ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by Buzz

And one of the first things the Jerries did was swap them for captured Bedford QL trucks, it's the one bit of British kit they were ordered to keep an eye out for due to shortages of motor transport.

My paternal Grandad was part of the BEF in 1940(RAOC driver) and one of the last things he did before leaving Dunkirk was to drain the sump of his wagon and run the engine until it siezed. I believe this was sop's for all the vehicles that were left.

Originally Posted by Buzz

As of Dunkirk the British Army were the only army in the world at the time to be fully mechanised.

Err, not quite. If you'd said Europe, I'd agree. There was still cavalry units in Palestine until 1941.

and not to forget the 14th Army using Mules in bits of Burma where mechanisation couldnt reach

Originally Posted by Crash

I don't think that anyone (least of all on Arrse, given that we are serving or ex serving personnel) begrudge the proper burial of German war dead; what I think concerns some of us is the current trend in Germany of 'Well, they are all Victims' irrespective of the country they served and what they got up to. Accompanying this is distanciation ie 'it was the Nazis that did that, not the ordinary German people.'

You cannot hate a nation, only an individual or an ideology.
This is the response I get when discussing the issue in Eastern France. In towns that were burnt to the ground in reprisals, with the men shipped off to labour camps in Germany, there is now 10-15% German population, and at least one german Mayor I know of. Although not comparable to Russia, significant areas and numbers of people in occupied Europe suffered greatly in WW2, but they blame individuals for actions, and a regime that propagated it, not every Heinz, Hans and Heinrich.

As a military man, I feel saddened at the lack of recognition for German war dead of both wars in Eastern France. Which is why I donate to the German war graves commission.

I don't think anyone who has read about the unimaginable suffering of the civilian population of East Prussia in 1945 could have anything other than tremendous sympathy for what they endured at the hands of the Red Army. But they can't get away from the fact that, in the immortal words of Basil Fawlty, "You invaded Poland".

Originally Posted by Mr_Deputy

1. A German who used a Panzer, 88s, MG42s, flamethrowers etc to burnt out and murder a starving Russian peasant farming family from their farm.
[snip]
I will ALWAYS have empathy for the squaddie and particularly the conscripted soldier....and I cannot think of much greater misery than the Eastern Front in Winter...

Unfortunately when dealing with bones in the ground, it is not possible to distinguish the difference......

A considerable blow to justice and history to collapse all distinctions. We spent a lot of our post-war childhoods demonising the German people and self-congratulating ourselves and the pendulum doth swing a little far now on its return journey.

I recall asking my late-father his views of bombing German cities, given our consciences being troubled, and he said 'we were up against' and believed we were facing the end. The German people were up against it on many measures and we'd wanted it so. The PTSD impact of WWI had rendered the British virtually silent. Our inability to engage with Europe meaningfully is legendary ala William of Orange poking us to avoid studied detachment as France moved. Glorious isolation doesn't work, nor does grandstanding.

Originally Posted by Mr_Deputy

but I know one country

But a country did not commit those crimes, a nation did not commit those crimes, these are not tangible entities - people committed those crimes.
As soon as you aportion blame to countries or nations, you presume a single holistic perspective is present in every individual. But people are not ants, they are good, bad and indifferent, you know that holds true for any group people, certainly in the military where extreme Polar opposites can be found.
Where distinctions can be made, they were rigourously applied, justly, via war crimes trials. The scope even went so far as to include entire units and organisations, but that is as far as one can reasonably go.