Sun man sees surrender ("troops shot their own commanders")

The Sun ^ | March 21, 2003

[FairOpinion]

Another article with a little more info, from UK Times:


Conscripts shoot their own officers rather than fight
From Tom Newton Dunn with 40 Commando near al-Faw, southern Iraq
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-619488,00.html



IRAQI conscripts shot their own officers in the chest yesterday to avoid a fruitless fight over the oil terminals at al-Faw. British soldiers from 40 Commando’s Charlie Company found a bunker full of the dead officers, with spent shells from an AK47 rifle around them.
Stuck between the US Seals and the Royal Marines, whom they did not want to fight, and a regime that would kill them if they refused, it was the conscripts’ only way out.

In total, 40 Commando had collected more than 100 prisoners of war yesterday from the few square miles of the al-Faw peninsula that they controlled. Two of them were a general in the regular Iraqi Army and a brigadier. They came out from the command bunker where they had been hiding after 40 Commando’s Bravo Company fired two anti-tank missiles into it. With them was a large sports holdall stuffed with money. They insisted that they had been about to pay their troops, to the disbelief of their captors.

These were the men who had left their soldiers hungry, poorly armed and almost destitute for weeks, judging by the state we had seen them in, while appearing to keep the money for themselves.

It was only as dawn broke that the 900 Royal Marine commandos, who had moved forward during the night, realised the pitiful shape of the enemy. The first white flag was hoisted by three soldiers in a trench just outside the complex’s north gate, which had been surrounded by heavy machinegunners from Command Company.

They were taken prisoner by Corporal Fergus Gask, 26, who may have accepted the first surrender of the war. “We started engaging their positions with GPMGs (general purpose machineguns) when I noticed this white flag go up,” he said. “I didn’t know whether it was a trick or not, but I approached the trench anyway, probably a pretty silly thing to do if I think about it.

“But as soon as I saw their faces I knew they were genuine. They actually looked very relieved they didn’t have to fight any more. And they became very pleased to see us when they realised we weren’t going to do them any harm.”

The dawn light appeared to have provoked an exodus.

Small groups of dishevelled Iraqis were standing up all around us with their hands in the air, or with a dirty white T-shirt tied to a stick waving above them. Every time you turned around, a new trickle of silhouettes emerged from the horizon walking slowly towards us. One Marine joked: “Oh no. They’re surrendering at us from all sides.”

Each prisoner was thoroughly searched before he was accepted into captivity in a procedure that the commandos had clearly practised many times. The injured were quickly treated and a handful received almost immediate helicopter evacuation from the oil terminal to HMS Ocean, where a temporary hospital for PoWs has been set up.

As a new day began, so did the Marines’ gradual expansion outwards into the large expanse of waste ground that is still pockmarked with shell craters from the Iran-Iraq War.To save them having to translate from Arabic maps, 40 Commando named the clear paths they had established or wanted to seize with London street names: Downing Street, Abbey Road or Fulham Road.

Engineers, meanwhile, began the work of shutting down the many oil pipeline valves.

[Justice]

Super post. Very Interesting! Nice HTML work putting it together too.

[Jhoffa_]

I don't blame them, I would do the same thing in a heartbeat.

Some tyrant abducts you, starves you and then expects you to kill anyone he points at just so you can win the pleasure of remaining in a tyranny surrounded by billboard sized images of that nutcase day and night?

No thanks.. That kind of "patriot" I am not.

[Aracelis]

Respectful Royal Marines ping!

[PhilDragoo]

What a refreshing change for a journalist to speak in glowing terms of "our boys".

Decimate the ranks of the septic western press pool and clone the Sun man.

Absolute stunning performance by these commandos.

When they're done they can take out the Labour Party and give Tony Blair a clear field of fire to follow us to Teheran and Pyongyang.

[A CA Guy]

Wow CJ!

[PianoMan]

That is hilarious! "After I hard day of defending Our Leader I like to chill on the stoop with some OE"...*bleah*

[Aracelis]

One Marine joked: “Oh no. They’re surrendering at us from all sides.”

lol...poor chaps.

[piasa]

Iraq is so corrupt that when their prisons are overflowing- or whenever Hussein had a hankering for it- prisoners are simply culled down to the desired number through arbitrary executions. From what I understand, the prison guards are known to go about town finding the relatives of prisoners in order to extort money from them in exchange for not putting loved ones on the death list.

So in Iraq, bribe money can mean the difference between life and death.

These captives, in fear of their lives and the unknown, were likely just trying to buy themselves some insurance in the only way they know.

[VOA]

I am sure those Iraqis are pleasantly surprised that they don't need to give
money to be treated decently.

Poor guys are probably in about the same mental state I was in when the Iron Curtain
and the USSR started crumbled...
all I could think was "this is too good to be true...what's the catch?".

I pray Duyba and his GI Joes and Tony Blair and his "Tommy Atkins" can
swiftly, painlessly finish this job and help these guys become former prisoners and future
friends.

Heck, if I had the disposable income, a trip to a country that is the site of
two big military campaigns would sound interesting...

[Bogey78O]

It's a shame people become like that.

[freebilly]

These captives, in fear of their lives and the unknown, were likely just trying to buy themselves some insurance in the only way they know.

No doubt they've been taught that the US and British forces would capture and execute them....

[FairOpinion]

Heck, if I had the disposable income, a trip to a country that is the site of
two big military campaigns would sound interesting...
----

I am sure it will be. Also it's a county of great historical heritage, which has been suppressed in the mandatory Saddam worship.

IRAQ HISTORY
http://home.achilles.net/~sal/iraq_history.html


In ancient times the land area now known as modern Iraq was almost equivalent to Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates (in Arabic, the Dijla and Furat, respectively), the Mesopotamian plain was called the Fertile Crescent.

This region is known as the Cradle of Civilization; was the birthplace of the varied civilizations that moved us from prehistory to history. An advanced civilization flourished in this region long before that of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, for it was here in about 4000BC that the Sumerian culture flourished .

The civilized life that emerged at Sumer was shaped by two conflicting factors: the unpredictability of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which at any time could unleash devastating floods that wiped out entire peoples, and the extreme richness of the river valleys, caused by centuries-old deposits of soil.

Thus, while the river valleys of southern Mesopotamia attracted migrations of neighboring peoples and made possible, for the first time in history, the growing of surplus food, the volatility of the rivers necessitated a form of collective management to protect the marshy, low-lying land from flooding. As surplus production increased and as collective management became more advanced, a process of urbanization evolved and Sumerian civilization took root.

The people of the Tigris and the Euphrates basin, the ancient Sumerians, using the fertile land and the abundant water supply of the area, developed sophisticated irrigation systems and created what was probably the first cereal agriculture as well as the earliest writing, cuneiform - a way of arranging impression stamped on clay by the wedge-like section of chopped-off reed stylus into wet clay.

Through writing, the Sumerians were able to pass on complex agricultural techniques to successive generations; this led to marked improvements in agricultural production.

[happygrl]

Thanks for both your posts FO.

Remarkable stories of our remarkable men.

Go Brits!

[Cultural Jihad]

Every time you turned around, a new trickle of silhouettes emerged from the horizon walking slowly towards us. One Marine joked: “Oh no. They’re surrendering at us from all sides.”

: )

[jimtorr]

I'd just like to add one thing: the Sumerian culture seems to have appeared on the scene full blown. None of the normal development stages have ever been found. It's possible that the people whose descendants became the Sumerians migrated to the area from elsewhere.

[Iris7]

Americans and British troops have worked together well in the past. In the Spring of '45 the British were on the north and the Americans on the south end of a line just inside Germany. The Rhine had been crossed earlier.

The Germans were convinced by skillful disinformation the Americans would make a holding attack, and the British the breakthrough, so the Germans massed against the British. The British attacked, pushing hard, the Germans committed their reserves, lots of shooting.

Well, right to the South General George Patton had been waiting for the commitment of the German reserve. He attacked under an artillery barrage and shattered the German force before him. His armoured Corps was loose inside Germany, and the only nearby dangerous German units were locked in battle with the British. Patton was just the man for what came next - a long range armoured attack intended to unhinge the German defenses. It went well. Patton's Corps was the right fist, the British army the left fist. The Germans truly got their rear ends kicked.

[happygrl]

I like that imagery: Americans and British comprising a two-fisted boxer.

We're making another good fight story together to put in the history books.

[American in Israel]

I am sure those Iraqis are pleasantly surprised that they don't need to give money to be treated decently.

Actualy they are scared sh*tless, when the money is refused, they figure they are dead men. It's a cultural thing.

[Riley]

I think that you are correct.

baksheesh

SYLLABICATION:	bak·sheesh
PRONUNCIATION:	bkshsh, bk-shsh
NOUN:	Inflected forms: pl. baksheesh A gratuity, tip, or bribe paid to expedite service, especially in some Near Eastern countries.
ETYMOLOGY:	Persian bakhshish, present, from Middle Persian bakhshishn, from bakhshdan, bakhsh-, to give presents, from Avestan bakhsh-. See bhag- in Appendix I.