RE: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,166386,00.html

"Why are contemporary conflicts so devoid of chivalry? Was the clash of the Desert Fox and the Desert Rats an anomaly? Will future wars continue to be characterized by such horrors as genocide and ethnic cleansing, by suicide bombings and beheadings-on-video, by places and acts like Abu Ghraib and waterboarding?"

Did the horrors of genocide and ethnic cleansing begin with contemporary conflicts? Is Mr. Pressfield forgetting about the Holocaust? So WWII with the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March was the age of chivalry? Humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib is somehow worse than the gas chambers? Is waterboarding, a non-lethal "torture" on a par with the experiments of Dr. Mengele?

"Today's wars are brutal and without mercy" according to Mr. Pressfield. Was WWII less brutal? Supposedly atrocities are committed today "for the benefit of the evening news." One wonders why atrocities were committed in the past.

A reason for the chivalry of the war in North Africa, according to the author, is that it pitted "Christian European" against "Christian European." Why, then, did the Wehrmacht in which Rommel served, commit so many atrocities against Christian Europeans on the Eastern Front?

It is likely true that Rommel was an honorable and even chivalrous man. These characteristics made him an aberration in WWII. On the whole, WWII involved all manner of unspeakable atrocities. "Tribal" people facing an uneven fight in contemporary wars did not invent brutality.

I get the point I think he was making, but it is definitely wide open to argument and rebuttal.. Huh.. maybe THAT was the point....

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Originally posted by godawgz:
I get the point I think he was making, but it is definitely wide open to argument and rebuttal.. Huh.. maybe THAT was the point....

What was his point? That you can isolate one campaign in the midst of the most brutal war in human history, and them complain about the present? Beats me...

Dave

I dunno.. maybe just to get people thinking and talking about current wars vs those of the past.. to make us struggle with definitions and classifications.. or as mole might say, with 'semantics'.

Pressfield is a former Marine who most likely participated in WWII. So what else would he name this article?

I doubt he would have wrote this if he had fought in any war after WWII.

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Originally posted by badmac933:
Pressfield is a former Marine who most likely participated in WWII. So what else would he name this article?

I doubt he would have wrote this if he had fought in any war after WWII.

Apparently not. He was born in 1943, and went into the Marines fresh out of Duke in 1966. http://www.stevenpressfield.com/content/author.asp

Chivalrous warfare is an oxymoron. There is no such thing and there never has been. While there have been individual acts of compassion shown for an enemy during many wars, the bottom line of warfare remains to kill people and break things.

The American civil war began as a vision of some twisted mirage of chivalry and gallantry. It quickly revealed itself to be quite another beast.

And it took the murderous scorched earth policy of Sherman backed by Grant and supported by Lincoln to finally bring an end to it. Had Lee have advanced on and burned Washington when he had the opportunity, it would have ended earlier and quite differently.

The only creed of warfare, is "Do unto others before they do unto you." Therefore if you can't resolve the dispute short of armed combat? Be prepared to do what needs to be done to get it over quickly and with finality.

Are you a sitting encyclopedia?

quote:

Originally posted by oldmole:

quote:

Originally posted by badmac933:
Pressfield is a former Marine who most likely participated in WWII. So what else would he name this article?

I doubt he would have wrote this if he had fought in any war after WWII.

Apparently not. He was born in 1943, and went into the Marines fresh out of Duke in 1966. http://www.stevenpressfield.com/content/author.asp

quote:

Originally posted by L0A1:
Are you a sitting encyclopedia?

quote:

Originally posted by oldmole:

quote:

Originally posted by badmac933:
Pressfield is a former Marine who most likely participated in WWII. So what else would he name this article?

I doubt he would have wrote this if he had fought in any war after WWII.

Apparently not. He was born in 1943, and went into the Marines fresh out of Duke in 1966. http://www.stevenpressfield.com/content/author.asp

Apparently mole is.

My bad.

But I still disagree with Pressfield's notions.

Perhaps on the level of Erwin Rommel, a field marshall in overall command, objectivity obtained and he felt no hatred toward the enemy. Perhaps Gen Eisenhauer, and other top commanders on both sides, retained their objectivity and felt no hatred.

However, as a GI in combat, I felt hatred. Those bastards were out to kill me. I hated them for it! I felt no compunction about killing -- I was reciprocating the complement.

Think of the combat soldiers in the Pacific. They hated the Japanese and had no qualms about killing them. They had to hate -- it came with the territory!

War, on the level of the combatant, is not pretty, it is not heroic either. No, one is either bored stiff during lulls or scared s--tless during flare-ups. When one is scared for one's life, one is angry and hates. When one sees a buddy killed or injured, one thanks heaven that it wasn't himself and hates.

If you've been in combat you have no illusions. If you have gentlemanly theories as to conduct under fire, you've never been there.

quote:

Originally posted by fnewt:
Perhaps on the level of Erwin Rommel, a field marshall in overall command, objectivity obtained and he felt no hatred toward the enemy. Perhaps Gen Eisenhauer, and other top commanders on both sides, retained their objectivity and felt no hatred.

However, as a GI in combat, I felt hatred. Those bastards were out to kill me. I hated them for it! I felt no compunction about killing -- I was reciprocating the complement.

Think of the combat soldiers in the Pacific. They hated the Japanese and had no qualms about killing them. They had to hate -- it came with the territory!

War, on the level of the combatant, is not pretty, it is not heroic either. No, one is either bored stiff during lulls or scared s--tless during flare-ups. When one is scared for one's life, one is angry and hates. When one sees a buddy killed or injured, one thanks heaven that it wasn't himself and hates.

If you've been in combat you have no illusions. If you have gentlemanly theories as to conduct under fire, you've never been there.

Amen

The Iraq war is honorable, some of the people opposed to it, however, are not. There were hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost in World War 2. Nothing has changed except the media and the attention they give to the mistakes as opposed to the success. As long as we hold our ground we will win.

I don't like meanie wars

Honorable War…..hahahahahaha! That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while……. I could understand “justifiable’, but honorable war…..please.

quote:

Originally posted by fnewt:
Perhaps on the level of Erwin Rommel, a field marshall in overall command, objectivity obtained and he felt no hatred toward the enemy. Perhaps Gen Eisenhauer, and other top commanders on both sides, retained their objectivity and felt no hatred.

However, as a GI in combat, I felt hatred. Those bastards were out to kill me. I hated them for it! I felt no compunction about killing -- I was reciprocating the complement.

Think of the combat soldiers in the Pacific. They hated the Japanese and had no qualms about killing them. They had to hate -- it came with the territory!

War, on the level of the combatant, is not pretty, it is not heroic either. No, one is either bored stiff during lulls or scared s--tless during flare-ups. When one is scared for one's life, one is angry and hates. When one sees a buddy killed or injured, one thanks heaven that it wasn't himself and hates.

If you've been in combat you have no illusions. If you have gentlemanly theories as to conduct under fire, you've never been there.

Outstanding post, very well put.

As for Rommel and the German military resistance:
He was on good terms with some people around Stauffenberg, but he had no idea that they had put him on a list of postwar functions, recommending him for president. He was surprised when the security service confronted him with such information, since he had never agreed to Stauffenberg's solution.

Furthermore he would most likely not have killed himself if the Nazis hadn't threatened to put his family into a concentration camp if he didn't.

quote:

Originally posted by Locutisprime:
Chivalrous warfare is an oxymoron. There is no such thing and there never has been. While there have been individual acts of compassion shown for an enemy during many wars, the bottom line of warfare remains to kill people and break things.

The American civil war began as a vision of some twisted mirage of chivalry and gallantry. It quickly revealed itself to be quite another beast.

And it took the murderous scorched earth policy of Sherman backed by Grant and supported by Lincoln to finally bring an end to it. Had Lee have advanced on and burned Washington when he had the opportunity, it would have ended earlier and quite differently.

The only creed of warfare, is "Do unto others before they do unto you." Therefore if you can't resolve the dispute short of armed combat? Be prepared to do what needs to be done to get it over quickly and with finality.

Indeed. If anything, the current wars are more chivalrous because the killing is on a much smaller scale. 2 MILLION Soviet POWs died in German hands in the early part of the war alone. All sides participated in bombing that was aimed primarily at the civilian population. All sides had at various times a, "take no prisoners" attitude.

quote:

If you've been in combat you have no illusions. If you have gentlemanly theories as to conduct under fire, you've never been there.

Amen, and while Rommel may have had the luxury of overtly chivalrous acts from time to time, the British also have a habit of portraying enemies who've "whupped 'em" as "upper crust" sorts. They were kind in memory to Saladin as well.
Major Robert Crisp wrote two of the best books on small unit tank actions in WWII; "The Gods Were Neutral" and "Brazen Chariots". In "Brazen Chariots" he clearly recounts being machine gunned almost every time he dismounted from one of his destroyed tanks.

That said fnewt, I've always idolized men like you, who did what you did.
I thought you might find these interesting. I found them in Iraq. There are theories as to how they got there but it's still somewhat of a mystery. The going explanation is that these were captured by Iraq from Iran, who bought them from Israel, who bought them from the US or France. These pictures were taken in "the trash lot" near the Kuwaiti/Iraqi border checkpoint at Safwan/Abdali. The Tank Destroyers were captured further north in Iraq, I think near Habbaniyah. [IMG]

Missing the point. Steven Pressfield's article was narrowed to 'desert warfare' faced by American troops in World War Two and Iraq/Afghanistan today. The differentiation between combatants then, European v. European/American and today, West v. 12th Century M.E. mentality. Rommel's Africa Korps was probably one of the most mainstream-regular German Army groups, unlike the forces in Europe heavily integrated with SS/Gestapo units. That is probably why a more acts of 'chivarly' were shown upon those battle fields than in Europe, after they got done trying to kill each other, on both sides they were professional soldiers who understood that war is hell. Unlike today, where the Iraqi's, Iranians, and terror-turds are operating their mentality on a 12th century mindset no matter their educational level.

Thanks William and Charles

Frank