How British PoW swapped uniforms to sneak IN to Auschwitz so his Jewish pal could slip out

MailOnline ^ | 13th December 2009 | Andy Dolan

[HamiltonJay]

Body armor helps, but industrial war is unlike pre-industrial war.

Afghanistan and Iraq are also a different kind of war, other than the inital invasion where you did have some military on military engagements, most battles have been smaller affairs. (This takes nothing away from those involved in them) Neither of these wars have involved the scope or size of what was going on in the two world wars.

Lets face it, entire death toll for all of Iraq is as of this week 4369, that’s less than 14 days worth of average losses in WWII.

The United Stats lost 292,000 men (rounded) through roughly 2.5 years that was our active official involvement in WWII, that’s a daily average loss of 320.

I respect any soldier who’s served, but if you come back waiving a bloody shirt as proof of your bravery as part of a political stump speach, I simply view that as disrespect to those who did not return alive.

I also can’t believe folks returning from some of these actions are going to be exactly thrilled to talk about what they had to do. We are fighting a people who have no qualms strapping bombs to mentally disabled people to use them as bombs.. and sending children onto the battlefield. I fortunately can’t imagine what it would be like to knowingly kill a child because that same child would kill you if you didn’t, but I know if I had been involved in that sort of thing, I surely wouldn’t be jumping up and down to talk about it.

[MuttTheHoople]

My dad's opinion of John Kerry (who served in vietnam) is that he's a worthless piece of dog $hit, with harsher words to follow.

Seeing that dad is a Vietnam vet, I have no grounds to disagree with him.

[MuttTheHoople]

Even back then, many people could spot a phony. One politician was blabbering on and on about all the campaigns he was in, who he served with, what kind of things he did, when one old farmer who had been a Sergeant, interrupted him,

"For God's sake, you've done enough. Just go home."

[bboop]

My husband’s father was in the Battle of the Bulge. Husband said he NEVER talked about it when he was a kid, and finally opened up when our son discovered that Gpa had a wooden leg and held his socks up with thumbtacks. He thought that was so very cool.

My husband then contacted a man his dad had spoken of, who had carried him off the battlefield. He told many stories of their times there. Husband connected the two and they had a grand reunion.

It just must have been horrific. Plus, men are prone to keeping things inside. Friend’s dad, a Navy pilot, told many stories about his flying adventures tho.

[RichInOC]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Denis “Ginger” Avey...

[thunder crash]

...The Real Most Interesting Man In The World.

[kidd]

WW II vets are different. You have to get a crowbar to get them to open up to what happened with them

Same with WWI vets. My grandmother's brother fought in WWI. When I tried to get him to talk about it, he got all funny looking and I thought his skin even turned a litle more gray

[pepsi_junkie]

My uncle was an emergency room surgeon who joined the army with a bunch of other doctors from his hospital. They were assigned to set up a hospital in North Africa. The front was far away, it was safe but the wounded were loaded onto trains and sent the long ride to the hospital. Someone had to keep them alive during the ride and my uncle got the job. Hardened ER surgeon that he was, it broke him. He came home early and never said a word about the war. When I was a kid I used to try to talk to him about it (I didnt know the whole story then). I was all into playing army and all that. He would just smile and pat me on the head and change the subject.

So that's what happened to the ER surgeon. Imagine the farm kid, aged 18, who watches the carnage of D-Day. I could see them not wanting to talk about it.

[naturalized]

I think they do, it’s just that the media won’t report it any more.

[NappyOne]

My grandfather went ashore with the second wave at Okinawa. It was well known to these Marines what had just happened at Iwo Jima to the second wave there, and he did speak of the worry they all had. Fortunately, the landings at Okinawa were unopposed.

He did tell several tales, snapshots of events. His remembrance of prayers on deck the evening before the invasion was touching. His capture, with a buddy, of 2 or 3 Japanese officers hiding out among the population of a local village (the locals ratted them out) and being worried about being reprimanded for not having more than a .45 with them was humorous. But he also talked about a bullet taking off the heel of his boot (the closest he came to a wound), how he “disposed” of a sniper by organizing the loading of a jeep with explosives to obliterate the tree the sniper was in, totally against regulations for such situations, and how he got caught in the open when the big banzai attack took place (the one that killed a Brigadier) – he and two buddies and a truck, one driving like mad with him and the other in the back tossing grenades into the path of the oncoming enemy. Never did he speak of any of his pals who were killed or wounded, the misery of the campaign or the fear he must have felt. He completed all 85 days of the campaign, unscratched, a member of the sixth Marine Division. And, I never heard him utter a negative word about Japan nor Japanese people. He did his duty and came home to let bygones be bygones.

He gave me a few more stories as well, and I remember them still, these 40 years after the telling. I didn’t realize until after he was gone, how precious it was to be given these few stories when it became evident to me that so many stories like them must have gone, with their owners, to the grave.

God bless him, and all heroes of all our wars.

The NappyOne

[Sans-Culotte]

What complete bravery. Funny thing about World War II vets- in previous centuries you have soldiers who brag about their accomplishments on the field of battle. After the Civil War, it was so commonplace that when one was running for office, he'd often "wave the bloody shirt" to show how his wartime heroics would translate into becoming a better President, or Representative, or Dogcatcher, or whatever...

WW II vets are different. You have to get a crowbar to get them to open up to what happened with them.

I think it is because the WW2 vets are the so-called "citizen soldiers" who were just ordinary guys who did a tough and dirty job in the war and tried to return to normalcy after the war.

In the 19th century there were many professional soldiers who thrived on war and danger, particularly in Queen Victoria's armies. Those men actually sought out danger, and were bitterly disappointed if they missed the hottest firefights.

[sbMKE]

My great-uncle was field artillery - went right up into the Rhineland alongside an infantry unit (212th). I have letters he wrote home from Europe as they went. Talked about sleeping on a hay bale when the going was getting good, then about eating a meal in a farm house. A weird disconnect because they were fighting the whole way - probably part out of the need to get around censors and partly a psychological compartmentalization.

I know that he went through some satellite work/concentration camps, from my research, but other than these letters, he never spoke about serving or the war. I always read it as duty, and shared experience with fellow vets in the community, but never story fodder.

[SunkenCiv]

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[FourPeas]

My father-in-law was captured at the Battle of the Bulge. He never spoke much about it except that the movie about it was pretty accurate, but there was a lot more snow.

[FourPeas]

My father-in-law was a German POW. He never said much, but what he did say was enough to explain his silence.

[Vanders9]

I guess its partly the old saw - “those who know the least talk the most” - but I guess also a lot of what went on was pretty traumatic.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Most of the men who joined Queen Victoria’s army did so because it was better than starving in the gutter. Discipline and conditions were brutally harsh in those days and they only earned a shilling a day (or 1/20th of a pound, and even then after stoppages it was more like sixpence or half a shilling).
Having said that, the US Civil War was fought be citizen’s armies as well, and the home population suffered from the devastation that was wreaked by the the two contesting armies..