Captured Personnel Permitted to Tell Stories for Money
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Just refreshing the Downing Street petition link ahead of the HoC "debate" today:
petitions.pm.gov.uk/Navy-media/
petitions.pm.gov.uk/Navy-media/
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Spoke to an oppo over the weekend and he said that the word is that the Marines did not attempt to sell any stories, and that just before the time of capture, that they were up for going weapons free.
I hope that was true and that if they are that those facts will come out. If so I hope that they will be thought of as seperate from the toerags that have let the RN down.
I hope that was true and that if they are that those facts will come out. If so I hope that they will be thought of as seperate from the toerags that have let the RN down.
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This is a couple or 3 dots off centreline for this Thread but http://www.ft.com/cms/s/30a6b8cc-e9e...ext%3Dcaldwell puts things in an interesting perspective. It makes parallels between brainwashing in the Korean War and the treatment of the CORNWALL 15. It points out the social differences between our Society then and now, along with relative resistance to attitude and belief forming.
I do realise, of course, that the N Koreans/Chinese had blokes for months and not just days. The general mechanism seems valid, nonetheless.
What happened in North Korean and Chinese POW camps between 1950 and 1953, wrote T.R. Fehrenbach, one of the war's first historians, "has become an emotional issue, and for that reason will probably never be clarified". The Korean war is known as the "forgotten war" because Americans have strong incentives to repress the memory of it. The US Army court-martialled 14 soldiers as weaklings and bad actors, convicted 11 and tried to wash its hands of the matter. But the episode created an undercurrent of paranoia that one can see in, for instance, the film The Manchurian Candidate. In 2000, a fine book, Raymond Lech's Broken Soldiers (University of Illinois Press) used declassified documents to show that brainwashing could be almost universally effective when skilfully applied. US soldiers behaved like a colonial population evangelised overnight. POWs wrote for in-house communist newspapers in exchange for cigarettes. They set up "peace committees". They offered to spy. They signed documents declaring the United Nations the aggressor in Korea. Two POWs confessed (under torture) to dropping biological weapons. At war's end, 21 prisoners chose to stay in Korea.
It is not easy for publics to accept that, well, such things happen in war. One reason is that the public senses inclination to be brainwashed. along with the captives. There are telling similarities between the Korean war era and our own. In both cases, a shock to the international order (the Chinese revolution of 1949, September 11, 2001) precipitated a military intervention, which in turn exacted a much higher toll than the public was willing to bear. During Korea, a certain current of western opinion wanted to believe the claims, however fraudulent, that the UN was waging germ warfare. (Maybe then we can bring the soldiers home.) In Britain, columnists have urged that more credence be given to the absurd and self-contradictory Iranian account of the seizure. Reality gets harder for the general public to read. It is possible to see in retrospect the pivotal role Korea played in softening up the US for McCarthyism in the 1950s. The behaviour of a soldier in captivity is often an indictment of the virtues of the society that produced him. Turkish captives, with their strong sense of authority and their vernacular religiosity did better in Korean prison camps than Americans, according to Mr Fehrenbach. British prisoners, with their sense of social hierarchy, did somewhat better. "American education," Mr Fehrenbach wrote, "had done a great deal of damping of the flaming convictions men live and die by." Brave and upstanding though they might have been in other contexts, Americans were quite unsuited to such an ordeal. The British soldier of today is more like the open-minded American of 1950 than the class-bound Briton of 1950. Open-mindedness, perhaps the ultimate democratic is a more ambiguous virtue once violence enters the equation.
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Perhaps an explanation of why people do bad things is to be found in this book. Mentioned on BBC Radio 4 "Start the Week" on Mon 16th April at 09.00hrs.
"The Lucifer Effect" or How Good People turn Evil by Phillip Zimbado, published by Rider. Dr Zimbado is the scientist who carried out the Stanford University experiments where volunteers acted out roles as prisoners or guards.
"The Lucifer Effect" or How Good People turn Evil by Phillip Zimbado, published by Rider. Dr Zimbado is the scientist who carried out the Stanford University experiments where volunteers acted out roles as prisoners or guards.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
GBZ, I was going to comment from what my then boss told be many years ago, however your second quote covers all the points he made.
The conditions in which the prisoners were kept was similar to the conditions that the Turkish troops enjoyed at home. Furthermore the Koreans did not have as many Turkish linguists.
There was a particularly vivid film, I think the princple, playing a British Army Cpl was Victor Madden (or something like that). The film might have been made by the Army Film Unit and the message was solidarity in hardship. One of the POWs was an outsider and therefore picked on by the Koreans. He was brought back into the fold and they all resisted successfully.
The isolation that the Iranians practised served to cut out one of two of the prisoners. When they were all reunited for the photoshoots that rather upset that ploy.
The conditions in which the prisoners were kept was similar to the conditions that the Turkish troops enjoyed at home. Furthermore the Koreans did not have as many Turkish linguists.
There was a particularly vivid film, I think the princple, playing a British Army Cpl was Victor Madden (or something like that). The film might have been made by the Army Film Unit and the message was solidarity in hardship. One of the POWs was an outsider and therefore picked on by the Koreans. He was brought back into the fold and they all resisted successfully.
The isolation that the Iranians practised served to cut out one of two of the prisoners. When they were all reunited for the photoshoots that rather upset that ploy.
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Commons Defence committee left unimpressed
Spoke to an oppo over the weekend and he said that the word is that the Marines did not attempt to sell any stories, and that just before the time of capture, that they were up for going weapons free.
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Turney and Able Seaman Arthur Batchelor were allowed to sell their stories to the tabloids and ITN after their release.
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Whats the big deal about letting them cash in? Lets face it the government Bu*****ks the services in every other aspect so if they get something good out of it then fair enough. Besides, no point in getting too high and mighty about it. I mean there was no outrage over "Tornado Down" was there???
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A fair point. And correct about the different circumstances. Principle still the same though. Tell your story and make a buck or two. I'm just uncomfortable with the RN folks getting a kicking for doing what probably most of us would do.
For what its worth, I thought Tornado Down was a good read. And important that it was told, for me anyway.
For what its worth, I thought Tornado Down was a good read. And important that it was told, for me anyway.
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HMS Cornwall's Commanding Officer put on the beach
Daily Telegraph
{snip}
Commander Jeremy Woods was sacked from the Type 22 frigate following "administrative action" taken by the Navy, the Ministry of Defence said.
But the Navy insisted that the dismissal was "absolutely not" related to the capture of 15 sailors and Royal Marines last year or to any personnel issues on board.
Although the Cornwall incident happened in March last year, Navy chiefs decided that Cdr Woods, 41, was not suitable to continue running the £250 million ship 16 months after the incident that caused national humiliation.
A Navy spokesman confirmed the officer had been "removed from command".
"This is an internal administrative matter between the individual and his senior officers and we will not give further details of the removal," he added.
He will remain in the Navy but is now likely to take up an administrative post "where his talent and experience can be used to best effect".
But the Navy insisted that the dismissal was "absolutely not" related to the capture of 15 sailors and Royal Marines last year or to any personnel issues on board.
Although the Cornwall incident happened in March last year, Navy chiefs decided that Cdr Woods, 41, was not suitable to continue running the £250 million ship 16 months after the incident that caused national humiliation.
A Navy spokesman confirmed the officer had been "removed from command".
"This is an internal administrative matter between the individual and his senior officers and we will not give further details of the removal," he added.
He will remain in the Navy but is now likely to take up an administrative post "where his talent and experience can be used to best effect".
"As a result of the Cornwall incident the Navy is getting pretty ruthless and if you are not up to scratch there is no way of hiding it these days," a serving officer said.
"If you cannot hack it you are shipped out because you cannot afford to risk one her Majesty's ships. There are also few ships around and plenty of young officers who want to command them."
"If you cannot hack it you are shipped out because you cannot afford to risk one her Majesty's ships. There are also few ships around and plenty of young officers who want to command them."
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Is this the same as being "dismissed the ship" even though there's been no Court Martial? I notice there's no reprimand, severe or otherwise, so is this the end of his career? There are those who lost secret documents and still made it to 1SL and the House of Lords, so all may not be lost.
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This is an internal administrative matter between the individual and his senior officers
Below the Glidepath - not correcting
This is an internal administrative matter between the individual and his senior officers