That was the way his squadron fought the war, that month, in that place. He was just a replacement FNG, just abiding squadron SOPs, doing what was expected, being a parachute ace.
And while the subject of chivalry (or not) and WW2 fighters was was on my mind, the story of the German refugee column popped into my head, no doubt because I also heard that other P-51 story first hand from an actual, living, WW2 refugee/survivor.
So the story is seen from multiple POVs: ground strafing survivior, American parachute ace, German fighter pilot saluting, and a crippled bomber getting home. All of these actual events happened in a couple of months, in a few hundred miles, among a group of men in roughly similar aircraft, a group of men separated by birth and language, but in person, almost indistinguishable from one another.
And look at the many faces of war seen in these related stories. Amazing, no?
If I had only read about the parachute ace, or the strafed refugee column, I never would have remembered them. But I spent over an hour with both of these two old men, so it left a deep mark. And I felt both of their perspectives related directly to the subject at hand: chivalry in the air war over Europe in late WW2. I didn't switch the Pacific looking for some similar or opposing morality tale, etc. It had nothing to do with that.
But, see, I met this old P-51 Mustang pilot, and this German who had been a 13 year old kid who had been strafed by P-51s (very recognizable bellies), and the Mustang pilot, for all I knew, might have been the parachute ace, who was also one of the strafers a few months later. Or another American like him. Very hard-hearted men by the spring of 1945. They had seen a lot of friends die, and bomber crews they were trying to defend, turn into fireballs. So they had little use for Germans. Very expansive rules of engagement for killing Germans, I should say.
War is hell. I'm glad we won it. What's the moral of the story? Not every German was a pitiless Nazi killer, every minute. And not every American fighter pilot was exactly a saint.
War is hell.
I understand the context.
WWII was total war.
After seeing what the Nazis did to Rotterdam at the beginning of the war (not to mention the Japanese in Nanking) it was pretty clear to the rest of the world what was going to happen to anyone who resisted the Axis.
I suppose it was like seeing two people fighting, one is fighting by Queensbury Rules, and the other, with no provocation, kicks him in the privates, and smashes his face in while he lies helpless on the ground. If you are the next person in line to fight, your reaction is likely to be “Okay, that is how it is. If I have anything to do with it, I am not going to be the one on the ground holding my crotch as my face is kicked in. He is going to get the boot first...”
Anyone who thinks that atrocities don’t happen on all sides in a war simply hasn’t experienced it, or taken the time to look closely at it. I remember a quote from someone that said something like “One of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American soldier with a gun” and I think that is likely true. The Marines in the Pacific weren’t fighting under the glare of the watchful eyes of civilization out there in the Pacific, and many of the “rules” went out the window. But as Eugene Sledge said in an interview I saw, there wasn’t a moral equivalence. He said that while he saw our soldiers commit brutal sadistic acts, but it wasn’t the norm. However, the quantity and the brutality of the Japanese WAS the norm for them, in his experience. On their side, it was universal and widespread.
But I do understand the point you make. When war comes, nobody is spared on any side.
Thanks for the clarification.
War is hell.
In Yeager's book, he tells about missions where they went down and shot every car, horse, bike, cow, hog, person, boat or bus that they could find in their assigned area. He said they didn't like doing those missions and if that's how they are going to do things, they damn sure better win the war.