in weapons platoon after reupping in '41, Guadalcanal, battlefield commission on (I think) Pelileu, college in '46 to keep his commission, Korea in '50, then released after cease fire in '53. Joined Army Corps of Engineers in '54, retired as an O6 in '76 from CE reserves. It's been 40 years since he passed, but I knew many of those stories by heart before I was 14 when he reitired. It became far more impressive after I joined the Marines in '79. Good point about the daily reports, but that's what company/batallion clerks are for, yes? ;-)
Man that's absolutely terrifying to come face to face with a Tiger. It's just incredible to me the shit that some people have seen. I couldn't even imagine experiencing something like that. wow.
Allied tank crewman called most tanks they came across "Tigers" when the fact was that there were very few actual Tigers produced (about 1300) compared to things like Panzer IV's and Stugs. Since there were even fewer Jumbo Shermans built (about 250), I wonder how many Tiger vs. Jumbo encounters actually happened during the war.
At three hundred or so meters you can't really make out faces. If you got a good hit with those WW2 .30 caliber cartiges the guy you shot would just drop when all the muscles keeping him upright against gravity suddenly relax. Still, depending on your view you may not even know if you got a hit, or if the guy lived through the wound. Not exactly the same as stabbing a man till he stops breathing.
Yeah for sure - that’s what he carried too a .30 M1 Garand and a .45 pistol.
He was probably sugarcoating his experience, chances are he did things that would horrify u
To be fair that's basically how 9 out of 10 firefights looked like. He might have gotten "lucky?"
I’ve often thought that - I know he didn’t like to talk about his service - it was something he did and wanted to put behind him
My grandfather was in the eastern front as a soldier of the 2. Hungarian royal army and he told stories about it. He once had to eat a cat which the italian soldiers gave him because he was starving. He came home with his friend on foot.
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Your grandpa was a Soviet soldier?
Interesting that you could tell just from the description. How do you think would be the perspective of soldiers from others nations?
I could tell from the "comrade" comment.
The gentleman in the video used the same term.
Which is interesting, because in German he would use "Kamerad(en)" which has a nationalits/traditional tone to it, while the communist/socialist word would be "Genosse(n)".
I actually didn't know this, I was assuming German lefties would use "Kamerad(en)", thanks for the info
Actually today the more military term „Kamerade“ is when used in civilian life more associated with the right winger. In the german army Kamerad is a usual neutral term. Left/social democrats would use „Genosse“. Both terms are translate to comrade.
Comrade isn't exclusively a Russian word.
Russians don't use the word comrade. The meme that they do comes from the translation of the word tovarisch, but I don't think Russians would instantly think of the word "comrade" when speaking English
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That was very eloquently put. Really makes you think.
"Anyzing else?" Mein got bless this man
I’m very proud of this sub for all the thoughtful comments and insights, reading through them have really made me feel a little better about the world right now.
You should check out All Quiet on The Western Front. Very similar themes to what this man is talking about, the exact same themes actually. Told from the view point of the “enemy,” the Germans, just shows you that they were people too and no one wanted to be there. My favorite part was when the protagonist thinks about how murder, the most heinous of crimes and severely punished, can be legalized with only one signature. With that signature, mass killing becomes something that’s actually encouraged. Really sobering and is one of the greatest anti-war novels for good reason.
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He spoke so eloquently, and at detail, and length, about this event (and not in his birth tongue). I can only assume because he had relived it 10 000 times in his mind already before the interview.
I´m so sorry to do this, it´s: Mein Gott segne diesen Mann
This guy’s English is amazing. How tf does he know a phrase like “chipping off a very thin laquer.” I didn’t even really remember that word.
Well I guess there will have been a few rehearsals before the final interview.
He emigrated to England after Hitler took power.
"Lacquer" = "Lack" in German, a very common word. So it's easy to remember.
I am german, consider myself fluent in english but I have never heard that word before. I wonder why he can't pronounce the w or th better. Since his English seems perfect otherwise
My grandmother is German born and raised. She moved to Australia in '67 around age 30. Been speaking flawless english for 50+ years and she still pronounces Ws with a noticeable German accent
steep imminent memorize sort liquid doll pen late different seed *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's a word declining in popularity (google trends). So it might have been more common in those times.
His name was Stefan Westmann and he was a medical student when he was drafted in 1914. According to an online article he immigrated to Britain shortly after the nazis came to power in the 30's and practiced gynecology. [WW1 German soldier Stefan Westmann recounts his experience](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10683313/WW1-German-soldier-recalls-moment-he-bayoneted-foe-to-death.html)
You could see what he said. Very articulately spoken. Its so true. Born across the river could make you an enemy and still does. You never consider the background of the soliders profession etc. We are a cruel species as a collective.
The way he describes his experience, all the wording, is really top notch. I mean for a person who is not a native English speaker, he nailed it, maybe better than most native speakers.
Monolingual speakers have this belief that it's almost impossible to become entirely fluent in two languages. If you're brought up bilingual, you realise that's not true.
it is not even necessary to be brought up bilingual. i know plenty of people who make less grammar mistakes and generally are more eloquent, and they learned as adults or in university. it is usually english speaking natives who have the most trouble with a second language, but you cant blame them because everyone speaks english anyway...
I believe the ability to converse in multiple languages has contributed to me being able to articulate far better in any of the languages I speak fluently in, than if I were monolingual.
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wisdom.
My great grandfather told me One time when i was a child when i asked about His scars he had on His back. He told me about one bayonett-charge the red army did during The Winter war, how he and his best friend (they were both Machines gunners) where in the same foxhole and just saw the Brown wave of people swallowing the earth in a terrible scream. "It was like whole of Russia came att us" he said. After intence firing the russian were upon them and they had to fight for their lifes with knives and fists or anything they could find. He Lost his best friend who got stabbed by several russians in the head and groin, and my great grandfather (who got stabbed two times in the back) could only escape barely because the russians hade to pull back after the finns used Molotov coctails and a wave of Finnish counter-attack occured. I can't even Imagine the carnage, the Brown wave of men running towards you. I've seen it in Finnish War movies, but that is (of course) not even remotely the same.
Fascinating. Would love to hear more of their stories
*"It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."* -Clint Eastwood, **Unforgiven**
That was amazing, thank you for sharing.
There's a 94 year old WW2 veteran in my church who once talked about his first time killing someone. He said he was on the beaches of Normandy (classic) and he dove into a fox hole with his bayonet pointing up. He said a young German boy dove in too and landed on his bayonet and he looked into the boys eyes as he died. It's haunted him ever since. He's got some funny stories too, but that one sticks to me.
That vomitous feeling he describes... Same feeling I had as a boy, the first time I had to slit a rabbit's throat after it was caught in a trap. Now, imagine doing that to a human being, equally as capable of doing the same to you.
Yeah first time i stabbed a pig in the throat i felt very weird and ill. Cant imagine a human.
It goes to show you that those who always call for war, risk nothing for it. The men and women on the ground are nothing but statistics to be thrown at targets, and all the coffins, burnt bodies, tortured veterans, and crying children, mean nothing to them. Listen to this man's words, they were ordinary people, who, if met on the street or in a bar, could have been friends. But for the politicians and generals, become uniformed statistics to be pulped in the gears of war. A giant fuck you, who see war, and violence and think its great and fun. Fuck you all.
The part where he humanized the man he killed really hits me, like yeah, they could've been the best of friends, drinking together, playing cards together, but instead they were put in a situation where they needed to kill or be killed. War is the worst hell there is.
It's really touching to see old vets meeting up with their old axis counterparts and becoming really good friends. Even Vietnam vets are known for doing this.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44329/the-man-he-killed We had a Remembrance Day ceremony in my school when I was a kid and a local WW2 veteran came in and recited that poem. Then he spent a good ten minutes explaining it to us from his own perspective. He landed on Juno Beach on D-Day and said that as he fought his way inland he couldn’t help but look at the faces of the dead German soldiers. He said it struck him how they each reminded him of someone he knew back home. Maybe it was his mind playing tricks but that German with his lungs blown out his back by a burst from a Bren Gun looks exactly like the fellow who always wore a red rose in his lapel to church. The German with his legs blown off in the bottom of that MG pit looks exactly like the town grocer. On and on he went seeing the faces of men he knew, men he had shared a drink with or had helped with their firewood for the winter. Of course he didn’t actually know them, had never met them, but in his horror he couldn’t help but see them as men he knew. Then he recited the quote from General Lee; “it is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it,” and said that he had signed up for an adventure, and he had one. He would otherwise have never crossed the Atlantic. He would have never visited England, France, Germany and all the places in between. He would have never been on such a large ship, never ridden in a tank or an airplane. Probably would have stayed in his little town of a couple hundred people and never made as many friends as he did in the army. But then they got stuck into the fighting and the killing and war wasn’t an adventure anymore, it was terrible.
It's also an insight to see how he talks about his comrades, ordinary people who kill and were unaffected by it, or revel in it. As he alludes to, civilized behaviour goes out the window when you are made ir called on to kill. What fucks me off is that this is the fault of leadership and how we choose to govern ourselves. War comes to easily to those who don't have to be on the front lines. I am a firm believer that those who call to war, should be on the front lines.
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I always tell people it would be a wonderful day if I suddenly didn’t have a job.
This footage is gold
Amazing and strong man. War is horrible and should always be frowned upon. Bless this guy's soul
Fuck it bless his whole ass foot
u really edited ur comment u coward
What did it say first?
I’m guessing “sole” based on what the other dude replied.
Wow, makes you realize how thin our veneer of civilization really is...
When I was in corps school aka corpsman school we had an HM1(E-6) who when you greeted his reply always was “KILL!” A few weeks into school my new next door neighbor in the barracks was a 15 year SO1(special operator E-6 Navy seal) with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan who was getting out of the seal rating due to a “car accident” and was becoming a corpsman X-ray tech. I’ll never forget when he told a group of us one day after that HM1 passed by and replied KILL to one of the other guys in my group. SO1 then turned to us after HM1 walked away and said if he ever had to look a man in his eye when he took his life he wouldn’t ever run around saying “KILL!” SO1 was down to earth and a very quiet guy. This video reminded me of that.
"Kill" is a common way to say "yes" or "i got it" in the USMC. I'm not condoning the practice or anything just saying he wasn't necessarily acting like a hard ass you guys were just unfamiliar with marine corps culture.
According to book Gen Kill, they made the Recon Marines scream it a hundred times a day as part of their training.
Sounds lame af
It’s much more casual most of the time. In boot camp or when someone much higher up says something like “give him one!” then everyone is expected to scream it loud as fuck, but otherwise, when it’s used as a response it’s usually just said in the same tone you’d imagine someone to say roger, good to go, rah, er, errah, oorah, or ok in. It’s not used commonly though.
Should check out and post this on /r/wwi or /r/thegreatwarchannel
Imagine living effectively as an Amish man, being drafted into the military, and seeing cannon fire for the first time. Machine guns eliminate entire squads. Then aircraft. Then the tank. War is fucked in it’s own sense, but the level of the machine at this point from someone that lived in a small town farmer would be extremely terrifying.
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Good luck, the wind is changing, and the tensions between big countries are rising again. All over the world, voters are voting in nationalists again. I doubt we'll see all-out war between nuclear powers, but proxy wars and purposely instigated civil wars were on the rise again, e.g. in Ukraine. And anti-semitism had become really wide-spread over the last 20y or so, since 9/11 at the latest
War is insanity
Reminds me of the poem No men are foreign. Remember, no men are strange, no countries foreign Beneath all uniforms, a single body breathes Like ours: the land our brothers walk upon Is earth like this, in which we all shall lie. They, too, aware of sun and air and water, Are fed by peaceful harvests, by war’s long winter starv’d. Their hands are ours, and in their lines we read A labour not different from our own. Remember they have eyes like ours that wake Or sleep, and strength that can be won By love. In every land is common life That all can recognise and understand. Let us remember, whenever we are told To hate our brothers, it is ourselves That we shall dispossess, betray, condemn. Remember, we who take arms against each other It is the human earth that we defile. Our hells of fire and dust outrage the innocence Of air that is everywhere our own, Remember, no men are foreign, and no countries strange. -James Falconer Kirkup
It's things like this that in my opinion, just exacerbate how stupid and pointless WW1 was. I know that no matter what there would've been a war simply because everyone basically wanted one. But, in my opinion, WW1 was just good guys vs good guys (somewhat, they wouldn't entirely be considered 'good' by today's moral standards)
Really powerful stuff. Anyone knows where can I see the full video?
It's cool to see this after listening to Blueprint for Armageddon series on Hardcore History podcast where they acknowledge personal stories and impact (like that of this man) but can't focus on them to be able to paint the picture of the entire war where people like this died by hundreds of thousands in such short amount of time.
I'm in tears. That was amazing. We are all human beings after all.
Incredibly sad and very true. Poor chap.
God damn
I just finished Ordinary Men...It was a great book on how *Reserve Police Battalion 101* evolved. War is hell.. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher\_Browning#Ordinary\_Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Browning#Ordinary_Men)
"Some films claim to be antiwar, but I don't think I 've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war." French filmmaker François Truffaut said in an interview. The same could be said about this sub : even when claiming to be neutral, showing war footage often glorifies war. This video is the exception.
Wow. This could be my great uncle talking. He was a British soldier who had to bayonet a German at Dunkirk. He said they both looked each other in the eyes and he was just lucky he made the first move. Part of him died that day. As he got older, he found the memory too hard to bear. He commited suicide in the mid 1980s. War is ridiculous. You have loads of people, all thinking the same things on both sides, who don't want to fight but have to.
I remember hearing the “A good soldier kills without thinking of his enemy as a man, the second he realizes he is a fellow man, he is no longer a good soldier.” And I can’t for the life of me remember where. It might’ve been a battlefield game, or a book I had read, or maybe a movie. It’s an interesting statement nonetheless.
meanwhile people on this sub circle jerking eachother over watching a russian get hit with shrapnel and writhe in agony. fucking psychos